2014 Campbellian Anthology

by Various

Three gifts in one, I mused, Serkadren wanted to show her and everyone in Behtalka’s orbit how easy it is for him. He will instruct his engineers to choose the best apprentice weaponeers as well, Kem-Fir will lose its knowledge monopoly in one fell swoop. An uprising or a Whittling now if she refuses, annihilation of the tower by starvation or takeover later if she accepts.

  Just then, I heard a low hum behind me. Through the barrier came the Tel-Kir who had harassed the Sedói. A whiff of barely suppressed triumph hovered around him. He went to the dais, touched the edge of Teg-Rav’s over-robe. A discharge ran through his fingers and the musk in the room got overlaid with the acrid scent of burnt flesh. When he withdrew his hand, I saw spots of blood glisten on the garment. The dull throb behind my eyes sharpened to a fiery spike. I felt such spikes whenever I faced a Tohduat who could not—or would not—control his Talent.

  “Please greet our guest,” Teg-Rav told him. He stood stock-still, looking down at me from his great height. “Properly this time, Tan-Rys.” The scent in the room turned slightly bitter and his yellow eyes flickered like brush fires. He ostentatiously went on one knee, touched my ankle. Unlike her, he was easy prey, I sensed him think. We’ll demand his ship’s weight in water.

  “Do you wish to best your adversaries?” I challenged him as he snapped upright.

  “With your puny help?” he jeered.

  I inhaled and spoke as fast as I could, switching to the tonals forbidden to all but the Dor-Nys. “I brought a drug that can put some of your people into temporary suspended animation. This will let you repair the reservoir ducts without a Whittling.” I kept addressing her but pinned my gaze on him. “Do you want to protect your people as you have vowed to do? Or do you seriously think that capturing the Melhuat’s low-Talented brother will be your salvation?”

  “I should have pulverized you when I had the chance!” he growled. I dove for the floor. A needle from his arm darter flew through where I had just stood and buried itself in the wall.

  “Pause!” I heard Teg-Rav shout, an arena fight command. When I looked up, she was standing at the edge of the dais, the sconce lights swirling restlessly in her wake.

  “Who else knows you’re Talented? And that Tan-Rys is an Amplifier?” I asked her as soon as I was reasonably sure he would obey her. “How long before the resonance between you grows so strong that the dampener fails? And what will happen when the Nim-Zad realize you let the Idriem test you so that they could customize the dampener?”

  Slowly she removed her mask. Her fine-hewn face bore no decorative scars, except for the two interlocking circles inlaid on her left temple and cheekbone. She was young, younger than I, but the skin around her eyes was as discolored and cracked as her lips.

  “My people must not find out,” she said, her tonals shifting to equal address. “At least not before Kem-Fir has fully recovered. We will exchange Serkadren’s brother for water—or for Behtalkat engineers without tithes of people or skills from us. I thank Ténli for its offer, but my people would never accept it. Even if it works as you say, it will make us dependent on you.”

  “Besides, why should we trust you?” added Tan-Rys. “What is Ténli’s gain in this?”

  “The motives of Ténli I will discuss with your Dor-Nys,” I said. To my surprise he gave me a genuine smile. What a Tel-Kir you would make… I turned to Teg-Rav. “Serkadren will not ransom Talsekrit. Talsekrit is still alive, alone of the Melhuat’s half-brothers, only because he is a Tohduat. But even if Serkadren valued him, the Melhuat of Behtalka can never appear weak to the other Confederation members.”

  Teg-Rav stumbled. Tan-Rys stiffened but she raised her hand and he went instantly still. Slowly, she sat down at the edge of her dais. Then it is well that I told the Nim-Zad to start the Whittling as soon as you walked into this room, Antóa Tásri.

  “I’m too thirsty to continue blocking you,” she murmured. She rubbed her eyes tiredly. “The first of many such decisions. Now you know why a Dor-Nys always wears a mask.”

  Perhaps I could still retrieve something from the ruin, if I acted fast enough. In measured steps, I went to her and gathered a fistful of her robe, ignoring the jabs of electricity that racked my arm. “If you grant me a few kos-it of time, I will go into suspension with Tan-Rys to show your people it can be done. We will endure the black sleep together, he and I, and awaken together—or not at all. If not for this time, then for the future, so that you have choices.”

  • • •

  We underwent the ordeal in Tan-Rys’ starship, anchored next to mine on the rooftop of Kem-Fir. It was a compromise: they would not allow me to bring anything inside the tower, I deemed it foolhardy to give them access to the Sedói.

  I persuaded Tan-Rys to consume several dewgatherers before we lay down on the hard platforms in the crew quarters. He was already parched, and the black sleep would dehydrate him further. A watchful ring formed around us, bristling with biometric testers. I proffered him the two identical plungers. They contained a dose calibrated to hit hard but wear out fast. He watched me discharge mine before following suit. A few heartbeats later, darkness pulled me under like a cold seawave.

  When I surfaced, I tried to stand up but my legs kept folding under me. The Idriem had warned us about the nausea and disorientation. I had faintly felt Tan-Rys at the edge of my awareness but his presence had been oddly reassuring, a whiff of warm wind. It was the rest that had been disquieting. As I continued the contest with my limbs, he glared at me from the floor.

  “Done this before?” he rasped.

  “Once,” I answered. I didn’t think it was a good time to tell him I had emerged with a tiny cardiac arrhythmia—and that the damage had defied the repair efforts of Ténli’s best healers.

  “You’re braver than I thought.” Gritting his teeth, he managed to get up. Nobody presumed to offer him aid. I consulted my time keeper—the people of Kem-Fir out in the wilderness might still be alive. At that point, silence swept the room and the circle around us opened to let Teg-Rav through.

  “What did the instruments show?” she asked.

  “The Ténli-e spoke truth, Dor-Nys,” said a woman whose studs and inlays indicated she was an engineer. “The instruments showed them close to death across all metrics—heartbeat, temperature, oxygen consumption, brain activity.”

  “And you, Tel-Kir, how do you fare?” she asked Tan-Rys. He flexed his hands, making the links to his weapons thrum.

  “Well enough to resume protecting Kem-Fir, Dor-Nys.”

  “Now that I’m here, I would like to see the Ténli-e vessel,” said Teg-Rav.

  “It is reckless enough to come outside—but enter the witch ship? This is improper, Dor-Nys,” said the senior Nim-Zad.

  “You also felt that Nir-Vad’s choice of successor and her last wish were improper,” replied Teg-Rav. The hush deepened and the air in the room turned sour with electricity. “It is good to speak your mind. But don’t make it a habit to constantly question the decisions of your Dor-Nys.”

  • • •

  “May I offer you some water?” I asked as soon as we were in the Sedói. Tan-Rys entered behind Teg-Rav while two Nim-Zad were stationed outside, weapons readied.

  “Not while my people thirst,” she replied removing her mask as slowly as an aged woman. “However, I think my Tel-Kir needs it.” Tan-Rys scowled but emptied the bowl I handed him, though he stopped drinking every now and then to glance at her.

  “Many in the Confederation would like to see Behtalkat rule moderated. For that to happen, the rest of us must band together and give them no excuse for intervening. Is the Melhuat’s brother still alive?”

  “He is,” she admitted after a tiny hesitation. “Of course, the Nim-Zad examined him thoroughly. But I won’t let the Tel-Kir exert themselves until our aquifer is repaired.”

  “Afterwards, he’s ours,” rumbled Tan-Rys, eyes and teeth glinting. “A Tohduat in the arena—that will be rare entertainment!”

  “It’s true that Serkadren cannot show we
akness by offering ransom. But the Tohduat leave none of theirs unavenged. Not a surprising policy, when they glean Talented children from all members of the Confederation. If you kill Talsekrit, you hand Behtalka the perfect reason to obliterate Kem-Fir.” I sensed Teg-Rav parsing the permutations. “If you return Talsekrit, Behtalka will be in your debt, rather than the other way around,” I pointed out. I took a deep breath. “And if you allow the people now wandering outside to return, it will signal to the other towers and the rest of the Confederation that Kem-Fir’s Dor-Nys is confident in her rule.”

  “I cannot do that,” she said quietly. “Once chosen for Whittling, they receive the outcast caste mark. If a merchant convoy is nearby sometimes they collect survivors, especially if they’re young. But none can ever enter a tower again, theirs or any other.”

  “Then let me take them. I can be considered a merchant of sorts.”

  “In this?” she asked, gesturing at the Sedói.

  I had been feeling cold ever since the black sleep, but now I grew colder. “How many went outside?” The Sedói could hold about twelve people. Seventeen, if I removed everything but the engines and the control console…

  “One hundred eighty-three,” she replied. I sank into a seat.

  Suddenly Tan-Rys put his hand on her robe and kept it there. The low sizzle was clearly audible. “Let me take them, Dor-Nys,” he said so low I could barely hear him. “My marauder is big enough.” She looked at the thin rills of blood seeping from under his hand. Carefully, she interposed her own hand between his and her garment.

  “Where do you propose to take them? Such an act will make you an outcast as well.”

  “I’m already spending the gift of a second life,” he replied. “I will take them to our merchant outpost on Regadif. It is a free zone, nobody will interfere with us there. It won’t be easy living without the scent of a Dor-Nys, in a place where castes shift and mingle—but it’s our old home.” He touched the two circles on his neck. “We of Kem-Fir still have its two suns as our device.”

  “When Rovbehim and Tuvrehad shifted orbits and boiled Regadif’s seas away, the Ténli-e helped build the ships that brought the Gan-Tem here,” I added. “Perhaps our peoples can fly together again?”

  “I wish I could fly between the stars,” she said longingly. “The only time a Dor-Nys goes outside is when she takes over another tower. And when she lies on her death platform, surrounded by her companions.” She pulled one of the adornments from her halo of hair and held it out to Tan-Rys. Then she handed me Talsekrit’s misedraht. “Tell Serkadren of Behtalka that this and the Tohduat who carries it are gifts from the Dor-Nys of Kem-Fir.” Then she took off her two over-robes and dropped them on the floor.

  • • •

  Tan-Rys and I hurriedly strung a web between our two ships made of ribbons from Teg-Rav’s robes stretched on kel-in wires. As we flew around Kem-Fir, the winds that raked the twilight plucked the web. And the banished came—they came to the call of the windsong and Teg-Rav’s scent. They staggered and crawled into the docking bay of the marauder, skins blistered and peeling. We didn’t get them all. Some had impaled themselves on thorns, walked into the path of kel-dif lizards, gone under Gid-en’s merciless light. I helped them lie down wherever I could find a spot and I pressed plungers, calculating and recalculating the doses and hoping I had enough. Even so, I knew that some would not awaken when we reached Regadif.

  The Nim-Zad flung Talsekrit at me when I was detaching the web from the Sedói. He was clothed in bruises, gashes and crusted blood. I cared for him as best I could and put a force field across the entrance to the sleep cubicle of the Sedói. He was furious with shame and fear. When he saw his misedraht handle peeking from my armband, he locked himself in silence. I didn’t envy him—Serkadren was known for finesse, but not for gentleness. The Tohduat were known for neither.

  “Care to cajole the Behtalkat at the jump point?” asked Tan-Rys as we sped to our destination. He had agreed to let me attach the Sedói to his marauder and act as his astrogator ‘this once’. “You’ll be better at it than I.”

  “Anyone would be better at it than you,” I teased him. He let out his harsh cough of amusement. “But our best safeguard is Talsekrit.”

  When we emerged from the jump point, the Behtalkat ship’s weapons strafed the space around us. But it was only a gesture, their missiles went ostentatiously wide. I had beamed an unencrypted message at maximum boost as soon as we had left Gan-Tem.

  “I will not be able to contact you openly, but the merchants always leak information,” Teg-Rav said, filling the viewscreen. “You will be welcome in Kem-Fir as long as I am its Dor-Nys. Longer, if I’m successful.” Her eyes flickered to Tan-Rys. “May you never be bested, Tel-Kir.” And the viewscreen went dark. He leaned over and touched it.

  “May wind never touch your face, Dor-Nys,” he whispered.

  We got little sleep between flying, monitoring our sleepers, and the damage to our bodies from windblown grit and Gid-En’s radiation. The pain was fierce—I heard stifled moans escape Tan-Rys when he thought I was dozing—and we lacked regenerating stem cultures. As Regadif’s two suns grew in our screens, he kept rubbing the kel-in ornament Teg-Rav had given him. In my fatigue I must have slipped, because he answered my unspoken question.

  “Each ornament on a Dor-Nys’ hair comes from a past Dor-Nys. This was Nir-Vad’s. Do you know what signals the succession?”

  “The Dor-Nys takes a lover openly,” I replied.

  “I’m past my prime, though Nim-Zad still ask me to sire more for their caste and mine. Yet Nir-Vad chose me. When she removed her mask, I thought I would be consumed. But she smiled, and said, ‘I am too ill to be pleasured, Tel-Kir. Just keep me warm.’ When the time came for me to be staked down next to her platform, she used her last wish to give me my life. The senior Nim-Zad were furious at the custom breach. She made me swear I would never let harm come to her successor. I think she knew Teg-Rav and I were Possessed.” His eyes filled and he must have been worn out, because he let them overflow. “I keep wondering if I kept my promise.”

  And as the full repercussions of my actions sank in, I wept with him.

  • • •

  “You exceeded your brief by far,” Némi Ferái Kámi-o remarked, as quietly as was ever his wont. “You went to Kem-Fir to prevent a Whittling, not to bring a starship’s worth of outcasts to Regadif.”

  “The group will be a refuge for Talented Gan-Tem,” I argued, determined to remain calm. “Serkadren and the Tohduat are now in Teg-Rav’s debt. Serkadren cannot attack Kem-Fir or Regadif without harming his own standing.”

  “The Circle met yestereve,” he said. My heart sank below the garden flagstones. He put his hand on my wrist—gently, though the regenerating skin stung even at the lightest touch—and I girded myself to hear the rest. “Your name will henceforth be Tásri-e.” And he let his happiness flood my mind. “Do not be so overwhelmed, nobility of merit is not hereditary,” he reminded me, his smile broadening.

  At that moment, one of the Kámi-o retainers glided through the translucent pavilion curtains holding a message tablet. “Némi Ferái, Némi Antóa,” he greeted us, bowing. Némi Antóa… Had the Behtalkat not destroyed our orbiting science stations, my parents might have lived to see this day. Collecting myself, I focused on the tablet which Ferái had activated.

  “Antóa Tásri-e,” said the man on the screen in Dominant Mode Behtalkat. Dressed in a opulent ivory suit that outlined his body, Serkadren was as handsome as an ice crystal lit by the noonday sun, his closely cropped hair lighter than davói fields in summer. “The Tohduat tell me my brother will mend fully. I also understand that Kem-Fir can once again meet its obligations to the Confederation. I am delighted to be so deeply in debt to someone of such intelligence and courage. If you and your guardian would accept my hospitality, I would like to thank you in person.” The warmth in his beautifully modulated voice didn’t quite reach his cloud-grey eyes.

  “Is it tru
e that he plans to change Behtalkat law?” I asked Ferái, whose mien had darkened.

  “It is true,” he admitted. “Besides pardaht, he also wants to have an official consort.”

  “Preferably a Ténli-e noble, to burnish his rule.”

  Ferái cast me a long, troubled glance. “I could wish you less astute. We Ténli-e never contract loveless unions, yet I cannot deny how much such a connection would help our cause. He might even abide by Ténli-e custom and leave his consort free to take lovers. But I never thought to sacrifice you on this altar. Nor had he reason to cast his attention on you—till now.”

  “I will do whatever I must to protect our people on Ténli, on Regadif, on Gan-Tem—”

  Ferái stood up abruptly. Putting his hands carefully around mine, he bowed deeply over them and held the bow—he, the first among equals of the Ténli Circle!

  “Ténli is honored that you walk on it, Erúe’s pride, Kandéi’s joy… Ferái’s hope.”

  Stewart C Baker became eligible for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer with the publication of “Raising Words” in Penumbra eMag (Jul. 2013), edited by Celina Summers.

  Visit his website at www.infomancy.net.

  * * *

  Short Story: “Behind the First Years” ••••

  Short Story: “Raising Words” ••••

  BEHIND THE FIRST YEARS

  by Stewart C Baker

  First published in COSMOS Online (May 2013), edited by Cat Sparks

  • • • •

  FIVE SHORT HOURS to planet-fall, Pete sat watching Magda die. Her hands were thin and wrinkle-fine, the leathern colour of paper five-hundred years old. She had been Archivist sixty years before him there in the great, silent bulk of the ship.

  “But what am I to do when we land?” he asked. “I have only been Transcriber, Magda. I never—”

  “You must look behind the shelf of the first years.”

  “The shelf of the first years is empty.”