“They’ll think we’re screwing.” Her eyes were like midnight, and her green mouth, full like Jacaranda’s in a narrow face, was close to his. It smelled of fresh mint, as if her lips were leaves and her sharp green tongue a growing point. “Don’t they do that here?”
A snake’s head, that tongue. It touched the hairs at the corner of his lip. He shuddered and pulled roughly out of her grasp. “Stop that!”
She did not back away. “Do I offend you, Lebedev?”
He shook his head as if he had been freed of a spell and straightened his shirt. “I am not a Pinxid man.”
She grinned. “There are no Pinxid men. Now, what about her, Lebedev?”
“You were her handler. Didn’t you know everything she did? Didn’t you warn her?”
“I didn’t send her here to die. I hope you get to see that, Lebedev, how she died. Maybe they’ll show you, before they kill you.”
Lebedev did not believe an ear had been planted in his room, but he was not sure and he dared not shut her up. “You should have called the police and shown them the vid-snap.”
“Police! I’ve seen enough of the police. And I couldn’t have let them set their filthy eyes on it if I’d wanted to because it wouldn’t record.”
The words struck him a blow. He whispered, “The murderers have sent you a message and you’ve led them straight to me!”
“Have I?”
“You did it deliberately. You came here, showed yourself, bribed the housekeeper, and drew a line from Jacaranda to me.”
“You should have let me play that four, Lebedev.” She shrugged. “I didn’t come here to betray you. I came to find out who really killed Jacaranda, what the Lyhhrt has to do with it, why Lyhhrt know all about this. Anybody wants to know what’s between you and me tell them I want to hire you for a bodyguard, because I love your hairy body, Lebedev.” She sniggered. “Nobody will bother me, I have six of my good pugs outside playing ogga-dippa on the machines. It’s a game that’s even stupider than skambi.”
Lebedev said, “I know nothing.”
“You’ll find out, because I’ll be back to learn. And if you can’t tell me then I will betray you.” She turned back with her hand on the door latch. “I truly loved her, Lebedev.”
“Yes.” Lebedev nodded and looked for the love in her face. “You truly loved Ned Gattes for a while, but you were not overly scrupulous about sending him to Zamos’s Spartakoi.”
She said in her cold voice as she pushed the door aside, “Ned’s a good lad. A little clumsy but lands on his feet.” She paused. Stuttering a bit she said, “Trying to save some animal—some damned animal—that’s how she died, Lebedev!” and was gone.
“Wait!” But by the time he hauled the door open she had disappeared into branching corridors, or perhaps the nearest shadow.
He was long getting to sleep and dreamed that his wife Roza was sitting in front of a mirror putting blue Pinxid coloring on her face, green on her lips, and leering up at his reflection. He woke startled with a spilling erection and tears in his eyes.
After that the sleep he sank into was a depth of sadness.
Next day he woke gritty-eyed; while he was brushing his teeth the key-jingling Housekeeper hammered a fist on his door.
“Your doctor’s appointment, stad oh-ten! Visitors forbidden in rooms, next time you get fined!”
He snarled, “Didn’t she pay you enough?” He had forgotten the appointment. The Lyhhrt had saved his life, but he did not like Lyhhrt better on that account; he recalled what Manador had said about Jacaranda being examined by a doctor, but thinking about it made him none the wiser.
In the basement between the dormitories and the main building, coldstrips in the ceilings lit the hallways with diffuse white light, and down the length of the uncolored, discolored composition walls and floor there were no pictures or carpets; Lebedev did not miss them. He felt at every step that there would be someone coming up behind him to hook a claw into his collar or lay a heavy Varvani arm across his shoulder.
As he pushed into Employees’ Bath, the door hit an obstruction and he heard a cry. He peered around it and found Ai’ia cowering between the door and the shower-stall curtain. She was wearing a wire mesh helm and a coarse robe with no more color than the walls; her face was darkly bruised on one side, her eye swollen. When she recognized him she clapped both hands over her mouth and squeezed herself farther into the corner; she had dropped an armful of towels and a net bag of crude soap-balls and did not try to pick them up.
Lebedev realized that he could not possibly have hurt her so badly by opening the door. He held his hands up and out, and whispered, “What is it, Miss? Who has hurt you?” He stayed in the shadow behind the open door so that neither of the spy-eyes directed at the ranks of showers could spot him.
“Oh—” Ai’ia stammered, “Oh mister, please let me go!” Her normal skin seemed near bruise-colored and vulnerable.
He bent to pick up the towels and soap. “Ai’ia—”
“Don’t talk to me, Mister!” Her whisper was painfully urgent. “They have been beating me up for talking with you, they will make me fight in dirt and fuck with beasts if they catch me again!”
Lebedev felt the particular helplessness of one who has had authority and lost it. He gave her the towels and soap and stepped aside.
After his bath he stopped at one of the stand-up tables in the cafeteria and gulped a cup of chicory that had probably been delivered from the Zarandu along with the coffee shipments for clients. He wondered what the O’e were given to eat.
The labyrinth of narrow service alleys that ran alongside the deeply carpeted and gold-lit halls, and which Lebedev as an employee was expected to learn, led into obscure branches that were often poorly marked; some of them were lit by dusty and flickering electric lights.
Lebedev stumbled here, seized by one of the intermittent fits of dizziness caused by his unbalanced inner ear, and intensified by the oppressiveness of the air. In the trembling light of one of these corridors a door was pulled open abruptly in the moment that he was about to pass it. He glimpsed something metallic grasping its edge and then heard the thump as the door rebounded in its socket and was pulled back again. The vibrations it caused sparked the light into a moment of brightness that lit up the figure in the doorway for one moment and subsided.
Lebedev saw a tall being that sparkled inversely with darkness and gave off black spatters with painful bursts of intensely white and spectrum lights deep within them. It crackled with static, it was as if lightning were black, and the universe split.
Yet this creature was physical, and wore a lattice of platinum joined with jewels that repeated its own deep sparkings; through openings it extended or, even, broadcast its six limbs like jolts of electricity. Lebedev could not tell its features because every spark of it seemed an eye.
His mind went quite blank and for an instant he stood locked with the apparition in an alphonse-gaston stance. The ceiling light went dim again, but he could see that the brilliant shadow with its spears of light was reaching out its central arms as if to caliper his head.
The hairs of Lebedev’s head and beard rose and crackled with static; he thought of the tip of Manador’s green tongue, but could not pull himself away. Whether or not this alien being was satisfied with what it found in Lebedev, it withdrew its points of darkness and shrank back behind the doorway.
Lebedev smelled a sharp tang of ozone, and was briefly dizzy again. Another figure came forward from the dark room; he saw that it was the Lyhhrt doctor, now filling the doorway, who had pulled the door back for the chimera.
The Lyhhrt was wearing what Lebedev recognized as his workaday shell, an unadorned casing with features only suggested; he looked at Lebedev and said, “Please go to my office. I will see you in one moment.”
Lebedev went past the doorway without looking back and found his way to the office. He felt as if part of his mind had been burnt out.
It seemed a very long moment that he
spent trying to pull his consciousness together. He sat down in the fitted chair and stared at the cabinets. They were as solid as cheap foam-plast could be, and their lines did not waver.
When the Lyhhrt came in Lebedev said, “That person is of a species I have never seen. Is it a member of Galactic Federation?”
“No.”
Lebedev thought he might push a little bit. “It does not seem quite . . . physical.”
“You think so?” The Lyhhrt fitted an instrument to one of its fingers and a light to another, and began to probe the recesses of Lebedev’s ear. “Nevertheless it is an egg-layer.” When he saw the way Lebedev pulled away and turned his head to look at him, the Lyhhrt repeated, “An egg-layer. Truly.”
Lebedev felt as if he had been given gifts by the Greeks. Information from the Lyhhrt, who rarely gave any, and of the wrong sort. He wondered if the Lyhhrt was not out of kilter in some way, and hoped the way did not involve what was being done to his ear.
“Your ear is healing well,” the Lyhhrt said.
Lebedev said, “I get dizzy.” He saw in his mind the Lyhhrt’s attitude, standing in the doorway behind the chimera, head bent forward, with something intimate—no, deferential—in it. Attitude? Idiot! A machine with a lump of slime in it!
“That will pass.” The Lyhhrt reached out both hands to him and Lebedev went rigid with a jerk, because the unbelievable egg-layer had made a similar gesture. “I want to look at your other ear, Lebedev, that is all. Please do not be so skittish.” What would that nightmare have been measuring me for? What would those two have to talk about? He knew it was a common belief, sometimes substantiated, that Lyhhrt too long isolated from their fellows in those metal carapaces went off balance. The silver finger poked at his mastoid bone. “Your oxygen capsule socket is very poorly installed.”
“In the police force they don’t give you fancy.”
The Lyhhrt pinched his earlobe, and he jumped.
“I want a blood sample,” the Lyhhrt said.
There was something odd and unmodulated in the Lyhhrt’s voice, and two words that came together in Lebedev’s mind: blood/egg-layer. Once again he pulled away and turned to face the silver man-shape with its beautiful articulating features. “Why? Why do you need blood when my ear is nearly better?”
What insects need blood to make eggs fertile?? Woman of the sea, blood red like a fetus, herself a kind of fetus, pregnant with a . . . too damned many pregnancies. Either one or both of us is crazy.
“I,” said the Lyhhrt. “We.” The lights went out and Lebedev knew that the Lyhhrt was crazy. Before panic could sweep him he felt the pressure of the Lyhhrt mind penetrating his impervious net, saying: :Neither one of us is crazy. I am angry.: The lights came on again, and the Lyhhrt regained control of his voice and said, “We are operating now on my personal emergency electrical system. No one else can reach us until I restore the main one. I am not angry at you.”
Lebedev wondered if the door was locked.
“The door is not locked. If you are so exceedingly fearful of me you may leave.”
“I’m going. Thank you for your care.” Lebedev stood up, took thought for an instant and added, “Thank you for saving my life.”
The Lyhhrt did not move. “If you should wish to repay me in any way for saving your life, you might choose to stay and hear me out for a moment.”
Lebedev wavered on one leg and sat down again.
“Thank you. You do not trust me, but you must know that I warned the woman, Jacaranda Drummond. I knew what she came here for, but not what was to happen to her, I never betrayed her. The ones who recognized her and arranged her murder are no longer here.” Dead, the tone of voice said. “Her life was not thrown away but used very well to save someone else’s—for a while, at least. Now you may go. I am running out of time.”
“Tell me about that someone else.”
“Is it safe to trust you, Lebedev?”
“You must judge that.”
“I must trust someone and I have no one else.”
Lebedev waited.
“If I do this now I have never taken such risks in all that I/we remember of time. You must promise to give me your life.”
“I’m damned if I’ll die for you, fellow,” Lebedev said.
“I did not mean for me. Someone else—two of them. I meant that you must risk your life for them.”
“If you mean the swimmer—I don’t understand you. Aren’t you working for Zamos?”
“For and against. Hurry, I have only a few moments before the techs discover I have turned off their power. Will you risk your life for the swimmer?”
“I have been risking it since the moment I stepped through Zamos’s doorway.”
“Is that a yes? I suppose so.” He paused, and his imaging eyes rested on Lebedev for a long moment.
“Look here, then.” The emergency lights turned down but did not go out, and the section of wall above the work table slid aside to display a vid screen showing the interior of the tank.
For the first and only time, Lebedev saw Kobai. She was floating listlessly in the center of the tank, making only enough motion with hands and tail to keep from sinking to the bottom. She could not see either of the watchers, but turned to face the camera as the Lyhhrt engaged her mind.
“Is that what Zamos has been calling an animal?” Lebedev heard the thud as Kobai thumped a fist against the screen with such eye-sparking fury that she pushed herself backward half way to the other wall.
“She doesn’t think she is.”
“What is she then, Lyhhrt?”
“Pregnant. The summit of Zamos’s creation and the first of her kind: a fertile clone.” It seemed to Lebedev that the Lyhhrt said this with as much pride as if he had created her himself. “Mother of slave nations, perhaps, Lebedev. In herself as an individual quite useless: the need for aquatic workers is very small. But what can be learned when she and the baby are . . . examined, you might say, can be applied to others. Strong body, matures in three-fifths of the time your species does, life expectancy—not much perhaps for this one, but will likely be a good for whatever new type may be developed. Gestation period five thirtydays—she is beginning to show a little.”
“She does not seem to have slave mentality.”
“That can be built in. Yes. Zamos has all he needs, but we do not have much time, no more than a thirtyday.”
“For what?”
“To take her and us out of here.”
Lebedev swallowed and stared. He whispered, “How can you be working for and against Zamos? What has all this to do with the egg-layer and the blood sample?”
“I will tell you everything eventually, but now I must reconnect the power, it is the point of noon, and your games table is about to open. I will protect you, Lebedev, but if you are to help me you must remain here and deal skambi, Lebedev. You must deal skambi.”
:You Iron Man Out-there, what do you do to feed this Baby that’s swimming in my sea? Do you give it more rotten dead-oyster and dried-up sea-smik that you pay for and bring here? That little tiny One? I hope it got to be tiny to come out of me. Tell me, Iron Man, do I get to die so it can feed off me? Is that what you are keeping me for, to make a meal for that One? Is that why you call me an animal?:
:By the Great Ideator, is that what you truly believe, Kobai?:
:I got nobody here to tell me different.:
:You have me! I would never call you an animal I was making it clear to someone else that you are not. If we needed more food we would bring it in, but it’s not necessary yet. You make food in your body to give the baby when it’s small.:
:I do?:
:It is called milk, and comes out of your teats, through the nipples, those pointed things on them.:
:Is that what they’re for? I thought they were just something for men to hold on to.:
:Whatever men may think to do, giving food is what your teats are made for. You can see that your breasts are beginning to swell and your nipples too, and
soon they will run a little.:
:That will hurt a lot when that New One bites my teats with his teeth!:
:It may hurt from being sucked but not from biting. The baby is born without teeth. They grow inside his mouth the way he is growing in you.:
:You say that is a him I have growing in here.:
:Yes, it is.:
:And who does he get to make the in-out with? Is that supposed to be me? There is no one else like me here.:
:No, that is unhealthy both for you and your future children. I can’t be sure what will happen.:
:I don’t think it looks too healthy for me and him right now, Iron Man.:
:Kobai, I am your friend and you are alive today.:
SEVEN
Shen IV: Ned Zella and the O’e
Ned Gattes pushed the foam plugs into his nostrils and let the tech press his face into the mold; the plastrine was soft and warm, like a smothering pillow. Ned liked a little fear, there was a spice to it, a bright flavor: the first pop of blood in the arena, a moving shadow in an alleyway when he knew just where the knife was coming from, going to bed with Manador. Not the kind lodged under his breastbone among the Spartakoi, in the Palace of Knossos on Shen IV. He did not know who was holding the knife here, what cloak the smiler was hiding it under.
The pillow pulled away, the flick of a tentacle dismissed him and while he threw the plugs down the disposal the next gladiator took the step that tugged at the line drawing forty others into the Mask Room.
Through the polarized window the afternoon sky of Shen’s fourth world still hit three walls of masks with a blue-white glare. Outside it Knossos lay half sunk in rock on the edge of the sea along five kilometers of stone jetties; the sea heaved and tossed beside them, thick with salt, and all of the buildings’ towers and crenellations hid water stills and rain basins; beneath the endless maze of malls in the depths of the Palace there were a thousand artesian wells. There was nothing but lichenous vegetation in the rocks and beyond them a desert covered with vast stretches of tough ground-trees that grew ankle-thick and tangling, and could not be crossed except with huge treaded vehicles. The Palace was a haven of deeply guarded privacy. Too guarded for Ned Gattes.
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