Flesh and Gold

by Phyllis Gotlieb

  “I’m grateful, Hathe, but too tired.”

  “Then share the evening meal with me tomorrow.”

  “Yes I will.” Then she was taken with a feeling of mild but definite unease, because the whole atmosphere of Thordh’s deceptions—and deceptiveness in general—seemed stiflingly close. “Thank you for preserving my Eskat, but if any question about him comes up, tell the truth. Thordh’s death has already made Khagodi double-minded in the eyes of others.”

  Tethumekh

  When she returned to her room she found the comm buzzing and flashing. “Hullo, sweetheart!” Tony wanted to hear about and tell her everything: “Like a kind of man’s voice, like a Solthree’s, could have been anybody disguised—‘Tell the police, tell the other Big Squat her Thordh’s dead!’ ”

  Will I never get rid of “my Thordh”?

  She listened to the light baritone voice, and thought of a desert windflute, and the scrap of her poetry that went with the thought:

  in

  the sea of

  the desert it sings

  Thinking of the sea reminded her of the swimming woman. Shall I tell him about Kobai?

  She heard in memory the words: —and I’ll kill you for this!

  Is there something about that mindvoice, some familiar echo, that links it with Boudreau? With Thordh, and Kobai too?

  And Skerow . . . the final judge of Thordh. Yes, why should she not also be a target of this violence? . . . or Tony, who had a pretty little wife and two frilly daughters. “Scramble, Tony. I want to speak to you.”

  “That’s what you’re doing, love!”

  Not over the comm. “Face to face, Tony. Head to head.”

  “Er . . .”

  “Not to esp you!” The idea amused her: Tony was only too generous with his thoughts. “I want to give you what is in my mind. Will you come and meet me in the Hub Common Room?”

  Where there are plenty of people night and day, and particularly guards.

  “All right, but let me get the girls to bed first. They and Jenny have got all excited over having the police here.”

  “Not in your sector, Tony!”

  “Yes, yes! The Terrarium’s buzzing. Give me a stad and three ticks.”

  “Good. I’ll put my thoughts in order.”

  “Dear lord no, Skerow! I can’t bear another headache like the one you gave me last time you did that!” He switched off, laughing.

  Silence now. No, the rustle of the tethumekh’s tail along her neck, its tip like a crystal of topaz that matched its eyes.

  Skerow took pity on Tony, and on her own weariness, and let her thoughts drift. Perhaps her indulgence in his presence took precious time away from his family; she hoped this was not so: this friendship was one of the very few pleasures she enjoyed on this world. There had been none at all in Thordh’s company; so many nights shared in a room of basins, and so few thoughts or feelings. His presence turned her shy and inhibited; that of all her peers, male Khagodi, did, and he had been a big man, just her own size. He had floated there asleep with the colors playing on his scales, perhaps three siguu away, tail curled around his Lineage, his ten sons and seven daughters . . .

  She could not drag her mind away now: the little picture-cube had been on the shelf—how had it got into her hand? Finger touching the switch-stud like a magnet.

  The holo image floated on the water of her basin. She could not bring herself to move the cube and disturb it, so very slender, so frail a girl holding the little transmitter in her pearl talons: :It is Tapetto, Bathi! I hope you are well, and Tada. Everyone here says I am looking so much healthier, I will be home by the time Tada comes for Holidays, and I will race with you!:

  One breath of wind for those ashes. And he had divorced her for infertility.

  She thought of composing a poem, but there would be too many desert winds blowing through it, and she still had a half stad in which it would be wise to make her way most slowly and thoughtfully to the Hub Common Room, all senses extended.

  The tethumekh had dropped to her shoulder and was trying to groom the scales of her neck. A member of this species almost always wore around its neck a fine chain hung with a pendant that had begun as the small seed of a kesshi fruit. The tethumekh sucked at its rough surface to rid itself of a substance in saliva produced by overbreeding, and after years of accumulation produced a precious jewel, very much like an opal: now Eskat was building the eleventh of such jewels. He tapped it with a claw, and the iridescent bead swung in the light. This time she would not leave him loose. She scratched him gently under the jaw and slipped into his mind: it was like looking into a crystal which showed things magnified but blurred . . . his daylong memory bank:

  Day always dark, no Sun to sleep in, he is bored and sucks furiously on the bead; once long ago there was a Big-one who kept him locked up and cruelly teased to make it grow. Not this Big-one. This One puts out food and water. Stale meat, strange-tasting water, some kind of small dried things, says this is good-good! He spits. When she goes and Other-one comes with that thump-step, yellow-eye looks him down, he squeaks: eeyik! Other wants to wring his neck, he is glad to jump-into-cage-pull-the-door-shut!

  But now Other-one sleeps and he is bored again. No,

  Here Comes Somebody!

  Wants to play!

  No! Skerow’s teeth clashed involuntarily. The tethumekh squeaked and skittered to the floor.

  But yes, no choice but to know everything now. The murderer had not reckoned with her patience, her particular link with this animal. She picked him up very gently, he trembled in her hand and drew the faceted gem of his tail down the side of her head. She soothed his scales down carefully the right way—nice, good Eskat!—and lived along with him the rest of his afternoon.

  When she was done there was almost no time to keep her appointment properly. She left without hurry just the same, caging Eskat and setting all her personal alarms. Tony would be anxious, but she would watch what was going on about her.

  The hall was bright with white diffuse light, its neighboring doorways framed with black-enameled Cruxan thaq-wood that lasted for centuries. She kept her mind tightly closed though there was no one about and the apartment doors connected white-noise circuits that shielded both the people behind them and whoever might be in the halls. She loathed the impervious helmet; Khagodi sight and hearing were slightly duller than those of most non-ESPs, and while she very rarely esped intrusively, the low-level scan she usually maintained sharpened her senses, especially on these worlds where the skies were so thick and dark. The helm made her feel blind and deaf.

  The walls of the first cross corridor were lined with grey slotted machines dispensing oxygen tanks, water-purifying cartridges, air-fresheners, meal and transportation tokens, franking-stamps, signet rings and sealing wax. The hard un-resonant floor was covered with colorless carpet tiles that looked the same whether they were threadbare or new.

  At the next hallway the traffic began to thicken with people of other species who breathed similar oxygen mixtures: two prowling Ungrukh who liked a night run, shaking imaginary fleas out of their crimson fur, looking calmly at her with eyes of the same color that flashed green as they turned them to the light: they wanted fresh meat and their thoughts clearly expressed what they felt about what they got instead; a long and twisting Sziis ambassador roiling because she had been obliged to smoke too much ge’iin at a party celebrating the acquisition of a hovercraft factory for a colony world; a Solthree, lugging an oxygen tank, who had been trapped by a flight delay and found no room in the Terrarium. None of these intended Skerow any harm. All of them, no matter of what species, sensed her in some way as prehistoric with her massive head balanced by the long heavy tail, her powerful tread and glistening scales.

  Two doorways watched by guards formed a loose airlock that led into higher oxygen country and eventually the Terrarium. Skerow put filters in her gills to thin the air and stepped on the moving walkway nervously: she did not trust ground that slid under her
feet. After a while the decorative foliage shifted in emphasis from succulents to broadleaf plants; these too looked as if they had lasted centuries: although the air was much moister here they seemed to be writhing for lack of water.

  The moving corridors put out branches that grew from and fed into more lanes swinging up and down to other levels. The one Skerow was traveling seemed to go on forever. Along all its length of siguu no other person was riding it. The traffic had melted, and the walk lay deserted from one vast stretch to another. She quickened her pace, but the exit ramp seemed to recede, or perhaps her eyesight had dulled because there were no sharper eyes to see along with.

  She was conscious of movement to one side, and glanced to her right; all she saw was a mirror where another Skerow paced along the reflection of her walkway.

  She blinked. There was no mirror here, and never had been, but there was another Khagodi keeping abreast of her on a walkway running parallel to her own that was about to swing down to a lower level.

  Startled, she realized that it was her awareness rather than her eyesight which had gone dim. In this moment she lost the power of her shield. Her mind was naked to a thought-attack of a kind she had never in her life experienced.

  Of all the criminals in her dock, Khagodi or extraterrestrial, no matter how furious and cursing they had been—some far worse than Boudreau—none had tried to attack her in this way, not even when she was bareheaded.

  She was helpless: her mind was so bent back on itself that all she could see was her own reflection, as if she were surrounded by mirrors; did not know who was attacking her or why, tried to run, to thrash about, and could not even see her body or anything but her own image, could not move. Light was fading from her eyes, the whine of her blood in its vessels rose with the drumming of her hearts; she began to sink under the pressure of the mirrors.

  She gasped, her jaws opened in terror and panic, but her nostrils and voice-bladder had collapsed; she was voiceless; when her teeth clamped again involuntarily they came down hard on her tongue; this time she found a shrill voice, and saw hideous stars of pain. When she could get her eyes open after that there was a dim tunnel of sight opening away from her, and at the end of it the tiny figure of Tony with his mouth open in a round shape and his hands turned out like finger-clams. The mirrors hovered at the edge of her vision ready to close in, but from the corner of her eye she saw the prehistoric figure looming, always running to stay where it was on the walkway.

  When she realized this—It must run to stay where it is—she saw clearly through the pain that her enemy’s intention was divided, and also aimed at Tony, the unknowing witness.

  :NOW YOU ARE GOING TO STOP THAT,: she said firmly.

  The other Khagodi stared at her with pale yellow eyes.

  She seized her consciousness to herself with all her being, and said, :YOU WILL STOP THAT OR I WILL BECOME REALLY ANGRY!: She felt rather foolish saying this, like a teacher addressing an unruly pupil, and at the same time rather savage, because of the threat to Tony—and the pain in her tongue. Her eyes locked with the Other’s. She tasted blood.

  The stars and mirrors crashed down on her.

  She rose from the rubble of smashed mirrors to just below the surface of consciousness, and her mind began a tentative exploration, as if she were probing the extent of a sore place. The sore resolved itself into the bite on her tongue, which had swollen so much it was a painful lump that filled her mouth. She was floating in her basin. Her head was under water but her autonomic system had extended her breathing siphon and inflated the fold of membrane at its lip into the big bubble that anchored its opening to the surface of the water; it was trembling with each of her short breaths. Someone had brought a Solthree chair for Tony, and he sat with Eskat digging claws into his shoulder, watching her. The tethumekh had become a decorative jewel like the swag of gold on a diplomat’s uniform, making him look odd and out of place.

  Strang and Ramaswamy had come and gone, and so had Commissioner Erha, but the Lyrhht Medical Examiner was bending over her. He had stayed because he was the only one who had even a notion of how to treat a Khagodi in shock. He had warmed her bath and given her a nutrient IV drip. Since she had had no time to eat the previous day’s meal she was saved from nausea. Now he said, “I have put my signal into the comm here, and you may access it with the emergency code,” and left.

  Alone with Tony, she watched through his eyes as he watched this big drowsing woman, so shy for all of her authority. At a just-below-conscious level she understood that now she was safe and in privacy, and she began to stir: her mind boiled anew with images of lightning flashes and shattered mirrors. The tethumekh sucked fretfully on its bead and squeaked: ik! eeyik! She saw through Tony’s eyes that a thread of blood had drifted from the earslit at the top of her gill; she turned to look at it and her siphon dipped and bubbled.

  “Watch it, sweetheart,” he whispered.

  She could not force her mind back to the walkway. :What happened, Tony?: Her eyes opened.

  “You don’t know your own strength, my love. I’d hate to be around when you became really angry.”

  :Did I kill her?: She shifted and began to lever herself up on a hip and one elbow. Her siphon-bubble deflated, and the tube folded concertina-wise into its gill-slit. The water streamed from her shoulders and neck.

  “Watch out for the IV! The doctors may be able to put her head together again.”

  “Who brought me here?”

  “Five medics and four trolley-servers lashed together.”

  “My folly in being so headstrong . . . this flask is nearly empty, and I suppose I no longer feel hungry.” She pulled the needle from her neck, filled a spitbowl with fresh water to rinse her mouth. “It . . . was Hathe then?” She spoke a bit raggedly: because of the sore. Through Tony she could see that her dark red tongue had a flaming lump on one edge.

  “Didn’t you know?”

  “I tried to keep from knowing.” Her head seemed dull, and she felt as if her body had shrunk. “I had left Eskat out of his cage, I didn’t expect Thordh would come back first. Thordh loathed him, but he took care not to let him escape. Hathe didn’t even think of Eskat while she was poisoning Thordh, and he thought she’d come to play . . . he followed her afterward . . .”

  “Do you think she poisoned him only because he refused to let Boudreau off?”

  “Not only . . . I believe someone must have bought her for that reason. To spy on Thordh. According to Sama, Thordh had let Boudreau off twice earlier, and there must have been other cases she didn’t know about. Thordh was a double-tongued man; it seems that he was in the hire of smugglers. Perhaps they had doubts about him already, and when he betrayed them—by having me take the case this time—they had him killed. I wonder about him . . . whether that one last time was one too many, and he was trying to redeem himself. Or just that he felt footsteps on his tail.”

  “Then why would Hathe sell herself—really?”

  “Must I know that? To gain some kind of power, meaning an apartment with more space and bigger basins? To get away from this ugly world? Tell me, did I truly harm her so badly?”

  “Not on purpose.”

  “She was very powerful. It’s a pity, she could have been . . . I will apologize to the Saints. I’ve lost a person I thought was a friend.”

  “So have I, and I thought I knew her even better than you did.”

  “When she showed herself to me on the walkway . . . after Thordh disgracing us . . . I thought—perhaps hoped—some other intelligence was putting on a Khagodi image. I was deceived—I deceived myself. Not altogether. There was a possibility that the attacker was Nohl.”

  “Nohl? Who’s that, Skerow?”

  She told him about Kobai. “When Hathe attacked me I was on my way to tell you . . .” And gave him the picture.

  “My God. From Khagodis? I’ve never heard of that kind of person. Who could she be?”

  “There is no other indigenous sentient life on our world, and nothin
g at all that looks in the least like a Solthree, not under the waters or in the trees or in the air.”

  “Poor woman! Why didn’t you tell the police?”

  “I’m not sure I know . . . first I was too astonished at Thordh’s death even to think of her, and then I only wanted to get away from them, get them away from me, and yes, I do know—because some of my own people were behind this on a world where there are so few of them, and the citizens here don’t much care for Khagodi authority figures. And, you know, the police don’t either.”

  “There may not be anything they can do about this woman but the police ought to know just the same.”

  “Perhaps they know already. Brothels bring in a great deal of money.”

  “I never expected to meet that degree of cynicism in you, love—and so suddenly.”

  “Because my manner is rather awkward you believe I’m ignorant and naive. You have many preconceptions about me, Tony.”

  “I did. But I don’t think I’ll have too many more!”

  The Slave

  Ramaswamy looked at her with soulful eyes. “It is not a human being, Madame.”

  “What!”

  “It is registered as an experimental animal, legally imported under the terms of the Recreations & Amusements Act, Brothels & Zoos Division. I was shown the bills-of-sale and receipts.”

  She looked hard at him. “Experimental animal? I spoke with her! And that is a trash law, Ramaswamy, designed to let Zamos’s establishments operate. They are not running a zoo.”

  He shrugged. “Whatever they run, Madame, is under the authority of the local police. Traditionally they are jealous of that authority.”

  “If I might see her—”

  “Zamos’s admits her presence, but we are not zoo inspectors, Judge Skerow. As long as this being has no status as a person, is legally accounted for, with documentation, and is seen to be in good health, those people are within their rights, no matter how ghastly a pleasure is taken from her.”