The Sorceress of Karres

by Eric Flint

  "Patham's seven hells. What would a man be doing out here? We need to get the fuel-lines coupled up, Leewit, and we can be out of here. Alignment will just have to wait. Fire a warning shot," said Pausert, clipping in the first of the fuel-lines.

  The Leewit loosed of a single discharge from the nova guns. "He's still coming Captain. Waving a white cloth now. I've got him on the 'scope. He's skinny and his clothes are ragged, Captain. Could be a castaway."

  "Could be a trap too," grunted Pausert, forcing the next fuel-line into place. "Keep watching him. And scan further out too. He could be a decoy. We're nearly ready. We'll deal with him, if he can convince us he's a real castaway."

  "Hello, the ship. I am unarmed. Please can I approach?"

  There was desperation in that call. A slight quaver in the voice. Pausert sighed. "Just stay put until we've finished," he shouted down. "Then we'll talk. Move before that and my gunners will shoot to kill."

  "You won't just leave me here again?" called the stranger plaintively. "I'd rather be shot then. Anyway, I am near the end of my supplies. I'll die of starvation anyway."

  Pausert pushed the coupling seal onto the next line. Swore quietly to himself again. It was all very suspicious. Here in Chaladoor everything was suspect. And just what brought them to this castaway? Chance? More klatha manipulation-or possibly his luck?

  "Just wait," he said again. "We'll give you a chance to talk."

  "I can pay, handsomely," said the stranger. "I'm worth a lot alive, safe back on Arcs world."

  Syrian. They were a pretty stuck-up bunch. But the Republic of Sirius was nowhere near the Chaladoor. It was right across the spiral arm, near Nikkeldepain. What was the fellow doing here?

  Captain Pausert clicked the last hose in place, and climbed down the rickety ladder Vezzarn was supporting. "Reckon we should just scarper," said the old spacer. "They wouldn't have left him here for no reason. Maybe he had space plague or something."

  "We'll keep a distance-but he must have recovered if he did. Cover me. The Leewit?"

  "Yes," she said tersely.

  "I'll keep out of the line of fire," said Pausert. "But set the charge as low as possible. I don't want to be collateral damage. I'll keep the microphone open so you can hear everything."

  "Yes Captain. Be careful, please."

  That from the Leewit? She must be feeling the same oddness about this as he did. "Do my best."

  He walked towards the man sitting on the lava-plain. The closer he got, the more the fellow looked like a starved scarecrow. That didn't stop the captain keeping his blaster in hand. "Who are you, and what are you doing here?" he asked.

  "Dr Mebeckey. I am a xeno-archeologist. Oh, thank Patham someone has come. You can't believe how good it is to hear another human voice, to see another human face. I've lost track of time. Please. Please you have to get me out of here."

  The name rang vague bells in Pausert's memories. "Just what are you doing here, Dr Mebeckey?" Where had he heard that name before? It rang vague alarm bells.

  "I led an expedition here. A xeno-archeological expedition."

  Pausert looked at the volcanic landscape. "Here?"

  "Yes. It was the war damage that led us to pin-point it. The crustal melting. That and the transmissions."

  "Transmissions?" asked Pausert warily.

  The ragged xeno-archeologist shrugged. "They stopped when we broke into the bunker. They must have been a distress signal, I suppose. I could have used one. We weren't the first ship to set down here to investigate them.

  "So what happened to your ship?"

  Mebeckey tugged his ragged beard. "They deserted me. We fell out about what to do with what we found here. In the end it came down to a fight. I barricaded myself into the room we'd set up as a store, with an M20 Blaster. Then… they just left me there." A tear trickled down his cheek. "What year is it now?"

  Pausert told him.

  The gaunt man shook his head. "I've been here more than twelve years. Please. Please take me away with you. Even if you are pirates. I'll do anything. Pay anything."

  "Pirates? No we're just a fast, armed freighter. We just set down to do some repairs… "

  "Ask him what they found, Captain," said the Leewit.

  So Pausert did.

  The man shuddered. "An alien. And I think it was somehow alive after all these millennia. Will you take me with you, please?"

  Pausert nodded. "Can't really leave you here."

  The marooned xeno-archeologist fell to his knees. "Thank you. You won't regret it, I promise, Sir."

  Pausert already suspected that he was wrong about that. But there was no way he could leave the poor man here.

  A few minutes later they raised ship, with a new passenger. The repairs left something to be desired with the ship-handling, as the calibration was not very good. Still, at eighty percent thrust the vibration was not too bad. At full thrust it was enough to start your teeth rattling. Mind you, that might have shut the xeno-archeologist up. He couldn't stop talking. Pausert thought that it might be that he had a lot of isolation to recover from. The Leewit said darkly that that might be the real reason that his crew abandoned him there. He was also going to eat them out of house and home. His expedition had landed with two years worth of supplies for nine people… he'd had to eke it out since. Now he was all for catching up. If he used up all the Wintenberry jelly-the Leewit's favorite flapjack topping, he'd catch one of her whistles, let alone catch up, the captain reflected with a smile, looking at the Maroon's plate.

  Chapter 14

  "Your daughter Vala has a very impressive scholastic record, Lotl," said the Chief Administrator of the Nikkeldepain Academy for the Sons and Daughters of Gentlemen and Officers. His tone was doubtful.

  Goth, lightshifted to appear like her mother Toll, tried not to look affronted at the tone. She'd put a great deal of effort into faking those results. It had meant a late night visit to this very office, and a painstaking and confusing dig through the papers in the filing system. And she wasn't claiming any abilities she didn't have. True, her math was skewed toward astrogation, and she was a little wary about the essay-writing, but…

  "What is the problem, then?" she asked.

  "It's the subject choices she wishes to register for here." He must have read the militant look in Goth's eye. "I see she's done them before! It's just that she'll be the only girl in several of those classes. And some of the teachers have complained that she'll be a distraction to the boys."

  "Oh." That idea was so alien to Goth that she literally had no idea what to say.

  "So… if you could prevail on her to do Housecraft instead of Advanced Mathematics…?"

  "I really don't think so," said Goth. She hadn't known before that frost could actually form on words.

  The administrator tried one more time. Nikkeldepain's parents must be a browbeaten lot. "It's not going to be pleasant for her, you know."

  Goth raised her eyebrows "Really?"

  "Well, she'll have to keep up or we'll transfer her out," said the administrator, irritably. "Now, about tuition and fees… "

  By the time she walked out of the office, Goth knew two things. First, she needed to make sure that her math was as good or, preferably, better than the class, and secondly, she was going to need quite a lot of money soon. The stock of cash from Mebeckey's wallet was running out.

  Goth started to cast her mind around, looking for ways of making sufficient money to fund an education that was beginning to look more like a war zone. The obvious and simple answer was to loot the law-abiding citizens of stuffy Nikkeldepain. But she knew that the captain would not approve, no matter how deserving some of the local citizenry were of being looted. So she'd have to turn to money that actually belonged to her. Well, money that belonged to her father. She was going to have to take steps.

  Yes, it would mean that Pausert's mother got a little less. But at the rate she was going, she'd be glad to get anything at all. And the captain was going to need that money to g
et some pilot training and a bit more food and some new clothes.

  But that would take a little time. Walking past the windows of the expensive furriers on the high Street, Goth had seen the prices of the miffel fur coats displayed there. Of course, to a citizen of Karres, a miffel fur coat was hardly worth owning. Tozzami and gold-tipped lelaundel were much finer quality. The miffel coat that Goth was wearing when she came down the Egger route had been chosen for practicality, and Goth had been quite cheerful about the idea that it might get scratched or damaged. It had a rather fine gold-tipped lelaundel collar.

  She would have to go and fetch it from the botanical Institute. She could find somewhere to sell it, but she hardly knew where to start. The logical place seemed to be with young Pausert.

  But when she found him it appeared that it would not be quite so simple. "You're coming to join our class!" said Pausert. "It's almost causing a riot. Half the boys said they shouldn't let a girl join the math class." He was grinning from ear to ear. "Rapport was really quiet, though. His face is still purple."

  "They'll get used to it," said Goth. "Or I will make them used to it. Huh. Look, I need to go and collect that coat of mine. "

  His face fell. "That could be difficult. They've upped security a lot since then."

  "Oh."

  He nodded. "My mother told me. I think she suspects I may have had something to do with last time. It was a sort of warning, I guess. She took the key."

  Her face betrayed her. He smiled. "We'll just have to take a chance, I guess. Get in somehow, although I just can't think how."

  "Tell me about it. Maybe we can work something out."

  He did. It wasn't very high tech. New patrols, and some infrared sensors. Still, she had fairly limited resources. She could bend light. She could even go in no-shape. But they'd still show up on infrared. She hadn't figured out heat yet. Of course, to bust up the machinery by teleporting bits out of it or into it, was doable. But that didn't seem fair. The Institute was her father's legacy too, in a way, and Pausert's mother's job. Goth didn't want him caught there.

  In extremis she turned to every young Karres witch's first resort: go up. "What about the roof?" she asked.

  "The roof?" Pausert looked puzzled. "It is quite high. I don't think you can get onto it."

  But after they'd been to look at it, Goth realized that he just didn't think of heights the way she did. "I need that coat back," she said firmly. "I can go up that pipe. Then there are those skylights. I'll get me some rope."

  "But that's burglary," said Pausert, shocked. "I don't think we can do that."

  "It's my coat. I'm not stealing anything. And your great uncle left the key. Therefore he must have meant that you could go inside." Goth was already rather fancying the idea. She'd always liked the excitement of the hunt, and this was similar.

  Pausert was less morally certain than he had been as an older man. "Are you sure? I mean, it seems wrong."

  "There's a don't walk on the grass sign. There's no don't climb onto the roof sign."

  "That's because nobody would," he said grinning. "Anyway, I am not sure I can climb a rope."

  "I can. You're not coming with me. You could get into trouble."

  "Ha, and you? Anyway. I am not letting you do it alone," he said determinedly.

  In some ways, he was already just like he grew up to be. Knowing the captain's obstinacy about these sort of things, Goth didn't even try. She let him show her where to buy rope. She was pretty sure the local police would take a dim view of it all if they were caught. She took extra care, therefore. She made sure to leave him outside and the person who bought that rope looked nothing at all like the young woman who had just been enrolled at the local Academy.

  They found a tree with a convenient branch. Rope climbing lessons followed. And very shortly after those had not succeeded, rope knotting. That did make it easier. By now, Pausert was entirely carried away by the excitement of it all, and Goth was feeling guilty. She tried to call it off, planning to come back quietly that night. But Pausert read her too well. "You're not going without me," he said.

  So they walked around to the back of the building. Goth was now really quite nervous. She would have done this in no-shape or light-shifted to look like something that belonged here, but she couldn't do that in his company. The "close your eyes" trick would never work twice.

  She found herself appealing to the Toll teaching pattern in her head. And yes, there was an answer. Not quite as good as no-shape or a light-shift, but it would make them a lot harder to notice, without being obvious to young Pausert. He could go on imagining they were just incredibly lucky. She'd bent light around herself and others before. Made refractory illusions of light-shifts. She could also bend light around the air. It was tricky. Air was not co-operative about staying in the same place. The molecules moved unpredictably. But an illusion could be created in it.

  Goth tried to trace the klatha patterns in her head, but it was like herding smoke. The best she could do, unpracticed, was to create a greenish haze around them. And that made her sweat.

  "Guess we just hope no-one is looking out of the window," said Pausert, his voice sounding a little uneasy.

  "Nothing to stop us walking here. You said the gardens are open to the public. Try to look like you're having fun."

  "Oh, but I am. Really. I haven't made a lot of friends here."

  "You don't fit here too well," said Goth. "Don't worry, eventually you'll find a place and people that you do fit in with perfectly."

  "You sound like you know," said Pausert, half-smiling.

  "Do, I guess. I've been a lot of places." She did not add that quite a lot of them had been with him.

  By this time they had reached the down-pipe, in among some bushes. Here, at the back of the institute, the gardens sloped away to open land beyond the city edge, and scattered small-holdings and farms. There was nothing that close at hand that they were likely to be seen, unless it was by someone wandering in the slightly unkempt gardens.

  "You first," she said, pointing at the pipe. That way she could hide him in a light shift while he climbed. He stood just a little straighter at what he plainly perceived as a responsibility, and set off up the pipe. Goth hid him in a light shift, merely patterning his back to look like the wall and pipe. By the way he huffed and puffed, she thought critically, he was not as fit as he could be. About time she got to work on that! She wondered if there was some local equivalent of the mountain bollem she could talk him into hunting with her. There was nothing like that for getting you in shape.

  When he was up, she followed him, climbing the pipe as easily as a staircase. Soon they were both on the roof tiles, moving to the rows of skylights. The institute roof was taller than any of the other buildings in the area, and so not overlooked. It was gently sloping and not difficult to move on, just a little hot. Goth was glad it was winter. Pausert was sparkling with the sheer adventure. It was Goth's turn to be wary now. She was learning a great deal by being responsible for him, for a change.

  They peered down through the first skylight. The plants looked quite different from above and Goth couldn't be sure just where her patch of maroon leafed markers were. But Pausert had a good sense of direction-or just knew the place very well-and had them move on. At the third skylight he tried found what he was looking for. "Okay, now if we tie the rope to that bar… "

  "If we just sit still and watch for the patrols," said Goth firmly.

  "Well, all right. It's just that I have math homework to do. You will tomorrow, too."

  Goth had not previously encountered "homework." It didn't sound like she was going to enjoy it, though. They watched. After about twenty minutes they had the patrol schedule sorted out. It seemed that orders had come down for more patrolling, and maybe even IR beams, but the security patrol had had many peaceful years of drinking tea and occasional saunters through the beds of plants from a hundred worlds, and weren't about to let a bunch of kids change that.

  They tied the r
ope securely, after a short but fierce debate about who could tie the better knots, and dropped down into the dense foliage of a makemake tree. At least, that was what Goth thought Pausert said. It seemed a strange thing to call anything. After another heated debate both of them went down. Goth did put her foot down little this time and went first in spite of his protests. She soon wished that she hadn't. Makemake was obviously "make you itch," but after her first brush with the leaves she carefully avoided them, 'porting some out of the way, rather than touch them. She could think of no way of telling Pausert about it, so he just had to find out for himself.

  Once down onto a narrow little walkway, they stood and scratched their arms and legs, until, avoiding any more leaves, they made their way to the edge of the bed and down into the corridor between the botanical beds. It had all seemed quite easy so far, but a few yards from the locker below the planting of maroon leafed Mularina tremblence from Coolumns world, they must have walked through one of the infrared beams. Goth had forgotten them.

  A siren sounded. "Back to the rope, quickly," said Goth. They ran back and crawled under the stinging foliage. Goth did a light-shift on the rope, just where it was visible above the tree.