“Then tell us, sir!” Skerow cried.
“One of our witnesses, a man named Sta Farre Samfa, is in hospital in this city after a murder attempt against him. He was to have been brought here today, but now claims that you were one of those who hired him, Your Honor.”
Skerow’s mind closed down in shock and for one instant she could not swallow air. “To obtain gold? That is a damned lie.”
Blaylock did not quail. “It was not I who spoke it, and it will become a rumor that cannot be put down.”
Ossta said, “When did your witness say this, and to whom?”
“After waking he told it to the peace officer who was to bring him. His statement was recorded.”
“What do you have in mind, Counselor, a declaration of mistrial over this sick man’s rumor?” Ossta asked.
“He seems likely to die before a new trial date is set,” Skerow said before he could answer. “Counselor, this statement is worthless. Your witness may have been threatened further—I cannot think with what, further than the death already upon him—but most likely he is in pain, or has been having nightmares. If he wishes to bring these baseless charges against me formally, I must see about getting myself a lawyer. In any case, I am standing aside. I will tell the audience that the trial has been voided.”
“Just wait a moment, Skerow my dear,” Ossta said.
“Yes, please.” Blaylock had become calmer, and took a deep breath. “I beg your pardon, Madame. I was taken aback and misjudged in haste; it has cost so much effort and expense to bring this case to court. Of course I must ask for an adjournment until tomorrow so I can question the witness.”
Skerow said, “Do so. You disturbed me very deeply when you said that your witness’s false statement will become a rumor impossible to put down. Make sure you have not made a prophecy that will fulfill itself.”
The feeling of dread that weighted her as she left the Court Offices and climbed the ramp was deepened when she removed her helmet at the doorway of her guest chamber: she had not felt such an intensity of silence for half her life. As she stepped through the archway she could see the wicker cage floating on the water. It had been flattened, and Eskat’s body was splayed inside it. As if someone had flung down the cage, tramped on it, and tossed it in the bath.
She waded down the ramp and fetched out the cage. The water had been warm, and so was the body. When she freed it she thought there were flickers of life in his heart and eye, enough to ask, Eskat’s One, here? before they folded into emptiness.
She unfastened the chain and bead from his neck and clasped him against her belly. So stupid to kill this frail chained beast; her eyes were blind with the tears she would not shed. She climbed the ramp and wrapped him in a towel, sent the bundle down the disposal and followed it with the broken cage; she stayed there crouching by the pool.
A black river of thought rose up against her. She could not think of anyone on this world who wanted her harmed or dead; most of the men and women she had judged on other worlds had been involved in civil suits that had nothing to do with violence. What happened on Starry Nova had seemed to her a dreadful aberration.
Her thoughts blackened more deeply. That detestable little beast, Evarny called him. Evarny had urged this case on her: You rode circuit with Thordh for over twenty years without being stained by the rumors . . . had he involved her to repel stain from himself?
No. She had been married to Evarny for as many years as she had ridden circuit with Thordh; she had never known the Thordh beneath the impervious helmet, but she had lived in Evarny’s mind. She knew that the blackness was in herself.
There was half a day to waste and all of a dreadful night to get through.
Brains Storm
Skerow had not visited the Hall of Ancestors since her divorce. Stripped of daughter and husband then, she could not bear the presence of the Saints. They had never been a comfort.
The day was full of mist, and the shrine seemed to have an aura it would not claim for itself. It stood in the center of the Courts and Administrations Complex, but was so unpretentious and modestly recessed under the low-branched beq-trees that it was often mistaken by tourists for a public lavatory. It had been set half-underground for coolness, and flowing airstreams running down from ventilators on its low dome roof shielded it from the damp. The dehumidifiers hummed intermittently, and the coldlight strips in its ceiling were dusky yellow.
The walkways between the pillars seemed black with darkness from where Skerow stood looking at them on the thick green sward of moss at the edge of the downward ramp. She stepped down and inward.
:Skerow? Is it truly you?: The thoughts eddied around her like the currents of wind that gathered in the early afternoon.
Another step and another until she was immersed in the sickly aura of the yellow-flickering lights and the swarm of ancient minds.
:Yes, Blessed Ones, Skerow it is:
:Wake up, you damned souls of the Unblessed! Skerow is bringing us eyes!:
One more step and the light strips brightened. Another noise reached Skerow. The almost silent throbbing of scores of pumps.
:And ears!:
The Hall of Ancestors on Khagodis was the last of its kind; sometimes it was referred to as a Memorial Garden, Hall of Elders, or Knowledge Park. Never a Cemetery.
But it was a hall of the dead whose brains had outlived them in the years when a misguided technology had kept them “alive” in globes of nutrient liquid. The practice had long been stopped, but because the Khagodi were the longest-lived of known sentients, there were still these few in existence.
The spheres of dark green glastex stood on veined green-marble pedestals among their skeins of tubing, in no particular order, as if they were galls on the underground root systems of the surrounding trees. There were more than a hundred and twenty of them, and the youngest was nearly two hundred years old. No Governor dared stop the pumps of These Last Ones no matter how the Ancestors or their families pleaded, and no one loved them either.
There was a musty smell here; Skerow felt the membranes of her gill-slits thickening in reaction to the molds that flourished no matter how well the place was cleaned and ventilated. :Hello, Aunt Hrufa!:
:Skerow, dear!:
:Uncle Lokh, are you there?:
Lokh was Hrufa’s uncle, but he answered sharply, :Yes, yes I am! What have you got for us, Skerow?:
The minds clamored: :Give us! Give us!: They were more than half mad.
There was a vending machine in a pillar to the left of the entrance; Skerow dropped a two-pista coin into its slot, and the machine gave her a bubble filled with colored pellets. She half turned toward the green moss and the red stone buildings outside. :I can give you eyes and fresh memories . . . I want something in return.: She turned back. “Who killed the tethumekh?”
She spoke this aloud, and the sound bounced off roof, floor, and pillars. She was absolutely certain that even now their combined minds, fused and focused, would be fifty times more powerful than her own.
There was a sullen emptiness. She broke the bubble and it collapsed into a filmy sac, plucked out a red pellet, and dropped it into her mouth. It gave off a warm and redolent spice.
:That’s good . . . : Hrufa’s thought was a curl of smoke. :You haven’t forgotten how you brought me the sesshipods, even as a child.:
“I remember it very well.” She manipulated the pellet on her tongue as if she were a seducer perfuming her mouth.
:You never loved the tethumekh.:
:I treated it as if I did. I truly loved you, when my mother died and we all felt lost because my father insisted on living so far away . . . I am sorry I never had the heart to come here when I became lost again.:
:Skerow! Skerow!: the minds swarmed around her. She did not know anyone else among them, and for a moment resented their intrusion into the private moment, but took another pellet. This was a cool blue one, tasting of menthol. :Give us more!: They encircled her, their texture hardened, like a headac
he. A draft of wind puckered the protective windstreams, and she smelled the afternoon rain. “The storm is coming.”
:What is lightning when we want life and blood? Why did you not have lovers after you left him? You have nothing to tell us!: Skerow did not know any of these who were so greedy for her life.
“What must I do or give for you to tell me who killed my tethumekh?”
:How to do that? Everyone wears the damned helmets nowadays.:
“I believe you know how.”
:You say yourself you did not love the beast.:
“The one who killed it is more than willing to kill me,” Skerow said. :I would never bring you lovers even if I could. Do you need to know of all my fearful experiences, all the torments I have seen and felt, to do me this one favor?: She noticed that even with ventilators the moss was encroaching on the stone, and realized that she was speaking aloud to distance herself from these minds. She was near tears for them now because they had lost, all of them, their self-images, and become so shameless.
They were almost abashed, but they did not answer.
:I will give five thousand pistaba for someone to come and drink the nectars, eat the foods, listen to the music for you until you are ready to sleep.:
One old man, once hearty and gracious, struggled to free his self from the formless group. :Die, you mean, not sleep. Do not undignify our scraps of life with euphemism.:
:And will that surrogate have lovers too?: Lokh, quite undignified, asked slyly; he had always been sly.
:I cannot force a person to do that.:
:That was my joke. I am not too old and crazy to make a joke.:
:You are not too helpless to make one, grandfather.:
She heard a spatter of rain at that moment, and then a lightning bolt. Thunder broke, the rain fell in sheets; she would find more relief from her frustration in letting it storm around her than in waiting among these Saints. She thought of how often the heroes in the River Epics descended into the vaults of the dead to take counsel of the spirits, and how difficult it was to make them give it. She tucked the little package of pellets into her sling-bag and stood watching the rain. It would clear in a few moments, and likely start again in a few more, until sunset.
Eskat had trembled so fearfully at every disturbance . . .
She cast the net of her thought out over the city, but her sorrow removed her so far from the purity of contemplation that she caught nothing but the knucklebone-tossing games of children playing in the rain. No other mind gave back the resonance she was searching for.
The Ancestors gathered round her and watched.
:Truly, Skerow, we cannot find—:
Were they so old and powerless? Individually they were, yes. She realized that none had real power, and not one would admit it.
“Together—” :Together you make one powerful mind, and I will not die, damn you, until I have done what I promised myself. You know you have the power, don’t you? Don’t you?:
Lightning-flash, thunderclap! children running for home, now.
See there—: She did not know who spoke.
A spark. :It’s a mind somebody knows.:
:It is the Solthree.:
:He has static in his helmet—:
:You can’t see him!:
:The helmet is defective—he—:
:—crushed the little beast. But nobody’s eye saw him.:
“Who is he?”
:Won’t tell his name to himself, will he?:
:He’s the voice in the street that says:—AND I’LL KILL YOU FOR THIS! And the voice in the hall that says:—WHERE’S THORDH, JUDGE SKEROW? and on the comm: IS HE DEAD, JUDGE? WOULD YOU LIKE TO BECOME A SENIOR MAGISTRATE, SKEROW DEAR? He kills and says: BE MUCH MORE OF A PLEASURE KILLING THE BIG ONE. He would have killed you, yes. He crushed the tethumekh only because he could not reach you.:
Skerow stood pressed on one side by the rain and on the other by the green spheres. “You did not believe me.”
:What would you have given us then?:
Skerow’s mind closed and refused to answer.
:Are you angry? You were asking us to break through another person’s defenses.:
:I ought to have given without asking for anything. I am not angry, I feel ill. Who would have thought that man, that demon, would be on this world?:
:The police have got hold of him.:
:I daren’t look—they would know me.:
:The Crazy Ancestors may look. The police are trying to shoo us away!:
No one shoos away twenty-five thousand years’ worth of Ancients. Skerow smiled. She felt herself smiling, but she did not try to join the group mind. She was grateful that the demon had fallen beyond her reach before she did him violence.
:That one’s name is Ferrier. Hears the Law say, “Ferrier, come with us!”:
The rain had stopped, and a wind was picking up the clouds.
Skerow said, :He is one of those charged with paying our people to steal gold.: She dropped one of the pellets into her mouth; it had gone suddenly dry.
:Yes,: said Hrufa, :Nohl was one of those who worked for him.:
:You know that Nohl,: said the hundred and twenty Ancients, :the one that left the Deltas to look for his fortune and married her in the Isthmuses—:
“Stop!” cried Skerow. “That cannot be the same Nohl.”
:You have been out of the River for a long time, Skerow. Your Nohl is not simply Mister Nobody,: said Uncle Lokh.
“Ancestors,” Skerow whispered, “could it be? In court the poisoned witness was called Sta Farre Samfa.”
:In back-country Vinelands dialect that is “Citizen Unknown”.:
It seemed to Skerow then that all that had happened, everything, since she had first seen Kobai in Zamos’s window, had been leading to this moment.
:Who is this one coming now?: Hrufa asked, and Skerow realized how sharply she and the Ancients had excluded strangers from the Hall; no one had ventured in, even for shelter from the rain.
Skerow recognized this one. :It is the Bailiff’s Clerk.: She stepped forward to meet the fellow as he approached; he had taken off his robe to hurry through the rain, and was twitching the drops off his skin.
“Have you come to arrest me now, Clerk?” Skerow managed to ask this harsh question mildly.
“No, no, Madame! I have come to beg you to speak to the witness. He will testify to no one but you!”
Nohl
Skerow had wanted to bring Nohl to justice, but Justice had come to him first.
She could not tell his age; he seemed ancient. He was crouching on a huge waterbed that crowded the small hospital room, wrapped in a tangle of instruments and tubing, shrunken and twisted with pain, belly swollen with poison; his left eye was invisible in a heap of inflamed flesh. Breath hissed in his gill slits, he opened and closed his mouth continually in his efforts to talk; his tongue was pale and thin.
“You expected me to die,” he said. “They all expected me to die.”
“I very much want you to live, Nohl,” Skerow said, “but you must be careful what you say now, to protect your rights.” Now that she had found him she was afraid that he might speak outside the boundaries of the case where his words would be lost in legal jungles and the case damaged so badly that no justice could be done. “I will present your testimony to the legal teams of both sides when you have given it, but you must answer their questions afterward if you are able.”
“If the poison and all these tangled procedures don’t kill me first, they may ask away,” Nohl said with a sneer.
“You must explain why you are accusing me, but you need not incriminate yourself.”
Nohl swallowed air chokingly and cried out, “I will speak! I will! What will you do to me, kill me again with stronger poison? Blind my other eye with another red-hot iron?” His only eye was swelling with blood, like Thordh he sweated bloody tears. “I am no longer accusing you, and I will explain.”
“You must take an oath.”
“Damn you,
I will swear by anything you like, only quickly, before the poison kills me!”
“Let Madame Ossta bring in the Court Recorder. You need swear only by your God.”
“No one is likely to put much faith in my honor,” Nohl said bitterly.
Let me begin at the beginning, it is not all that long a story. My marriage was not as rich as everyone believed. Earthquakes and volcanoes had shifted the terrain the estate was on, and by the time I came to share in it, it was half-sunk in swampland, and the beautiful parks and gardens were ruined from flooding. My wife had no better a name in her family than I did in mine, and no other inheritance than the land. We hadn’t the means to keep it up, and no one wanted to rent it. We were so poor that when my wife’s house collapsed there was no money to repair it, and we were forced to live under one roof. She had some sort of female disease in her parts and we could not even have children.
Yes, yes, I am getting to it! I have put it together so in my mind, all these horrible clockfalls, let me tell it as well as I can!
Nothing I ever did would work out for me, except to come near putting me in prison. There was nothing for it but to try to sell the estate, anything to get some money out of it, to keep the roof over our heads, to buy food. I went to one of my cousins in the Deltas to find a buyer, those misers would never lend me a half-pista though God demand it, and when they were done ridiculing me, they sent me to the Consortium.
Now I tell you I sold it cheap, and there were faceless men of twenty worlds who plowed it with their feet before they gave me a seal to bloody my thumb on for the money. I kept the house and a hundred siguu of land each side around it. I shored it up, and fought off my wife as best I could with her ailments and whining, and with doctors and lawyers and stonemasons there was little more than enough left to buy a pisspot.
And damn me, no, I’m double-damned already, but by the Unhatched Egg no more did I know what was going on in those swamps and shores until someone comes to me that the Consortium sent and says, Nohl, you know the land and shoreline so well, we’ll pay to have you oversee our crew taking care of a stock of aquarium animals we’re storing in the bay.
Flesh and Gold Page 13
