by Gayle Greeno
Eli finished topping the second mug and pushed it toward her along the counter, setting the empty third mug back on the shelf. “Now that’s a first, something I never thought I’d live to see the day,” he admitted, head tilted a bit to one side, waiting to see how she’d react. “My apologies,” and raised his own full mug to hers. “To the Lady’s health and to ours.”
Doyce claimed her own mug. “It happens sometimes, those that don’t like Seekers. The ghatti remind them of what they try to hide from themselves.”
“But few of Cal’s ilk who would refuse a free drink to make their point.” He saluted her again with his mug and sipped. “Well, Cal was right about one thing: there’s work to do. I should check the kitchen. Will you be staying for dinner and the night?”
“Yes, if you’ve the room. And someone to see to my mare, other than Cal,” she added, still stung by the man’s refusal. She hoped Khar wasn’t wandering wherever the old man had gone. Although the ghatta would instinctively sense his dislike, she didn’t want their paths to cross. No sense to give provocation without reason or need. She cleared her mind to try to sense Khar, but felt nothing, the ghatta busy about her own affairs.
“My pleasure. Any special requests for dinner tonight? We’ve some nice fresh fish, plump for grilling.”
“You’re read my ghatta’s mind, then. And mine as well.” And they laughed.
Washed, clothed in her last clean outfit, an old yellow cotton tunic, thin and soft from many washings and wearings, and equally old gray corded pantaloons,. Doyce relaxed at a table at the far end of the room, away from the bar, finishing her dinner. Khar still rambled, and Doyce resisted a twinge of worry, wishing the ghatta back with her. Still, Khar enjoyed prowling around in the early night hours, so she tried to pay it no heed.
Dark grill-marks scored the tender, translucent flesh of the plump fish. Picture-perfect vegetables: summer squash, tomatoes, giant red slices layered over with circlets of raw sweet onion big enough to adorn her wrist. A small saucer held a piece of cooling fish for Khar, though she’d begrudged the sharing just a tad. Claire sat across the table from her, stealing a few moments from her tasks, eyes darting to keep track of whose mug would need refilling when she set to work again.
Smug satisfaction on her face. “Your clothes should dry by morning. I had them hung outside, but we’ll bring them in by the fire before it gets damp. There’ll be time to press them first thing in the morning.”
“Perfect! It’s the one thing I can’t stand about doing circuits. Not having all the clean clothes I’d like, or the means to wash them properly. Too many years as a eumedico preaching cleanliness—and practicing it, too.”
Claire’s laughter bubbled, she shook an admonishing finger at Doyce. “Too many years around finicky, fastidious ghatti. That might have something to do with it as well. Papa always said your room was neater when you left than when you came, and then Mother’d get embarrassed. If she knew you were coming, she’d spend half the day dusting and polishing in nooks and crannies you never thought a room could have!”
Doyce had the grace to look flustered, and she was. “I didn’t know I was that bad. I’m sorry ... all that extra work I’ve caused your mother. Frankly, I’m always so glad to be there and not on circuit that I never realized.”
“She relishes every moment of it, loves having you and Khar and the other Seeker-Bond pairs there. And Papa’s theory is that no one would dare steal or cheat with all of you there.” Claire patted her arm reassuringly. “Mother’s especially fond of you and Khar. You’ve always reminded her of her younger sister. You’re family as far as she’s concerned, as far as we’re all concerned.”
Touched, knowing she could never free the words caught in her throat to thank Claire for such unexpected, unmerited affection, Doyce tried to refashion the subject elsewhere. “You and your parents have always liked the ghatti. Strange, though, how some seem to take an instant dislike to them. Old wives’ tales of an absentminded scientist and an experimental lab cat who escaped, or someone’s bad experience—apocryphal, at best—at a Seeking. Mainly, a senseless dislike of gentle beasts.”
“You mean like old Cal?” Claire’s look was shrewd. “Eli told me what happened. Probably didn’t tell you why. Don’t think he knows, come to think on it. He hasn’t owned The Cyan all that long. Bought it with his ring winnings, banked them up, took the blows and then got out while he still had a brain, as he describes it. He’s got too much invested in this to waste much talk on Cal.”
Doyce stirred sugar into her cha. “While you aren’t too busy, despite all the work you have to do?”
“You can work and listen at the same time. I know what it means to have someone listen to you and care about you. You used to for me, every time you came. Everyone needs that, so you have to make the time.”
Twenty years younger and so much wiser than she. So often the listening seemed a conscious effort, a burden of caring and involvement, not the easy spontaneity of the girl/woman across from her.
“You may have heard of Cal? His full name is Calvert Tipton. Perhaps from the ledgers or your Seeker records?” When Doyce indicated no, she continued. “He used to be a Seeker.”
Surprised, Doyce’s head jerked up, hazel eyes narrowing in consternation. “How long ago?”
“He must have retired long before I was born, oh, nearly three Eighths ago.” Claire picked up Doyce’s fork at its balance point and rocked it back and forth, tines touching the plate, the handle tapping the table. “At least, but sometimes it’s hard to judge from his ramblings. At any rate, retirement didn’t sit well with him. He didn’t want to stay at Headquarters and help with the training, some sort of tiff or feud, and he couldn’t seem to settle down to anything worthwhile. A little of this, a little of that, and he’d be dissatisfied. Said that even his ghatt, Aroo, didn’t give him as much comfort anymore.” She tinged the fork against the edge of the plate, let it find its balance point again.
“He’d wander from one town to another and somehow pick up bits of gossip or rumor. He said ‘somehow,’ but I think the ghatt transmitted the information.” She spared a glance at Doyce to see how she reacted, but Doyce kept her face closed, a neutral expression of polite interest. “Well, it’s possible,” Claire insisted. “Isn’t it? And I don’t think the ghatt went searching people’s minds for anything terrible or bad, but he transmitted just enough embarrassing things so that Cal would have a sort of hold on them. Not exactly blackmail, but enough for him to get an ale or two, some food, whatever he needed to keep body and soul together.”
“It is, of course, against all the rules and strictures.” Doyce’s voice remained level, but angry thoughts swirled. To degrade a ghatt to that state, and the ghatt might well have done it, out of love and devotion, protesting, yet trapped in the need to protect and share. “And you’re surmising things from an old man’s ramblings that may or may not be true.”
Guiltily, Claire nodded and continued to play with the fork: up and down, right and wrong, good and bad, a simulacrum of the scales of justice.
“But the ghatt Aroo finally died and Cal had no one left, no family and no friends, and certainly no way now to barter for his sustenance. He offered himself to the eumedicos then, said they could do what they would with him. Is that true, Doyce? Would they do things to him? And what?” Brow furrowed, entreaty clear in her large brown eyes, Claire paused, expecting, craving reassurance.
Doyce took her time framing an answer. Distasteful memories rose, twisting at her stomach in mockery of the good supper she’d consumed. What to say, how to phrase it to an outsider, and how much to say? With a grimace she snatched the fork from Claire’s fingers, still unwittingly playing with it. “Stop toying with it. Look, consider it as a balance, like the fork. Something bad or unpleasant on one side weighed against a greater good for more people. How do you measure it? What justifies it?”
How had she justified it? “At times we would discover something new—a new theory, a new ap
proach, a new ’script that might alleviate someone’s suffering, cure a disease, prevent a death. Then we ...” she corrected herself with savage emphasis, “they had to test it.
“Did they have the right to try it on innocent people under the guise of helping them when they might be hurting them even more? Sometimes we, they, did, but not without asking permission to experiment, saying that it might work or that it might make things worse. The patient made the decision as to whether to try it. But sometimes more tests, more experiments were needed beyond that, and they would ask for volunteers. Mostly from amongst the eumedicos.” She unconsciously rubbed a scar on the inner side of her left elbow, souvenir of one such trial. “And sometimes they found volunteers from outside. There’s always someone poor, hungry, with no hope left except for what the eumedicos offered. And sometimes, if it were really dangerous, there was a handsome reward—if they survived to collect it. That’s probably what Cal meant.”
“It doesn’t seem fair!”
“No, it isn’t,” she shot back, embittered by the memories and irked at Claire’s innocence. “But neither is it painted in black and white, no life is, just shades of gray.” So many hues she couldn’t begin to count them sometimes, while Claire, still young and untried, saw things in their polarities. “Does Cal still go to the eumedicos?” She tried to keep the question nonchalant.
Claire fought back tears, head bowed low, and whispered, “Yes, I think so. Sometimes. He comes back and that’s when he rambles on about the old days, about himself and Aroo and the things they did, the cases the ghatt searched out, the way their minds melded.” She pushed her bench away from the table, face drawn. “I ... I’ve got to get back to work. I’ve tarried too long.”
Swinging her feet up on the vacated bench, Doyce watched Claire weaving her way back and forth, carrying pitchers of ale to replenish empty mugs, brandy for the prosperous merchants traveling through, wine for some of the courting couples. Each time she passed by she refused to meet Doyce’s eyes, her head held high, cheeks burning. It would pass, Claire would be herself by morning, she hoped, but the young never found it easy to learn of something cruel, an injustice so far removed from their range of experience that they could not imagine how others could condone it.
Lady knew, she had hated those experiments for all of her years as a eumedico. No pleasure in causing further pain, but she had to concede the good that came of it. The dissection of a body suddenly dead from some unknown or poorly understood disease, that she had coped with marginally better—the carefully labeled samples, the tissue cultures, the slides stained for viewing. The dissection of ... ? She swung her feet down hard, back rigid with certainty. That, that was what they, what someone had done with Oriel’s brain, with the brain of the. poor cat Ballen! Someone was dissecting their brains, but for what? Yet the cold certitude of her rightness seeped into her flesh, chilling as formaldehyde. The smell Saam had mentioned? Formaldehyde? Ether? Trembling, she took a sip of ale without tasting its flatness, and tried to think.
Blast that ghatta, where was she? What would Khar make of the story if she’d been there at her feet to hear it? Let Khar mull it over, and then tomorrow they should consider sending a message back to Swan Maclough and the others. She never had sent word back about the cat, just as well since she hadn’t had all the pieces in place at that point. Was it worth having Khar ‘speak M’wa and Bard, and have them relay to Byrta and P’wa, and back through the others on the circuit? How long would it take to transmit if all the ghatti were in range? She began to work backward on her fingers. Alternately, she could send Khar ahead to the Way House in Roxborough to pass a written message to one of the young ghatti in field training to carry, if she felt uncomfortable about broadcasting her thoughts to too many. Still, what was the precise message to be?
Darts thunked against the red and yellow cork target as two courting couples challenged each other in a game. If they could toss darts as well as they laughed and loved, they might even hit the target instead of the pine back-board. Only their love scored a bull’s-eye. She flinched as one dart took wobbling, erratic flight and narrowly missed piercing a bystander’s ear. He jumped back with a yelp and jostled Claire, balancing a tray jammed with full ale mugs. She swayed and dipped, graceful on her feet in a complex dance and kept the mugs upright, contents barely sloshing.
Take it as an omen, she counseled herself. Balance, rationality, in the midst of erratic thoughts. But still, why would an ex-Seeker voluntarily offer himself to the eumedicos for experimentation? No love lost between eumedicos and Seekers; grudging respect at best. But all Seekers knew that the eumedicos did not have even a shadow of what they were blessed with—the ability to read minds, even through an intermediary ghatt, Did Cal have a place in the puzzle? Did the eumedicos? She wondered if Swan had any recollection of Calvert Tipton.
Calmer but no less confused, Doyce stretched, ready for more thought, if not for bed. She collected the saucer of fish and slid from behind the table, headed for the stairs and her room. Let the ghatta return soon and they could discuss their options and sleep on it. Then, most likely, send a message through M‘wa and P’wa. Mindlinked together, they could reach Swan and Koom directly. Some interesting conjectures, unexplained coincidences, but nothing that fully explained what had happened to Oriel and Saam. Not yet. She longed for the others: Bard, Byrta, Rolf, Parcellus, Sarrett. I pray thee well, by the Lady. And the ghatti, too, especially you, poor, dear Saam. She raised her hand in good-night salute to Eli behind the counter, looked in Claire’s direction but received no answering farewell. She turned for the stairs. But the cold malice of someone’s glance hit her square between the shoulder blades, made her stumble at the first step. She twisted her arm back, momentarily expecting to find a dart dangling there, the pain so piercing. But the ominous presence had fled, leaving her convinced she imagined things. No one at The Cyan Inn had reason to hate her or hurt her.
The smell of sulfur and the bright flare as she struck the lucifer and touched the woven wick of the oil lamp made Doyce shiver at the isolation, alone in the tiny island of light. Not good to be vulnerable in the dark, not after her last sensation of fear downstairs moments ago. She fiddled with the wick and forgot to shake out the lucifer, burning her fingers. Blast! Hot! Sucking finger and thumb, she fitted the chimney onto the lamp base and looked guardedly around the room, whitewashed walls, dark beams, a narrow bed with a dark blue and maroon woven coverlet, and an ewer and pitcher on the stand by the bed. A darker shadow loomed amongst the shadows at the foot of the bed, she drew her arm back, ready to fling the lamp in its direction, then cursed herself for overreacting.
“Khar, how did you get in?” The ghatta’s sides heaved, and when Doyce held the lamp near, she could see that her eyes were glazed, the nictating membrane partially cloaking them. “Khar, what’s wrong? You gave me such a start! Why didn’t you ’speak me?”
“Window,” she stated with an effort.
With the lamp nearer and steady now, she gave an inward groan, realizing the signs. How could she have missed it, she should have known far earlier. Even the tomcat in the stable had sensed it. “Khar, you’re in heat, aren’t you? And about twenty days early, too. Why didn’t you say something when you felt it coming on? We could have stopped it then and you wouldn’t be like this.”
“Didn’t think .. it was. Too early. Just didn’t ... listen to my body,” the ghatta panted. “Close window so I can’t get out.”
Doyce tugged at the leather wallet bag attached to her belt, snapped the side pocket open. She had the dosage wrapped in a paper spill, simply brew the decoction and get Khar to swallow it and she’d calm down. It would just be that much harder and longer since they hadn’t caught it in time. Hurriedly, she shuttered the window.
Ghattas came into heat two or three times a year, but long ago the Seekers, in conjunction with the eumedicos, had devised a ‘script that rendered them infertile. A contraceptive that kept them from feeling the raw hunger and desire of rec
klessly pursuing a mate regardless of the emotional and physical turmoil that rendered them useless during this time as a partner for their Bondmates. The ghattas took the ’script voluntarily, so concerned with their Bond and their calling that they wished it to come first. Only when they desired a litter to continue their species did they refuse. Ghatts, too, took a related ‘script that rendered them impotent, that relieved them of the.burden of prowling for willing females, doing battle amongst themselves to win a mate. A few of the ghatts became addicted to their ’script, wheedling more than necessary; they were easy to identify from their overly placid dispositions and plump, cushiony looks, their sedate walk.
Pouring water from the pitcher into a tiny glass beaker, Doyce shook the gray powder into it, cursing as it floated without dissolving. She balanced the beaker atop the lamp, precarious on the petaled top of the chimney, and waited for the water to boil. Could they even travel tomorrow with Khar like this? And that let out sending a message back through the route to Bard until Khar recovered. Rummaging around, she found the glass pipette in its slim mahogany case, and used the rod to stir the mixture. Boil, she commanded it, and at last it obliged, or nearly so. Further pacing impatience as she waited for it to cool. Then, finger over the top of the pipette she controlled the column of liquid in the tube and bent over Khar, slipping it into the corner of her clenched mouth as she lifted her finger to release the liquid. It would take longer this way to ensure Khar swallowed it all, but she didn’t trust the ghatta to be able to sit up and lap from her bowl, she was shaking too hard.
At last she droppered all the fluid into the ghatta and felt her shuddering abate, although the terrible, feverish burning remained, consuming her body with an inner fire, burning with the physical longing for what she had chosen to miss.
So much for her idea of a bed tonight, she decided as she shook out her bedroll on the floor. Best to let Khar sleep undisturbed. She stripped off her tunic and pantaloons and hung them on the peg beside her staff and sword and prepared to settle down.
