“Next time a she-malechild,” Mitte’s second-eldest—goblet in hand and about to sip—intoned. And all of the N’Kiddim males clucked and murmured assent at such a high fortune for Quorth’s small-clan.
Chapter One
Ay’r was in an almost-empty soft-lounge in Cygnus-Port, lapping a Soma-Stelezine bar and gassing about the N’Kiddim and their tiny planet with a fellow Species Ethnologist, when the message repeated on the freestanding holo.
“Am I bizarre? Or is that you the Matriarchy’s paging?” Xell-I asked. “Hold on,” Ay’r said and listened.
The Matriarchal Council requests the privilege of a Meeting with the mother of Ay’r Kerry Sanqq’, full ident. unknown, last-known residence listed as the University for Species Harmony upon Sobieski IX. Please present yourself at any MC station for expenses-paid. two-way, full holocommunication.
“They’re looking for my mother.” Ay’r was amazed.
“Problem with that?” Xell-I asked. “She’s not a sociopath or something?”
“Worse than that,” Ay’r said. “She’s been dead for centuries.”
“Your father will take the call. He probably already has. Cygnus-Port is a long comm. delay from the Center Worlds.”
“Forget it, Xell. He’s been gone for centuries, too.”
“Sweetness!” the sleek and chicly garbed Hume-Delphinid slid against Ay’r all of a sudden. “If I knew you were” – for an instant, he wondered if she’d be cruel enough to say “motherless”! But no, she finished – “an orphan!”
“Then you would what?” Ay’r asked. “You’ve already done everything an interspecies female could possibly do to bring me pleasure.”
“I’d have been nicer,” Xell-I cooed.
“I’m not an orphan. At least I don’t think so. Although, admittedly the last I heard from my father, I was still in Neonatal Education and Development. I think I’d better make that comm. It sounds like some sort of Cpm screw-up.”
“I saw a holo-comm. station in B-lounge,” Xell-I said. “And when you come back” – she batted her huge Icthyxalmic eyes at him – “I promise I’ll be mother, father, your whole Eve-damned pod to you!”
“You just want me to wear me out sexually, then have me leak something about the N’Kiddim Smalling Rite,” Ay’r teased. “But you’re going to have to wait until I publish.”
“Motherless bastard!” she now said, but Ay’r just laughed.
Ay’r found the holo-comm. station easily and, still holding the Soma-Stelezine bar, dialed. He had never before used one of the expensive Inter. Gal. Comm.s and was glad the MC would take the charges. He was surprised by how rapidly it worked. After only a tissue of static, the other screen materialized a holo of the Matriarchal Council logo, which was replaced by a live holo of a handsome woman about 500 years old, dressed in the MC uniform.
“State your business with the Matriarchal Council,” she said.
“I’m Ay’r Kerry Sanqq’.”
She looked confused.
“A holo-comm. here on Cygnus-Port was paging my mother.”
“Oh!” she said and then, “That’s a Secured Line.”
Immediately, the holo-comm. station he had stepped into sealed itself with a whoosh. Another first for Ay’r.
He was just thinking about what was going on here when another MC logo replaced the woman and a far younger woman – say, 150 or so – in the tight, long-skirted high-shouldered uniform of MC Security, showed. She looked at him licking the Soma-Stelezine bar and half smiled, then said, “It’s your mommy we’re looking for.”
“My mommy’s dead,” he said.
“How long ago?”
“At my birth,” he said with some embarrassment.
“Truly? Then if we did a quick full-neuron memory scan of you, it still wouldn’t show what she looked like.”
“I doubt it.” Why did the MC want to know what she looked like? “What’s this all about?”
“MC business. Hold!” She was replaced by the MC logo, then returned again.
“I’m requested to have you transport here.”
“I’m at Cygnus-Port. Where’s ‘here’?”
“Regulus Prime, of course!”
Reg. Prime: a.k.a. Wicca World, ruling planet of the Matriarchy!
“We’ll put you on an MC Fast.”
“But why?” Ay’r asked.
“Her Matriarchy, Wicca Eighth, wishes to speak to you.”
“To me? About my mother? This is bizarre!”
“It’s listed as a High Request,” she said, meaning an order.
“Her Matriarchy has been told all that I know?”
“All that you just told me. We can arrange a Fast from Cygnus-Port,” she said.
If anyone could, Her Matriarchy could. Ay’r wondered what Important Woman he would be bumping off the faster-than-light transport. Whoever she was, she would be in snit to hear it was a mere male doing it.
“It’s JoHanna by me,” he said slangily. “I’ve heard a lot about it, but I’ve never been to Wicca World.”
No surprise to her: few males had.
“Meet your Fast at Cygnus-Port in one hour Sol Rad. We’re assigning you a guide to brief you.”
“Brief me?”
“A few current events.” She switched gears. “Might I offer a fashion tip! Codpieces are offensive here on Reg. Prime. Very loose trousers are suggested. Oh, and Her Matriarchy may or may not be amused by your fondness for drugged desserts. I’d think that over before you arrive.”
“Give my love to your spouses,” he signed off.
The MC Security bond broke on the booth, and Ay’r walked back to the lounge, where Xell-I had fallen into a state of deep contemplation.
He whistled high once. She slowly came to enough to feel him kissing her, caressing her vestigial dorsal lightly.
“How about a raincheck, Xell? I’m off to Wicca World.” And in case she still didn’t get the point. “On a Fast.”
“How too bizarre,” she uttered and fell back into musing.
Fifty minutes later, Ay’r was gliding across the surface of a wide corridor on a conveyance leading to the Fasts. He’d been checked through MC Security once, waved through three more times, and would evidently encounter several more of the statuesque females before he was ushered into the transport. Next to him, a squat Cyber Carryall was using its six arms to rearrange all of Ay’r’s luggage.
“Leave it. It’s fine now,” he told the Carryall.
“There is a more efficient manner of lading,” its mechanical voice replied.
The Carryall had been hurried in Ay’r’s rooms, and it had complained all the way here that it could pack the load better: Ay’r’s traveling baggage plus twenty-five differently sized objects containing all of his time with the N’Kiddim.
“We’ll be there in two minutes,” Ay’r argued.
“Two minutes and eighteen seconds at our current acceleration,” the Carryall corrected.
“Once we get there, you’ll just have to let yourself be unloaded again.”
If the machine heard his logic, it made no difference. The six arms continued shifting around the canisters.
“If you break anything ... ,” Ay’r warned.
His threat made a difference: the arms immediately settled to one side. “One minute and fifty-four seconds,” the Carryall spoke.
“Dimwit!” Ay’r expostulated. And was surprised to see another person quickly approaching on another lane. He thought he was going to be alone.
A Hume dressed in MC colors was suddenly four feet to one side, and in a hurry. Evidently an official. Tall, well built, and ... male! Despite wearing – and even looking fairly good in – the skirted uniform of the MC, Ay’r had never seen a male MC official before.
“You’re not late!” Ay’r said. “You’ve been bumped.”
“Bumped!” The official’s face took the news with handsome surprise. “More like shoved!”
“It’s my flight and my flight only.”
>
“You are Ser Sanqq’.” His companion used the formal greeting. He slid from his slightly more advanced position into Ay’r’s conveyance lane and sauntered back to meet him.
“And you’re my guide.”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Guide to what? Wicca World? Someone already told me not to draw attention to my genitals. A shame. I had Desmer Cosmetology done only a decade ago. Wanted to show it off. I don’t need a guide.”
“You do,” the official seemed accepting yet somewhat irritated. Close up, he appeared to be physically perfect. Some Important Woman’s gene-spliced plaything, Ay’r guessed. (None but Very Important MC Women could afford them.) He was probably on vacation near Cygnus-Port and had been coerced by the MC to leave. “I’m P’al.” He introduced himself so fluently that the apostrophe within his name could be noted and yet didn’t stop its lilt. “You couldn’t pronounce my other names, so I don’t usually bother.”
Ay’r was trying to place the male’s accent but couldn’t. From Wicca World? No one on the holo-comm.s had talked like this.
“What’s wrong with this Carryall?" P’al asked suddenly.
While they had been talking, the squat machine had begun tentatively to rearrange the containers. Hearing itself referred to, it stopped so quickly that one piece of baggage was still left in the air.
“Oh, put it down!” P’al said to the machine and faced Ay’r, who in return couldn’t resist saying it.
“Funny, you don’t look like a Matriarch!”
“Don’t start. I’ve heard every sophomoric one of them!” P’al appeared barely nonplussed. In the same, indifferent, curious voice he said, “You know you needn’t bring all this. There are MC Security holds.”
“All this, as you call it, is my career. Why? Isn’t there room for it on the Fast?”
“Of course there is. Your career? Oh,” as though remembering, “your avocation. Species Ethnology.”
“That’s right, P’al! And I’ve got a Spec. Eth. scoop here that I don’t want out of my sight. Where I go, it goes.”
“Primitive rattles and masks and suchlike?”
Ay’r was taken back. “A few. I spent six months Sol Rad. with a completely Archaic tribe on a planet seeded only a few thousand years ago. I lived with them, slept in their longhuts, even cohabited with them. I learned their myths and legends. I drank their potions and practiced their magic. I was inducted into their most occult rite and took a secret name and hunted my special God.”
“I thought Spec. Eth.s weren’t allowed to propagate a Seeded World,” P’al said, evidently unimpressed by the adventure as Ay’r presented it. Yet an intelligent comment. This P’al knew more than his looks let on.
“It’s too late for that to happen. The N’Kiddim are already on a different genetic track from us.”
P’al appeared to consider that. In that second, the end of the tunnel seemed to rush at them and they stopped. A screen dropped and a small section of Plastro-Beryllium hull was revealed framing a wide doorway: the Fast. Also, naturally, the MC Security force. One woman lifted a unit, checking each of the two men’s molecular signature and waved them in. They heard one guard bark a command repeatedly.
The Carryall with Ay’r’s luggage was sitting there refusing to release his baggage. “What’s the problem?” P’al asked – not the guard, but the Cyber. Efficiency has not been achieved,” the machine’s voice replied.
“Nor will it be,” P’al explained calmly. “You’re damaged in some way. Release the containers and after you’re through here, send yourself in for repair.”
The six arms began to move off the load, then hesitated. “Your evidence of damage?” the Cyber asked.
Odd for a machine so primitive to talk back.
“Your admitted inefficiency itself,” P’al answered, still nonplussed. “Not to mention your questioning me.”
The Carryall accepted the logic in the reason and released the containers, saying, “I will go for repair.”
“Suggest that they look at Toxonometer 244, Subsection 5a.”
P’al and Ay’r stepped into the Fast’s luxurious passenger lounge.
“You should have just told it to calculate pi to its end, and let it run itself into the ground,” Ay’r said.
“That would have been cruel. It was already conflicted.”
Conflicted? P’al didn’t say damaged. Odd.
“Cybers your field?” Ay’r had to ask. He had already settled into a cantilevered long seat and was requesting music and drink.
“Let’s say Cybers are my avocation.” P’al was removing his uniform and storing it in a wall slot. From another slot he pulled out a lightweight tunic much like the one Ay’r wore and made something of a show of putting it on. Needless to say, he was perfect under the clothing. “There! That’s much more comfortable!”
“You’re obviously not an engineer.”
“I am, in a way. My actual avocation is Cyber psychology. Or rather the study of those Cybers intelligent enough to possess a psychology.”
“Wicca World full of crazed Cybers?” Ay’r asked.
“Not really. Not of late, at least. Or haven’t you kept up with the Inter. Gal. Information Service? Since last month, all but the less-intelligent Cybers have been removed from Reg. Prime.”
“Looks like you’re out of a job.”
“Perhaps not. I’m being reassigned.” P’al looked at him a minute too long, then said, “I thought perhaps you would know something about my reassignment.”
“Me?” Ay’r didn’t hide his surprise. “In my entire life, I’ve had less contact with the Matriarchy than I’ve had in the last hour.”
“Indeed! There’s a fine irony in that.”
Before Ay’r could figure out what that meant, P’al had seated himself and dialed a drink and had placed himself in a semirecumbent position directly under a shade of lighting he seemed to have dialed up especially for maximum effect upon his hair and limbs and the folds of his tunic.
“If you weren’t an official, I’d think this was a come-on.”
“A come-on? You mean sexually?”
“The striptease, the pose, the lighting.”
“I’m just getting comfortable.”
“So you’re not schilling me? You know” – Ay’r went on to explain the antique word – “softening me up and getting me interested in you so that when we’re on Wicca World I’m so preoccupied with your Michelangelesque body that I don’t dream of touching any of the lovely ladies?”
P’al was in no way nonplussed. “I can’t help noting a certain not very well-hidden animosity toward the Matriarchy. It’s not my business, of course, and between you and me, I don’t care what your politics may be. But for prudence’s sake, I recommend less sarcasm once we arrive at Reg. Prime. Unless, of course, you’re looking for a fight.”
Ay’r resented the advice and knew at the same time that it was good advice, and that P’al was indifferent to whether or not it was taken.
“What do you expect? I’ve lived with Proto-Archaic Humeoids for the past six months.”
“I also note that you have more than ordinary historical interests. Your use of pre-Matriarchal words, for example.”
“Pre-Matriarchal linguistics is my ... avocation – 20th to 24th Centuries.”
“A shining era!” P’al said. “The so-called Space Age!”
Odd he called it that: most Humes would call it the Metropolitan-Terra Age.
“Without them, where would we be? Not zipping thousands of light-years in a few hours!” Ay’r said.
P’al changed the subject. “Wicca World is a lovely place. Everyone says so. Both pleasant and real. Everyone is either a resident or guest. No hordes of Humes or other species rushing about Melisande. Wicca Eighth Herself is a charming and compassionate Matriarch. All this you shall see for yourself. Whatever the reason, your enmity is ill placed.”
“Maybe.”
“More than one MC Psych. has suggested that the de
ath of your mother at birth is responsible for this ambivalent attitude toward the Matriarchy.”
So, in an hour, they had gotten a complete scan on Ay’r. He should have guessed as much.
“Wait! Don’t tell me. Let me guess. A sense of abandonment leading to anger.”
P’al went on, You realize, of course, that her death was statistically improbable. In fact, your mother may have been the last Hume female to die in childbirth. Had her spouses and she not been in the hostile, primitive environment they were, she would easily have been saved. But of course you know all this, Ser Sanqq’.”
“And I’ve been tutored and counseled and ... call me Kerry. Agreement?”
“Agreement. The MC Psych.s would also say, Ser Kerry, that the disappearance of your father less than three years Sol Rad. later might have increased your anger at males. All males. Explaining, for example, why you’ve taken on the relatively antisocial avocation of Species Ethnologist.”
“I did plenty of socializing with the N’Kiddim.”
“Yes, but they’re Archaics. Not your species. And it would also explain why you thought I was attempting to seduce you.”
“You were attempting to seduce me!” Ay’r said.
“For the Matriarchy?”
“Maybe?”
“To worm secrets out of you? Secrets you don’t even know you possess? Maybe I was flirting a bit,” P’al admitted in a different tone. “Sometimes I can’t help myself.” He had a thought. “You’re not, you know, what do they call those sexual throwbacks?”
“Sociopaths. They used to call them heterosexuals. No, I’m not.”
“Well, that’s a relief.”
“Have we taken off yet?” Ay’r asked.
“In a Fast, you generally know when it takes off,” P’al said.
“How?”
A second later, Ay’r knew the answer. Suddenly he felt gently pinned down against his seat, immobilized, folded up lengthwise, then rolled down from the top, shrunk, placed inside a tiny capsule, warmed slightly, then tossed lightly across the breadth of the galaxy.
Dryland's End Page 3
