Zenn Scarlett

by Christian Schoon

  “But why won’t he talk to us about it? Why hasn’t he gotten in touch? What if he’s… I don’t know... sick or hurt or something?”

  “Zenn, I know you’re concerned about him.” Otha turned to face her. “But you mustn’t let your imagination run away with you. There’s no sign that Warra is in any kind of trouble.”

  “But that’s just it,” Zenn had to keep herself from shouting. “We haven’t any sign at all, for over a month.”

  “I’ve sent a shard to the ferry port. It’s probably been shipped up to the Helen of Troy already. Warra will get in touch when he receives it, I’m sure.” Otha went back to the instrument tray. He gathered up the remaining surgical instruments, put them into a large, metal basin, set the basin in the autoclave and switched the sterilizing field on. “So, you need to stop tying yourself in knots over this. And, besides, we’ve got… you’ve got more immediate things to occupy you right now.”

  “I know,” she told him, a little too forcefully. “I’m just…”

  He looked down at the instrument tray and chewed at his cheek.

  “Zenn. Third and final test coming up. You need to clear your head, go over your course notes for the past term, and be as prepared as possible. Right?” He arched his eyebrows at her, waiting for an answer.

  “Yes. I’ll be ready.”

  As ready as I can be without having any idea what I’m going to be tested on…

  He nodded, turned and stepped through the door, leaving her alone with her tumbling thoughts and the soft, regular breathing of the sleeping raff.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Bleary-eyed from sleep deprivation, Zenn was at her desk bent over a v-film detailing the complex pulmonary plumbing of Kiran sunkillers when a loud ping at her window made her levitate a good two inches up out of her chair. It was late; everyone else had long since turned in. But with the removal of the sunkiller’s bandages being scheduled for the next morning, she wanted to make sure she understood every aspect of the valves directing the airflow in the creature’s wings.

  At the window, she looked down to see Hamish winding up to toss another pebble. She pushed up the sash.

  “Hamish,” she called softly, not wanting to wake the Sister, sleeping just down the hall. “What is it?”

  “I have detected an unusual event. Within the cloister walls,” he half-whispered, craning his head up at her. “As instructed, I am coming here to speak of this to you. What would you wish me to do now?”

  “Wait there. I’ll be right down.”

  Less than a minute later, she was next to him in the cool air outside her dorm room. The night was spiced with scent of rosemary from the garden, and the usual tang of the animal pens.

  “What did you hear?” she asked.

  “It was not an audible signal. I detected a scent. Born on the breeze currently blowing from east to west, and enhanced by the evening’s rather high humidity, which increases the carrying distance of…”

  “Hamish,” she whispered harshly. “What was it?”

  “It was the scent molecules of masticated addictive tobacco and goat manure.”

  “Chewing tobacco… Graad Dokes. I knew it!”

  “As well as a second array of scents I could not distinguish, due to the overwhelming potency of the tobacco resin odor.”

  “But it was Graad? You smelled him?”

  “I cannot attach person names to these odors. I simply state the molecular signature I detected.”

  “Where did the scents come from?”

  “From the area to the southwest. I would say the far corner where the cloister walls intersect.”

  “The Rogue’s Gallery. Come on.”

  Zenn started out at a half run. After a moment’s hesitation, Hamish fell in behind her. Framed by the canyon walls on either side, the narrow strip of black sky above them was bridged by the arc of the Milky Way, its faint, cold light painting a wash of star shine on the shadowed cloister grounds.

  Chewing tobacco. That could only be Graad.

  She was running flat out now, the packed gravel path hard beneath her feet, arms pumping, the air burning her throat. She sped past the refectory, past the infirmary and out into the soft, recently plowed ground of the open field beyond.

  As they neared the edge of the Rogue’s Gallery, Zenn raised a hand, and turned to make sure Hamish had seen her signal. They both stopped. She bent, hands on knees and tried to listen, breathing hard.

  “Sense anything?” she whispered between breaths.

  “There are voices. Two speakers. In that direction.” He lifted one claw to point.

  “Who is it?” she asked.

  “The sound volume is too low for me to discern this.”

  She crouched and crept forward, past the darkened cage of the axebills. The two birds huddled together, sleeping with their bodies so close they looked like a single animal. She skirted as far from their cage as possible, not wanting to wake them and have their alarm calls draw attention.

  “The voices,” Hamish was very close behind her, his Transvox almost inaudible. “They spoke from… just there.”

  It was Rasputin’s cage. Zenn was startled to see the outer door standing open. But from their position, she couldn’t see into the holding space between the two doors. The sound of rustling debris and angry hissing from inside the cage made it impossible for her to hear anything else.

  “Stay here, out of sight,” she told Hamish. “I’ll get closer.”

  “Very well…” Hamish seemed perfectly content with this suggestion.

  Leaving the sexton in the shadows, Zenn made her way silently to a row of water barrels lined up against one wall of Rasputin’s cage. Hidden from view by the barrels, she knelt in the dark and listened, breathing deep to settle her racing heart.

  “…and I say quit stallin’ and unlock the damn door.”

  There was no mistaking that voice. Graad Dokes. The second voice sounded out of the darkness then, and Zenn’s breath caught in her throat.

  “I told you already. This won’t work.” The other voice was a low, anxious whisper. Zenn knew its owner. She tried to tell herself she was wrong. But she knew. “You see how that thing moves? We let it loose, it’ll be on us before we go ten feet.”

  Liam… No!

  Zenn slumped back against the nearest barrel, her eyes squeezed shut against the sensation of a hot steel band suddenly constricting her chest.

  “And I told you,” Graad snarled. “We just open the door a crack and leave. By the time the monster finds its way out, we’ll be long gone.”

  A sour taste rose in Zenn’s mouth, and she felt she might be sick. She turned to peer between two barrels. Liam and Graad stood in the narrow corridor between the two cage doors. Just beyond them, in his cage, Rasputin undulated back and forth, his black-dot spider eyes watching the two men with a murderous, single-minded intensity.

  “No,” Liam said, shaking his head, a new firmness in his tone. “We can’t. People will die.”

  Graad made a disgusted face, then stepped in close to Liam, menacing.

  “Then they die. And their monsters with em.”

  Graad lashed out and snatched something from Liam’s hand. It was a piece of yellow paper. The combination Otha had given Hamish. The coleopt must’ve dropped it, or thrown it away... or, the thought stung her: Liam had talked Hamish out of it. Liam. The fact that he was here, with Graad, was something simply too unthinkable, too horrible to be real. But there he stood. Zenn felt sick to her stomach again.

  “If you won’t do it, I will,” Graad said, pushing past Liam to the inner door.

  “This thing isn’t like the others,” Liam said. “It’ll kill everything in sight.”

  “Your heart has just never been in the right place on any of this, ya know?” Graad said, reading off the paper and then punching numbers into the door’s keypad. “Look, kid. The Authority won’t never end the Rift long as this place and their freaks are here. We get rid of the monster-church and its monsters, Ea
rth opens up contact with Mars, and I get a one-way ticket off this rock and back to where I wanna be. Pretty damn easy to understand.”

  The realization hit Zenn instantly. That’s why Graad hated the cloister and its animals. He thought the presence of aliens on Mars was why the Earthers refused to end the Rift. And, she had to admit, he might be right. Especially if the New Law had anything to say about it.

  “Dokes, I did what you asked, before. Right?” Liam tried to wedge himself between Graad and the door. “But the whalehound, the sloo thing, they weren’t man-killers. Not like this one.”

  “Yeah, you did what I told ya. Cause I explained what would happen if you didn’t.” He pushed Liam roughly out of his way. “And like I’ve said, this here is a dangerous place. Be a pity if your little red-headed freak-doctor pal had herself a nasty accident.”

  “I told you to leave her out of this. I swear, Dokes…”

  “Ah, too late for those kinda sentiments, kid.” He flashed an evil grin at Liam, and cracked open the inner door. “Way too late.”

  “Don’t!” Liam lunged past Graad, trying to shut the door, but the big foreman jammed his elbow viciously into Liam’s midsection, doubling him over. Then he brought his knee up hard into Liam’s face, and the boy staggered backwards through the outer door and crumpled to the ground, clutching his head and moaning.

  By the time Zenn had scrambled to her feet and run out from behind the barrels, Graad was already disappearing into the darkness on the other side of the cage, running fast. Liam was still on the ground, gasping for air. A cold terror froze Zenn in her tracks: just beyond Liam, Rasputin’s inner door stood wide open.

  “Liam!” she screamed, rushing toward him. “The door. Shut the door!”

  Liam’s bloodied face tilted toward her, his expression one of dazed pain and confusion. In the cage, Rasputin’s fore-section rose up at the sound of Zenn’s voice, long, spider legs waving in the air, small head turning rapidly back and forth as it scanned for a way to get at them. Liam staggered to his feet, stumbled toward the outer door, and went down again, sprawling onto the ground. Rasputin spotted this and responded, scuttling for the open doors. There was no time. The creature would be out before she could stop it.

  “Hamish!” She yelled, still running, not turning to see if the sexton was there or not. “Distract it. Draw it off. Other side of the cage.”

  She didn’t want to believe what she heard next.

  “Do I have your permission to…?”

  “Yes! Do it!”

  She saw the black beetle shape heading toward the far cage wall. Rasputin saw the movement and immediately turned in pursuit.

  Then she was next to Liam, who was almost up on his feet again. She raced past him, arms extended, reaching for the outer cage door. But the bloodcarn had already lost interest in Hamish. The orange blur of its immense body scurried into her peripheral vision, coming with uncanny speed. The creature dove for the opening, but was moving too fast, and overshot. With a hideous, sputtering scream, it skidded in the loose litter of its cage, then coiled back on itself, hundreds of feet scrabbling to gain traction and reverse direction. A second later, it found the open inner door, and pushed the front half of its body into the narrow corridor, jaws snapping, thrashing its way toward her.

  At the last possible second, Zenn’s fingers wrapped around the chain link of the outer door. She flung her entire body against it, slamming it shut. Before she could pull away, the bloodcarn crashed full-speed into the door, one huge mandible pinning her fingers to the wire mesh. The entire doorway bulged out with the force of the impact and for a horrifying second it seemed about to burst from its hinges, as the creature, inches from Zenn’s face, hissed and sputtered, its bitter, sulphurous insect smell sharp in her nose and throat. With the last of her remaining strength, Zenn pulled back with all the weight of her body, ripped her hands from between the bloodcarn’s mandible and the wire mesh. She fell to all fours on the ground. The bloodcarn backed out of the corridor, then seethed and writhed along the fence line, hissing loudly.

  Zenn raised her head. Liam had managed to sit up. His face was ghostly white in the thin starlight. Blood streamed from a gash over one eye, which was already swelling shut. He ran a hand over his face, smearing his forehead with red.

  Zenn stared at him, unable to arrange her thoughts into any sort of meaningful order. She felt the light pressure of Hamish’s claw on her shoulder.

  “Novice Zenn,” he said, bending low. “You are damaged there.”

  She looked down at her hands; the knuckles on both had been skinned badly. Blood oozed from the crushed flesh.

  “I’m alright, Hamish,” she said, her voice as shaky as her trembling body. She moved gingerly into a sitting position, flexed her fingers. Nothing broken. “Looks worse than it is.”

  “Scarlett…” Liam said softly. He was squinting at her with one eye, the other now totally closed and bruising rapidly. She turned her face away.

  “Tell me… it’s not true,” was all she could manage.

  “I never wanted this. I never wanted anybody hurt.”

  She felt her body going strangely numb. Post-adrenal crash? Or the fact that Liam had been lying, quite spectacularly, to her all this time? Liam, the person she’d let in, the person she’d allowed herself to trust.

  “It was you,” she said, still unwilling to look at him. “The one letting the animals out. The one trying to… destroy the cloister.” Then the numb, dead feeling was gone. She raised her eyes to confront him. “Why?” She almost spat the word at him. “How could you… hate us that much? What did we… Was it your father? The sandhogs? Did you blame us and our animals for that?”

  Liam’s face contorted.

  “Yes! I did blame you for that. All of you. But that’s not why…” His voice cracked, and he had to pause for several quick, deep breaths. “I didn’t blame you later, I don’t blame you now. Did you see? I tried to stop Dokes, keep that thing from getting loose. I knew what it could do. I tried to stop him.”

  “But the other times, that was you?” The anger began to mix with disbelief. “The whalehound, the sloo… Gil’s sandhog? You?”

  Liam just shook his head, as if that could change the past.

  “Novice Zenn,” Hamish said, leaning down. “We must see to your wounded-skin fingers. Let me assist you in standing, and we will go request assistance from the director-abbot and our Sister Hild.”

  “Scarlett, Hamish, no,” Liam protested. “Please, you can’t tell Otha.”

  “We can’t? Why not?” Zenn said, getting to her feet. “You could’ve killed somebody! We could lose the cloister. Lose all the animals, see them all put down. You…” She had to stop talking, and only her rage kept her from breaking down in tears.

  “Otha will tell Ren,” Liam said, moving nearer to her and Hamish. “Ren will turn me in and they’ll send me to prison in Tharsis for sure.”

  “So?”

  “They’ll put Dokes away too. I’d be in Tharsis with him. And I’ll be the reason he’s there.” Liam’s face went a more sickly shade of white. “You don’t know him like I do. He’ll kill me, Scarlett. Graad Dokes isn’t the kind to forget, ever… and he will kill me.”

  Zenn knew with absolute certainty that what Liam said about Graad was true. She tried to think.

  “Well… what? What do you want me to do? Not say anything? Forget this happened? I can’t.”

  “I understand that, Scarlett. But… there’s more going on here than you know. I didn’t want to do the things I did. You’ve got to believe me. They forced me.”

  “They? Who?”

  “There’s others involved in this. They’ll keep trying to shut down the cloister, even if I’m gone.”

  “Who, Liam? What others?”

  “I can expose them, we can stop them. But I need to get the proof. Give me an hour, a couple of hours and I can bring proof.”

  “Liam, I don’t understand. And even if I did, why should I trust you after…
after what you’ve done?”

  “I know. You’re right. I don’t blame you. But if you can just give me time to get back to the ranch, I can get the proof. And we can put an end to it. Scarlett, I promise you.” He reached out then and took both Zenn’s bleeding hands in his. Pain snaked up her arms, but she didn’t pull away. “Zenn,” he said, speaking her first name for the first time she could recall. “I promise.” He said the word with such intensity, his face suddenly childlike…

  “Alright,” she said quietly. “I’ll wait for you. At the dorm.” She could imagine any number of ways this could go very badly, but she couldn’t think clearly enough to see an alternative. How could she send Liam into the same prison with Graad? It would be a death sentence.

  “And you won’t tell Otha?” His one blue eye staring… pleading.

  “No. Not until you get there.”

  “Right. Then we’ll both tell Otha. And he’ll see that I’m trying to help. Deal?”

  “Deal,” she said.

  Then he put both hands on her shoulders, pulled her to him and kissed her, his lips warm on her lips and there was the heat of his face, the press of his arms and the scent of sweet hay. Then it was over. He leaned back to look down at her.