Dushau tdt-1

by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

  The next time, Krinata was ready to move on the burst of music. But she didn’t know what to expect after the fifth questioning session. However, it seemed perfectly natural that Storm should change places with the black clad old woman he confronted, so that now she headed their line.

  The grooms and bride now formed an inner circle. They each grasped the ribbon of the one next to them, unwinding the ribbons so that they connected the circle. Meanwhile, everyone else did likewise, each joining himself to someone on the left while taking a ribbon from someone on their right. From above it would be a multicolor cartwheel.

  On the next burst of music they all circled left, Krinata trying to fake the quick dance step which Rrrelloleh managed well enough. They hadn’t made a full circuit before she was wondering how soon it would be polite to drop out.

  She was about to ask Rrrelloleh when the music cut off with a squawk, doors flew open all around the courtyard, and Ducal troopers, many with Rashions on leashes, swarmed out to surround the celebrants, weapons lowered. The armored uniforms also appeared on the roof, and behind the people watching from windows.

  ELEVEN

  Riot at a Lehiroh Wedding

  An amplifier boomed. “Nobody move.”

  The silence was so deep Krinata could hear the pool’s pump, and a huge bird winging by overhead.

  When the commander was certain he had everyone’s attention, he announced, “You are harboring four conscriptees who were ordered to report to the Duke’s forces two days ago. Not only are these four to be taken from your midst, but I am thus authorized to collect every able-bodied male here. And as many females as I see fit.”

  The voice and accent was human, not Lehiroh—possibly from nearby Ramussin, which was also of the Nineteen Stars.

  A rustle of dismayed protests rippled through the crowd. The amplifier boomed, “Since you’ve violated Ducal law, no consideration will be made for Ensyvian custom.”

  Krinata heard a low, shivering note from Rrrelloleh. Now they understood what Storm hadn’t wanted to discuss out on the street. She wasn’t at all surprised when the grooms responded to the four names called out by the commander.

  Armed men flanked by men leading Rashions approached the edge of the wheel formed by the celebrants. In a moment of tense defiance, the outermost people in the wheel, whose ribbons were much longer, raised them into a chest high, satin barrier before beamer proof armor.

  The troopers paused, looking neither left nor right, as if they were at parade attention. The amplifier barked, “Forward!” The troopers all took a step in unison, breasting the wall of satin ribbons. For a moment, Krinata thought there was going to be a riot—or massacre.

  But the celebrants dropped their ribbons. The soldiers worked up the wedge-shaped spaces between lines toward the center where the four reluctant conscriptees waited.

  The detachment targetted on Storm halted. “This is an unforgivable outrage,” stated Storm, his voice carrying emphasis because of its colorless lack of passion.

  “You mean,” said the human squadron leader, “you didn’t expect the Duke to enforce his decrees in the most memorable way? Think! After this, no one will resist for any reason.”

  “After this,” said Storm, and Krinata felt genuine regret in his words, “no one will obey, for any reason.”

  The trooper made an uncivilized sound and grabbed the Lehiroh’s shoulder, propelling him back along the wedge-shaped avenue, between lines of his men, all human.

  As the last of the troopers turned to go, he noticed Rrrelloleh. “I thought Ensyvians were too incestuous to let outsiders into their ceremonies. Or are you a convert?”

  She felt Rrrelloleh stiffen, but he remained patiently silent, eyes fixed on the high distance. Emulating, Jindigar literally was not there. This being was Lehrtrili, and Krinata knew it so deeply that even the Rashions surrounding her could not have found a hint to the contrary in her mind.

  The officer who’d taken Storm dumped him on two of his men and returned to inspect Rrrelloleh.

  “Answer, Lehrtrili! You’re wearing a voder!” He poked at the box on Rrrelloleh’s chest.

  Krinata said, “He’s elderly and unwell. His name is Rrrelloleh, and I am his nurse. I will answer for him.”

  The officer kept his weapon on Rrrelloleh, but eyed Krinata, taking in every detail of her costume.

  Around them soldiers were culling men from the lines of celebrants, pushing and kicking them into a bunch near the door Krinata had marched out of. Protests were rising from the crowd. Some of the Lehiroh men, she noted for the first time, had enlarged breasts. Those men were being defended by others who insisted on replacing the lactating ones.

  The women were massing, protecting the pregnant ones. She knew they were perfectly capable of tackling the armed humans, might kill a few before the beamers cut them down.

  The officer inspecting her pulled her roughly away from the

  Lehrtrili, noting she was human, not Lehiroh. Suddenly, she didn’t like the wolfish grin she could see below his eye shields. “You’re a brave one, Sister. I like that.” He held his weapon to her temple, and ordered, “Farmer, sic your beast on this one. Gravitz, take the Lehrtrili.”’ He focused on Rrrelloleh. “Now, what are you two doing here? Should I ran you in for sedition—or espionage?”

  Krinata’s heart leaped to her throat. The Rashion crouching at her feet growled thoughtfully.

  Rrrelloleh presented his leptolizer, butt first, to the officer.

  “My entry visa, sir, in perfect order. Walking through the park, we saw an Ensyvian groom pacing nervously in front of this house. Curious, I invited myself to his wedding, promising to abide by his customs thereafter.”

  The officer seated the butt of the leptolizer in a socket on his armored hip. It gave out a bleep and projected the port-of-entry seal. “This can easily be checked. If it’s legal, then the charge will be espionage.”

  He tightened his grip on Krinata. “Now, you.”

  “She doesn’t carry a leptolizer, only an identdisc.”

  “Let’s have it.”

  Fingers shaking, Krinata fished the disc out of her belt pouch. He snatched it, turning it over and over. “Looks real.

  Could be forged, though.” He watched the Rashion as he snapped, “State your name and your business here!”

  “Marietta of the Sisters of Jacob, nurse to Rrrelloleh.”

  As she spoke, the Rashion’s uneasy murmuring grew to a roar, and he went for her throat, teeth bared.

  Several things happened simultaneously. The officer snarled,

  “She’s lying!” A child screamed, falling from a window and landing with a sickening thud. Someone pushed two of the armored men into the pool where they sank like stones, while their buddies tried to fish them out. And Rrrelloleh clamped both hands around the Rashion’s wrists, flipping him to the end of his leash and pulling his trainer off balance.

  In three graceful moves, Rrrelloleh had the Rashion that had been watching him knocked unconscious, the officer and his two men tumbling in different directions. Grabbing Krinata’s wrist, he ran toward the knot of conscriptees.

  A beam cut a black swath across their path. Dragging Krinata, Rrrelloleh ripped off his mask, and leaped over the beam. They were heading for the most guarded door, the multicolored glass one leading into the large room. It was suicide. Yet she kept running.

  The conscriptees were fighting their guards now, rolling and tumbling, some with amateurishness, and some with keen professionalism. Already two guards lay bleeding a dark bluish blood she knew was really red, human blood. The armor might be total protection from beam weapons, but it was a handicap hand-to-hand. A detached part of her mind wondered why armored men had been sent against the obviously unarmed. What did that imply about the Duke and his men? Cowardice akin to Rantan Zinzik’s?

  Jindigar waded through a heap of bodies to the four grooms, and snapped, “Let’s get out of here! With us gone, they won’t have any reason to persecute the family!�
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  One of the grooms, the one wearing dirt-smeared yellow, raked the Dushau-faced Lehrtrili with a glance, froze in the act of disemboweling a guard with the guard’s own weapon, and exclaimed, “Jindigar! Dear God, he’s alive. He’s alive!”

  Storm tossed an armored guard over his head and grunted, “We can’t leave without Bell!”

  Another kneading his shoulder where a beamer had singed his blue sleeve, leaving a rent that exposed sculpted muscles, said, “Bell’s…” he sidestepped as one armored man charged him, “around here somewhere.”

  The yellow-clad groom flipped the charging trooper onto the stack of dazed men with an absentminded air as he followed blue’s gesture, looking for his bride.

  The blue groom heaved a trooper off another Lehiroh, admonishing, “You can’t do that to my cousin!” Over his shoulder to Storm, he said, “Guard Jindigar, I’ll find her.”

  The yellow groom exclaimed, pointing up at the roof. “They’ve got her!” An automatic spraybeamer was set on its tripod, aimed at the riot below. The red-clad bride was held between two burly men, standing on the edge of the roof.

  The amplifier let out a blast of music followed by the commander’s voice. “Surrender at once or the bride dies!”

  Paralysis swept the courtyard. The only sound was the rattling of armor as the troopers picked themselves up. Many, too horrifyingly many, celebrants did not stir. Others gazed fixedly at the red wisp on the roof above them.

  The yellow groom had lifted Krinata by the shoulders, out of the way of a falling trooper. Now, he gazed into her eyes, and said, quizzically, “You’re human!”

  Storm grunted, “Friend of Jindigar’s,” but his eyes were on the red-clad woman above them.

  Yellow answered abstractedly, eyes on Bell, “Oh. That’s all right, then.” He set Krinata on her own feet.

  At the next amplified command, the troopers locked shackles and tanglefoot fields onto the living celebrants.

  Six men secured Jindigar, and were about to take him away when the commander ordered, “The Sister, too.”

  Krinata didn’t know whether to be relieved or terrified.

  Two huge vertical landers, with Ducal seals newly painted on their scarred old sides, swept down into the court. The entire family was packed into those riot-squad wagons. The only resistance was a bit of sullen foot-dragging. The grass was littered with too many corpses dressed in festive white, smeared darkly with blood. And now gas burpers had been brought up. Hostility would be met with an excruciatingly painful gassing that wasn’t always entirely harmless.

  A wall of guards and Rashions separated Krinata, Jindigar, and the bride and grooms from the others. The riot wagon was so crowded, people were unable to sit. The air rapidly filled with the stench of beamer burns, human and Lehiroh sweat, and in one case, vomit.

  Storm turned to the wall, curled in on himself, agonizing over the result of defying the conscription order. “I never thought they’d do such & thing. Never!”

  The blue groom gripped his shoulder and whispered, “Neither did we. We all discussed it. Everyone agreed.”

  “Shut up, you!” The bruised and grass-stained squad leader who had ogled Krinata now held a beamer on Jindigar.

  Blue turned from Storm. Without so much as a narrowing of the eyes as warning, blue yelled, “Was it worth it?”

  The fierce cheer was deafening in the confined space. Suddenly, the floor tilted, then tilted the other way, rocking them from side to side. The amplifier said, “Keep it down in there or you’ll get seasick!”

  But the atmosphere had changed. The guards sensed it, and Krinata saw fear in their eyes. If the entire Ensyvian population felt like this, did the Duke have a chance? Apparently, they could conscript Ensyvians, tax them into poverty, and take away all freedoms with impunity. But infringe on their religion, and whole families—even the least religious—would proudly fight to the death.

  When they’d landed, they were offloaded through a chute reeking of animal dung into a huge bam jammed with lines of people being processed like prisoners. Storm whispered to Jindigar, “I wish now I hadn’t invited you.”

  People shrank from Jindigar muttering that even to speak to a Dushau was death. But Storm and the whole family showed no signs of shunning him.

  They were stripsearched. Krinata was amazed to see groups of all the other Razum species also being herded through. This was either a conscription center or a massive jailing operation. Were they impressing all criminals?

  In line behind her, Jindigar muttered, “They’re going to have a time stripping me.” He began to pluck indigo and yellow feathers from his arms.

  In the line ahead of Krinata, there was a scuffle as a trooper ripped the garment from a Lehiroh woman. The male Lehiroh in line behind her protested she was pregnant. The guard answered, “That can be taken care of handily.”

  This is not real. Please, don’t let it be real. Krinata had been raised an aristocrat on one of the oldest colony worlds of humankind, amid traditions of uncompromised honor. No noble could lend a good name to such proceedings.

  The feeling she’d had in the park came back. There were huge gaping cracks in the secure walls of the Allegiancy. The Empire just wasn’t what she’d always imagined it to be. Was it ever? A nostalgic pain filled her eyes with tears.

  Hearing her sniffle, Jindigar, behind her, risked muttering, “This is war, Krinata. A despot’s war for power. It couldn’t have happened two centuries ago. That Allegiancy was worthy of your loyalty… and mine.”

  With that consolation echoing in her mind, Krinata had to grasp all her courage and Zavaronne pride to disrobe before a man whose groin pulsed at her every move. He took his time stamping an ID on her belly, noticing her humanity with relish. Then he stamped the indelible number on her forehead, lingering as if he was going to kiss her. His breath was hot, but not foul. Yet she was revolted, her whole body quivering with disgust.

  Jindigar, neither looking at her nor averting his gaze, stumbled deliberately. The handful of feathers he’d gathered flew into the guard’s face, and he sneezed. Jindigar apologized profusely, meanwhile tangling his avian feet amid the human’s boots. They both went down in a heap, Jindigar crying out a contrite apology for each new offense.

  Krinata stared for a moment, then used the time to pull her robe about her. Jindigar helped the human to his feet, brushing stray feathers from the man’s now dusty uniform, contriving to thrust more of them under the man’s nose.

  “As you can see,” grunted Jindigar, “I’ve been trying to remove this costume, but it takes butyloline and alcohol to strip the adhesive.”

  The man swallowed his anger, looking Jindigar up and down. He snatched the walking stick away from the Dushau with a lurid epithet, and spat, “I know you people don’t carry weapons, but this is forbidden. Next!”

  At the exit line, they were issued a thin turquoise shirt and trousers outfit, cut the same for everyone and fitting no one. They wouldn’t let her keep her robe even when she complained of the cold. Jindigar again claimed he needed solvent to “change clothes,” but was issued an outfit with pants too short for him, and shirt too narrow. He handed them to Krinata, saying, “Two layers might help.”

  She gratefully donned the second layer, and whispered her thanks for helping her. He answered, “My situation could hardly be worse, so it was no risk.”

  Many of the pregnant Lehiroh could not wear the trousers at all and settled for the oversize shirts that almost covered them. Then they were herded out into the afternoon sun, separated into a number of groups, loaded into surface vans, and carted a short distance to another building Krinata never saw from the outside.

  They lost touch with the rest of the family, but the bride and four grooms were shoved into an underground cell with Krinata and Jindigar.

  Hours later, guards came and took Jindigar away. He forbade Krinata to fight for him, and Storm held her as she lunged reflexively at the guards. When he was gone, she cried. Bell came to sit with
her, offering only a warm shoulder in comfort, for it was all she had.

  But Jindigar returned, cleaned and dressed in turquoise shirt and pants that almost fit, and a grave expression.

  When the guard left, he said, “Truth has been taken. There was nothing Arlai could do, and no one aboard had his central keys, so he’s behaving under Allegiancy strictures. But everyone is being ferried down here.”

  In horror, she imagined the session he’d gone through that had yielded those few terse sentences. Yet he showed no outward sign of the strain. That worried her.

  Hours passed in which guards tromped up and down outside their cell. It was one of five force-field enclosed cells at the end of a corridor. Strangers, Holot, were crammed into the cell next to theirs, and a group of humans into the end cell. Yet the two opposite were left empty.

  Then, when Krinata was sure it was late night despite the relentless bright light, Truth’s passengers arrived, bewildered, some still “walking wounded.” Grisnilter was supported between two Dushau, his right leg dragging. The humans, Cassrians, Dushau and Holot were herded into the two opposite cells. They could see each other, but not hear.

  Jindigar, though, had the answer. He questioned the other Dushau via sign language, explaining that it was a code often used in noisy environments.

  Arlai, it seemed, was all right for the time being, his parting remark to them having been a pledge to keep Imp out of trouble until they returned. The authorities had assumed he was still under full Allegiancy restriction, but soon some Sentient would notice Arlai had not taken the new Allegiancy delimiting programming. Meanwhile, Arlai was determined to play it straight until he could rescue them.

  Jindigar swore. “I wish I had a way to tell him to sit tight. There’s no reason he has to go down with us. Why didn’t he take off as planned? At least they’d be safe!”

  “Ask,” prompted Krinata.