by S. L. Viehl
“Contact Drefan and tell him to send help.” Reever unfastened my harness, easing me down to the crumpled interior of the roof, and clipped a tether to my belt before releasing his harness clip. “We will need transport for the wounded.”
“We’re well enough to walk to Beta Dome from here,” Mercy argued.
“That charge caused damage to the Renko’s weapons array and engines,” he informed her. “But the hull is intact.”
“There will probably be some casualties,” I added, “and the survivors will need to be evacuated. “
“I should let them freeze their asses off,” Mercy grumbled as she sent the signal.
After we worked our way out of the wreck of the STV, I enabled my suit weights and rechecked my seals before doing the same for Reever. “How many crew members does Davidov have on board?”
“His usual complement is seventy. He may have hired more to help maintain the blockade.” Reever had one of Mercy’s pulse rifles under his arm. “Stay behind me.”
The four of us approached the dust cloud slowly settling around the Renko. Through the haze I saw that the exterior systems and emitters weren’t functioning, but the view panels displayed both light and movement inside the ship.
“There is an emergency access air lock below the navigational array on the starboard fuselage,” Reever said. “We’ll board the ship there.”
“What if they decide to shoot us as soon as we’re inside?” Mercy wanted to know.
Reever shrugged. “Then they will blow out the air lock and the ship’s atmosphere, and we will not have to evacuate anyone.”
It took a few minutes for my husband to access the air lock from the exterior control panel, which had been damaged in the crash. He also insisted on going in first, by himself.
“They will probably be armed,” I warned him. “Don’t get yourself shot.”
Mercy fussed over Cat’s now-bleeding facial contusion while I watched Gamers. Several STVs emerged from the dome and began moving toward us. A small army of drednocs followed them.
“Once Reever gives us approval to board, I will triage any wounded and prep them for transport,” I told Mercy and Cat. “If the survivors are not already wearing envirosuits, keep them busy putting on their gear. Don’t provoke any confrontations.”
Mercy gave me an innocent look. “You mean, don’t kick Davidov’s ass into the nearest mine shaft?”
“Especially don’t do that.”
Reever opened the outer panel and waved us inside. Once the air lock had equalized its atmosphere with the Renko’s interior, we removed our helmets and stepped through into a loading dock.
Wounded crew members littered the deck and lined the hull walls. Most appeared ambulatory, but I spotted three unconscious men covered with bloodstained thermal blankets.
A large hand with nine digits landed on my arm, and I looked up into a dark green face with blue eye clusters.
“Can you help my son?” The being pointed to a smaller version of himself under one of the thermal blankets. “He was caught under a cargo pallet.”
A female limped over to us. “Are you a healer? I think my knee is broken.”
Reever carried another man out of the next cabin and placed him beside the other seriously wounded crew. It was Davidov, who opened his eyes and said something to my husband, and then went limp.
I stripped off my gloves, pulled a scanner from my case, and went to work.
Seventeen
We were able to evacuate the entire crew of the Renko by the early-evening hours. Drefan initialized the simward program at Gamers for the wounded, and sent Keel and several other staffers to serve as my nurses.
Mercy took some of the unharmed survivors back to her dome, but the rest stayed at Omega Dome. To keep the colonists busy and away from the crew of the Renko, Reever took charge of the ship’s cargo and worked with the colonial security to transport and divide among the domes the supplies recovered from the crash.
Drefan supervised the search for Lily, who had disappeared during the crash.
None of the Renko’s crew assumed that they were guests of the Trellusans. They were treated with courtesy, but they were also immediately disarmed and put under drone guard. Fortunately none of them chose to challenge the colonists.
Broken bones, internal hemorrhaging, and head wounds comprised most of the serious injuries among the survivors. I arranged with Drefan to use one of his largest air locks as a surgical suite, and with Cat again assisting, I performed surgery on two of the crew to repair their damaged organs.
“Is there anything you can’t fix?” the Omorr asked as he watched me close the chest incision I had made on the second patient.
I glanced over the edge of my mask at him. “You are assuming that these patients will survive. Medicine, like doctors, is not perfect. After surgery, there is always the possibility of infection or another complication. “
“You mean, go through all this, and then still lose them?” He shook his head. “I couldn’t do that.”
“Life is precious,” I said. “That I perform surgery to preserve it is no different than Drefan sending recovery teams out to the Renko, Mercy giving shelter to the survivors, or you ignoring your own injuries to serve as my surgical assistant. We all do our part, Cat.”
We transported our patient to the simward, where Keel helped us put him on monitor. Most of the ambulatory patients had been treated, and I saw to Cat before making rounds of the rest. I had nearly finished when Mercy signaled me on my wristcom.
“Cherijo, I need to talk to you. Alone.”
I stepped out into the corridor, which was deserted. “I am alone now. What is it?”
“I have a situation over here.”
I smothered a yawn. “If you have more wounded, send them to Gamers. It’s best we keep them all in one area. If it’s another encrypted signal, I can guarantee that there is no one left on the Renko to receive it.”
“You don’t understand,” she said, and her voice dropped to a whisper. “I found Lily.”
“Don’t approach her,” I said quickly. “Contact colonial security and tell them where she is.”
“I can’t.”
Her loyalties were going to get her killed. “Mercy, I know you care for her because she worked for you, but she’s too dangerous—”
“Cherijo, I found only her skin.”
I muted the signal and looked around before responding. “Where?”
“Not far from the drop point,” Mercy said. “Near the entrance to the old mine. And that’s not all. One of the guys I brought over here from the Renko told me that a crew member is missing.”
“Who?”
“He doesn’t know. They had time to do only a quick head count when they were abandoning ship.”
If the colonists found out that the skin killer had become active again, they might panic. With the survivors from the Renko on colony, and the possibility that the killer had taken one of them already, things could get very ugly, very fast. “Have you told anyone else about this?”
“No, and I won’t,” she said. “I’m going to move Lily’s remains over to Alpha Dome for now. An old friend of mine lives there, and he’ll watch over them for us. He did ask for one thing in return.”
“What?”
“He wants to meet you and Reever.”
“Most of the colonists avoid Alpha Dome,” Mercy said as she led us through a narrow access way. “Swap can’t get around too easily, so he’s pretty lonely. I think that’s why he wants to meet you.”
I looked ahead at the small dome, which had few lights and seemed neglected. “Is Swap elderly or disabled?”
“Not exactly.” Mercy stopped at the entrance to Alpha Dome and put down the bag she was carrying to hand us two small nose filters. “This doesn’t entirely cancel it out, but it makes it bearable. The only way to completely avoid it is to wear a breather, but I think that’s rude.” She turned and keyed in an access code.
“Avoid what?” I
said, and then choked as a thick, revolting stench rolled out of the opening panels. “Oh, no.”
Mercy shoved the filter prongs up my nostrils before fitting her own to her face. The filter did screen out most of the stink. She looked at Reever, who had yet to put on his. “It doesn’t get better inside,” she said, the filter giving her voice a peculiar resonance as she shouldered her bag again.
My husband reluctantly placed the filter on his nose and followed us inside.
Given the other colonists’ obsession with biodecon procedures, I found it odd that we did not have to pass through any air locks or scans. The entry opened up to a curved passage that appeared to be made of polished brown and gray rock from the surface that had been carved in symmetrical ridges.
A closer glance revealed the rippled walls to be constructed entirely from pebbles about the size of my smallest fingernail. All had been cut in different shapes and fitted together so precisely that there were no visible gaps.
“Swap built all this when he was in his rock-hound stage,” Mercy said as we followed the gentle turns of the passage. “He was crazy for stone for like three years. This is where the offworld stuff starts.”
The walls began to change color and texture, becoming conglomerations of blue, green, and black stones. Here and there I spotted subtle patterns that formed geometric shapes. The farther we walked, the more complex the patterns became, until it made my head spin simply to look at them.
My footgear slid on something wet and sticky, and I looked down to see a transparent gelatinous substance coating the floor of the dome.
I pulled Mercy to a stop. “What sort of creature is this Swap?”
She shrugged. “He’s never told me, and I’ve never seen anything like him. But he hasn’t shown himself to anyone but me and a couple of the original colony survivors. He’s a little shy that way. As far as I know, he’s the only colonist who is native to Trellus.”
Reever bent and touched the gelatinous ooze. “This has the same texture as the substance that was in our envirosuits, after the crater collapse.”
“Swap sheds a lot of it,” Mercy said. “He’s the one who pulled you two out of that crater and brought you back to Omega Dome.”
Now I definitely wanted to meet him. “How much farther?”
She gestured ahead. “We have to go through another part of the collection.”
“What does Swap collect?” Reever wanted to know.
“Junk.” Mercy smirked. “He calls it art.”
The passage widened and divided into five other passages, each transitioning from the rippled walls of stone into structures made of other materials: alloy, plas, wood, and two others I couldn’t readily identify. Mercy diverted us through the passage made of alloy, the walls of which were formed at first from hundreds of thousands of hull rivets welded seamlessly together. They expanded into sections of coiled wire, joints, and frames. One segment appeared to be formed out of ten thousand conjoined blades of various lengths, widths, and castings.
“How long did it take your friend to collect all of these objects?” Reever asked Mercy as we passed an enormous starburst made from alloy strips cut from a myriad of view ports, door thresholds, deck seams, and console panels.
“No one knows. Swap originally started his collection underground, in the tunnels where he lived, but moved it up into Alpha Dome after the original colonists built it for him.” Mercy ducked to avoid a hanging cluster of gleaming emitter reflectors.
“All of these objects did not come from the colony,” I guessed.
“Before the blockade, traders brought them in by the cargo-hold load. Swap always has something someone wants.” She smiled back at a wall of alien faces sculpted out of innumerable wheels and gears. “He’s become the wealthiest trader in this system.”
My husband inspected the faces. “Why does he cement everything together? He cannot use them like this.”
“He can’t use them anyway, but you’ll understand that when you see him. He started making them into walls after the Hsktskt raided.” Mercy’s grin faded. “It gave us kids something to do, too.” She caught my curious look. “Swap took in me and the other kids who survived the raid. He fed us and kept us warm until the free traders showed up.”
No wonder she counted him among her friends. “That was very kind of him.”
“Personally I think he just wanted the extra hands to help him build this maze,” Mercy said. “Once he owns something, he doesn’t like giving it up. And he really didn’t like it when the Hsktskt helped themselves to his junk.”
“They stole my art,” a deep, rich voice corrected her. Something boomed as a heavy weight fell, and the floor of the dome bounced. “I couldn’t allow that to happen again.”
A massive wall of quivering pink slid over the end of the passage, cutting us off. At the same time, it began to ooze into the passage, coming toward us in three solid pink streams of goo.
Reever tugged me behind him.
“Swap,” Mercy said, “I know you’re impatient to taste them, but at least let me bring them out into the main room.”
“Excuse me?” I stared at her. “He wants to taste us?”
“Oh, he’s not going to eat you.” She grimaced as the pink glop rose in a column from the floor and slid against her cheek. “It’s sort of like licking, see? It doesn’t hurt, and it’s the only way he can sense things.”
The other streams retreated, as did the third after giving Mercy’s chin a lick, and the wall at the end of the passage moved away.
I looked at the sticky residue Swap had left behind on Mercy’s face. The smell was so intense it punched through my nose filter. “I begin to understand. “
Reever didn’t move. “Is this manner of contact entirely necessary?”
“You can take a long, hot cleanse after this,” Mercy promised, wiping some of the pink from her face and glancing at her fingers before shaking it off. “I always do.”
We walked out of the passage into the main room. Swap had filled his living space with mountains of objects, most neatly sorted by shape, composition, and color. A thick coating of the pink substance seemed to hold them in place, as did a long, winding wall of the same material.
At least, I assumed it was a wall, until it swelled and contracted and began to rise, up and up and up until it loomed over us like a pink mountain.
“Cherijo Grey Veil, Duncan Reever,” Mercy said as she gestured toward the tower. “I would like to introduce my friend, Swap.”
I could not see a head, eyes, ears, mouth, or sensory organs, or indeed any definition of a body. I couldn’t even tell from where his voice came, or how it was produced. The creature seemed to be made of several hundred tons of the sticky liquid, and nothing else. Then I turned my head and measured all of the pink substance I could see, and an idea began to form in my mind.
“I am very pleased to meet you, Swap,” I said politely as I took Reever’s hand in mine. He linked with me in time to hear my thoughts. I think it’s some sort of colossal snail.
Or an amoebic life-form, Reever thought back.
Two streams of pink curled around our ankles.
“I am neither a snail nor an amoeba,” Swap said, “but I can collect thoughts from what I touch. Rather like you, Duncan Reever.”
“Forgive us.” I felt embarrassed. “We meant no disrespect.”
“I am not offended, Doctor,” Swap said kindly. “I understand the need of humanoids to place things in a context so that they may better comprehend their nature. My only regret is that I cannot be so easily quantified. Perhaps it would be best to think of me as a worm. My form is somewhat similar to those you encountered on Akkabarr.”
I thought of the tiny ice worms that lay dormant on my homeworld until the blood and body fluids of carrion spilled on the ice. They then lived out a complete life cycle while breaking down the carcass, and their newly hatched young ate the last of the carrion and the dead bodies of their parents before burrowing down in the ice to hibe
rnate until the next awakening.
“You are much, much bigger than they were,” I told Swap.
The worm made a sound very much like a laugh. “All things have their proper size and place.”
“Mercy tells us that it was you who saved us during the collapse of the crystal crater,” my husband said. “You saved our lives. We are very grateful to you.”
“Somehow I doubt you and your mate would have died, but considering how you were forced to come here, I thought it best that you not be made to suffer.” Swap slowly descended, filling out into a wide hill of pink ooze. “After tasting you, however, I fear I became insatiably curious about you. I would very much like to recite a poem for you both.”
“Swap collects songs and verses, too,” Mercy said. “I got him hooked on archaic Terran poetry.”
“Keats, Byron, and . . . Shelley,” I remembered.
“My dear Duncan, you should not worry so much about your wife’s memory,” Swap said. “Now, I wish to share one of my favorite sonnets with you.”
“That’s a poem,” Mercy said helpfully.
Reever and I listened as Swap recited:
“Eternal Spirit of the chainless Mind!
Brightest in dungeons, Liberty! Thou art,
For there thy habitation is the heart—
The heart which love of thee alone can bind;
And why thy sons to fetters are consign’d—
To fetters, and the damp vault’s dayless gloom,
Their county conquers with their martyrdom,
And Freedom’s fame finds wings on every wind,
Chillon! thy prison is a holy place,
And thy sad floor an altar—for ’twas trod
Until his very steps have left a trace
Worn, as if thy cold pavement were a sod,
By Bonnivard! May none those marks efface!
For they appeal from tyranny to God.”
I was not sure if it was a great poem, as the Iisleg had no poetry. Still, I could appreciate the sentiment behind the lyrical words. My friend, Teulon Jado, had brought freedom and justice out of an undeserved and hellish imprisonment on Akkabarr.
