Skeen's Leap

by Clayton, Jo;

  There was a dukkurbox by the grish, dusty and old but it had to have what I needed. I closed my eyes and let my hands work the latch; there was an alarm here too, it’d sound on the bridge, but I didn’t care now. Inside there were emergency stores and other supplies. And a flame thrower. I worked as fast as I could, though it seemed like years before I got the flamer and the aid kit tucked into my shirt. I suppose it only took a second or two; I know the Sound didn’t seem to notice. I let it take me faster and faster along the ways. Every time I passed a dukkurbox I jerked it open, laying a trail as long as I could. I collected two more aid kits just in case. The Sound got louder and louder. I took out one of the kits and opened it without looking at it or thinking what I was doing. Closed my hand about the anahastic spray. I fumbled the kit closed, shoved it back in my shirt and ran along the way clutching the small can.

  When the Sound finally pulled me off the walk into the jungle maze, I shot a gout of anahastic at the wall and marked my trail with it every tenth swing of my arms, getting this into muscle knowledge so if the Sound got so strong it canceled brain-think, body-think would keep laying down the splotches of spray. Anahastic flouresced under torchlight; anyone following me—and I hoped (down deep, not letting myself think about it) that half the SP’s on the ship were after me by now—would see it.

  The Sound pulled me deep into the jungle until I finally came to one of the larger spaces and saw IT. A monster fungus that had hundreds of small holes all over its orange and green body. It moved all the time, like a cloud of smoke in a gentle breeze. I saw later it had grown up over one of the fan holes that kept the air moving in the Insul. At the moment all I knew was that the thing was singing to me from a hundred mouths while long ropy tendrils that grew in explosion patterns about several such sphincters were wrapped loosely about Qesarra, that fibers along these arms were punched into Qesarra—into her eyes, her mouth, into her skin. That thousands of tiny red spiders swarmed over her, liquifying her so the fungus could suck her dry. There were other husks of skin and bone scattered about the space, rustling dryly like fly bodies about a spiderweb.

  The sound called me closer and closer. More swarms of red spiders were pouring out of the singing holes. I couldn’t have broken free if I tried. I didn’t try. I saw Qesarra being drained by that thing and I went berserk, running at it. The tendrils brushed at me, trying to get a hold of me, but I was doing a dance more desperate than any of Qesarra’s and they only brushed at me. I didn’t feel the jolts that were supposed to paralyze me. I got the flamer out and turned it on Qesarra. Her arms went black, her sleep robe caught fire, her hair burned. The tendrils smoldered, then burned. The torch that was Qesarra fell against the thing and it screamed. The sound blew me back, addled my head worse than it already was, but my body knew its work. I held the flamer on the thing, held it there flaring full out, held it even after I’d exhausted its fuel.

  I would have died like Qesarra because the wetness in it kept quenching the worst of the fires. The tendrils charred and flaked and fell away, but the nubs were still there. Parts of the surface boiled and dripped down, but one flamer would never have killed the thing. It was huge—filled up that space and flowed into other spaces—half a kilometer around. I did minor damage, made it hurt, but ten men with flamers wouldn’t have dented the thing.

  I didn’t die. The Worao acted fast when the dukkur alarms started sounding. An SP team went into the ways, followed the line of alarms, then found and followed the anahastic trail I’d laid down. They came charging to the rescue with more flamers and a pair of sonic disrupters. They blew that horror into fragments and fried the fragments, then spent the next several cycles flushing the most powerful fungicides they had through the Insul. I didn’t know anything about that until a lot later. When I came out of what it’d done to me, turned out I couldn’t stay in a world ship any longer. The hurt had gone too deep and there was the thing about Qesarra. The Worao were grateful enough to put me in therapy on Feyurnsha and leave enough credit for my treatment and re-education, though that didn’t work out quite the way they planned, I didn’t turn into a docile productive Feyurnit. But from the day they landed me to this, I’ve never gone back on a world ship and I never will.

  AFTER A BUSY NIGHT, SKEEN COLLECTS A FOLLOWING.

  Skeen woke the next morning in a warm and sweaty tangle of flesh with Hal suckling at one nipple and Hart playing with the other. Hart laughed when he saw her awake, yelped when her fingers found his not-hair and tugged. He swung over her and began raking his fingers along her ribs. She bucked vigorously, slithered away, slippery with sweat though weak from giggling. She was ticklish all over and the four Aggitj youths had discovered that with much glee, which she repaid in kind when she found that fooling with their not-hair sense organs drove them even wilder.

  Much later they swam in the river, ducking and diving, splashing each other. The Aggitj were seals in the water—agile ivory, rose, and gold seals—narrow limber bodies beautiful in their watery arabesques.

  She came out of the water sputtering and laughing, half drowned, feeling lazy and scrubbed clean inside and out and full of energy and languid as a worm three days dead. She rubbed herself dry with one of the blankets, pulled on her wet underwear, shook out the eddersil, and got dressed.

  Breakfast. Bread, cheese, a handful of plums, the last of the ale. Clean-up. Bury the coals, shovel dirt in the craphole, scatter leaves where their night-wrestling had messed the ground and grass. The Aggitj did the work. Their movements had the flavor of ritual and they sang a droning song while they worked.

  Skeen sat in the saddle watching all this activity with interest and some impatient. She couldn’t see they’d made any great mess, but the Aggitj were very serious about what they were doing. Timka had been much the same way about their camps, eyeing Skeen with disfavor when she started to leave before the place was put back close to what it’d been before they came. Skeen wanted to leave now, but she owed them more courtesy. Good kids, limber and loving and sexy as hell. She felt like their mother, well, maybe not their mother, considering the games they’d got up to last night. She had enjoyed herself to the max last night, but she didn’t want to repeat it. When she dived into a Pit Stop, she seldom spent two nights in the same place with the same person. It felt better to say it’s been great, guys, see you.

  The Aggitj finished their fussing, huddled together a moment to sing a short wordless song, a kind of celebration, maybe of a happy night and a joyful morning. They moved apart, chattering cheerfully in their own tongue, swung into the saddle, chattering on in Trade-Min, so persistently they canceled each other out until Hal who was the oldest put two fingers in his mouth and blasted the other three with an ear-shattering whistle.

  He waved Hart, Ders, and Domi back, then maneuvered his mount beside Skeen.

  Skeen started on at an easy walk, Timka’s horse ambling patiently behind. They rode in silence for half a stad, then Hal said, “We want to come with you, Skeen ka Pass-Through.”

  “You don’t know where I’m going.”

  “Doesn’t matter. We got no place we need to be.”

  “I’ve trouble on my tail. You could get killed.”

  “So? We’re extras, Skeen ka. We can’t go home without an army behind us. We don’t want to settle yet with an otherwave woman and start grubbing a living. If one gets killed, the others will mourn him and skin the killer. If we all get killed, our troubles are over.”

  “I’ve got other commitments.”

  “So so, the Min. We know.”

  “You seem to know a lot.”

  He grinned at her.

  “If you’re thinking every night will be like last night, you can forget it. I don’t repeat myself. One is fun, more’s a chore.”

  “Never?”

  “Well, I never say never, but don’t count on it.”

  “We travel hopefully and make do.”

  “And you must feel free to leave whenever you get a better offer.” She saw that he wan
ted to protest and stopped him with a lifted hand. “You won’t lay the burden of oaths on my shoulders, you cheerful young con artist. No way. The arrangement is you travel the same road I do until you’re bored with it. No strings on me, none on you” She frowned at him, slapped her hand on her thigh. “And no fuckin’ secret oaths either. I get a smell of something like that and I’ll shove all four of you off the nearest mountain.”

  He laughed at her and started to sing, the other three joining him in some happily complex polyphonic music.

  The day passed pleasantly, calmly; Skeen enjoyed having the Aggitj with her. They distracted her from fussing over the miseries bound to happen to her. A number of birds flew by overhead, some of them large enough to be Min; not being Min herself there was no way for her to tell if those were temporary shapes or the ones they’d hatched with. No more gooey bombs. After a while she relaxed; didn’t matter if they were or if they weren’t, they couldn’t do anything but watch. She began to appreciate the limitations of the shape shifters. Couldn’t carry much, no money since all the gelt on this world was metal coin, much too heavy. Couldn’t take clothing along. Weapons, maybe, but on this world arms wouldn’t be much more than a neat little knife or a dram of poison. She grinned, remembering the tin of powder provided by Strazhha. Sneezing powder. She stopped smiling. If she half tried, Strazhha could come up with something really nasty.

  They camped again beside the river, cast nets for their super, drank pots of tea with triangles of waybread, swapped songs for a while, then scattered for the night. A polite hint or two politely turned aside and Skeen slept alone.

  The next day they began meeting travelers coming away from Oruda and catching up with slower packtrains, threading through the humpy proboscidate beasts, loaded like the hairy, flat-footed nodders who had dusted her and Timka outside Spalit. The Aggitj knew half the guards and the trainmaster, trading jokes with them, answering questions, passing a flask around, generally enjoying themselves. Silent and apart, Skeen rode along the edge of the road feeling as conspicuous as a crow in a flock of doves. She caught a few curious stares, but no one asked questions. After shouting out messages to be dropped along the way, the boys came swirling around her.

  “Kondu Yoa. He’s a summer-ender. Balayar.

  “Kamachi Yoa. She’s a winter-ender. Kondu’s sister.

  “They know EVERYONE.”

  “Yoa Kondu, he’s going into the Boot. He’ll tell our sisters we have a patron.”

  “Sorta patron.”

  “No difference, the look’s enough.”

  “Tell Chor Yitsa we looking good.”

  “Got prospects.”

  “A place we’re going, not just fooling around.”

  Skeen laughed at their exuberance, but she started to feel uncomfortable again, not quite sure what she’d got herself into.

  On the fifth day the land began to change its nature. More trees, water in the ditches, not just mud. The river broadened and acquired marshy fringes. The road moved farther from it onto higher ground to catch what wind there was and avoid the sullen stench of the wetlands. On the slopes to the south of the road were neat vineyards and orchards—small, two or three rows of vines in one place then a clipped hedge, half a dozen trees showing fruit mostly green, here and there rows of berry vines. Another tiny vineyard. Then the pattern repeated. “Pallah farms,” Hal said. “Runaway serfs, outcasts, whoever can’t get along the other side of the river. Funor Ashon sold them the land to make a screen between Funor lands and the road.”

  They rode into Oruda as the sun was writing rubrics on the dimpled dark water of the lake. Tepa Hapak the Funor Ashon called it. Tepa Vattak was the second lake, half a stad beyond Hapak. The city was long and thin, clinging to the edge of the lake, separated into two parts by the marsh where the river ran into the lake. The two sections of the city were not only separate but looked very different. The South Branch was open and jumbled, buildings plunked down wherever it suited the builder. What streets existed were wildly eccentric scrawls liable to stop and start without much concession to logic or plan. The North Branch was closed and secret, hidden behind high walls. No streets there either, at least none visible to the casual observer.

  Skeen sorted through hazy memories from the night at Nossik’s Tavern, retrieved his instructions and rode deeper into the city, threading through crowds out to enjoy the balmy evening or get some last minute shopping done in those market stalls that weren’t closed down. She found the Grinning Eel in a reasonably uncongested area, a large walled establishment much like Nossik’s, torchlit now, the flickering red light making the Grinning Eel look like he was flexing his loops and laughing at whoever rode through the arch beneath his swinging sign.

  In the stable, Hal touched her arm before she could begin negotiations with the hostler. “We’ll leave you now, Skeen ka, and find a place to snug in for the night.” Behind him, the other three nodded solemn agreement.

  “I’m like to be in Oruda for a while,” she said. “If you plan to go on with me, then I’ll pay your shot here until you can find work. Pay me back when you can.”

  “Skeen ka, what if we can’t? Better we do as we been doing and forage for ourselves.”

  “You been here before?”

  “No. Nor you either, remember?”

  “True enough, but I’m not going to be sleeping rough. I was warned about the Funor. Too easy to stray on land where you don’t belong and get shortened by a head.”

  “Oh, Funor. We know about Funor.”

  “Oh, do you.” She turned to the hostler who was listening with polite interest. A small dark man with eyes like brushed black tar. A heavy earring of dark smooth wood and beaten silver hung from one lobe. He grinned at her, showing elongated, fangish eye-teeth. “Tell these idiots.”

  “Ya-true, Paksha-wat. You push your toe over the line, chop.” A swift down blow of his bladed hand. “Where t’ain’t no fences, it be them that say the line it be here. Chop chop.” He turned to the Aggitj. “You won’t have no trouble finding work. They like the extras here, got an extra on t’ council, I send you to him, he puts you to work.”

  Hal worked his mouth; with a quick twist of his hand, he asked a moment’s grace then retreated to a corner of the stable with the other three. They began talking in earnest whispers.

  Skeen smiled affectionately at them, then turned to the Hostler. “You’re a long way from home.” She looked thoughtfully at the earring. “Seems to me I could put a name to that home.”

  “Ah now, could you, then you’ve come a long way yourself.” He grinned at her. “Sometimes it takes one helluva long way from troubles to get the teeth off ya tail.”

  “So I know.”

  “So we both know.”

  “Gate jumper?”

  “How else.”

  “Here long?”

  “Twenty-three years local come first snowfall. Junks still got their tentacles on Aalda?”

  “Take more than me to pry them loose.”

  “‘Nother wave’s due, think it’s likely?”

  “No. Already some rumors of evacuation when I was in Chukunsa. Less than a month ago.”

  He clicked his tongue against his teeth. “Bai! Damn world too crowded now.”

  “Ever think of going back?”

  “No. This suits me fine, bought me a sweet pair of femmes from the Snake Lady, going shares here with Portakil, had all the jumping about I ever want. You?”

  “I’ve got some scores to settle the other side. Anyway I like my life a bit more spiced and a lot looser than I’d have it here.”

  Hal came back. “We pay you soon’s we get work. We’ll go looking in the morning, yes?”

  “Fine with me.” She turned to the hostler and began the tussle to set a reasonable fee for housing their horses.

  Declining from full, the moon was still bright enough to kill the light from all but the most aggressive stars. Much (though not all) of the night noise had died away, the narrow crooked ways were most
ly empty, even the cutpurses had opted for bed. Skeen walked warily down the middle of those open spaces between those dark silent structures, head up, eyes moving side to side, holster flap tucked back, the lanyard buttoned on in case she had to roll. A few furtive shadows flickered across eye-corners, but no one came close enough to threaten.

  When she reached the waterfront, she strolled out to the edge of a wharf and settled on a squat snubbing post.

  The lake stretched out to the horizon, dark and secret, lapping lightly at the piles beneath the wharf. Behind her she could hear voices and snatches of music from a tinny lute, a bit of revelry still going on in a lakeside tavern. Long torches were burning at intervals along the curve of the shore suggesting there was a watch band that patrolled the wharves. For now there was no sign of them and she hoped they’d stay away a while longer; she was enjoying the night, comfortably tired, comfortably full of good food and tart cider, comfortable with her solitude and reluctant to break it by whistling for Timka and calling her in. She swung her legs, watched the dark water lift and fall. Finally she sighed and whistled the agreed-on signal, waited, whistled it again, waited, repeated the tune a third time.