Enigma

by C. F. Bentley

  “Harmony exists everywhere. We need only open our eyes and our hearts to find Her. Artificial restrictions and prejudice only keep Her out.”

  Who said that? Sissy didn’t think the voice was hers. It reverberated and belled in clear tones that could not be mistaken as any voice but Harmony’s.

  Lord Lukan, Guilliam, and Penelope gaped at her. The dogs sat up, raised their muzzles, and howled.

  Guilliam bowed low. “My Laudae, your wish is my command. I will have the roster to you within moments.” He rushed out of the room, face alight with joy.

  “My Laudae, you must return home. Harmony needs your gift of prophecy for all the people, not just this small delegation,” Lukan said. He bowed from his sitting position.

  “All of humanity needs my gift of prophecy,” Sissy replied shakily. She felt incredibly light, as if the station had suddenly stopped spinning, taking the gravity with it. “I trust these negotiations to no one else.”

  “I beg your pardon, My Laudae, but only humans exist within our empire. These CSS citizens are something less,” Lord Lukan’s son sneered.

  “That is the kind of ignorant prejudice we are trying to erase,” she fired back.

  “But what are we going to tell the people?” Lukan asked. He waved his son to silence. “When word of Laud Gregor’s condition leaks out—and it will with that Media person aboard and uncontrolled—the power struggle in the High Council and down through the ranks of the lesser castes will invite chaos and discord.” He sounded like he recited those words by rote.

  What did he truly believe?

  “You, Temple and Noble, keep the other castes—no one is lesser than another—in ignorance. That is how you have always enslaved the people. Ignorance and prejudice dictated from the smallest portion of our population downward through the castes.” She rose, slowly, her hands flat on the table, elbows locked, to keep her head from spinning and her body from shaking.

  “I shall give the Media person a story. Any story to keep him happy and away from Medbay,” Lukan said quietly, eyes lowered to his hands. “That is how we have always handled them. But I still think you should return to Harmony. Leave Laudae Penelope here as your representative.”

  Sissy took a deep breath. “If you knew what I know about our origins and the creation of our society, you would fight even harder to keep this information secret, which means keeping me here. Turn me loose on Harmony without Laud Gregor to curb my tongue, with an independent Media to report my words, and the caste system would shatter from armed rebellion from five of the seven castes within weeks.”

  Mustering every ounce of willpower, she nodded to Lord Lukan and walked out of the room with the facade of authority and calm she’d learned to cover her true emotions.

  Jake needed to know about this discussion. She wondered where she’d find him for a private chat.

  Two steps into the lobby she had to bat away a hover cam and order it to find another victim to record. “An independent Media reporting the truth without censorship is a good thing,” she reminded herself. “A little inconvenience doesn’t outweigh the advantages.”

  The camera came back, following her onto the lift.

  “However,” she said harshly directly into the lens, “invasion of my privacy will not be tolerated!”

  The camera backed off and left her alone at the next level.

  Maybe Major Mara had a way of disabling the cameras when she needed privacy. And to keep them out of Medbay.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  “I can only spare one comm unit.” Jake looked sternly at the six girls clad in lavender coveralls. “So you all have to guard it well and never lose it.”

  He’d gathered Sissy’s girls in the heavy-G gym where he usually worked out. Few came there, at least not before 0600 on the station morning. Sissy was occupied with something arcane in the Temple with Lord Lukan. She kept Marsh, Ashel, and Dog with her but not the girls and Monster.

  The huge black dog prowled the gym, sniffing to see who had used each piece of equipment and when. Satisfied, he parked his wide hind end on Jake’s foot and leaned.

  Jake nearly staggered under the animal’s weight.

  “We will be very careful, Jake,” Mary, the eldest, answered for all of them.

  “You are to use it to report to me and me only. If I’m not available, then you hold that report until I am.”

  “Yes, Jake,” they answered in chorus.

  “And what are you to report to me?” Activity in the docking bay above told him that a transfer of food supplies from CSS worlds took place. Some of it would stay here on station. He had never realized how much food people ate until he had to provide for them. Most of the cargo, though, would move on to relieve rim worlds gearing up for siege by Maril battle wagons.

  That same transport could spare him only a few extra fuel rods. The consumption rates had increased to seven percent above normal.

  “We report anything that looks or feels out of place,” Martha replied.

  “Like the signs at the tram stops that are all mixed up,” Sharan piped up.

  “Show me that,” Jake demanded, moving the girls toward the lift.

  “We already fixed them,” Suzie said quietly from behind Mary.

  “Let’s check them out anyway,” Jake said. He took the hands of Sharan and Suzie, the two youngest, and stepped onto the next lift platform. He trusted the others to follow, herded by Monster. They rarely went anywhere alone. Always in a pack. Always exploring and therefore invisible. Maybe they could discover what was wrong with propulsion.

  Jake held his breath as they rose through the docking bay. Too many chances for someone to look and notice him with the girls, but without Sissy. His co-option of their help needed to be secret. Or it wouldn’t work.

  Spies had to remain invisible. He’d learned that the hard way on Harmony.

  A hover cam peeked into the lift. Jake beamed a coded message to it from his own com. It backed off, convinced no one interesting used the lift. Thank you, Mara, for that little piece of coding.

  “Keep the comm in your pocket, Mary,” he said out the side of his mouth. “And if a hover cam is near when you do use it, aim the on light toward the lens and push the red button.”

  She nodded and complied. Her fingers touched the cloth surrounding it frequently. He knew she wanted to fiddle with it, explore its capabilities, understand how it worked.

  He didn’t even know how it worked. Not really. Just the basic principles.

  “I’ve set it to my private frequency. Don’t change it,” he ordered.

  Mary, Martha, and Sarah, all looked at him with wide, innocent eyes. They held his gaze a little too long. They were up to something.

  “If you change one little thing, take it apart, do anything with it but report to me with it, I’ll take it back and find someone else to do the dirty work.”

  “Yes, Jake,” they chorused.

  Yeah, right.

  Soon enough they reached the nullgrav of the station core. All six girls tumbled off the lift platforms, spinning and dancing without the restraints and limitations of gravity. Reveling in the freedom of weightlessness.

  Jake envied them their innocence and adaptability. Their capacity for simple joy.

  “These directions all look correct,” Jake mused. Even as he spoke the lights on the post flashed. Screens darkened and new numbers and designations popped up. It happened so fast, if he hadn’t been watching, he doubted anyone would have noticed that they were not at Harmony Spacer and Military Residential, access strictly limited. He knew he stood on the platform leading to CSS offices and group facilities. Only the smell of cooking soy loaf wafting up the lift shaft told him the kitchens and dining facilities were in this wing.

  That reminded him he needed to get some engineers in to redesign the wings to cope with hull breach. They needed air lock doors closing off the lift and stairwell shafts. Another expense. Another day.

  “Mara,” he called Control.

  “Yes
, sir?”

  “You notice a blip on any of your screens?”

  A moment of near silence as she consulted with someone. “Just a nano of blankness. Everything came back normal. Must have been a glitch or reset in the programming.”

  Were the glitches causing the fuel drain?

  “Not everything came back normal. Signposts in the tram stations have changed. I need you to get techs out to check them all and fix the ones that are wrong. See if you can trace back the source. Look in propulsion first.”

  “On it.” A long pause. He almost closed the connection. “Uh . . . sir? Is there a map of the station anywhere so we know what all the signs are supposed to say?”

  Jake cursed long and fluently.

  His six spies giggled and went back to their dancing.

  Click. Click. Click. The soft sounds within the bulkheads caressed Adrial’s ears. Dim lights of deep night. Few sounds in Medbay other than the constant drip and wheeze of lifesaving machines. And that out of place click.

  Adrial had slept too many hours during the station’s daytime routine to find rest when everyone else did. She spent most of the night reading, learning about her current environment and the people who inhabited it.

  She had already memorized a map of the station she’d found on her reader. It looked more detailed and accurate than standard visitor directions to the most frequented destinations.

  Click. Click. Click. The slow rotation of screws on the ventilation grate.

  She checked her guard. She dozed in a chair outside Adrial’s room. Everyone supposed her in a drug-induced sleep now, as she was during most of the day. They had no way of knowing that her father’s Angelic ancestors had been night hunters. She found the hours of darkness, whether dirtside or station bound, soothing. A time to think, and plan, and learn.

  A time to stretch and strengthen her muscles and bones in secret. A time to reprogram sensors and diagnostic scanners to look as though she had barely healed at all.

  Something moved inside the bulkheads and ventilation shafts—someone who kept the same nocturnal hours she did.

  She moved her hand to the summoning button, cautiously. Her other hand clasped a Badger Metal knife she’d stolen from Lieutenant David. Just a little one that he rarely used and kept in his calf pocket. The being that moved secretively could be watching her.

  She paused, waiting, wondering. Always better to observe first, assess the danger, find an escape, then act.

  “Little Bird,” a voice out of her dreams, or her nightmares, whispered.

  She tuned her hearing to locate the source. There, in the shaft grating high in the left corner of the room. Another gift from her father’s ancestors was sensitive hearing. She knew the voice belonged to the being who had rescued her from the Squid ship.

  “Little Bird, are you awake?”

  “Yes.” As she spoke she pulled the summoning button close to her body, beneath the light sheet that covered her to her chin. The gel floats didn’t give her a lot of room to move, but she didn’t really need them to protect her light bones any more. She’d made secret forays out of Medbay exploring the station.

  Long ago she’d learned to leave no trace of her comings and goings. Security cameras responded to her commands without protest, showing the watchers what she wanted them to see.

  “I would speak to you, Little Bird.”

  “Show yourself.” She looked pointedly toward the doorway where the guard dozed.

  The grating panel slid aside, and the being poked his strange head through. His large ears wiggled and twisted, capturing stray sounds. His flat nasal slits flared and retracted. Then he slid two arms with normal looking hands—four fingers, no opposable thumb—onto the wall. He seemed to grip the paint with those hands as he pulled his bulbous body through the narrow opening.

  “How fare you?” he asked even before he touched the ground and stood upright. His extra limbs slipped into the deep folds of his clothing so that he looked closer to humanoid.

  “I heal.” No sense in letting him know any more than the medicos. Only she knew how much strength she’d regained once they set her broken bones and repaired pierced organs. CSS medicine was far superior to what the Messengers of the Gods offered their prisoners.

  “You need to know that I watch over you,” the being said. “I will not allow the humans to harm you.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You also need to know that I have intercepted a distress signal from a Maril ship. I masked it very quickly. I do not think that Control received it.”

  “Maril?” Panic rose in waves from Adrial’s belly. She had to get away, gather what information she could, and escape into the vastness of the galaxy. Easy enough to wipe the computers of any trace of her presence. Harder to erase memories.

  “Do not fear.” His hand rested atop hers where she was set to fling off the sheet. “Those aboard the ship will die before they reach here.”

  “It’s a trap,” she snapped and pushed him away. Her head swam for several seconds as she sat up, legs dangling over the sides of the bed. “They will use the humans’ sense of justice and compassion to gain entrance here, then get me to slaughter any who stand in their way.”

  “This is no trap. I have monitored the ship. They are badly damaged, losing atmosphere. Pieces of their hull litter the path from the jump point to here. The humans will not know of their presence until they are all dead.”

  “How can I trust you?” Adrial didn’t dare relax yet. She had to be ready to jump free and run.

  “I will protect you, Little Bird. The Maril will not find you while I live.” He jumped up and grabbed the vent opening, scrambling through and closed the grating. “Study the map of the galaxy on your reader,” he whispered, the words fading away as he retreated.

  Only the faintest trace of his scent lingered as proof that he’d even been there. “You are better at leaving no trace than I am. What can I learn from you?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  “I love my home. I desperately need to return to Harmony. But I can’t,” Sissy cried to herself and her Goddess. “I can’t trust these vital negotiations to anyone else. Not Penelope or Gil and especially not Lord Lukan, with Garrin whispering hatred into his ear. He looks like he wants to agree with me, but can’t.”

  She bowed her head in humiliation. “I can’t leave Jake.” That was the most compelling argument to her heart, the least important to her people.

  She sank back onto the floor of the Temple, her back pressed against the altar. She’d spent so much time kneeling in prayer that her back ached and her knees felt raw. Her head still spun.

  What to do about Laud Gregor? How could she justify staying at the First Contact Café when the High Priest ailed so terribly? He might never be strong enough to go home. Harmony would splinter and fracture with both the High Priest and High Priestess out of the empire.

  She couldn’t bear leaving Jake.

  The people of Harmony would never allow her to be with Jake as she longed to be.

  Seeing him every day, spending evenings with him in study and planning, was sweet torment. The thought of never seeing him again mad her heart and mind ache all the more. Yet her responsibilities to her people, to her Goddess, to her government threatened every hour to send her home.

  She rested her head against the synthetic stone of the altar. Real stone dug from Harmony’s bones was too heavy and expensive to ship to the space station. She longed for some tiny sacred connection to her home planet. The small crystals from her travel kit offered little solace in her need to set foot on her home world.

  Slowly her eyes drifted closed as she pictured the funerary caves west of Harmony City. She drew in a deep breath as the caves breathed in at sunset, then let the air slide slowly out of her, as the caves did in the morning. Again and again she imagined herself deep inside the caverns, grounding herself in the womb of Harmony, breathing with the Goddess.

  Bit by bit she built the image in her mind of the cool air
, the solid rock, the little rooms painted with murals of the creation, the niches filled with uncountable bones of her ancestors, and the aliens that had dwelled on Harmony before her people came there.

  “Welcome,” a gentle voice whispered to her as if she truly had entered the caves.

  Her breathing fell into a sympathetic rhythm with the planet in her memory. She curled her fist around a rock covered with dirt and let it meld with her being.

  And then she flew, soaring over the treetops. Her body ached from long hours at prayer and ritual thanksgiving, but her mind and soul had shed its burdens. The cliff face of the mountain offered her respite from her long journey with the Gods. She touched down lightly, folding her wing flaps beneath her arms, and sank into her warm aerie. Her younglings chirruped and gazed longingly over the edge toward the freedom of their first flight.

  She had come full circle in the sacred breeding ritual. Her life had purpose now; her duty to the Gods and the government had been fulfilled. Soon she must return to work with her young in tow. Soon she must leave this sacred place.

  Explosions startled her nearly back into flight. She spread her wings over the little ones, searching warily for the source of danger.

  The surrounding mountain shuddered and groaned. Rocks fell all around her and her children. She huddled over the little ones, protecting them from the energy blast that struck the cliff face above her. She sent prayer after prayer skyward toward the Gods, questioning what she and the People had done to displease the newcomers so.

  “We offered them succor and shared our shelters with them. We welcomed them with ceremony. Yet they turn on us and murder us by the thousands.”

  First one small stone, sharp and jagged, then several much larger ones slammed into her back. Pain ripped through her. Blood spurted. Her life drained away . . .

  A sharp pain in Sissy’s neck severed her connection to the waking nightmare.

  “Harmony! Why do I dream of the war of attrition my people perpetuated against the Maril priests and mystics?” she cried, uncurling from her cramped fetal position.