Only the Open

by M. C. A. Hogarth

  Vasiht’h caught up with him, glanced once at the bodies, then wrapped his arms around Jahir’s torso. The mindline filled with a cooling wave, like sea water, desperate with froth. /What’s wrong? I’ve never felt anything like this out of you! What happened? You… you killed them?/

  /I made them kill each other,/ Jahir answered, flat. Harder then, as sword’s edge. /They’re not just pirates. They’re furriers./

  For a moment, the mindline hung tense between them, blank.

  Then Vasiht’h wobbled. /You don’t mean… PEOPLE furriers?/

  “They kill the Pelted and skin them and sell their pelts,” Jahir whispered. He was not just weeping, but sweating from the effort of what he’d done. But just saying it aloud made the anger rise again, and this time, for all his incredulity, Vasiht’h held him steady and did not back away.

  “This way,” Jahir said, sensing the remaining ten. “Before it’s too late.”

  They ran, then. Palmers could burn on a high enough setting. The boarders had no intention of marring their merchandise with unsightly marks, so there was a good chance he and Vasiht’h could save the Pelted. The humans would die, like the one Jahir had run past, but most of the crew were Pelted as well—

  He caught up to the next set and didn’t warn them this time. He just lunged for their minds and told them they were among enemies, forced the impression into them until they believed it and shot one another down. Jahir staggered to one side until his shoulder hit the wall of the corridor, accepting the chest that buoyed him up from behind.

  /You used to it being this much effort?/ Vasiht’h asked. The matter-of-factness of his question didn’t diffuse the rage, but somehow put it in a context in which he could live through knowing a sentient fur trade existed.

  /No,/ Jahir admitted. /But I’ve never used the ability offensively before. Lisinthir could control bodies. All I have is… psychologies. I didn’t know compulsions could be resisted so effectively by those without talents like ours./

  Vasiht’h bent alongside one of the bodies, gingerly moving the head from side to side. /That shouldn’t surprise either of us. If people weren’t capable of resisting any thought they deemed foreign, even their own, we’d have long since been out of work./ He straightened, holding a gem. /They have telegems./

  /That means it won’t be long before they’re missed. We should find the crew and tell them what we know./

  Vasiht’h looked at him. /What about their ship? Can you do anything about that?/

  Could he? When controlling ten minds at a time against their will had been so wearing? But then, did he need to control ten minds, or ten hundred? If he could find just one over there and tell it to sabotage the vessel…

  Don’t be me, Galare. Be you.

  But how can I be me when all I feel is rage? he asked that memory of Lisinthir, trying to breathe through it.

  You would tell me you cannot feel rage?

  Fine, he answered. But what do I do! I can’t kill them all no matter how much I want to!

  Be you, Galare.

  Jahir flung himself from the voice. Then I shall be myself! And shoved the anger out, and out, and out. Let it build and thicken, let it expand like lava plunging from the sides of a volcano. Put his shoulder into it and pressed from the inside until he emptied himself out and the wrath sped from him like the corona of an exploding sun, dragging his energy after it. It skated to a halt just outside the ship and there it spit and howled, a magmatic shield that poisoned everything it neared. Holding it steady, Jahir felt it stretching tendrils toward the pirate vessel, trying to ensnare it, and sensed, just barely through that barrier, the terror it was inspiring.

  /Goddess!/ Vasiht’h whispered, trembling at his side.

  /Beloved,/ Jahir said, straining. /I need your help./

  /Anything!/

  Jahir tugged the mindline, drawing the Glaseah’s attention to the weight he was holding up. /This. Can you bear it for a few moments?/

  /I… think?/ An impression of someone moving alongside him that did not come from their physical bodies. Then the weight rose off him. /Yes. Goddess, ariihir, what is this!/

  But Jahir was already using the freedom to thin himself out and stretch toward the pirates. Somewhere on that ship was someone in charge. He bounced off a wall of fear and panic, so heavy it had to be the product of a mass of minds, walked himself along its borders, hunting, clawing, scrounging. Somewhere… there. In a knot amid the terror, there was someone whose identity was bound up in the memories of authority. How far was he from them? Did it matter? Jahir felt attenuated, as if he might come apart. But he refused and wrapped his hands around that heart. He was not Lisinthir to control a body. But a mind he could influence. He sucked the terror from the surrounding mass and shaped it into a lance and then he smashed it into that single person’s mind… and felt the heart stop from shock.

  That one death set off a tidal wave of panic, and Jahir slid back down the link to put his effort into maintaining the shield that was fueling it. Using his anger as the medium for that shield had deprived him of its power, though, and he was beginning to feel the physical effort of it, in sweat sticking his clothes to his body, a cramping hunger and thirst, in the increasing tremor of muscles responding as if he was holding up a real weight. He didn’t like to think how long he would have lasted without Vasiht’h at his side… but he didn’t have to. They stood fast together as they always had, and there was a joy in that which transcended the peril and the horrors they would have to face when they finally let it go.

  /I feel it too./

  Jahir smiled, pained, eyes closed.

  They both felt it when the vessel moved off, though neither of them believed it initially.

  /Is that really happening?/ Vasiht’h asked, awed.

  /I think… yes./ Jahir tentatively groped past the shield, found… nothing. /They have left./ Neither of them moved. Then Jahir added, /The shield, we can drop it./

  It went out like a match falling into water, and both of them went with it, collapsing to the deck. Fortunately they were near enough to the wall to slide most of the way down, but it was an untidy situation all around.

  “Did you just drive away a pirate vessel by terrifying them into fleeing?” Vasiht’h asked, low.

  “I had to do something,” Jahir said, slumped. His wrists and ankles were trembling, and the rest of him felt… very vague. Not even in his defense classes had he ever been so sodden with sweat, enough that his hair was dripping slowly onto his pants. He felt not just exhausted, but depleted, as if he’d used up something vital that needed replacement. Food, he thought. Or juice. He found himself latching onto the memory of Nuera’s sparkling verjuice, tasting it on his palate as if he could swallow it down.

  /Ugh, stop that,/ Vasiht’h said with an audible groan. “I can’t tell whether I never want to eat again or I want to eat everything. No one warned me how much work being dva’htiht was.” He pressed his shoulders up and let them drop. “We should talk to the crew and find out what happened. Before we got involved. How many people got hurt.”

  “Two dead,” Jahir said, without thinking, eyes closed. “Many unconscious, but only two dead.”

  “I guess they’re human,” Vasiht’h said, subdued.

  “Given what the pirates intended?” He glanced at his friend. “Did you know?”

  “About the fur trade?” Vasiht’h grimaced. “No. I thought that was something teenagers came up with to scare each other at overnight parties. I guess you’re sure?”

  “If you could have seen what I saw….”

  “Don’t—” Vasiht’h held up a hand. “Don’t show me. That’s one thing I don’t want in my head.” He pushed himself upright and smiled wryly. “The one time being Eldritch wasn’t worse for you than being Pelted would have been.”

  “Unless I’d been cousin Lisinthir,” Jahir said, and stopped abruptly.

  “That reminds me,” Vasiht’h said as he finished gaining all four feet. “Do you always hear his voice
in your head that way now? I couldn’t catch the words of the conversation, but it was definitely a back-and-forth. Almost as if he was there. You must have a very clear sense of his personality for that… arii?”

  Jahir slumped back to the ground, grabbing for his collar and opening it to fumble for the medallion. “You have better eyes than I do,” he said. “Look at the back more closely and tell me… could you have fit a chip in it?”

  Vasiht’h eyed him, then sat alongside him and bent close. “Move your head, you’re blocking the light.” The Glaseah twisted the amulet on the strand, pulling it taut against Jahir’s neck. For a very long moment he said nothing, squinting at it. Then, “There’s a very small part of it that looks like it reflects differently.”

  Jahir put a hand on his partner’s wrist.

  It becomes you. And it will serve you in your need.

  I have left you a tool. Use it, if you would.

  “I need a medkit,” he said.

  Vasiht’h’s eyes narrowed.

  “Please,” Jahir said. “And something to eat. And then we must find the captain and the crew.”

  “All right,” Vasiht’h said. /But only because I think you need the medkit. And you’re going to tell me what this is about./

  /I so vow./

  The Glaseah nodded and left, footfalls unsteady at first and then firming. Left to himself, Jahir let his head rest back against the wall and breathed. If he was right—but he was right. There was no other reason, when his cousin did nothing without planning several steps ahead. The only question was: what next? Where did he belong, to best move the Pattern to the place where it would breed success for them all? Survival?

  Had he really driven off a pirate vessel with the force of his anger alone?

  His penchant for not looking too closely at those things that might distress him was, by now, all too clear to him. What he’d done… he would have to sit with it for some time, when he was on Sharsenne and had the leisure. For now, he bowed his head forward and felt for the amulet’s catch. Removing the pendant felt wrong, but he would have it back in place soon enough.

  When Vasiht’h rounded the bend, Jahir was already holding out his hands for the kit. He received instead a protein bar, which he eyed with resignation.

  “Eat,” Vasiht’h said, opening the kit.

  Obediently, Jahir took the first bite.

  “Scanner?”

  “No,” Jahir said. “The AAP.”

  The Glaseah’s look then was speaking; the wash through the mindline, thick with suspicion, even more so.

  “And the tweezers.”

  Vasiht’h scowled. “Arii—” But handed both over. “At least finish the bar.”

  “In a moment.” Jahir turned the pendant and held it up to the overhead lights. Lisinthir wouldn’t have designed the amulet to be broken, as that would have invited poor fortune and destroyed a work of art besides. There had to be a way….

  “Ah,” he murmured, and used the edge of the tweezers to press along the tiny patch until he felt something give. A slot opened and revealed the chip he’d been expecting, and he couldn’t help his low chuckle. “Imthereli,” he murmured in their tongue. “Mind of a drake, thou hast.”

  “What is that?” Vasiht’h asked, perplexed.

  “Hold this for me… just thus, don’t move.” He set the pendant on his partner’s palm and checked the AAP. It had a saline vial, so he set the syringe to use it and carefully touched the tip of it to exposed chip. It stuck—thankfully—and he rested it against the vein in his arm.

  “This is safe, I’m assuming.”

  “It is how it’s meant to be implanted,” Jahir said. “More or less.”

  “More or less!”

  Jahir depressed the button and watched the saline level drop. Unlike a normal injection, it hurt, but then normal injections weren’t pressing something macroscopic through skin. It was a small chip, but when he lifted the AAP a thread of crimson blood had spilled into the inside crook of his elbow.

  “I know that’s not supposed to happen,” Vasiht’h said, disturbed.

  “It’ll pass.” Jahir set the pump aside and drew in a breath. And then he laughed and touched his hand to his brow.

  Vasiht’h had sat back on his haunches and had his arms folded. “So?”

  How would Lisinthir have programmed it? He and Vasiht’h had attended a party once in dominos, the consumer cousins to Fleet’s roquelaures. Those models had been cheap, with few interface options… but the high-end versions they'd investigated had all had the option to be activated via subvocalization. He tried commanding it in Universal first, and was unsurprised when it failed. Chatcaavan… no. Not the language that could be understood by their enemies. Which left only Eldritch.

  In that tongue, he told the roquelaure to wake, and that he would be a Seersa, and found himself looking down at his own foot now furred and four-toed and bare, in the way of most of the digitigrade species.

  Vasiht’h’s shock was cold as peppermint, and lemonade. Peppermint lemonade?

  “Really?” Jahir asked, in a voice higher than his own. “Have you had such a thing?” He re-considered. “It sounds delicious, come to that.”

  “Goddess of Dreams!” Vasiht’h exclaimed. “Even your voice pitch is different!” He reached for Jahir’s arm and recoiled. “The fur is furry!”

  “It would hardly be a useful disguise otherwise.” He repressed the urge to find his partner’s expression amusing and instead tied the amulet rampant back on. “Will you permit me one more test?”

  “One more?” Vasiht’h said, astounded. And added, “Can you walk like that?”

  “It feels no different to me on the inside of the seeming than being myself,” Jahir said. The bar had seemed to settle his stomach, so he resumed eating it, much to the Glaseah’s bemusement. “But yes. One more test.”

  “Go ahead?”

  Jahir swallowed and drew in a long breath. Roquelaure, he commanded the implant, careful not to make the sound aloud. It was harder than he thought to speak that way. Normal form, uninjured. And then he looked up at Vasiht’h.

  “That’s… not possible,” Vasiht’h whispered. And then, indignant. “That’s not even legal!”

  “I assume you see my cousin,” Jahir said, quiet, and even he heard the difference in his voice.

  “That’s not how dominos work,” Vasiht’h insisted. “You’re not supposed to be able to mimic a specific person.”

  “It’s how they work when Fleet makes them,” Jahir said, and pushed himself upright. Mask off. “There. Better?”

  “Yes!” Vasiht’h stared at him, ears sagging. And then, speculative. “Why?”

  “Did he give it me?” Jahir shook back his hair… or tried, anyway. It hadn’t dried yet and was sticking together in a way he found disagreeable. “I think it was a way of giving me options.”

  “Options,” Vasiht’h said, tasting the word.

  “To keep me safer,” Jahir offered. “It will allow me to look like any species, believably.”

  “He got it from Fleet, for you?”

  /I suspect,/ Jahir said, wry, /that he stole it from Fleet, for me./

  “Why?” Vasiht’h asked.

  To that, Jahir had no response… for he feared the only one that would answer was that his cousin expected him to go into worse danger than he himself would see. And Vasiht’h, knowing him too well, did not press him to admit it.

  “Well,” the Glaseah said at last. “I’m glad he’s looking out for you.”

  “I am also.” He managed a whimsical smile. “Surely together the two of us cannot fail.”

  Vasiht’h snorted. “Let’s find the captain.”

  The captain of the passenger liner was an Asanii, one of the felid races, and putting a good face on his distress to the crew on the bridge when they arrived and the first mate tried to turn them away. The first mate continued trying until Jahir said, “There are twenty dead pirates on the vessel in the passengers’ quarters.”

&nbs
p; “You were supposed to stay in your cabin,” the first mate, a shorter Karaka’An felid, snapped.

  “If he’d stayed in his cabin, those pirates would be alive and killing people for pelts,” Vasiht’h said, and silenced everyone.

  “Let them in,” the captain said.

  Explaining that he was responsible for the pirates’ flight was one of the more interesting exercises Jahir had attempted in recent years. He had always considered the Alliance’s technology magical; certainly it routinely achieved miracles in ways he couldn’t have described, much less duplicated. And yet the masters of this technology, who themselves probably couldn’t have explained or duplicated it either, were deeply troubled to learn that “real” magic had routed their enemies.

  “It’s not real magic any more than a Glaseah’s ability to talk mind-to-mind is magic,” Vasiht’h said for him, and Jahir let him carry the battle while he stared out the windows at space and wondered what else he could eat. He rarely remembered being so hungry.

  At last he interrupted to ask, “How did they catch us?”

  The captain was leery of him, but also obviously tired of engaging with Vasiht’h. “It’s a bit of a gamble, but there’s a way to bounce a ship out of Well if you know its vector and engine harmonics.”

  “So are the engines broken?” Vasiht’h asked.

  “Just jarred a bit,” said the third member of the bridge crew, who was sitting at the systems station. “We can be back underway in a couple of hours.”

  “And we’ll have to be, to report our dead and the attack,” a fourth muttered.

  “Go see to the passengers,” the captain said to the first mate. Facing Vasiht’h and Jahir, he said, “I’m grateful for what you’ve done, more than I can easily express. But there’s nothing you can do from here. I advise you to return to your cabin and rest, see to any… wounds… you might have taken in the fight.”

  “That’s a good idea,” Vasiht’h said, taking Jahir by the sleeve. “We’ll do that. How soon do you think we’ll reach Sharsenne?”

  “We’ll probably only be a few hours off our original ETA,” the captain said. “Call it three to five hours, maybe—”