Chain of Secrets

by Jaleta Clegg

  Others gathered while I ate. Their minds pressed on mine as they stood outside, waiting. I wondered how long they'd let me ignore them. They wanted to know who I was, how I'd found them, and what I wanted with them. I wasn't sure what answers I could give. I wasn't sure what answers I even knew or could guess.

  I finished then stood. The women watched me, their hands tucked under their aprons. Their silvery eyes followed me as I crossed the cabin and pushed open the outside door.

  Cold air poured into the cabin. I shivered as I eyed the crowd outside. There seemed to be hundreds of people, all silent, all waiting. I saw no children. I looked from face to face, seeing the genetic stamp of the Hrissia'noru in the silver hair and eyes of some. All of them were shorter than human norms. They waited, silent and still as statues.

  Their minds and emotions weren't silent. They pressed in on the walls I'd built around myself. I stayed in the doorway to the cabin. It was a stalemate. I refused to give in to their pressure. It may have been petty of me, but I was the one who had been manipulated into being there, in that isolated mountain valley. I was the one whose life had been ripped apart by the Hrissia'noru once before.

  A man finally stepped forward, his face creased with impatience. His hair was dark, his eyes silver. I shifted my attention to him. A ripple of restless movement swept through the others like wind through the forest as he came forward.

  *Who are you?* The words echoed in my mind.

  I refused to answer.

  The man's eyes narrowed. He stepped closer, until I could have touched him if I'd reached out. I crossed my arms over my chest instead, a reflexive gesture of protection. His silver eyes watched me as if I were a particularly ugly insect.

  "Why do you not speak?" he finally asked aloud. "You can speak mind to mind. Why do you refuse?"

  I shook my head, denial of what he said though I knew it was true. Hadn't I done just that the night before?

  "Who are you?" he asked with an icy snap to his voice.

  "Dace," I answered, curious what they would do with an answer that meant nothing to them.

  The man facing me pinched his mouth shut in frustration. Anger built in his mind, a force that would wash away my mental barriers. Sparks of power gathered in the air around us.

  Another man stepped forward. He was young, his hair a pale gold, his eyes the same strange shade. He placed one hand on the other man's arm. I felt the silent communication between them, a wave of power that I could taste. The dark haired man stepped back.

  "We mean you no harm," the golden haired man assured me. His voice was the lilting one that had helped the night before. He smiled, gentle and reassuring, as if I were one of the wild creatures of the mountains and not another human. "They call me Ri'ato'ul. We are honored by your presence, Dace." My name was slurred, as if it held more consonants than one.

  I wasn't fooled. The others disapproved of Ri'ato'ul and his speech. I could read their emotions more clearly than I read my own.

  "The others aren't," I said.

  Ri'ato'ul looked momentarily confused.

  I nodded at the others gathered to watch me. "They aren't honored by my presence. They're suspicious. They want to know exactly who I am and why I'm here."

  His expression reminded me of Lowell. "Then tell us who you are and why you've come. And why you do not use mind speech."

  "Because I'm notu'zhri," I said, expecting that to clarify things. It didn't.

  The whole group shifted, as if a cold wind had just blown through.

  "Notu'zhri?" Ri'ato'ul asked. His pronunciation was different than mine, more slurred. "In the ancient language it means soul of stone. The term is strange to us."

  "But you have heard of the Hrissia'noru?" I asked.

  They shifted again. A ripple of whispering, both verbal and mental fluttered through the cold air.

  "The name of our ancient people," Ri'ato'ul said. "How do you come to know of it?" He wasn't gentle and reassuring now. He was as cold and demanding as the other man had been.

  "Because I suspect they are the ones who sent me here. To find you."

  The stirring was almost gale force this time. There was a fierce argument conducted in seconds, and entirely within the minds of three of the people. The edges of their anger washed over those near them, sending those people eddying back. A woman wearing a silvery robe trimmed in white fur won that argument. She turned towards me. Ri'ato'ul stepped away, bowing to her. She ignored him, concentrating on me.

  She stood three feet in front of me, studying me with eyes the color of the pine forests. Her hair was chestnut brown, pulled back in a complicated braid. Two broad streaks of silver ran from her temples into the mass of braid, giving her hairstyle even more complexity. She was barely taller than me, and I'm considered short on most worlds. The way she carried herself made any issues over her height moot. Her supreme confidence in herself swept away obstacles.

  She raised her right hand. Her fingers shifted in a gesture I found strangely familiar. I felt her tug at my mind at the same time.

  "If you mean us no harm," she said, her voice silvery and soft, "and if you truly have been sent, then you will not resist. I will not harm you." She reached for me, her hand outstretched.

  I stepped back and ran into my two bodyguard women from the cabin. Their hands on my shoulders pushed me forward.

  The woman paused, frowning. "I wish only to verify your claim," she said as if it explained everything.

  The women behind me held my shoulders. I was still too weak to fight. Or run. I sighed and gave in. Whatever they would do to me, I couldn't stop them.

  The woman's hand touched my forehead, cold and hot and light and dark all at once. I was whirled away into my own thoughts, seen through other eyes.

  "I found another one."

  Waves curled around my bare feet, cold and stormy green. I looked up into the wind. The ocean rolled restlessly beyond the rocky shoreline. I was on a beach, cold sand and swirling wind and gray clouds overhead. And I was happy.

  Darus slid in the sand as he came over the beach. He carried a heavy shell in his hand. He grinned as he dropped it next to me, with the others.

  "Why are you collecting shells?" I asked him.

  "Because I always wanted to," he said as if it explained everything.

  I remembered that day on Parrus. It wasn't the memory the woman sought. She moved deeper into my mind.

  "Cadet Dace, report!" The order snapped me to attention.

  My heart raced double time. I'd just crashed, for the third time that morning. The simulator was being reset behind me. I stared past the head of my drill instructor. I could just see his hair, short and stiff and the color of decking plates in the rain. He tapped his clipboard impatiently.

  "Report," he ordered again. "You just died, again. Why?"

  "Because, sir," I said, my voice shaky, "I used the throttle when the pressure valves were still adjusting to the altitude change."

  "You died, cadet, because you didn't pay attention to your lesson." His voice was harder than steel, sharper than a laser cutter. "Go to your quarters and don't come back until you have studied your lessons. Don't come back until you know this ship better than I do."

  He turned his back on me, stalking away to the next unfortunate beginning pilot cadet.

  I burned with anger. He only treated me this way because I was female, and I was a scholarship student from a poor world.

  Wrong again, although I felt her surprise. She dropped her hand, studying me with her deep green eyes. "You fly starships? You are Patrol?"

  "Yes, to both." Maybe it would be easier if I just told her what she wanted to know. I opened my mouth to start.

  She raised her hand and plunged me back into my memories.

  I was cold. At least it wasn't raining. I sat hunched and shivering on the outside steps. I was locked out again. I pulled a stale crust of bread from my pocket. I'd saved it from lunch and now I was glad. At least I wouldn't be too hungry.

&nbs
p; I nibbled the bread while I looked up at the sky overhead. It had rained earlier and the ground still held a few muddy puddles. The clouds had moved on. The sky was ablaze with stars. I watched them hungrily. There were other people out there, on other worlds. Someday, I would go out there. Someday I would find those other people, those other worlds. They wouldn't lock me out. I would eat all sorts of foods and wear fancy clothes and I would be someone important.

  Best of all, I would be free. No one would hit me out there among the stars.

  I wished I could have told that skinny little girl that her dreams were nothing more than impossible wishes. I was suddenly back in the sunlight. I felt naked under the stares of the people. They shared my memories, they shared every private thought I had. Whatever barriers I'd put up before, they were down.

  Before I could do anything, the woman touched my face again. There was compassion in her touch. But there was also a compelling need to know me. The memories flowed faster now.

  Faces, voices, smells, sights, sounds, all poured through my head in a rush. Brief glimpses of my past flashed in my mind. It was a jumble.

  She shook her head impatiently. Her hands shifted. She placed them on my cheeks, cradling my face between them. She stepped closer, her breath mingling with mine in the winter air.

  "What…" I started to ask.

  She didn't bother to answer. I felt her in my head. It was almost pain, but not quite. She tugged and twisted at the strands of memory. There was a snap as resistance gave way. My memories flowed into an orderly pattern. She nodded once. And reached into my head again.

  I had no words for what I saw, not then. Light, dark, tree, bird, sunshine, shadow, cool wind blowing across bare feet I kicked in the air. A face, dark eyes and hair, and a voice that made me wriggle with happiness.

  A light touch and the memories spun forward. A pause to glimpse an intriguing moment, not to me, but to her, the one who swept through my mind. I was tempted to fight, to resist, but I had no reason.

  Confusion, pain, hunger, I was lost and alone. People rushed past me, huge and terrifyingly strange. I was crying. Someone scooped me up, carrying me through a gate into a walled yard. Voices murmured, promising me safety.

  Forward again.

  I stood on a stool, up past my elbows in dishwater. I stared out the window at the birds fighting in the bush outside. I wished I had wings. I wished I could fly.

  Memories flashed past, swiftly, scenes of the orphanage. Brief pauses on a particular face or thought or sound. Forward again.

  The door was open. I was not supposed to be in the hall, but I had faked illness to be excused from an interminable embroidery session. I crept close to the door, hiding behind the wooden panel. Male voices on the other side, asking questions about things I'd never heard of: velocity, angle, vector, radius, other terms that rang in my head like music. I crouched behind the door in fascination.

  The pain of punishment was fresh and bright, as though it was yesterday, not over a dozen years before. The ideas that so fascinated me were forbidden, which made me all the more determined to listen and learn what I could.

  Forward again.

  "Your father is missing, presumed dead." He waited as if expecting tears or grief. I felt neither. My father was a name on paper, nothing more.

  Forward again.

  I walked across the strange surface of the landing field. Very few born on Tivor had ever walked that surface. The ships rose in front of me, huge lurking shadows of metal in the night. The crew of the ship waited impatiently for me to finish gawking. I clutched my meager bag of possessions and held my head high, trying to hide my fear at the strangeness and wonder of it all. The ship's ensign welcomed me with a grimace. To me he was godlike, a privileged member of the company that flew between the stars. He was barely older than me, and resentful of being assigned to babysit me for the flight.

  Forward again.

  The uniform was scratchy, too heavily starched. It was also too big. I'd arrived a week late. There was nothing else available for several days. My head felt strange, cool and naked. The long hair I'd fought all my life was gone, shaved down to a stubble. I wiggled my toes in boots too big on my feet as I hurried after the rest of my class. I felt a surge of excitement as we entered a classroom. Those magical words, terms describing spaceflight and hyperspace, would finally be mine. I would soon be free to fly.

  I tried to ignore the insults as I walked through the mess hall. They were whispered, just loud enough for me to hear, which made them hurt all the more. I pretended not to hear them, hiding tears and anger as I'd learned so painfully on Tivor.

  I stood at the end of a line of ten cadets. I was a head shorter than the others. My dress uniform was freshly pressed, creased to knife edges. I stared into the air over the heads of those watching. The others had families cheering them, I had no one. The Academy Director himself presented the medals. Top ten students in a class of over two thousand. He came to me last, stopping to smile before placing the medal around my neck. His slight nod was recognition enough for me.

  The ship leapt under my hands. My ship, Star's Grace, seemed to float up through the atmosphere on her maiden flight. Well, not exactly maiden for her, but it was for me. My own ship, she was mine. I'd spent several months rebuilding her. We were finally free to fly, me and my crew of two.

  The ship exploded behind me. Bits scraped over the hull of my pod as I tumbled, blind and out of control. Someone had sabotaged the pod.

  I was lost in the woods. My horse had dumped me. Leran was going to be furious with me when he found me. A creature with huge teeth loomed over me. I screamed and bolted, running blindly through the trees.

  "No," I protested, stopping the flow of memories. I didn't want to face the rest. "I'll tell you what you want to know."

  The woman with the pine colored eyes shook her head. Her hands were warm on my face.

  Tears slid warm and heavy down my face as I closed my eyes again, plunged inevitably into my memories. "No," I whispered once more as the past closed over me.

  He came out of the mist like a primeval god in a really bad vid. The mist of the forest morning swirled around him.

  His name was Malcolm Tayvis and he was going to change my life, completely and irrevocably. And he was dead.

  I pushed myself away from my memories, distancing myself, becoming an impassive observer as the rest flowed by. It didn't help.

  I stood in a wide courtyard of stone, smoke billowing from the burning buildings all around me. A woman faced me, a blaster in her hand aimed at my face. I raised my own hand and fired. She stared at me, her eyes wide in shock and surprise as she crumpled slowly to the stone. I'd killed her. Her name was Vunia and she would have killed me without a second thought. It didn't matter. I'd shot her point blank.

  I knelt over Tayvis, watching his labored breathing. He was dying. We were hiding in a thicket of bushes. I heard the Patrol ships landing and breathed a sigh of relief.

  The flow of memories paused. I blinked in the bright morning sunlight and shivered in the cold air. The woman watched me, her head tipped to one side.

  "You wished to hide your memories of this man. Why?"

  I couldn't find the words to say what I felt. I gave her my grief instead. Her eyes filled with tears. She replied with a wordless warmth of compassion.

  "Forgive me," she whispered, "but we must know the truth."

  The memories flowed again. I was dimly aware of tears dripping from her hands, hers and mine mingled together.

  Chapter 28

  Lowell sat at the tiny table, a steaming cup slowly cooling in front of him. He stared down at the swirled pattern printed on the table top as if it held the answers he sought. He sighed and rubbed his eyes with one hand. The answers weren't there. He wasn't sure anymore where they were.

  He glanced up as a man walked past the small cafe. Half of its tables were located outside the front, almost in the station walkway. The shop across the way was still closed. It was early mo
rning, day shift, on Viya Station. Few people were out and those he saw, like the man now well past the cafe, were on business. Most wore uniforms of one sort or another, usually the gray jumpsuits of station dock workers and techs.

  He shifted his cup to one side. He had no intention of actually drinking it. A group of workers, laughing and teasing each other, entered the cafe and ordered. Lowell watched their loud group as they selected a table to sit at. Two women, three men, all looked young and untroubled. He could almost envy them.

  Another handful of people entered the cafe, ordering breakfast. The walkway filled with people. Another day had started on the station. The lights flickered to full brightness. The tables at the cafe filled up with people. Lowell watched them, a habit almost as old as he was.

  Tayvis entered the cafe. He wore a dock workers jumpsuit, gray and baggy. Lowell wondered idly if they were deliberately made not to fit anyone. Tayvis collected a cup and turned, surveying the cafe. The chair across from Lowell was one of the few still empty. Tayvis made his way through the crowd to the chair. Lowell admired the way Tayvis made it look casual, unplanned. He waited until he was settled before speaking.

  "You're looking well, for a dead man."

  Tayvis looked up. His face was thinner, his expression harder, than Lowell remembered. A faint scar started just past his left eye, angling into his hairline.

  "You're looking well," he replied, "for an admiral. Is the Patrol demoting everyone or are you slumming again?"

  "I do what I have to," Lowell answered, more sharply than he intended. "I always have."

  "And what good has it done anyone?"

  Lowell could almost taste the hostility in the air. This wasn't what he wanted. He lifted his cup and tasted the tepid liquid instead. It was as bitter as the expression on Tayvis' face.