by Chris Walley
“Wepps, after descent, I want all the Krallen checked—each one out of its casing, powered up, and all systems tested. And a full status report to me.”
Wepps wrinkled his brow. “Cap’n, you’re a hard man these days. Can’t we wait until we’re in orbit? Even with 3 percent nonoperational—and that’s unheard of—we’d still have around one hundred and forty-five thousand ready.”
“Wepps, I want us ready to launch a fast, crushing attack from the moment we reach Farholme orbit. I want full readiness before we get there.”
“As you will, Cap’n.” There was a pause. “So you anticipate us needing the Krallen despite this diplomacy stuff?”
Lezaroth looked forward to where a small star at the center of the screen vanished behind the gathering mists of the Nether-Realms.
“Wepps, trust my intuition: we are going to war.”
Early the next morning Merral and Lloyd flew to the Manalahi Shoals. Vero met them on the strip and Merral, squinting against the glare of the white coral sand, envied his friend’s extra-dark glasses.
Gulls wheeled and squawked noisily above.
“The patient is doing well,” Vero reported. “We haven’t talked to him today, but he’s eating. The infection is almost gone.”
“And Betafor?” Merral said as they walked over to the whitewashed cluster of unfinished buildings.
“Still in her room. She behaves oddly. She’ll stand as still as a piece of furniture for hours; then she’ll walk around in perfect circles for another hour. She’s very nimble—she can climb walls. Still wants to see Azeras. It’d be touching if I didn’t suspect something else was going on. Anyway, the nurse has cleared us for forty-five minutes this morning with Azeras and an hour this afternoon. Let’s go.”
Sarudar Azeras had been placed in room six. The room’s splendid view seaward more than compensated for the rough and incompletely painted walls.
Azeras was lying on his side staring out of the window. As he turned stiffly toward them, Merral noticed that his hair had been cut and his face shaved. There were numerous small scars on his face and arms. He looks much younger than I guessed. He must be only in his late thirties.
“Good morning,” Vero said, moving to a chair at a distance from the bed.
Vero is clearly distancing himself.
Merral pulled up a seat by the bed and sat down. “Let me introduce myself. I’m Merral D’Avanos. And you are Sarudar Kezurmati Azeras?”
There was a long silence. Azeras stared at Merral with wide, dark gray eyes, eyes unlike any Merral had ever seen. He sensed anger, fear, and secrecy in them.
“Am I a prisoner?” he asked finally in a rough, frayed voice that was somehow too loud.
Merral and Vero exchanged glances.
“You are Sarudar Kezurmati Azeras?” Merral repeated.
“‘Sarudar’?” he snorted. “Can a man still be sarudar when his ship and crew are destroyed?”
“The ship’s destruction was an accident.”
Azeras shrugged. “It doesn’t matter now. They’re dead.”
“We would have preferred a surrender.”
After another long silence, Azeras again asked, “Am I a prisoner?”
“At the moment you are a patient. What would you prefer we call you? Sarudar? Kezurmati?”
“Azeras will do. It is our fashion. Or Sarudar.” Azeras’s hard eyes seemed to assess Merral. “Are you the D’Avanos?”
“What do you mean?”
Azeras raised his left hand and moved his fingers as if exercising them. To Merral’s astonishment, a large patch of skin on the back of his hand suddenly lit up and flickering images moved across it.
“Good grief!” Merral said.
“Ah,” said Vero quietly, as if a suspicion was confirmed.
A tiny image of Corradon’s head appeared on the screen and a faint voice could be heard—“Under the leadership of Merral Stefan D’Avanos”—followed by Merral’s face.
Azeras flexed his fingers again and the screen darkened.
“I see,” Merral said, gesturing in astonishment at the hand. “That’s awfully . . . clever.”
“A diary,” Vero said. “Or its equivalent. Built in. Logical, I suppose.”
Azeras turned to look out of the window.
“About your ship,” Merral said. “We tried negotiation, but they fired on us. We were hoping to stop the ship taking off.”
“Oh, I believe it.” The words were almost a snarl. “Damertooth would have opened fire first. . . . A fool to the end.”
“Damertooth? The captain?”
“Yeah. Good pilot, but he spent too long with the creepy.” Azeras continued staring at the view from the window.
“‘The creepy’?”
Azeras cautiously turned toward Merral. “A careless translation of a Freeborn phrase.”
“For what?”
As Azeras’s brow furrowed, Merral sensed unease. “For something that makes your flesh creep,” Azeras replied.
“What can you tell us about this being?” Vero asked. “Was it in the steersman chamber?”
“What do you know about that?”
“I was on the ship,” Merral said, quietly.
Azeras stared at Merral. “I heard that. It was on the broadcast. I didn’t know whether to believe it or not. . . . Impressive.” His voice held a note of grudging admiration.
“What was in the steersman chamber?” Vero asked, his tone unyielding.
Azeras’s gaze dropped to his hands. “That’s where the steering through the Nether-Realms—what you call Below-Space—is done.”
“That wasn’t the question, Sarudar,” Vero said. “What was in this chamber? Was it the creepy?”
“Yeah.” The voice was barely a whisper.
Out of the corner of his eye Merral saw Vero motioning him to continue. “There was something in that chamber—a spirit being, a demo—”
Azeras shuddered. “That thing! Don’t blame me. It wasn’t my idea!”
“Explain,” Merral said.
“It wasn’t our ship. We stole it. The True Freeborn don’t use steersmen. Never have. We tried to take a stand against using extra-physical powers. We—”
“Wait!” interrupted Merral. “Extra-physical? Explain.”
There was a pause. “Magic, the supernatural, contacting the powers. The things you don’t do. They were in our past. But we tried to stop doing them.”
“Why?”
“Oh, we realized that using the powers is like taking a drug. They gave strength, but at a terrible price. They cheat you. You think you strike a deal with them, but it never works. The powers always win in the end.”
Vero shook his head but said nothing. Azeras continued. “Anyway, when Nezhuala started using the powers, we realized we faced a master magician who could defeat us. So we vowed not to use them at all.”
At the mention of the name Nezhuala, Merral looked at Vero, who mouthed, Later.
“Go on,” Merral said. “You seized this ship.”
“Yeah. And we found a steersman on board. Now if it had been me in charge and not that worm-rotted fool Damertooth, we’d have ejected it into the vacuum then. I swear by the powers. But we needed all the speed we could get. We were being chased by Admiral Kalartha-Har and a steersman allows you to get deeper in the Nether-Realms. It’s faster there.” He shivered and paused before continuing. “Anyway, somehow we got through to Assembly space and landed here. We had to stay bottled up in the ship with that thing among us. It wasn’t happy and started to take over the ship. It got so you always knew it was there. You could sense it, hear it chattering away in your mind. It poisoned our thinking. Certainly trashed Damertooth’s.” He turned back to the window, sighing. “And the steersman didn’t do us much good, did it? All dead but me. And a machine.”
There was a heavy silence that Merral didn’t want to interrupt. Suddenly Azeras turned and looked hard at Merral. “So you made it through the chamber? And past the slitherwing, eh?”
“‘The slitherwing’?” Merral remembered the dreadful flying creature. “An appropriate name. Yes, I met that too.”
Azeras grunted. “We underestimated you. We thought you were primitives—peasants with mud on your feet and straw in your hair. We found your news broadcasts hilarious: ‘Record hailstones in Snivelhome!’ ‘Earthquake in Back-of-Beyond—Cow killed!’ ‘Big attendance at picnic in Mongobongo!’ How we laughed.”
Merral struggled with Azeras’s tone of voice. Of course, it’s sarcasm. But Azeras was continuing. “We laughed at your petty preoccupations: religion, sports, the weather, your refusal to have a proper economy, your women pilots, your—”
“And what’s funny about women pilots?” Vero snapped.
Azeras gave him a condescending look. “You would entrust an expensive vessel to a woman?”
“And you wouldn’t?” Merral asked, aware of the deepening frown on Vero’s face.
Azeras shrugged. “Women have their uses: bed, kitchen—maybe the brighter ones can teach children.”
“Sarudar,” Merral said before Vero could speak, “it might be worth remembering that your rescue was achieved by a female pilot.”
Azeras yawned. “Civilian flying, not military.” His cold gaze raked Merral. “Anyway if you killed a steersman, Commander, you were either lucky or the fates watched over you. But don’t go thinking you’re some big hero. There’s more where they came from. And worse. And they’ll be on their way soon.”
We’re hearing this confirmed from yet another source.
“So, what do you propose to do with me? Are you going to kill me? exhibit me? trade me to the Dominion?”
“We wouldn’t do that,” Merral protested. “None of it.”
“Really? I’m from the Freeborn—the True Freeborn, not Nezhuala’s illegitimate monstrosity.” His voice held tattered pride. “That makes me an enemy of the Assembly. The Assembly hates the Freeborn worlds; it has tried to destroy us in the past.” There was a sullen anger in the words.
Merral looked at Vero for help.
Vero put his long fingers together and peered at Azeras over them. When he spoke his voice was low. “Sarudar, you make assumptions about us without really knowing us. The coming of your ship cost us much. Lives were taken when the Gate was destroyed; more lives were lost at the lake. And we need to establish the facts. But we, not the Dominion, will decide your fate.”
Merral nodded.
Vero continued. “And as to what happened in the distant past, well, we can compare our histories later. But we have no wish to hurt you.”
“I agree,” Merral added.
A long silence followed in which Merral observed a gold bracelet on Azeras’s right wrist. The bracelet was a gold chain broken apart by a lightning bolt. He recognized it as the symbol of the True Freeborn Betafor had displayed.
“You must make your judgment,” Azeras said. “But if you spare me, I’ll help you.”
Merral nodded.
“Sarudar,” Vero said, “I’m surprised at how good your Farholmen is. How did you learn it?”
“An older version of Communal is still used in the Freeborn worlds . . . or was. As a traditional language. I was always good at languages. And from the moment we entered your system, we watched your world and listened.” He gave an almost animal-like snort. “What else was there to do in the ship? And there was even less to occupy me on Ilakuma. So I watched your broadcasts.”
After a pause, Merral asked, “Your wound, how did it occur?”
“I removed a life-bonding unit with a remote probe. It was a lousy unit and the pain control wasn’t adequate. I don’t reckon I sealed the wound right.”
“If you hadn’t removed it, what would have happened?”
“I’d have had two days to live. That’s why I took the risk. . . . It got infected.” He paused. “How’d you know where I was?”
“We had a message from Betafor. She asked that we meet with her. She took us to the cave.”
“Thought so.” He paused. “Look, all this she and her stuff is nonsense. That thing a person? Bah! Allenix units are just imitations of us. They aren’t really alive. They don’t really have feelings; they just copy ours. They won’t admit they are only machines. They claim superiority to us—we’re ‘just’ flesh—but they’re really inferior. Humor it if you want and call it she but you always have to remember it’s a thing.” He paused again. “Did it explain why it wanted you to rescue me?”
“N-not really,” Vero replied. “She said that you were her officer and that she had a duty to serve you.”
Azeras’s lips tightened in a humorless smile. He snorted again. “That’s pretty funny. I hope you didn’t give it an Assembly medal. So, it didn’t explain that it was life-bonded to me?”
“To you?” Merral said, feeling that he had stupidly overlooked something obvious.
Vero’s face registered shock.
“Yes. If I die, Betafor gets switched off permanently. It wouldn’t like that. Not at all. I’m glad the other Allenix unit was destroyed.”
“The second implant?” Merral asked. “That’s its purpose? Of course.”
“We removed it,” Vero said.
Azeras’s expression showed irritation. “Worms rot you! You should have asked me first! Let me guess: she encouraged you to remove it.” His tone was sneering. “She sweetly asked how the operation went. She inquired whether the second implant was removed safely.”
Vero squirmed on his seat. “A-as it happens, yes.”
Azeras groaned. “Congratulations! You now have an unrestrained Allenix unit. You need a sanction over them to keep them loyal. They have their own agenda. Better keep that thing away from me! Oh, and let me make another guess. Has it asked to see me privately since the operation?”
“Yes.”
There was a snort of contempt and Azeras said something that Merral didn’t catch, but which seemed to be an expletive. “Check the pockets in its tunic. There’ll be protests, but do it. There’ll be a termination patch there—a small, silver-wrapped flexible square, thumb-sized. It’s for suicide; every med gear carries a few. It’s a fast-acting nerve poison. Betafor probably wanted to kill me before I could talk to you.”
Merral reeled at the idea of a society (Could you even call it a society?) of beings filled with such mutual loathing that they were held together only by the severest threats.
Vero cleared his throat and leaned forward. “T-that’s a very serious charge.”
“I swear by the powers, if that thing gets access to me, and thinks no one is watching, it will kill me.”
“But why contact us and have you rescued?” Merral asked.
“Because, my friend, if Azeras had died with the device in, she would have perished,” Vero replied. “With it out, his death means nothing to her.”
“You catch on,” Azeras said. “Except that my death does mean something. I’m a nuisance, because I can tell you the truth about it. And you may decide to dismantle it. It is safer with me out of the way.”
Merral caught the look of dismay on Vero’s face.
Azeras spoke again. “Allenix units have only scorn for humans. They want us out of the way, because they want to replace us. That’s why we life-bond them. If it was me, I’d switch it off. If it thought that the Dominion would serve its own purposes better, it would betray us all. But you people are different. You’re too trusting. Well, beware!”
“Sarudar, this poison: is suicide an important part of your culture?” Vero asked.
“Death ain’t nice, but it beats being thrown to a creepy or being taken alive by Nezhuala.” He paused.
That name again.
“Just keep Betafor away from me.” Azeras turned and stared out of the window again. After some moments he spoke. “I will say that this is a nice view.” His voice was softer. “I love the sea. Never been on a world with a real sea, mind you. Not a big one. An ocean. But we always had the images.” He shook his head as if remembering somet
hing. “You know, once I learned the ship was destroyed I was tempted to make a break for the sea at Ilakuma. Walk across the ridge. Build a hut, live off fish. But the wound didn’t heal. Yes, you have real seas.”
He stared out of the window for a few moments longer and then turned his haggard face to Merral. “So, who knows I am here?”
“Barely a dozen people. Betafor was insistent on secrecy.”
“Good. If you decide that I may be of some use to you, I’ll need to hide. And take my advice, terminate Betafor. That thing will betray you if it can. You trust too much!”
“Will the Dominion hunt for you?” Vero asked.
“Not for me.” Azeras stopped and Merral felt there was something significant about his pause. “Not if they think we all perished with the ship.” Azeras peered at Merral. “The ship was totally destroyed?”
“Yes,” Merral said. “All we have are fragments.”
“Ah.”
Suddenly, a strange look crossed Azeras’s face and Merral somehow found himself thinking of the old word crafty. But he said nothing more.
There was a knock at the door and a nurse entered. “I’m afraid this man needs a break,” he said in a tone that allowed no disagreement.
“Very well,” Merral replied. “We have all got plenty to consider. Sarudar Azeras, may we talk again this afternoon?”
“If you want. Just keep that Allenix unit away from me.”
“We will.”
Two hours later, Merral stood next to Vero watching a large wallscreen showing a mosaic of smaller images. Most of the images were of half-painted corridors, but a central one showed a man lying—apparently asleep—on a medical cot with a white sheet draped over his body, his right arm on top.
“I don’t like this,” Merral protested.
“We have to test what Azeras said.”
“It’s close to tempting someone.”
“My friend, she’s a machine. Can a machine be tempted?”
