by Diane Duane
And then, hearing a faint humming in the air, he looked up- very slowly, not wanting to alarm anyone- and saw the sesheyans with the guns. All of them held the guns rock steady with sights trained on him. "The Wanderer walks strange ways," he said, "and company finds, unlooked-for: but hospitality's laws say feed the guest ere you kill him."
The guns did not lower. But the sesheyan holding the biggest of them, the one who had appeared atop a boulder not far from the edge of the landing field, looked at Gabriel with a long, cold, thoughtful look. "You are not from VoidCorp," he said in perfectly serviceable human idiom.
The lift activated again. Guns lifted all around. "Just my friend," said Gabriel, "a fraal. She isn't armed and she's pushing three hundred, so please don't frighten her. No, we're not from VoidCorp." "Not at all," said Enda as she came out of the lift to stand beside Gabriel.
"Prove it," said the sesheyan on the boulder, in a tone of voice that clearly said to Gabriel, "leader." Gabriel started to become exasperated. "That's going to be a little tough to prove, don't you think? Look, it was Ondway who sent us-or rather, he didn't send us. He tried every way he could think of not to send us, including not telling us anything about you, or even that you were here. He was very careful about it." "That is possibly what we call a 'negative proof,' " Enda said demurely. The leader's eyes pinched down narrow at her.
''We've brought you everything we could think of that might be of help to you, considering that no one would tell us anything outright," Gabriel said. "Electronics supplies, mostly. What I don't understand is what you're doing here! This is not supposed to be an inhabited planet."
"Not supposed to be," said the leader, and dropped his jaw in that sesheyan grin, possibly responding to Gabriel's aggrieved one, similar to that of a tourist complaining that the colorful native dancers were not going to perform today, even though the brochure had said that they would. "No. You have come a long way, and we thank you for it, even though you should not have come. But we must get your ship out of sight very quickly. Things happen here at night."
Gabriel looked around him at the scared looks on the faces of some of the sesheyans, at the way they looked up at the sky as if it might suddenly rain knives. "Tell us where to put it," he said, "then we need to talk."
Chapter Seventeen
IT TOOK ABOUT half an hour to get everything squared away. Sunshine was tucked into a cave just big enough to take her, and the cave's opening was sealed over with such care that Gabriel might have thought the locals were expecting a police search. Then he and Enda were led through caves and tunnels into a large dim space. The heat they had detected from orbit and assumed to be a dome was actually a substantial network of caves that the sesheyans had very carefully joined and sealed off over the years. The interior was carefully and sparingly lit by powered lights and much subdivided into "apartments" and private areas. The main area, under the highest arch of a huge natural dome of stone, was left open with many wildly assorted pads and blankets and coverings scattered around. Gabriel thought of the encampment on Grith, the floor of the main clearing having been carefully scattered with branches and plant needles gathered for the purpose, and saw here a faint sad echo of the forest. Food was served out to them with the great care of people who have not been expecting visitors and have little to spare, but are pleased to give them the best they can manage. There were no questions while they were eating. But when the bowls were taken away and the drink was brought out-mostly chai of a vile Phorcyn kind that Gabriel had had too much of while awaiting trial-many sesheyans gathered around them in a circle, and Gabriel got the sense that there would be grilling now. There was some, conducted politely enough in human idiom. Names and ship registries were demanded, along with details about how Gabriel and Enda had come to meet Ondway and what had happened afterwards. The sesheyans sitting closest to them, many with guns nearby, listened to every word intently. Gabriel got the very strong feeling that had their story diverged at all significantly from what the sesheyans' own sources must have told them, Helm would have had to make his way home alone.
When they were finished, and Gabriel and Enda had detailed what they had brought in the ship and why, the adult sesheyans in the circle began visibly to relax. Gabriel seized the moment and said, "All I want to know is: what are you doing here? How did you get here? And how is it that no one knows?" The colony leader, Kaiste, replied a little wearily, "I would not say that no one knows, alas for that. Since you have been kind enough to have come all this way, we will gladly tell you our history, or as much of it that matters. We cannot tell you all of it. That might be an unnecessary burden on you some day."
If VoidCorp got to hear about it, yes, I just bet, Gabriel thought.
"Obviously we have not been here for very long," said Kaiste, "about twenty standard years. We were originally a large subcontracted work crew who were transshipped here as what we think must have been a very early venture of the Company to investigate or perhaps even colonize this part of space. Certainly they sent us out with full colonial packs, though we were told that we would be executing a subcontract, doing subcontracted non-suited mining work." " 'Ditchdigging,' " Enda said.
"Yes, but something happened. There was an accident in transit. We came a long way-many starfalls- and after perhaps twenty of them, the ship in which we were being transported suffered an explosion that either caused or was the result of some kind of stardrive failure. The explosion may even have been sabotage. The Company"-again he would not say its name-"was not popular on the world from which we had just been removed. I am not an expert and cannot describe the nature of the failure accurately, but the ship came out of drivespace after the failure and could not locate itself. There was a problem with its navigational systems as well, probably due to the explosion-one of the computers involved in the control of both systems was affected."
Kaiste looked a little bleak. "There is no way to put a good face on this, but we took our chance and rose up, killing almost all the Company people on the ship. Even with the chance that we might do nothing more after that than drift and die slowly in space, we could not let the possibility slip past and know for the rest of our lives that, if we had acted, we might be free. Indeed for some weeks there was confusion. Even among our own people there were killings until we established leadership and some kind of plan. Finally though, among the two thousand aboard, including some of the surviving humans, some of us were found who had a very little experience with stardrives and system drives. After many false starts we set course, as we thought, for Corrivale, hoping that surprise would allow us to reach Grith before the Company could do anything. Perhaps it was a feeble hope, but it was the only course that we could get all the people involved to agree to."
"So you set coordinates," Gabriel said, "and made starfall again."
"That we did. But there was either a fault in the coordinates, or another fault in the stardrive, or perhaps the same one. After five days we came out here. We knew where we were in a general way, but everyone was very afraid that if we tried another starfall, we would rise somewhere even less predictable-inside a sun, say. No one wanted to take another chance. So at last we stripped the ship of supplies and spent a month establishing a sealed colony down here. We used the ship's emergency supplies and shelters to seal and connect the natural caves we found here, which hold air nearly as well as they might water. Then we took our last few people off the ship in a shuttle and sent the ship out on her last starfall. No one knows where she made starrise, though as far as we know, the Company never found her again."
"And you've been here for twenty years," Gabriel said, "scratching out an existence."
"It has not been a proud life," said Kaiste, "but it has at least been a free one. A while after we came, we were finally able to make contact with the traders from Phorcys and Ino, and we traded them what few goods we had and were able to mine-we are good at that at least. We did a good business in the carboniferous stones-our rubies and sapphires are particularly fine."<
br />
"Surely you don't think to stay here forever?" Enda said.
Kaiste gazed across the room to where some small sesheyans were playing. An older child was scolding a younger one, who was pulling on his wings and rolling around on the floor. "Our children dream of the forests," Kaiste said. "We very much hope they will see them again. Or rather, for the first time." "But why are you still here?" Gabriel said. "You're not that far from Grith. You could have arranged something-not with the traders maybe, but with some freighter firm based on Grith. Ondway would have helped you, or the people who worked with him."
Kaiste's head was bowed in what Gabriel was learning to recognize as the sesheyan version of shaking one's head "no." When he looked at Gabriel again, that distress was back in his eyes, and a chill ran down Gabriel's back, irrational but impossible to ignore.
Very softly, after a moment, Kaiste said, "We have been betrayed once before. I should say, almost betrayed. Ondway had contacted a trader, a freighter captain whom he trusted. He intended to bring us away from here to Grith on this human's ship in two or three quiet runs. The captain came to look the situation over. We made her welcome, ate fruit with her, did our best to keep her safe here in our home. Then we caught her in the very act of attempting to call VoidCorp to tell them of our presence here. So we killed her." A helpless shrug of the wings. "There was nothing else we could do to protect ourselves. Some among us thought to use her ship ourselves, but when we tried to power up the craft, the entire drive and computer system overloaded, frying the equipment. Apparently the captain had installed some sort of fail-safe device to prevent exactly what we were intending."
Kaiste took a small sip from the metal cup he held. "After that we decided that we would have no more such cases of self-defense on our consciences. Ondway tried to convince us otherwise, wanted to keep trying to organize a way out of here for us, but there would have been no way to be sure that, no matter how much he trusted those who offered him help, they might nevertheless have betrayed him and us. The Company is too powerful. The temptation of what they could offer another betrayer would always be too great. We had come too close to being recaptured or killed, and we would not take that chance again-or the chance of again causing Ondway such guilt and pain as he had suffered because of the captain's betrayal. We made him swear by the Three that he would never reveal our presence here to anyone or try to bring about our rescue, though he was sure he had other friends who would not betray him, humans and others who would have helped. Ondway's movements are simply watched too closely for him to retrieve us himself. Since the incident we have worked to find our own way away from here, no matter how long it takes."
Gabriel sat there in silence, thinking that the time involved might be generations if they kept thinking this way.
"You are very welcome for the supplies you bring and the concern you show," said Kaiste, "but we do not think you should stay longer than the night."
"We appreciate your concern for us," Gabriel said, "but-"
"No, you don't understand," said Kaiste. "This is not a safe place. It has never been a safe place, but now it is even less so."
Gabriel glanced around him at the other sesheyans who sat with them. Their eyes were full of a fear less controlled than Kaiste's.
"What is it?" Gabriel asked. "Let us help."
Kaiste hunched up his wings.
After a few moments one of the other sesheyans said, "The attacks started a year or so ago. It was particularly cruel, in a way, for things on this world were finally beginning to work correctly. We had enough food, the atmosphere was finally showing a little change, the heat was increasing-" "Heat," Kaiste added. "That has been our main problem out this far in the system. But we had been working on it, and we were succeeding. We had enough technical expertise to begin tailoring gases that would increase the heat held in our atmosphere much more swiftly than might otherwise happen." "Greenhousing," Enda said. "Terraforming worlds do that. Heat the atmosphere up first with a lot of noble gases, that kind of thing."
Kaiste bowed his wings in assent. "There is much activity below the planet's crust here, and we have been using the volcanism to help us. We mine for the gases that are of most help in heating up the atmosphere. Progress has been made even more quickly than we dared to hope, since we also found light oxides that we could 'crack' for free oxygen."
"It was always a temporary measure," said the other seshey-an, the female who had spoken. "There had always been two hopes for us before we were nearly betrayed. We would get away from here somehow- hire ships, or if we had to, build them- and smuggle ourselves that way to Grith. We know the difficulties," she said, lifting one claw before Gabriel could speak, "better than you believe, but we were willing enough to try. Otherwise-we would make this world marginally liveable and then eventually call on the Concord for aid. The people on Phorcys and Ino with whom we had been dealing said they would not interfere, but they would not help either. We would have to do it ourselves." Gabriel thought of the plump, comfortable negotiators sitting around the table with the ambassador, sitting on this chilly little secret, and he had to immediately start disabling his own fury before it made him get up and start smashing things.
"Ships seemed impossible to come by," said Kaiste, "so for the time being we concentrated on making air that we could breathe, turning this world into somewhere we could stay while we made the tools to build the tools to construct the ships. We knew that sooner or later we would be noticed, but we kept very quiet and worked to keep that notice from happening for as long as possible. And life actually became settled. We had enough food for the first time, enough water, enough hope-just enough." Kaiste shook his head. "Then came the near-betrayal-and after that the attacks started to come. Our people go out suited, to mine the various metals available here, to tend the various thermal caves where we have been providing light for crops and from which we release the greenhousing gases. What became plain was that someone was watching our comings and goings. Small ships began to come down from space and take our people. There is no time when we are safe from them. They come in gloom or dark; it's all one to them."
"Are these little round ships?" Gabriel asked, making the shape with his hands.
All the sesheyans around him froze. Kaiste looked at him with great suspicion, his foremost eyes narrowing.
"Some have reported such," he answered, "but it is very unusual to see them and live afterward. For a long time they were simply another kind of unhewoi, something that came and vanished, taking one of us with it."
"Unhewoi?" Gabriel asked.
Enda tilted her head to one side as if shaking her head in regret. "It is a word for the Taker," she said, "the Beast that waits in the shadow of the woods and snatches you away. Bad sesheyan children are threatened with the Unhewoi if they don't behave. Many species have such a figure," Enda shivered, "But none expect it to become real."
"For months now we have scarcely dared to go out," said Kaiste. "Our situation was bad enough when the traders stopped coming. We thought perhaps the Company had somehow gotten wind of us, even though the freighter captain had not been able to complete her message to them. Our fear was great, and our privation has slowly been growing. We were depending too much, perhaps, on what the traders brought us. Then this worse danger came upon us, and though we need trade, we dare not expose others to the danger. Others have tried to come, even from Grith, but we have warned them to stop lest they too be taken. We live in a prison now, and we do not know for sure how we will ever escape." Gabriel's heart turned over in him. It would be a long time before he forgot his own taste of prison and the possibility of living in it forever. "There must be something we can do for you." "The kindest thing is to leave," said Kaiste. "The attacks are always worse after people from Outside are here. We are resigned to our fate. We made it ourselves; we must bear it ourselves." He shuddered. "Worse yet, we would not be able to bear it if they came and took you."
That image of Enda, dead in a gel-filled suit, the blue
eyes quenched, her face stretched and distorted with rage and pain, hit Gabriel again-hit him so hard that it was all he could do to keep from jumping to his feet and heading back to Sunshine.
He looked up after a moment. "We'll go tomorrow," Gabriel said, "but I don't promise not to come back." Kaiste shook his head. "Your courage does you credit, but you only endanger us as well as yourselves. Please go with our good will. You will keep our secret from the Company, I know. But beware to whom you speak of us. They do not forget."
No one had much heart for conversation after that. The sesheyans showed Gabriel and Enda to a screened-off cubicle where they could have some privacy until the morning. There was no problem regarding warmth-the stone wall to one side of them was hot, and a pool of hot water bubbled up in the corner of their cubicle. But Gabriel had no joy of it, though at any other time he would have stood on his head in a pool half the size and praised it all out of proportion.
"We have to do something to help them," he said for about the twentieth time, some hours after they had been left there. Sleep would not come anywhere near him, and Enda had given up on it too since Gabriel plainly could neither lie still nor be quiet.
"I wait to hear a plan from you," Enda said rather wearily, "but I have yet to hear anything coherent." "It's hard to plan coherently when there's still the matter of those VoidCorp fighters to think about." "They are no longer a problem, I would have thought."
"That's not what I mean. Where did they come from? It's not that they couldn't have had stardrive, but it's not all that usual. It would make more sense for their base carrier to be around here somewhere, yet there's been no sign of it."
"Possibly they're afraid of attracting as much attention as such a large VoidCorp ship would produce should it appear in Thalaassa system without warning," Enda replied, "especially if they thought Schmetterling was going to be here to take official notice."
