Flesh and Gold

by Phyllis Gotlieb

  F L E S H and Gold

  F L E S H and Gold

  Phyllis Gotlieb

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  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this novel are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.

  FLESH AND GOLD

  Copyright © 1998 by Phyllis Gotlieb

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.

  This book is printed on acid-free paper.

  Edited by David G. Hartwell

  Designed by Nancy Resnick

  A Tor Book

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.

  175 Fifth Avenue

  New York, NY 10010

  Tor Books on the World Wide Web:

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  Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Gotlieb, Phyllis.

  Flesh and gold / Phyllis Gotlieb.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  “A Tom Doherty Associates book.”

  ISBN 0-312-86523-6 ISBN 978-0-312-86523-8

  I. Title.

  PR9199.3.G64F57 1998

  813’ .54—dc21

  97-29852

  CIP

  First Edition: February 1998

  Printed in the United States of America

  0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  For the First Readers:

  Calvin Gotlieb, Donald Maass, David Hartwell,

  Virginia Kidd, John Robert Colombo,

  Terence Green, Elisabeth Vonarburg,

  Ursula Le Guin

  PROLOGUE

  Khagodis: Nohl and Ferrier

  “My knife is missing,” Nohl said.

  “What does that matter?” Ferrier turned his eyes from the smoking volcanic peak on the horizon to the east and watched the waters of the bay dancing in glints of light from the lowering sun. On Khagodis the air is so thin that the stars are sometimes visible in daylight; now in the flaring blue Ferrier could see three of the system’s other worlds. He had hooked the oxygen tube into the corner of his mouth and it bubbled slightly.

  Amber lights glinted on Nohl’s scales. With a pearl talon he flicked away an insect buzzing near his eye and looked down at the thin figure whose head came to his elbow. Ferrier was wearing white against the equatorial heat; his short jacket was closely fitted, and had double-breasted black buttons. Nohl was thinking that Ferrier’s eyes were like the buttons, fixed and sharp on white skin. A thin skin over arrogance and greed.

  “I lost it down there.” Nohl nodded at the folding waves and at the same time clawed at his shoulder harness as if he expected to find the knife there; his stunner had not been taken. “I went because one of them had a foot caught in the sprigweed—when I came up it was gone.”

  “Think they’d know how to use one?”

  “They would know. They already use pieces of shell for cutting, and sharpen them, too. Sometimes they catch fish with them, by slashing, but those are not dangerous to us. A real knife . . .”

  Ferrier said, “If one of them’s got it you ought to know who.”

  But Nohl did not like to admit that he was no longer quite so powerful a telepath as he had been. Even some of the best Khagodi ESPs grow weaker with age in the sixth sense as well as others. He hunched his bulk down at the edge of the steep bank and steadied it with his tail. “Kobai knows where everything is.” :Come here, Kobai!: He sent the message silent and deep, deep enough so that the Khagodi standing guard farther down along the bank moved forward. Nohl shrugged him away.

  A whorl appeared on the surface before him, and two hands parted the waters: a head rose between them. The head was hairless and dark red; under the brow ridges the eyes were dark and sharply alive through the transparent sealed lids. The face was fine-boned, a woman’s. Kobai snorted to clear the brine from her nose, spat and swallowed air. She grinned up at him.

  “Yes, Lord Upthere?”

  I know all the time Big Om stole that knife, he don’t hide it from us his own Down-people, think him some big man that Big Man Om, flub his lip and go cross-eye, poke-poking the women, See Me Big Om. Don’t know we take a look and see he is not so big, and kind of dumb.

  About knife, yes. Way we-people get a knife is, if the Up-people drop it down. Then they put to mind: where is my knife? and call around everywhere, don’t care what you are doing, weaving the net or eat or make the in-out. They ones talk with the mind and the mouth sound, not with the hands like us under the water. Sometime I think they are not so bright either. They sure are deaf. Yes I can make with mouth by swallow air, go burp-burp, the kind of way they do. But I don’t like to put my head through the skin of my world and make dumb noise. Because then I got to think so hard what the word are I don’t talk good. Like now, gentle ones.

  Yes, yes, I go on. Where I was? Big-lord say, Pay attention you Folk, my knife is lost.

  You think I tell, or Siko or Pers, about Big Om and this knife? No, honorables. We do not give away even the kind we have no use for. He never do us harm except for pushing his this-here at us.

  So we say, No, no, great ones, it is not here. Let them guard their own knives.

  That one big upside-Lord who likes me—he is not a bad fellow—he puts his mind in my head and says, :Come on, Kobai, you know everything, so you must know who has the knife.:

  And I give back, Nononono Lord Big One Upthere, I would never touch a knife.

  :Kobai,: says he, :you are funning me. I think you are all hiding Om.:

  I don’t give him a funny answer because he is all right. But that Om, he has to be so big. I think that time he got bit by the sharptooth make him one wild man. He only want to make a pretend fight in the water with silly Usk and all the crazylegs around the place, but he got the demon in him from that bite and he dive deep and pick up a chunk of the gold that get washed smooth and shiny down there, jump up most out of the water with one great whack of his tail and shout in this loud thoughtvoice like we hear in the mind from them up there, :You like your fine gold all so much you take this and keep it and let me keep one own small knife!:

  And he throw that chunk let me tell you, so hard!

  But he don’t shout nor he don’t throw no more, never.

  An instant of tableau: a jet of blood leaping out of the throat of the dark red figure half-emerged from the placid waters of the bay; the thin dark Solthree with gun lifted in one hand, the other to his bruised temple; the scaled Khagodi staring down at him, hands raised and open. On the horizon one volcano spits a jet of red fire.

  The spurted blood fell slapping the water while the astonished face, hairless and gaping, slipped down and away, the huge eyes lingered at the surface for a moment and were gone.

  “Stupidskin!” The Khagodi flicked the gun out of Ferrier’s hand. The watchman had aimed his stunner but did not fire. “What have you done?”

  The thin dark man caught up his gun quickly and arced it up toward Nohl’s heavy jaws, heard the sudden movement of the guard behind him, and replaced it in its sling. “Taught them a lesson, that’s what.” He rubbed the bruise on his temple again and kicked at the lump of gold near his
foot. “They try anything they’ll get it again . . . Nohl, you are a frightened little man.” He picked up his broad-brimmed hat and put it on his head; it had an esp shield set into it.

  Nohl had never wanted to know what was in Ferrier’s mind, but now he stood watching him a moment, scratching an irritated spot near his gill-slit and thinking how if that shield had been removed a few moments earlier Ferrier might have been lying dead, brainburned by two furious Khagodi, and perhaps Om would be alive. “I believed you had some modest store of intelligence. These people would not have hurt you.”

  The waters of the bay began to pucker and glitter with points of sunlight. Hands rose from it, twisted, snapped fingers, and made lewd gestures. The domed heads pushed out glistening, the huge eyes bulged, lips on the water’s surface made cracking blurt sounds. The body of dead Om rose from the water on the arms of his people in a gesture of defiance as the lifted hands of the others slapped the surface. Ferrier’s fingers sought his gun once more. The sweat stood out on his upper lip and ran into his beard shadow.

  Nohl said, :Get down, all you Folk! Go about your business!:

  The eyes turned on him sullenly. He was not a bad one, no. But his friends were demons.

  The sea people fell away to the depths, and the bay rippled in its calm evening way; the sun dropped below the rim of the world. Ferrier took out a handkerchief and wiped his face and neck. “Anybody going to report this?” The question was more threat than appeal.

  “Not I.” Not with that gun a touch away from Ferrier’s nervous hand. “One of the Folk might. You cannot stop that without some great violence, and no Khagodi does that kind of thing. You will be brought to book, Ferrier.” There was real threat in Nohl’s voice, but what he really felt was shame at his own complicity in dealing with this sniggering little man.

  Ferrier took a suck of oxygen from his tank. “It’s really amazing, all the people who’ve wanted to get rid of me . . . maybe still want, you think? You do some thinking about getting rid of that woman, that Kobai. She’s the one who’d screw things up for you—yeh, I could work out a couple of ideas for her.” He kicked at the water-burnished lump of gold and grinned up at the big-jawed head. “Include that in your shipment. Or my kickback. I’ve been arrested before. If I get pulled in again I figure you’ll get me a judge who won’t convict, like usual, or we’ll all find out what Central thinks about the people who do your slaving for you under the water, and their keepers. You like that, friend Nohl, you tight-ass Khagodi?”

  He tilted his hat and walked away. In a few moments his solitary figure dimmed in its background of flat scrubgrass terrain. Two chalkwhite moons rose above his head. Nohl watched him disappear; he admired Ferrier’s courage almost as much as he detested him.

  Often there were rains toward morning, but now a cool wind swept a sky intense with stars. Nohl looked out at the seas among the islands, then down at the waters of the bay: lights were moving below that rumpled surface, the bioluminescent lanterns of the Folk. They are like the stars. No. They are like the lights of a village where the people are going about settling things in the evening. They have much to settle.

  He thought of Kobai, a woman of no small intelligence. Damn you, stupid Om! he told the horizon. And wondered what would become of her and the others.

  I need a new knife.

  ONE

  Fthel V: Skerow

  Starry Nova was a name stuck on the port city of Fthel V by Solthree jokers. The Russian words stary novy, old new, where there were no visible stars and nothing was new, gave a good sense of the grubby middle-aged facility.

  Skerow was endlessly fascinated with Starry Nova. The Khagodi are brisk about playing down an exaggerated reputation for morality—along with the well-deserved one for telepathic power—but their presence has always commanded too-extreme respect and unwanted reverence. Skerow liked to visit dark and grimy cities like this one set in the cold dank center of a continent of mines and ore refineries; a city of lowered skies, lodgings rather than homes, few pleasures and fewer legal. The inhabitants paid no attention to Khagodi.

  “You are a romantic!” Tony Labonta had cried, dancing in his buckled pointed shoes and balancing a goblet of the local gargle with a star-fed tidbit.

  He had said this several years ago during Skerow’s last visit on the assizes circuit at a function honoring the appointment of a new commissioner of mines and resources. Skerow, a grave and sober judge, looked down from a height of over two meters on the curly head of Tony, a tiny and pugnacious prosecuting attorney known for his youth and daring. “Romantic! You are meaning to tease me, Tony!”

  But he was grinning up at her with no concern about keeping his mind shut, and it was true that he saw something shy and wild in her: farouche, was his word for it. He had other words to describe her: streamlined baby allosaurus, for instance, but she was not sure what they meant, or that she wanted to know.

  She put those thoughts away now, while she lingered by the window of chambers late on a slate-colored afternoon, slow about dressing herself in a judge’s dignity. The robe, a long surcoat of thin crinkly leather, was an old one she had inherited from a retired associate, a Khagodi from the equatorial regions of her world, when she was not sure how long she would remain a judge. Later, secure, she had not bothered to replace it, though it smelt of salt seas and musty scales. Before she was done Thordh came in; he stood hesitating in his rippled draperies. She waited; she had never made small talk with him. At length he said, “Will you take the bench today? I would like to go back to quarters.”

  Khagodi judges traveled in pairs and alternated on the long wearisome circuits. Thordh had been the protégé of Skerow’s old associate, and came from the same country. She herself lived among the stony hills of the Northern Spine Confederacy, and had first expected him to be a warm and effusive Southerner, but he had little to say to her, and held his esp shield down tight.

  “Certainly I’ll sit for you. Are you ill?”

  “A little.” He spoke lingua with a precise and refined diction. “I find the old ague rises in my bones from the chill air of this place. Here,”—offering his case of spools and tablets—“there may be some notes you do not have.” With the other hand he picked up a magnificent impervious helmet of silver and bronze, and put it into its traveling case. The helm was too heavy for Skerow; she preferred her silver net, which had its own disadvantage: it rubbed her scales wrong way.

  That Thordh of yours is a very sober sides, Tony had said.

  He’s none of mine, Tony. The image of Tony, hair ruffled, jigging with some private joke or other, folded itself away, and she arranged her face in the sober mien of the Law.

  Skerow did not need any kind of seat before the lectern; she rested on the base of her heavy tail. Sometimes she rather enjoyed her power; sometimes she found it wearisome, as today, when the robe seemed shabby and she felt like a bumpkin wearing it, and the court was heavy with the stink of atmospheric tanks for fifteen kinds of humanity; even Thordh’s absence, the empty cubicle below and to one side of her, seemed looming and intrusive. Tony Labonta stood waiting, neat and tight like a duelist; she did not think of him, but called the court to order.

  Defendant was a Solthree named Henri Boudreau, a smuggler caught in port, a pirate rather, dragging a long record over five worlds.

  The sheriff led him into court, a man of fierce brows and mustache; he glanced up at Skerow and his eyes bulged: he snorted into the supplementary oxygen tank. Defense, an old warrior woman, drew her mouth tight. Tony’s eyes narrowed. Skerow had tried many cases in this court; now, for a moment, she became disoriented.

  The Warrior, a powerful black woman with elaborately coiffed hair, drew close to the railing. “I understood that Justice Thordh was trying this case.”

  “He is indisposed and has asked me to stand in for him.” Because Defense did not seem to be ready to withdraw, she asked, “Do you wish to make some formal objection, Madame?”

  “Um, no.” Defense stood for
one more instant of paralysis, turned to a statue of basalt; Skerow, caught in the moment by her own unease at Thordh’s having so casually rid himself of the case, waited with her. Defense shook her head slightly and withdrew beside her client.

  Tony brought in twenty-three witnesses, and with the hammer of his argument nailed down the case with them one by one, hardly pausing to sniff oxygen. Skerow, mindful of Tony’s brash enthusiasms, allowed half of Defense’s objections, but Boudreau’s activities had been so blatant that the Warrior’s dramatics were mechanical and tired.

  When the arguments had wound up Skerow called the lawyers into chambers to discuss sentencing.

  “His record stretches across the Fthel system and beyond,” Tony said.

  “He’s never had a major conviction, or served as much as a year, with time off,” said Ms. Sama, for the Defense. Again she was looking oddly at Skerow, as if she wished to say something, but not with her mouth. Of course Skerow could not remove the helm to esp: all Galactic Federation judges were obliged to use them, and particularly the powerful Khagodi.

  “A question of sentence,” said Skerow. “If we send him to mine the iridium and beryllium he smuggles out he will have easy access among the miners to—and probably die of—the drugs he has smuggled in. Does that seem fair?”

  Tony lifted his hand to forestall an angry outburst from Sama, and smiled at Skerow, who nodded and said, “Perhaps a few years supervising the robots at an ore-processing plant where there are no drugs available and he has no soul to corrupt but his own. What do you think?”

  Out in court Boudreau stood gaping and red-eyed while this sentence was read. “Five years,” he whispered. Then said something silently that by lip movements might have been: Where is Thordh? But Skerow was not sure of reading a Solthree’s lips correctly.