The Sentients of Orion

by Marianne de Pierres

  Jo-Jo was overwhelmed by a putrid sweet scent that made him want to gag. Hot burning liquid climbed through his throat, causing such a sharp pain in his chest that he had to clamp his mouth shut to prevent a moan escaping. Bethany’s fingers clawed at his foot.

  Keep it together, Beth. Keep it to—

  Then he heard a deep, distressed sob. Not Beth. Petalu Mau. But Jo-Jo didn’t dare move his head to look.

  The creature stopped its feeding and retracted its feelers inside its mouth lobes. The upper part of its torso rotated in a semicircle as if it were straining to detect the source of the noise.

  Jo-Jo wondered which its strongest senses were. Clearly it could hear—but how well could it see?

  It crawled closer to them—only a table length away now—undulating as though it was caught in a strong wind. Extending its feelers again it ran them along the tabletop and down the closest legs.

  Bethany let go of Jo-Jo’s foot. She was going to run. He knew, because that was what he wanted to do himself. He felt his leg muscles bunching.

  The creatures seemed slow-moving enough. Maybe they had a chance if they were.

  He pressed his palms against the floor, ready to push up, when he caught a movement from the corner of his eye: a humanesque figure running straight towards the CTL column. The creature near them spun with freakish speed, bunched its body and sprang after it.

  Jo-Jo raised his head.

  In several agile bounds the creature covered half the distance to the column. But those closer to the column beat it there. One of them knocked the ‘esque down with its raking mid-claws and the group fell on him, feelers intertwined and fighting for position.

  Jo-Jo hugged the floor and began a furious belly-crawl towards the service lift, his adrenalin stoked by the victim’s cries. He crawled over bodies, barely feeling the flesh beneath their clothes. He didn’t look at their faces—didn’t look anywhere but at the red light pulsing gently above the service lift.

  When he was only a few body lengths away from it he became aware of movement at his elbow. Bethany scrambled past him, blood spattered over her grimly set jaw.

  She reached the lift first and hit the button to summon it.

  Jo-Jo pulled her back down, but across the trade court the group feeding on the fallen ‘esque retracted their feelers and started up an odd swaying motion.

  They’d seen her.

  ‘Be ready,’ Jo-Jo rasped. He watched the lift icon pulsing downward as the lift itself descended from the top tier of the station.

  One of the creatures bunched its body and sprang towards them.

  As the lift icon hit the midpoint of its descent Jo-Jo jumped up and grabbed a chair, ready to swing.

  Bethany threw herself at the lift door, pounding the summon button repeatedly. ‘Please!’ she cried. ‘Please!’

  Jo-Jo raised the chair. Time, he told himself. Just buy some time.

  Then he felt a hand on his arm.

  Petalu wrenched the chair from his hand. The big man’s torso was heaving from exertion and sweat still poured from his plump face. But his earlier fear had gone. His eyes were quite calm. ‘Me.’

  Jo-Jo dropped back, looking for another weapon, but there was nothing within close reach. He backed up against the lift door next to Beth.

  The creature bunched to spring as the door opened. Bethany fell inside with Jo-Jo after her.

  Then Petalu took one almighty swing...

  TRIN

  They felt the water a long time before they saw it. It reached for them with fleeting salty touches on their skin and a stinging flavour at the back of their parched throats, giving heart to the misery of their flight. In the lightening sky Trin saw the outline of the high dunes and the hint of sea mist.

  A few hours only.

  He had ordered Juno Genarro and his scouts not to return this time unless trouble threatened but to save their strength to swim to the palazzo marina and bring back transport for the rest of them. He had held out against Cass Mulravey, insisting that the scouts retained their cooling robes.

  Despite walking through the darkness of the night, those without suits or robes were dehydrated. Trin tried to keep Djeserit close to him but she insisted on helping those who struggled most. Her own skin was blistered and flaking from the searing nightwinds.

  More of them had died during the night. Some were his men—those who had surrendered their robes on his orders. Trin’s fury collected in a mental space reserved for Cass Mulravey. She nursed her women as though they were more precious. And her presence was a constant reminder that Mira Fedor had left carrying his child.

  He fretted that Mira would not return with aid, that she would turn her back on her world. He held endless conversations with her in his mind, arguments that always ended in the same place, with the same look: him demanding and her accusing.

  ‘Principe.’ Djeserit was next to him.

  ‘Si,’ Trin said. ‘We must cross them now.’

  He knew that her gaze followed his to the towering shadows that were the last line of red dunes. ‘They must be as high as Mount Pell,’ Djeserit gasped. ‘How can we climb them?’

  ‘We will not if we wait for the daylight,’ Trin said grimly. ‘Ever.’

  In the east the sky grew lighter. He did not need to explain himself to Djeserit. Her practical sense was greater than his, and her selflessness shamed and angered him. She had helped the weakest—man and woman—despite her own unhealed injury. And when they stopped to rest she always attended Trin, listening while he spoke with Joe Scali and the others, serving him a little food and water, soothing him with her presence.

  ‘Tell me again,’ Djeserit whispered. ‘Tell me what is on the other side.’

  ‘If our route is accurate we will see the Tourmaline Islands,’ Trin said. ‘And the holiday palazzo with its medi-facility. And food.’

  She moved closer, not quite touching him. ‘You have led us to safety, Principe.’

  Gratification fluttered in his breast. Her respect never failed to lift his spirits. Djeserit was right: he had saved them.

  Buoyed above his exhaustion by self-belief, Trin gave his order to Joe Scali and Vespa Malocchi.

  ‘Everyone must climb. Now. We must not wait.’

  * * *

  Trin led them over the last line of dunes without once looking back, concentrating on the impossible task of moving his numb legs, thinking ahead to the sight of the palazzo, feeling the cool safety of its interior.

  The world around him dwindled to a single dogged purpose, and he had only a dim recognition of the sounds that he could hear: a shout, and weak cries of despair that could have been people calling his name. But he thought the voices were part of his tortured inner world, or part of his past. The present was the hot sand into which his aching feet scraped transient hollows, and it was the slicing pain across his lower back from muscles pushed beyond their endurance. When his trembling legs threatened to collapse he fell to his knees and crawled.

  Hand, knee, hand, knee...

  Trin reached the crest that way. Then, as he came to the top of the dune, the slap of a cooler wind raised his energy, and he let momentum tumble him down the other side. It rolled him nearly to the edge. With rattling breaths he crawled the final distance and flopped himself into the water, tearing open his fellalo to let the tepid liquid flood inside it. He wallowed and gasped, his mind filled with the cooling feel of it on his skin and the irresistible desire to drink it in. Only the dragging sensation as his robe became waterlogged forced him to retreat to the sand.

  ‘Principe!’

  Trin dashed water from his eyes and sought the source of the voice. Joe Scali. He stared up at his friend. There was no relief in the man’s ravaged face, no celebration of arrival. Joe’s legs shook as if he would fall.

  ‘Djeserit is not here—’

  Trin stumbled to his feet, his heart thumping.

  ‘And the palazzo—’ said Joe hoarsely.

  Trin turned seaward. The Tourmaline I
slands were exactly where he had reckoned: a line of flat scrubby land dots so close together that they would have looked like another large land mass if each one had not been divided from its neighbours by narrow channels of foaming water.

  He scanned north, seeking the palazzo’s familiar outline. It too was where it should have been, its imposing column-edges pale against the dawn. Above it, though, flashed the lights of circling AiVs.

  ‘They are there ahead of us.’ Trin turned to Joe. ‘Quickly. Call the men. We must get to the cover of the nearest island before the light is truly upon us.’

  ‘Trinder.’ Joe’s tragic face again. ‘See.’

  With an effort Trin widened the scope of his view, as though his eyes had become a telescope through which he must alter magnifications scanning first along the beach line where he saw Cass Mulravey and her women in the water as he had been; saw Cass herself scooping water over the head of the bambino Vito. The infant hung limply in her arms. ‘Where are the rest?’ he demanded. ‘Why are they taking so long?’

  This time Joe Scali dragged at the front of Trin’s robe, pulling him round to face the dunes. Bodies lay on the ridge and further down the side: men, all of them without robes, fallen from exposure in their final effort.

  ‘Carabinere.’

  ‘St. Some did not make it that far, even.’

  Trin struggled to remember something. Why was it so hard to think, and to see? Then it came back to him. ‘Djes?’

  ‘I saw her helping Seb Malocchi. I-I...’

  Trin strained his eyes again to examine each fallen body, searching out the configuration of the limbs. On the furthest, half buried in the red sand, he thought he saw his pale ensign. He had bound Djes’s leg with it when the Saqr had wounded her and now she wore it, hidden under her clothing. Wrenching free of Joe Scali’s grasp he staggered along the beach, fuelled with emotion.

  As he passed Cass Mulravey he stopped and waded out to her. ‘See what you have done.’ He punched his fist towards his dead Carabinere. ‘See what you have cost me.’

  She didn’t flinch from his anger but held out her hand to the women. ‘And see what you have saved. I’m sorry for your men, Trinder Pellegrini. But you have saved your future. Without these women you are nothing. You cannot even breed.’

  Trin would have hit her then, slapped her down into the water and held her under until all the air left her limp body if he had not needed the last of his strength to reach Djes.

  He left Mulravey and began first to climb, then to crawl up the almost sheer face of the dune, towards his ensign.

  Djes was there, half buried as he had guessed, beside Seb Malocchi’s body. Malocchi was gone, his tongue swollen, his cracked lips coloured with dried blood.

  Trin dug for her underneath the corpse of the Garabinere, shuddering with the effort, unable to cry. He remembered the fire in Loisa. He had saved Seb from it, just so he could die with no less dignity.

  Joe Scali joined him, and Vespa Malocchi, Vespa cradling his fratella’s face while Joe helped Trin pull Djeserit free.

  Trin put his face to her lips but felt no breath. ‘Djes.’

  ‘Principe.’ Joe Scali brushed the sand from her neck. ‘See.’

  Her gills moved sluggishly as if her body was searching for another source of oxygen.

  ‘Quickly. The water.’

  Together they dragged Djeserit down the dune and laid her in the surf. Trin held her body against his, willing oxygen into her blood, muttering senseless words. The water sluiced off the worst of the dirt and the flaking skin, leaving her face hideously raw. But Trin saw only her failing gills.

  The survivors gathered on the water’s edge, watching in silent exhaustion.

  Cass Mulravey pushed to the front of the group. ‘She’s part Mio. Move her through the water,’ said Mulravey. ‘In a circle—to get the water passing through.’

  The cursed woman was right. Trin dug his feet into the sand and began to spin slowly around.

  After a dozen spins Djeserit’s gills started to open and close rhythmically and within a few moments her top eyelids slid open. She stared at Trin through the water and the milky aqua-membrane, orientating herself. She seemed so alien at that moment.

  He continued to spin her until she tapped his arm to tell him to stop. When he let go of her she flipped over and swam in slow circles of her own. Finally she surfaced, taking in great gasps of air as water drained from her gills and they shut.

  Trin wanted to hold her again to reassure himself of the life in her. Instead he moved stiffly away to the water’s edge.

  ‘Principe! The scouts!’ shouted one of the men.

  The lightening sky revealed three flat-yachts sailing in from the north. Trin recognised the type of vessels as those from the Palazzo’s marina, and identified Juno Genarro at the bow of the lead one.

  ‘There is cover amongst the thorn bushes on the closer islands. We must reach there before full light,’ Trin told the survivors. They had clustered into their two distinct groups: Mulravey’s women and the pitiful remainder of Trin’s men.

  ‘What about the palazzo?’ Mulravey asked.

  ‘You can see the AiVs as well as I,’ said Trin.

  ‘Perhaps they are survivors like us.’

  ‘Then you should take your group and find out. Mine will take cover on the islands.’ He swept his glance over her women and the couple of men with them. ‘Those of you who would come with me will have my protection.’

  ‘Protection?’ Mulravey made a dry, disparaging sound.

  Yet as she did so the familia women left her group to stand, heads bowed, among Trinder’s men.

  Mulravey’s face crumpled with disappointment. ‘You’ve brainwashed your women, Pellegrini, but when Mira Fedor returns things’ll change. They’ll listen to her.’

  ‘Deserters do not earn respect.’

  ‘Mira Fedor is no deserter. Careful whose reputation you dirty.’

  Trin felt his anger rising again. ‘What is your decision, woman? We have no time to waste.’

  One of her group pushed forward to the front; a morose male wearing a cheap envirosuit, threaded at the knees and shoulders. ‘Don’ talk to my sister like that.’

  ‘Lennie, stop!’ hissed Mulravey.

  Trin sneered openly at her. ‘So you would take cooling robes from the backs of soldiers for your women, but leave your brother with one.’

  ‘She wanted me to give it over,’ said her brother. ‘Not that it’s good fer much.’

  Mulravey held her head high but Trin sensed her chagrin. ‘You have not given up yours either, Principe,’ she countered.

  Trin reached inside himself for self-assurance and righteousness. Of course I must be protected. I am Principe.

  He turned to the flat-yachts rolling into shore on the breaking waves. ‘Make your choice.’

  SOLE

  play’m play’m little creatures

  scurry scurry in out ‘round

  scratch’m deep, bleed’m more

  luscious luscious

  TEKTON

  Tekton’s free-mind remained in a bad mood for days after his breakfast with Ra. It shouldn’t have been, really. Ra showed every sign of being rattled by Tekton’s project. Yet Tekton knew that Ra and the others were not to be underestimated.

  Show/beauty had been Sole’s instruction.

  It had taken Tekton so many months to settle on what God might find beautiful that he was not sure how advanced the other tyros’ projects were.

  In truth, beauty had been a puzzle that he’d been unable to unravel. The evening, though, when he had seen Miranda Seeward’s thighs and arms rippling as she wrestled her lawmon colleague in the Melange bar, the answer had come to him: the archiTect’s second creed, beauty is in the eye of the builder. Tekton would create beauty not for Sole, but for himself. And nothing—NOTHING—was more beautiful, more exciting, more ecstasy-beholden to his free-mind than the sight of undulating flesh.

  Now that Tekton had located the exotic and
rare mineral amalgam that would turn his vision into reality, he had just to keep it away from prying eyes while it was constructed.

  To process the amalgam he would need a foundry of sorts and warehousing while it was sculpted. Logic-mind warned him that he would need to find a discreet workshop for the sculpting process. Manufacturing large quantities of quixite without OLOSS sanction would likely incur a great penalty, so fearful were they of any material that might be perverted to support the trans-humanesque cause.

  But Tekton did not have time to wait for sanction. That would give Ra and the other tyros more time. He needed a facility now.

  The Entity has requested your presence in the shafting room.

  Now?

  Yes, Godhead.

  Not a little annoyed at the timing, Tekton hastened to the surface building. The Balol matron wasn’t there this time. The attendant was a tall thin Pagoin who looked as if he might implode from sheer fragility.

  Tekton entered the sheer-walled room and stared at the shafting cylinder, remembering his previous experiences with startling clarity.

  ‘This will not be painful or nauseating like the initial procedure. Well... only slightly nauseating, so I’m told,’ said the Pagoin.

  ‘Why do I need to be here at all? I have had my... procedure as you call it.’

  ‘The accentuation facility in this room gives you a more multidimensional and intimate communication experience with Sole. The Entity prefers to use this when it has something important to communicate. The auditory preceptors in your remodelled mind have limitations.’ The attendant blinked several times. ‘Do you mind me asking, Godhead, what is it like to have two separate minds?’

  Tekton thought to ignore the question. Then he reconsidered. ‘It is most... liberating,’ he allowed.