Presently the voice formed itself:
yes i found what people are and not alike
What do you want with us?
i want to know
About people—
about myself i knew no other like me people
Did you come in that ship on the mesa, and bring us here?
what is a ship i know yes it is not
Are you saying that vessel is not a ship?
it has no energy to move itself
True … no one has been able to explain that yet.
i made that when i was looking for others like me and i picked them off their worlds and put them in something so i could bring them with me
And how did you make—
i looked inside the structure of the stones and they told me how to form but it was too hard for me to carry and too far from any sun
And you put—those who were not people but—
ones like those under the water and in the sky
—Into a specimen case!
i found your originators on another world i was very young then and knew no better or i would not have taken them without thinking
But you lost the …
i only meant to take them away to some place where i could make them move for me and see if they were like me when i stopped to rest here first some of those creatures ran away or fell out of it and then the world opened up and it fell in the world closed over it i did not know how to get it back and i was very tired and shrinking and needed the sun but i did not make your people perhaps i may have been ignorant enough to try that if i thought of it but you became people by the way they become i know nothing else
My people are not going to like that explanation … and I’m damned if I am going to tell them!
when they truly want to know they will discover but i know nothing i do not know if there are others of my kind i do not know where i came from or where they are and i will go to the limit of the universe and look until i know perhaps they are asleep in the cores of the stars that feed them as they feed me dreaming of us i am tired and want sleep now and perhaps i will dream of them I have not found them on this world and I am leaving now
Wait—why did you choose to speak to me?
no one else would let me you seemed to know so much and i thought you might really know
Being, I wish I did.
Hasso opened his eyes. There was no voice and no Being. The sea and sky were as empty of that presence as they were of the gargaranda and the blue scavenger. Perhaps he had been dreaming.
“You were not dreaming,” the Lyhhrt said from beside him. “I hope you are not offended when I confess that I shared your experience.”
“I’m grateful,” Hasso said. “Otherwise I might have lived the rest of my life believing I was a bit crazy. Perhaps I have been honored in some way, and wonderfully fascinated too … but I must confess I will not miss that Being.” He was thinking of the horrifying possibilities of religious unrest and violence as the Diggers, Watchers, Hatchlings contended over a Truth that only might exist somewhere out beyond the stars. Of course he would tell Tharma everything. Perhaps she would know what to say to the world, if anything.
“I want to tell you something else.” The Lyhhrt hesitated, and Hasso waited.
“That crevice we were trying to hide in led to a hollow, not quite large enough to call a cavern … . I don’t know how he came there, but I sensed that an Ix was living in that place. He had built a small fire, its smoke was drowned out for you by the smell of trash burning. He was roasting thumbknuckle buds and eating them when they popped …”
This homely picture could not but resonate in Hasso’s mind. Horribly. He could hardly manage to choke back air enough to say, “That might have been the one who murdered my father.”
“No. He was a child. Born accidentally in an impossible time. With nowhere to go, no way to breed, nothing to do but die … perhaps you believe I should have destroyed him.”
They looked at each other steadily, and Hasso said: “You know I could never destroy anyone.”
“I know it, and as for myself, I want to go home to Lyhhr in peace.”
“I thought you would. I hope you find peace and much more on your world, even though I will miss you deeply.”
“I may come back. I am your friend wherever I am.”
Bonzador: The Briar Patch
Ned was reaching for his breakfast pack when Spartakos came up quickly. “Change of plans.”
Ned stopped dead and whispered, “What?”
“My Maker has destroyed the Other but not before he told his captains to kill us.”
Ned could feel the grafted skin on his polymer jaw turning white and then red. His mind kept saying, yes, it is real, it’s real, yes—
His mouth said, “Jeez, is this the way to make a living.” And then, “When, Spartakos?”
“As soon as possible.”
“And they don’t know here that ‘other’ is out of the way.”
“It won’t matter if they have the weapons to use or sell.”
“They’d use them first. These chukkers wouldn’t want witnesses. You’ve got to bring a carrier down here, Spartakos.”
“My Maker is returning.”
“Is he? I won’t count on that. There’s that aircar we came in, but it doesn’t hold more than fifty.”
“And it’s a drone they keep out of the camp. Eat your meal, my-friend-Ned-Gattes. And another, if you can find one.”
“Not very hungry … Spartakos, you and Rrengha could get out of here.”
“I am your weapon,” Spartakos said. “And my people are here.”
Rrengha said, :And I have nothing better to do.:
These two could take me out of here—if I didn’t mind being sick of myself for ever. His face was plastered with every version of insect in the district, and he wiped at it distractedly, leaving a smear on his arm.
The sky was almost clear, for once; sun and wind had left the ground baked hard.
He was squatting by his tent eating when Lek came running, battling his own cloud of insects. “Listen, I had that dream, then Azzah told me—was that our big red friend at work?”
“That’s the kind of dream Rrengha has.”
“God damn it, I brought a hundred people into this hell-pit! You’ve got to tell me if it’s true!”
Ned looked hard at Lek, and said, “It’s worse than true. It’s going to happen here, not there. And any time.”
Lek froze for a moment. He had been in as many dark corners as Ned. “You’re not skinning me … if we got out, there’s nowhere to go.”
“Spartakos might be able to call in some kind of ship that could get us out of here.”
“They’d kill us first. Just when do you think is ‘any time’?”
“The easiest’d be when we’re sleeping.”
“Nobody’s gonna sleep tonight.” He added, half-whispering, “We’ve got to get out somehow. There’s no time to make real plans.”
“The alternative may be dying without knowing or trying to fight.”
“Who do I tell about this?”
“Anybody you trust, just keep Rrengha alongside.”
A loud voice yelled, “Awright, you, it’s worktime, you forgot it?”
Ned looked up to see if the work-boss was that rouser, Cawdor, but it was only somebody come out of the same factory. This one liked to go round waving his zapstick and touching leaves to hear the sizzle. The look in his eyes said, You’ll die as good as the rest of them.
Ned became conscious of the dull rumble of the cycler. It seemed louder today, as if it expected to dispose of more waste. Like dead bodies … . He went off to go through the motions of work, in the same patch where he had done the same thing yesterday, trying to watch all sixty-four points of the compass. There were no masses of movement among any of those around him, though the looks were furtive and the greetings mumbled.
Azzah worked her way over to whack at branches beside him. Somethin
g about her made him wary, and he knew what: the boiling anger of a slave people had reached a particular intensity in her.
“When I went to talk to my people in the southwest camp I saw a gate, and Rrengha says it opens on a path and maybe leads to an old landing field. What do you think?”
He stood and looked out toward the southwest where he could see no more than milky sky and the dark lines of useless growth, occasionally broken by stands of thin trees. Between the southwest and northwest camps was the gated compound where the self-styled captains and most of the NCOs lived and stored their weapons.
“Eh, the ones that live in the southwest are a lot worse than that bunch you used to serve, you’d have to plough through them before you got out.” Not likely to lead anywhere, either. But hope, Azzah, hope.
She was a lot sharper than that. “You don’t believe in that. I don’t know you, do I.” She rubbed sweat off her forehead, smearing her arm as Ned had done. “Some of those worse ones are looking for you, but Spartakos calls you my-friend-Ned, and you came with that other one of us Folk that is gone now. What was he, and what are you?”
Breathing hard, Ned forced himself away from fear and said, “That one of you that you thought was Folk is really a Lyhhrt who was trying to get to Khagodis to stop an attack there, now he’s trying to stop a massacre here. Of us, you and me and everybody else here, even the worst. I’m just a pug who did some work for GalFed and Spartakos was my partner. I was trying to help, and I got us stuck here, didn’t I? You may have a better chance if you keep away from me, so you don’t get caught in the crossfire.”
She seemed about to say something, but didn’t. He turned back to push sticks into the loader and drag out as many as he had dumped, trying to put together a plan at least as good as Azzah’s. We might just get some breathing space if we had distractions. And some weapons—
Then he caught a whack on the side of his head, one hand was grabbed and dragged up behind his back and a heavy arm came around his neck.
“Tommy Longjeans, is it?” a voice bellowed. “Let’s have some good times together, Tommy!” That was Hummer, recovering from memory loss.
Shit. Looking in the wrong direction.
Hummer growling: “I’m gonna show you off, Tommy, some people want to have a better look at you, let’s have some fun!”
He choked, gasped for air, tried to claw at the meaty arm with his free hand—
—and whulk, a sound like a hammer striking a melon. Hummer fell like a grain sack.
Ned fell with her, and when he looked up in terror, he found Grushka examining her cyber arm. “Never did that before.” She pulled him up with her other hand. “I think my shoulder’s out of its socket.” Then, “Azzah sent me to keep an eye out for you.”
He stared down at Hummer’s bloody head, rubbed his sore neck and couldn’t find his voice.
She said, “Ayeh, I know you thank me, now let’s get’r out of the way, we can’t carry’er far an she’s too heavy to boost into the loader, so let’s shove her under this stuff.”
Ned found a voice among his painfully swollen throat muscles. “Where’s Rrengha?”
“Sleeping. She has to sleep some time.”
Times she picks. “Who’s looking at us?” He didn’t dare turn his head.
“Nobody that’s gonna tell. Can you give me a hand here?”
“She dead?”
“I’m not gonna ask. Come on—”
“She’s got weapons.” He squatted to examine Hummer’s armory.
“What’s that little thing?”
He unhooked it carefully and lifted it by the loop. “It’s a Zepp.” Zepp dart: agony, madness and death in ten seconds. Not my kind of weapon. He dropped it down his shirt front, afraid to handle it, afraid to leave it about. “Nobody uses them but people like her.”
Would she have used it on me?
:Yes,: Rrengha said, waking from her own dreams in the shadow of the mess tent.
Ned picked Hummer’s comm off her wrist, stood up and ground it under his heel. “Got a direction finder. Now she’s not anywhere.” Especially if she’s dead. “Take the stunner and the zap, I’ll keep the baton. Tie up her hands with that belt, just in case.” He helped Grushka lift and carry the body, alive or dead, and push it into uncleared brush that was unlikely to be cut down now. “Just don’t wave them around.”
As he moved down the line of workers he found Spartakos. Spartakos said, “I was monitoring her comm unit. I see that violence has begun.”
Ned showed the Zepp. “Nobody else has been carrying these.” They will now, if she’s opened up those containers, they’ll feel free.
Spartakos touched it with an iridium-plated finger. “Taken from that store of weapons … she stole it.”
“Yeh.” Ned ran a hand through the sweaty mess of his hair. Violence has begun. He held out the Zepp. “I’m afraid to carry this around.”
Spartakos took it from him. Lightning flashed between his hands and a drift of powder sifted down. Violence.
“I will make arrangements for the rest of those,” Spartakos said.
Cinnabar Keys: Identity
While Ned Gattes was eating breakfast, a half-forgotten woman in a safe house on the edge of a small satellite town near Altamir, the other main city of Cinnabar Keys, was wakened by the holstered man who was guarding her.
“Madam Greisbach, a call from GalFed HQ, very urgent.”
She pulled herself up slowly and rubbed her eyes, still shadowed by fear. “They’re not supposed to know I’m here.”
“Can’t help that, ma’am, someone has to know I’m here, and it’s a secure line.”
He was a thin sharp man with a sneering voice. Eufemia Greisbach was a gentle-faced but hard-headed woman who did not like Secret Service agents even when they were cheerful and polite, or safe houses, for that matter. She took the comm from his hand and waited until he left.
A mechanical voice said, GIVE PASSWORD.
She pressed the long series of keys on the pad. The voice that came through the earpiece said: “Greisbach, is that you?”
((Greisbach is that you)) The words in the Lyhhrt vodervoice echoed and reechoed, she felt blood reddening and then draining from her face.
That evening days and days ago, she had not heard those words addressed to her at the GalFed Headquarters in Montador. Her friend and colleague Willson had spoken them, his last words, and the answer had come from his Lyhhrt murderer: No, but I will do instead.
That exchange had festered in the mind of the surviving Lyrhht and forced itself into her mind while he waited for her along with his dead Other and Willson’s body to give his burden of information.
She said, “Yes, this is she. You have survived then. Where are you?”
“Headquarters is rerouting this call but I am not there. You needn’t know, any more than I need know where you are.”
“Is it really you? How do I know you aren’t the killer?”
“Galactic Federation is content with my genome sample.” She was silent, and he added, “Would anyone else know how much you desired Willson, and respect you for not taking him from his family?”
She felt her face flaming again. “Not the respect, no.” Nor the agony she and the Lyhhrt had shared over their losses. No more powerful password could ever have been uttered. “Why have you called?”
“Galactic Federation accepts me as I am. Your identification will give me access to help from World Police.”
“I see.” She did not want to know what for.
“The murderer is dead, and you will be free soon,” he said, and the line clicked.
The mechanical voice said: REPEAT PASSWORD IF YOU ACCEPT THIS IDENTIFICATION, and after she had done that the line went dead.
The agent came to collect the comm. She said dully, “He said I’d be free soon. I guess that’s good enough.”
He stood looking at her for a moment. “There’s a good breakfast for you, waiting.”
Bonzador: Seek and Hide
:They are missing the woman and the hunt is beginning,: Rrengha said.
Ned saw only moving figures grunting with effort, some working as if they had not heard any of the news and others as if they might be spared for obeying, still others beginning to collect in threes and fours; the O’e had gathered into separate orchestrated groups that kept sight of each other as they moved. Spartakos was shepherding them; Azzah was their leader.
He caught sight of Ned, approached him through the clustering workers who did not know quite where to go, and called out, “Keep filling that loader!”
One of the women, who had stopped working to ease her back, yelled, “What’s the fucking good of that? If all the stuff we’ve been hearing is true they’ll cut us down while we’re doing their work!”
Spartakos said, “I need the loader. It’s a weapon.”
Ned stared at him, wondering if he had gone mad, like his maker. He had dulled his surface by rearranging its infinitesimal plates so that light did not jump back from them, and looked almost like a stranger.
The woman who had been yelling at Spartakos said, “You got a plan?”
“I have a course of action,” Spartakos said. “Stay away from me—and Ned, my friend, you too. Go find Azzah.”
Ned, dazed, limping from his fall under Hummer’s weight, went to find Azzah. The sun beat down hard now, the insects swarmed to drink the sweat of the laborers, and the O’e group were looking as dazed as he.
“I don’t know what,” Azzah said. “He told me to move southward and take as many as I could with me. That’s farther away from the main gate …” She called out to her cohort, “Come with, come with!”
Mindworlds Page 21
