“We’re Talented,” I said, smiling. With the capital, yes. Lyanna and I have been tested and registered as psi Talents, and we have the licenses to prove it.
“Uh-huh,” she said, turning on her side and smiling back at me. Not her vampire half-smile this time. Her sexy little girl smile.
“Valcarenghi wants us to get some rest,” I said. “It’s probably not a bad idea.”
Lya bounced out of bed. “OK,” she said, “but these twins have got to go.”
“We could push them together.”
She smiled again. We pushed them together.
And we did get some sleep. Eventually.
Our luggage was outside the door when we woke. We changed into fresh clothes, old casual stuff, counting on Valcarenghi’s notorious lack of pomp. The tube took us to the top of the Tower.
* * *
The office of the planetary administrator was hardly an office. There was no desk, none of the usual trappings. Just a bar and lush blue carpets that swallowed us ankle-high, and six or seven scattered chairs. Plus lots of space and sunlight, with Shkea laid out at our feet beyond the tinted glass. All four walls this time.
Valcarenghi and Gourlay were waiting for us, and Valcarenghi did the bartending chores personally. I didn’t recognize the beverage, but it was cool and spicy and aromatic, with a real sting to it. I sipped it gratefully. For some reason I felt I needed a lift.
“Shkeen wine,” Valcarenghi said, smiling, in answer to an unasked question. “They’ve got a name for it, but I can’t pronounce it yet. But give me time. I’ve only been here two months, and the language is rough.”
“You’re learning Shkeen?” Lya asked, surprised. I knew why. Shkeen is rough on human tongues, but the natives learned Terran with stunning ease. Most people accept that happily, and just forgot about the difficulties of cracking the alien language.
“It gives me an insight into the way they think,” Valcarenghi said. “At least that’s the theory.” He smiled.
I read him again, although it was more difficult. Physical contact makes things sharper. Again, I got a simple emotion, close to the surface—pride this time. With pleasure mixed in. I chalked that up to the wine. Nothing beneath.
“However you pronounce the drink, I like it,” I said.
“The Shkeen produce a wide variety of liquors and foodstuffs,” Gourlay put in. “We’ve cleared many for export already, and we’re checking others. Market should be good.”
“You’ll have a chance to sample more of the local produce this evening,” Valcarenghi said. “I’ve set up a tour of the city, with a stop or two in Shkeentown. For a settlement of our size, our night life is fairly interesting. I’ll be your guide.”
“Sounds good,” I said. Lya was smiling too. A tour was unusually considerate. Most Normals feel uneasy around Talents, so they rush us in to do whatever they want done, then rush us out again as quickly as possible. They certainly don’t socialize with us.
“Now—the problem,” Valcarenghi said, lowering his drink and leaning forward in the chair. “You read about the Cult of the Union?”
“A Shkeen religion,” Lya said.
“The Shkeen religion,” corrected Valcarenghi. “Every one of them is a believer. This is a planet without heretics.”
“We read the materials you sent on it,” Lya said. “Along with everything else.”
“What do you think?”
I shrugged. “Grim. Primitive. But no more than any number of others I’ve read about. The Shkeen aren’t very advanced, after all. There were religions on Old Earth that included human sacrifice.”
Valcarenghi shook his head, and looked toward Gourlay.
“No, you don’t understand,” Gourlay started, putting his drink down on the carpet. “I’ve been studying their religion for six years. It’s like no other in history. Nothing on Old Earth like it, no sir. Nor in any other race we’ve encountered.
“And Union, well, it’s wrong to compare it to human sacrifice, just wrong. The Old Earth religions sacrificed one or two unwilling victims to appease their gods. Killed a handful to get mercy for the millions. And the handful generally protested. The Shkeen don’t work it that way. The Greeshka takes everyone. And they go willingly. Like lemmings they march off to the caves to be eaten alive by those parasites. Every Shkeen is Joined at forty, and goes to Final Union before he’s fifty.”
I was confused. “All right,” I said. “I see the distinction, I guess. But so what? Is this the problem? I imagine that Union is rough on the Shkeen, but that’s their business. Their religion is no worse than the ritual cannibalism of the Hrangans, is it?”
Valcarenghi finished his drink and got up, heading for the bar. As he poured himself a refill, he said, almost casually, “As far as I know, Hrangan cannibalism has claimed no human converts.”
Lya looked startled. I felt startled. I sat up and stared. “What?”
Valcarenghi headed back to his seat, glass in hand. “Human converts have been joining the Cult of the Union. Dozens of them are already Joined. None of them have achieved full Union yet, but that’s only a question of time.” He sat down, and looked at Gourlay. So did we.
The gangling blond aide picked up the narrative. “The first convert was about seven years ago. Nearly a year before I got here, two and a half after Shkea was discovered and the settlement built. Guy named Magly. Psi-psych, worked closely with the Shkeen. He was it for two years. Then another in ’08, more the next year. And the rate’s been climbing ever since. There was one big one. Phil Gustaffson.”
Lya blinked. “The planetary administrator?”
“The same,” said Gourlay. “We’ve had a lot of administrators. Gustaffson came in after Rockwood couldn’t stand it. He was a big, gruff old guy. Everybody loved him. He’d lost his wife and kids on his last assignment, but you’d never have known it. He was always hearty, full of fun. Well, he got interested in the Shkeen religion, started talking to them. Talked to Magly and some of the other converts too. Even went to see a Greeshka. That shook him up real bad for a while. But finally he got over it, went back to his researches. I worked with him, but I never guessed what he had in mind. A little over a year ago, he converted. He’s Joined now. Nobody’s ever been accepted that fast. I hear talk in Shkeentown that he may even be admitted to Final Union, rushed right in. Well, Phil was administrator here longer than anybody else. People liked him, and when he went over, a lot of his friends followed. The rate’s way up now.”
“Not quite one percent, and rising,” Valcarenghi said. “That seems low, but remember what it means. One percent of the people in my settlement are choosing a religion that includes a very unpleasant form of suicide.”
Lya looked from him to Gourlay and back again. “Why hasn’t this been reported?”
“It should have been,” Valcarenghi said, “but Stuart succeeded Gustaffson, and he was scared stiff of a scandal. There’s no law against humans adopting an alien religion, so Stuart defined it as a nonproblem. He reported the conversion rate routinely, and nobody higher up ever bothered to make the correlation and remember just what all these people were converting to.”
I finished my drink, set it down. “Go on,” I said to Valcarenghi.
“I define the situation as a problem,” he said. “I don’t care how few people are involved, the idea that human beings would allow the Greeshka to consume them alarms me. I’ve had a team of psychs on it since I took over, but they’re getting nowhere. I needed Talent. I want you two to find out why these people are converting. Then I’ll be able to deal with the situation.”
The problem was strange, but the assignment seemed straightforward enough. I read Valcarenghi to be sure. His emotions were a bit more complex this time, but not much. Confidence above all: he was sure we could handle the problem. There was honest concern there, but no fear, and not even a hint of deception. Again, I couldn’t catch anything below the surface. Valcarenghi kept his hidden turmoil well hidden, if he had any.
I glanced at Lyanna. She was sitting awkwardly in her chair, and her fingers were wrapped very tightly around her wine glass. Reading. Then she loosened up and looked my way and nodded.
“All right,” I said. “I think we can do it.”
Valcarenghi smiled. “That I never doubted,” he said. “It was only a question of whether you would. But enough of business for tonight. I’ve promised you a night on the town, and I always try to deliver on my promises. I’ll meet you downstairs in the lobby in a half-hour.”
* * *
Lya and I changed into something more formal back in our room. I picked a dark blue tunic, with white slacks and a matching mesh scarf. Not the height of fashion, but I was hoping that Shkea would be several months behind the times. Lya slipped into a silky white skintight with a tracery of thin blue lines that flowed over her in sensuous patterns in response to her body heat. The lines were definitely lecherous, accentuating her thin figure with a singleminded determination. A blue raincape completed the outfit.
“Valcarenghi’s funny,” she said as she fastened it.
“Oh?” I was struggling with the sealseam on my tunic, which refused to seal. “You catch something when you read him?”
“No,” she said. She finished attaching the cape and admired herself in the mirror. Then she spun toward me, the cape swirling behind her. “That’s it. He was thinking what he was saying. Oh, variations in the wording, of course, but nothing important. His mind was on what we were discussing, and behind that there was only a wall.” She smiled. “Didn’t get a single one of his deep dark secrets.”
I finally conquered the sealseam. “Tsk,” I said. “Well, you get another chance tonight.”
That got me a grimace. “The hell I do. I don’t read people on off-time. It isn’t fair. Besides, it’s such a strain. I wish I could catch thoughts as easily as you do feelings.”
“The price of Talent,” I said. “You’re more Talented, your price is higher.” I rummaged in our luggage for a raincape, but I didn’t find anything that went well, so I decided not to wear one. Capes were out, anyway. “I didn’t get much on Valcarenghi either. You could have told as much by watching his face. He must be a very disciplined mind. But I’ll forgive him. He serves good wine.”
Lya nodded. “Right! That stuff did me good. Got rid of the headache I woke up with.”
“The altitude,” I suggested. We headed for the door.
The lobby was deserted, but Valcarenghi didn’t keep us waiting long. This time he drove his own aircar, a battered black job that had evidently been with him for a while. Gourlay wasn’t the sociable type, but Valcarenghi had a woman with him, a stunning auburn-haired vision named Laurie Blackburn. She was even younger than Valcarenghi—mid-twenties, by the look of her.
It was sunset when we took off. The whole far horizon was a gorgeous tapestry in red and orange, and a cool breeze was blowing in from the plains. Valcarenghi left the coolers off and opened the car windows, and we watched the city darken into twilight as we drove.
Dinner was at a plush restaurant with Baedurian decor—to make us feel comfortable, I guessed. The food, however, was very cosmopolitan. The spices, the herbs, the style of cooking were all Baldur. The meats and vegetables were native. It made for an interesting combination. Valcarenghi ordered for all four of us, and we wound up sampling about a dozen different dishes. My favorite was a tiny Shkeen bird that they cooked in sourtang sauce. There wasn’t very much of it, but what there was tasted great. We also polished off three bottles of wine during the meal: more of the Shkeen stuff we’d sampled that afternoon, a flask of chilled Veltaar from Baldur, and some real Old Earth Burgundy.
The talk warmed up quickly; Valcarenghi was a born storyteller and an equally good listener. Eventually, of course, the conversation got around to Shkea and Shkeen. Laurie led it there. She’d been on Shkea for about six months, working toward an advanced degree in extee anthropology. She was trying to discover why the Shkeen civilization had remained frozen for so many millennia.
“They’re older than we are, you know,” she told us. “They had cities before men were using tools. It should have been space-traveling Shkeen that stumbled on primitive men, not the other way around.
“Aren’t there theories on that already?” I asked.
“Yes, but none of them are universally accepted,” she said. “Cullen cites a lack of heavy metals, for example. A factor, but is it the whole answer? Von Hamrin claims the Shkeen didn’t get enough competition. No big carnivores on the planet, so there was nothing to breed aggressiveness into the race. But he’s come under a lot of fire. Shkea isn’t all that idyllic; if it were, the Shkeen never would have reached their present level. Besides, what’s the Greeshka if not a carnivore? It eats them, doesn’t it?”
“What do you think?” Lya asked.
“I think it had something to do with the religion, but I haven’t worked it all out yet. Dino’s helping me talk to people and the Shkeen are open enough, but research isn’t easy.” She stopped suddenly and looked at Lya hard. “For me, anyway. I imagine it’d be easier for you.”
We’d heard that before. Normals often figure that Talents have unfair advantages, which is perfectly understandable. We do. But Laurie wasn’t resentful. She delivered her statement in a wistful, speculative tone, instead of etching it in verbal acid.
Valcarenghi leaned over and put an arm around her. “Hey,” he said. “Enough shop talk. Robb and Lya shouldn’t be worrying about the Shkeen until tomorrow.”
Laurie looked at him, and smiled tentatively. “OK,” she said lightly. “I get carried away. Sorry.”
“That’s OK,” I told her. “It’s an interesting subject. Give us a day and we’ll probably be getting enthusiastic too.”
Lya nodded agreement, and added that Laurie would be the first to know if our work turned up anything that would support her theory. I was hardly listening. I know it’s not polite to read Normals when you’re out with them socially, but there are times I can’t resist. Valcarenghi had his arm around Laurie and had pulled her toward him gently. I was curious.
So I took a quick, guilty reading. He was very high—slightly drunk, I guess, and feeling very confident and protective. The master of the situation. But Laurie was a jumble-uncertainty, repressed anger, a vague fading hint of fright. And love, confused but very strong. I doubted that it was for me or Lya. She loved Valcarenghi.
I reached under the table, searching for Lya’s hand, and found her knee. I squeezed it gently and she looked at me and smiled. She wasn’t reading, which was good. It bothered me that Laurie loved Valcarenghi, though I didn’t know why, and I was just as glad that Lya didn’t see my discontent.
We finished off the last of the wine in short order, and Valcarenghi took care of the whole bill. Then he rose. “Onward!” he announced. “The night is fresh, and we’ve got visits to make.”
So we made visits. No holoshows or anything that drab, although the city had its share of theaters. A casino was next on the list. Gambling was legal on Shkea, of course, and Valcarenghi would have legalized it if it weren’t. He supplied the chips and I lost some for him, as did Laurie. Lya was barred from playing; her Talent was too strong. Valcarenghi won big; he was a superb mindspin player, and pretty good at the traditional games too.
Then came a bar. More drinks, plus local entertainment which was better than I would have expected.
It was pitch-black when we got out, and I assumed that the expedition was nearing its end. Valcarenghi surprised us. When we got back to the car, he reached under the controls, pulled out a box of sober-ups, and passed them around.
“Hey,” I said. “You’re driving. Why do I need this? I just barely got up here.”
“I’m about to take you to a genuine Shkeen cultural event, Robb,” he said. “I don’t want you making rude comments or throwing up on the natives. Take your pill.”
I took my pill, and the buzz in my head began to fade. Valcarenghi already had the car air-borne. I leane
d back and put my arm around Lya, and she rested her head on my shoulder. “Where are we going?” I asked.
“Shkeentown,” he replied, never looking back, “to their Great Hall. There’s a Gathering tonight, and I figured you’d be interested.”
“It will be in Shkeen, of course,” Laurie said, “but Dino can translate for you. I know a little of the language too, and I’ll fill in whatever he misses.”
Lya looked excited. We’d read about Gatherings, of course, but we hardly expected go see one on our first day on Shkea. The Gatherings were a species of religious rite; a mass confessional of sorts for pilgrims who were about to be admitted to the ranks of the Joined. Pilgrims swelled the hill city daily, but Gatherings were conducted only three or four times a year when the numbers of those-about-to-be-Joined climbed high enough.
The aircar streaked almost soundlessly through the brightly lit settlement, passing huge fountains that danced with a dozen colors and pretty ornamental arches that flowed like liquid fire. A few other cars were airborne, and here and there we flew above pedestrians strolling the city’s broad malls. But most people were inside, and light and music flooded from many of the homes we passed.
Then, abruptly, the character of the city began to change. The level ground began to roll and heave, hills rose before us and then behind us, and the lights vanished. Below, the malls gave way to unlit roads of crushed stone and dust, and the domes of glass and metal done in fashionable mock-Shkeen yielded to their older brick brothers. The Shkeen city was quieter than its human counterpart; most of the houses were darkly silent.
Then, ahead of us, a hummock appeared that was larger than the others—almost a hill in itself, with a big arched door and a series of slit-like windows. And light leaked from this one, and noise, and there were Shkeen outside.
I suddenly realized that, although I’d been on Shkea for nearly a day, this was the first sight I’d caught of the Shkeen. Not that I could see them all that clearly from an aircar at night. But I did see them. They were smaller than men—the tallest was around five feet—with big eyes and long arms. That was all I could tell from above.
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