by Diane Duane
About an hour later they were somewhere else in the rain forest. By Gabriel's reckoning they still could not be much more than ten kilometers from Redknife, but there was no other indication whatever of where in the world they might be. Night fell quickly, and gloomy forest corridors and paths were quickly exchanged for pitch-black forest corridors and paths. The twenty or so sesheyans who were conveying them suddenly stopped, and Gabriel stood there blinking, aware of Enda beside him but still completely unable to see anything but shadows against shadow. High above, the uppermost tree-canopy was faintly colored with the light of what might have been, shining above it, the light of Hydrocus at first quarter, or gibbous-an indefinite ruddy glow such as humans see when they close their eyelids in normal light. Their hosts or jailers took Gabriel and Enda into one of a number of simple dome like constructions of woven ferns and branches, the sesheyan version of a tent. The sesheyans posted a guard outside it and left them there in a darkness broken only by Gabriel's luckstone. There they spent the night, rather wet (for the shelter leaked), but not cold. It is almost impossible to be cold in a rain forest on Grith in the summertime. Even the most unseasonable weather for that time of year would not have taken the temperature below 20°C. Sesheyans, being fairly inured to the wet as a normal part of their environment, were somewhat blind to the human or fraal attitude toward rain inside a tent. However, sable-snakes inside a tent were something Gabriel was not prepared to take with equanimity. After his robust reaction to the first one, a sesheyan came inside to sit with them, concerned that the prisoners should not die untimely. I bet they're not so sure we're spies any more either, Gabriel thought, just a little glumly. Any spy who would be sent here wouldn't react like that. Pity I couldn't find some less humiliating way to convince them.
The morning came after what seemed an interminable night of gandercats' cries through the darkness, and a great deal of itching, almost all of which was psychosomatic. Before they turned in, Gabriel spotted a particularly large bug walking with exaggerated care across the floor of their shelter. For the rest of the night, he'd had a hard time believing that there weren't lots more of them. There's never just one bug. But when the dim light came again, things looked less itchy, and their hosts looked marginally less unfriendly. Maybe it was just the change of lighting, which was now a pronounced, green-tinted twilight instead of dead blackness full of pelting rain and strange screeching noises. "The water here is at least clean," Enda said, coming back into the shelter after spending a few minutes outside with one of their guards.
She looked more radiant than usual, and her hair had been rinsed and wrung out and wound into a tight bun at the back of her head. Her smartsuit was as clean as one might expect it to be after being dragged through jungle slime and mud. It had managed to lose all of the mud and most of the embedded grime already.
Gabriel shook his head, thinking, If I can ever look that good at three hundred, after being chucked into a jungle, I'll count myself lucky.
There was some noise off to one side of the encampment. Gabriel looked over that way, then stopped, seeing a flash of color that surprised him. His eyes were definitely getting used to this lighting-yesterday he doubted he would even have been able to see it. Other thoughts were also on his mind though, for the beishen he saw coming toward them at ground level, its wearer making his way carefully around the boles of the biggest trees, had a red stripe.
Ondway came into the clearing with several others around him. More sesheyans came to meet them, and there was a lot of hurried talk in low voices. Gabriel stood watching by the door of the shelter, and Ondway looked up past his countrymen and saw Gabriel standing there.
He made a sound rather like a roar. Gabriel winced slightly, until he realized that what he was hearing was the true sesheyan laugh, the sound that was meant to ring out under the trees-not the tamed or subdued laugh of some VoidCorp employee within walls.
Ondway strode toward him. "What are you doing here?" he roared.
"This is where you said we were supposed to come," Gabriel said.
"Here? I think not! You were supposed to go to Redknife!"
"We did try," Enda said, putting her head out of the shelter, "but I fear Sunshine had other plans. She is not far from here, still largely functional, but she will need some repair before she sees space again." "You are going to make us haul a smallship from here to Red-knife?" Ondway roared again. "Hunter of night in the forests: what manner of guest behaves so!"
"The same manner of guest that gets rained on all night," Gabriel said, trying hard not to sound too aggrieved about it.
"Yes, as for that, it would not have happened had you waited as I told you! Why did you not wait for your guide?"
"We were being followed," Gabriel said, starting to get angry now. "I've been attacked too often lately to want much more of it. So has Enda-"
Ondway started to laugh. "I thought you said you would hardly notice! But followed! Did you think we would offer you sanctuary without seeing that you came to it safely? The one who followed was your escort, your guide! He would have brought you safely here the next day, but instead you fled from him like ..." Ondway was now laughing so hard that he could barely speak. "Wanderer, you are incorrigible! And I have had to pay your guide faceprice because you lost him and made off without his help!" "Sorry," Gabriel said, but he wasn't particularly, and he was feeling better already. Sesheyans were famous for their tracking abilities, and if he had managed to spot one and then lose one, even in the cluttered and uncomplicated environs of the Iphus Collective, that was not exactly a terrible thing. "If I should now pay you faceprice, please tell me."
Ondway looked at him with some surprise. "That is a noble offer, Con'hr," he said, "but let us put it by for the moment. Let me talk to my folk."
He turned away. Gabriel turned, too, to find Enda covering her eyes briefly. "Are you all right?" he asked.
"Yes," she said very softly, "but Gabriel, Ondway is related to the Devli'yan clan, a cousin of Devlei'ir himself. His faceprice would be easily equivalent to the whole cost of Sunshine . . . probably more." Gabriel swallowed, then said, "Uh. Yes, well." He looked away into the forest, trying to look like someone absently enjoying the morning's beauties, and thought, When will I learn to just not say anything?
Gabriel sat down on a fallen tree-trunk, then got up hurriedly, brushed his pants off, and sat down again a little further down the tree. Some of the bugs here were really big. What surprised him was that they didn't even seem to mind being sat on.
Recovering, he glanced around him and said, "If I got my counting right, we're not much more than six or seven kilometers from Redknife."
"A long way through jungle and rain forest," Enda said, "especially for those not used to such travel, or those who are unsure of the way." She sounded dubious.
"Oh, I wasn't thinking of escaping," Gabriel said. "I don't think we need to worry about that at the moment, but all these people appeared so quickly after we came down." He glanced at the sesheyans all around them. "There must be a lot more sesheyans living in the forest immediately around the settlement than we thought."
"It would not surprise me," Enda said. "Many have retreated into the forests, not only because they prefer the ancient hunting and wandering lifestyle, but because they prefer not to be easily counted by those who would have less than benevolent reasons for doing so. Here the forest protects them as it would have in the deeps of time, on Sheya the ancient, much to the annoyance of their enemies." She smiled a little, an oddly satisfied look.
After a little while Ondway came back to them and sat down beside Gabriel on the fallen tree, rustling his wings down about him until he was cloaked. "Well," he said, "you have caused inconvenience, but it can be worked around. Indeed it must be, for naturally the central ship-tracking system noticed that you did not arrive at Redknife as scheduled." "They'll be sending someone to look for us," Gabriel said.
"As to that," said Ondway with a grin, "we, or some of us anyway, are the 'some
ones' they would send, and if we report that we cannot find you, well. . ." He shrugged. "Wide are the forest's ways, and even the Wanderer is sometimes lost: a weary time to find the ways again, when every fern holds its shadow... "
Enda smiled. "And in the meantime, we will have our 'few days' rest.'"
"While your poor machine is prepared to be hauled out of where it rests. No one from Redknife would bother venturing this way until those of us who are forestwalkers told them there was some reason. Even with positive satellite tracking, there would be no point in attempting a rescue until we told them it was safe." Ondway rustled his wings again. "Safe from what?" Gabriel asked.
Ondway produced that feral grin once more. "From us. Why, Con'hr, there are unstable tribal elements even in this part of the world, reckless, uncontrollable sesheyans who do not obey the rule of law and who pay no fealty to Concord or to any other force moving in these spaces-dangerous pirates and criminal types, smugglers and racketeers, and regular savages." The grin gentled somewhat. "But some of them walk in the cities," Enda said, "under very different guise."
"Well, that is true," Ondway agreed, and stretched his wings out. then let them drop again in a gigantic shrug. "I myself am based in Diamond Point normally, working for a freight expediting company that subcontracts to various system-based firms. Some of them have ties with VoidCorp; some of them are independents. My citizenship is sourced on Grith, so that the Corpses cannot touch me-yet, but I am able to go freely about the system on the expediting company's business, handling various minor details of freight transfers, sometimes doing courier work for sensitive material. I might be anywhere within the course of a week or two, and no one would think anything of it."
Gabriel digested that, knowing he was being told something of substance but not being certain exactly what as yet. At the time, though, he felt something familiar: the same itch or urge that had been moving under the surface of his thoughts and had suddenly caused him to say to Ondway, not so long ago, "We'll be going back to Thalaassa." It was as if he had heard something, not even whispered yet, but about to be. Something in the air...
Gabriel held still and quiet, trying to isolate that itch, that urge, trying to hear the whisper. Enda, noticing none of this, merely nodded at Ondway. " 'Corpses,' " she said, with that slight smile. "Quite. And among your contacts you count Doctor Delde Sola."
"We have been of use to one another occasionally before," Ondway said. "As now."
"Yes. Well," Enda said, "such 'use' is certainly not without its price. Here we are, and you have helped us and are helping us. Well and good. How may we help you in return?"
Ondway looked at them both in a measuring way. "Where had you thought to go after your stay here?" The air whispered to Gabriel. Something suddenly came together, made sense. The planet no one mentioned, the name no one spoke, even though it was right there in the neighboring starsystem. "Rhynchus," Gabriel immediately said, while Enda was still opening her mouth. Ondway looked at him in astonishment-and was there an edge of anger on the expression? "Who told you about that?" he said, much more quietly than he had been speaking.
Gabriel was very tempted to say You did!-except that it would almost certainly be misunderstood, and he could hardly explain it himself. "What is going on out there?" he asked, also more quietly. Ondway looked at him.
"Come on, Ondway," Gabriel said. "You can't convince me that VoidCorp has listening devices installed in the trees."
Ondway was very still for a few moments. "Though the doctor recommended you to me," he said at last, "she does not, cannot, even with all her resources, know everything about you-and believe me, within minutes of meeting you, she would have known much. Delde Sota was a Grid pilot before she was a doctor. Nor can I know everything, though I know what has been on the news services of late. They say you are a murderer and a spy." "The accusations are false," Enda said.
"With respect, honored, were you there? No? Then how can you be sure?"
"The wise take their hearts' advice," Enda said, "even when the heart cannot provide hardcopy documentation, but I do see your point."
Gabriel sat there and looked at the ground, while yet another huge bug trundled by. This is what the rest of your life will be like, said that voice buried down in his brain. No one ever again believing anything you say. Because of one carelessness, one episode of-
"Never mind," Gabriel said then and looked up once more at Ondway. "Let it pass. Maybe we'll go somewhere else." But the look he gave Ondway was intended to suggest, And if you believe that, he thought, I have a few nice planets in the Solar Union to sell you.
Ondway shrugged his wings. "Perhaps it would be wiser. Meantime, we will take a few days for the 'search parties' to 'find you.' Then we will arrange transport for your ship back to Redknife-" "You ought to let us see if she can be made to lift," Enda interrupted. "There was nothing wrong with her drive when we shut it down. Our main worries were about structural integrity, and a short flight to the spaceport should not be beyond her abilities." She glanced over at Gabriel.
He nodded. "There was that control surface problem I mentioned, but lifting her slowly and not trying anything showy, just limping her in-that shouldn't be a problem."
Ondway thought about that for a moment. "Well, it might be wiser to bring her in via ground transport anyway, annoying as that will be. It might look 'more in character' and would suggest that she is worse damaged than she is if you desire to remain here longer."
"It would also be much more expensive," Enda said, giving Ondway one of those grandmotherly looks. "Not that the transport teams would mind, I am sure. But let us at least check the drive and see how the situation looks in a few more days."
Ondway gestured with his wings, a movement like someone putting their hands up helplessly in the air, and then he chuckled. "Honored, let it be as you say. Meanwhile, have you eaten?"
"Only the cold grain porridge that everyone else had this morning," Enda replied before Gabriel could get his mouth open, "and I am sure Gabriel here is wasting away. If you like, we will draw on ship's stores."
"No, not until we 'find' her," Ondway said. "There should be no need. I had never heard that human warriors were averse to roast meat, and Rohvieh who is cooking this morning has an excellent claw with a roast. We may not be certain of you, but we will not starve you." He got up to lead them off to breakfast.
Gabriel followed willingly enough, but he could not avoid seeing the odd look Enda was giving him. And all the while he was thinking, We seem to be guests for the moment, but we could be prisoners again at any moment.
And just what is going on up on Rhynchus?
Chapter Fifteen
THREE DAYS WENT by, and they ate well enough. Gabriel even started to become inured to bugs. The morning when one nearly half a meter long ran over his boot and he merely looked down and said "Huh," Enda clapped her hands and hailed him a hero-and all the sesheyans around him had a good laugh at his expense. That, at least, Gabriel was getting used to. It surprised him what a cheerful people they were, down here in the dimness in their own proper environment. Sesheyan laughter that had so startled him at first because he had never heard its like, now seemed commonplace, and when he didn't hear it, he missed it.
The morning of the fourth day though, the day they were scheduled to "find" Sunshine, that laughter was missing when he woke up, and this struck Gabriel as very odd. He dressed and got up in a hurry, leaving Enda sleeping, and headed out of the leaf hut to see what was the matter.
The encampment was very silent. Outside it, all the usual morning-period forest screeches and hoots were in full flower, but there were only a couple of sesheyans about. One of them, tending the low smoky fire that was kept smoored except when cooking was about to begin, was sitting on the ground, hunched up with her wings huddled around her, a posture so eloquent of fear or great distress that Gabriel went straight to her and bent down, saying, "Sister, what troubles you? And where is everybody?"
She looked up at hi
m mournfully-at that point Gabriel suddenly realized that she was one of the youngest of them-and said, "The Hunter may widely range, but sometimes the prey hunts him: and fear goes hunting the forests, and the dark between the stars:"
She choked her words off suddenly. It was an odd sound, for sesheyans normally always left you with the impression that the song of their conversation invariably had another verse that they might add at a moment's notice, or a year from now, but that they were never actually done. "But where did they all go?"
"Under the forest's shelter lie other places of landing:" she said. "News came from one of the nearer that one had returned untimely: he bore a-"
More broken staves, Gabriel thought. Those were evidence of a sesheyan about as upset as one could become. But what in the worlds could have-
He barely heard them coming. That he could hear them at all was evidence of several days in almost exclusively sesheyan company. Gabriel had a few seconds' warning anyway, before the clearing was full of sesheyans, many more than had routinely been using the encampment. Ondway was among them. His expression, as far as Gabriel could make it out, was very grim and dark. Behind him came several more sesheyans, silently carrying something on a plasteine sheet stretched between them. Gabriel went over to them, then saw what they carried on the sheet and stopped very still. He recognized certain things about the object immediately. The green-colored plastic e-suit, full, as he now knew, of that acidic gel, the dark armor in plates and patches over the suit, the terrible, blank protective helmet. The shape suggested strongly that there was no human inside. It was too broad in the shoulders and too thick in the leg.
