The Horseshoe Nail (The Donn Book 1)

by S Thomson-Hillis

  Aggrieved, the Archivist sniffed again, fishing out the cones with ill-grace. “Scan on site only, no withdrawals,” he ground out. “Watch the time, it’s late. Anything else?”

  Not a hope in hell.

  Grabbing the cones Mark found a desk and elio as far away as possible. Plugging in the first cone he flipped through contents files, quickly selecting useful topics.

  He might have told the medical staff that most Donn could communicate the same way he did with Ellis but he’d been lying. Donn guarded their privacy in concentric rings, a bit like the walls of a fort, first, Bonded partners, secondly, immediate family, parents and children, and thirdly, other Donn. You could invite people into the family conference but only if all the members agreed. His parents, the Bonded couple, could shut out everybody and from outside their mindspeak felt shiny and hard. No one could intrude, not even close family. Talking to Ellis was like that, only he was inside the hard and shiny tunnel.

  It had been Bonded Donn couples using that intimate mode who had won the war for the Union. Fast, undetectable, watertight communication by Bonded Donn. So tight that even other Donn could not pierce it, and there had been traitors, naive idiots who believed the Autocracy would return their lives for information. But he and Ellis weren’t Bonded yet, surely they could not be, they’d only just met. It was going to happen, oh yes, he’d make it happen. He’d known that from the moment he’d clapped eyes on her. That was the way of his people and only right and proper, he did know that much, but it hadn’t happened yet.

  The Donn Mating Ritual had been sacrosanct, if terminally low on his educational agenda, but for a bright, energetic and curious youth the mechanics had loomed large. Mark had spent months scavenging the demilitarised zones of the colony on Algezeal before being transferred to the orphanage on Genta Prime. Both had dives where the young of all species congregated to chew on adult mysteries. Female company had never been a problem and at the orphanage he’d even been lucky (or unlucky) enough to scrape up a few well-earned black eyes from jealous peers. The taboo against breeding Latents had been drummed into him, as with all Donn, it was tattooed on his head, heart and soul. As a result Mark had never really seen the point in long-term relationships with women, when it could never be real. You saw, you had a good time, got bored and moved on. He could take as many partners as he liked but never father a child. For the rest, his parents had clearly expected him to rely on instinct. Once his family had scattered he’d never even seen a female Donn.

  Traditions and Ritual Etiquette of the Donn had been penned by a dry academic who’d probably never met a female Donn either. The paragraphs were bulleted in strict order and coy references to the breeding cycle and the-male-will, if-the-female-should made Mark cringe. It seemed the Donn Mating Ritual was as rigid as stone with four main stages, Identification, Formal Choice, Vows and Bonding. He pretty much knew the basics.

  Identification was fine. Yep, all those boxes were ticked. And how. But that stage, he noted grimly, also included dire warnings about extraordinary high instability factors and apparently any problems equalled lift-off to la-la land. An exaggeration of the whole leaping hormones thing, it was standard fare for humanoids. Donn didn’t do mistakes, nor did they do second chances, and any suspected rivals, no matter the species, were seen off with brutal ferocity. That explained Mark’s new possessive streak, the murderous tendencies, his distrust of Tam Harris and even the mysterious Kai. It was animal. Self control began to wobble.

  The Formal Choice stage was exactly as advertised. There was a narrow interim courtship band during which, if the worst came to the worst, you could withdraw. Opting out was called Rejection, one of the worst fates imaginable and few survived sane. Hadn’t Ellis said something about choice? Hadn’t she said, there should’ve been choice, you made me?

  Was that what she meant?

  He’d forced her to take him when she didn’t want to?

  The wobbling stopped and he began to ice over.

  The Vows were the final stage. You Bonded during the Vows. Once the Vows were taken, and only then, the exclusive link kicked in, the shiny hard tunnel of mindspeak shared by his parents and now by him and Ellis. You had to get through the first stages to use it and both sides had to choose to accept each other. There it was. Large as life. Somehow he’d crashed through the Identification barrier and, whoomph, straight into an exclusive link.

  Bonded Donn mindspeak, the end of a strict Formal Ritual, not the start. It was mental intimacy, nothing physical (though that scored too) that sealed the contract and forged the link that could never be broken. You weren’t Bonded until you’d made your Vows.

  There should’ve been Choice. And she hadn’t wanted him?

  Rejection? Given the Choice she’d have Rejected him?

  Perhaps the lone years had changed him, scarred him. Perhaps he was too damaged, too human. He stared blindly ahead and let cruel insecurity slowly crucify him.

  It was the worst crime he could’ve inflicted on her. He’d forced her.

  He didn’t bother reading about the Bonding Stage, the fourth stage of Ritual. There didn’t seem much point. It was supposedly very tricky, a time when the new partners were excluded from society, isolated until their linked emotions stabilised, because...

  Yeah, yeah, who cared?

  One chance and he’d screwed it up because he hadn’t understood enough about his own race to realise what horrible crime he was committing. Mental rape.

  Everything was screwed up. He’d had one chance and he’d screwed it up.

  He had forced her, forced her.

  To the Donn it was a horrible crime.

  Ignorance was no excuse. It never would be for Mark.

  If you’d tapped him with a hammer he would’ve shattered. He stalked back to the Archivist’s desk, stacking the cones neatly in the tray. Then, a study in perfect self-control, he smiled so sweetly the Dimitrion flinched. And left. Walking casual, walking cool.

  “Try the third chapter, page one-three-four, sub-section three,” he threw carelessly over one rigid shoulder. “Acquit me of criminal intent, the rest I confess. Enjoy.”

  Chapter Twenty-five

  The Induction Pack referencing the Archives had been a long time ago in Jenson’s life. He had made the link because someone he’d met at a party the other night had mentioned she’d found it useful when researching a similar extinction. Mostly though, he wanted to find out why a good friend was behaving like a dumb teenager during his first crush. He would’ve been happier if he could have wheedled the problem out of Mark but Mark was stonewalling and nobody could pry squat out of a stonewalling Donn or even a stonewalling Mark. Mark reckoned his private life was none of Jenson’s business, which was not true and not to be tolerated. If you’d ever accused Jenson of needing something to care for he’d have decked you. His mother, if she’d survived the Autocracy annexe of their Homeworld, would have sighed and tutted, and then listed the procession of wounded animals her lanky son had carted home to tend in their barns. Jenson always said he looked out for Mark because being one of a kind meant always being the odd man out. Besides, it was mutual, they went back a long way and you always looked out for your mates, didn’t you? End of story. What story?

  The same could be said for most people on Imperious.

  Everyone had a story by the end of the wars. Some shared, some didn’t.

  The fleet was nine months into a two-year tour and each ship functioned like a village in space. It was bound to cause speculation when a man, known to collective female-kind as a challenge, turned into an infatuated fool overnight. Current conjecture had swept over Mark’s head but when he did notice, the reaction wouldn’t be healthy. Donn retribution could be sudden, unexpected, cold and ruthless and prevention was better than cure. Jenson smelled trouble circling closer by the minute, and to stop trouble in its tracks he needed to understand the problem. If Jenson had to go to the Archives, then that’s where Jenson would go.

  The Archivist di
dn’t believe his luck. Yanking out the requisite titles, he smirked greedily. “I hear she’s something of a stunner,” he opened, sniffing delicately – and waited…

  ...and still waiting… “Who?” Jenson asked, all bewildered innocence.

  “Our new young lady Donn in Medical. Is she awake yet?”

  “How should I know?” Jenson shrugged. “Did you hear that three DMOs and a Biotech all caught the same sickness? Apparently it’s contagious as hell and even a stasis-barrier doesn’t completely isolate it. Most Donn are immune but they’re definitely carriers.”

  Sapphire-lined eyes opened wider than the rotating mouth.

  Jenson bent and beckoned confidentially. “Called sticky-beak,” he explained, gently tapping the Dimitrion’s extended nose. “Now, which volume would I need?”

  There was an awful silence while metaphorical gum was, probably, swallowed.

  “Traditions and Ritual Etiquette,” the Archivist snarled. “Chapter Three, page one-three-four. We’re closing early tonight so you’ve got three hours.”

  HStJ Jenson had been strictly raised by a proud and socially aware mother. “Thank you kindly for your cooperation, sir, your support is surely much appreciated.”

  * * *

  Tam Harris had been born inquisitive. It was the hallmark of good UC-I operatives and Eban Krystie considered Tam one of his finest, hence the Sim Edger episode. Harris was a compassionate man and it wasn’t just his Scolosian roots, some people are just born that way. After Harris had lost Lent he’d really begun to appreciate what it was like to be alone in a crowd, and now he’d met Mark and discovered first hand that the cold and distant reputation wasn’t as deserved as it might have seemed. Ellis? Well, he told himself his curiosity was justifiable, not personal, and on a professional level she was definitely on the need-to-know list. He was no fool. He’d been in at the beginning of something that could go big and it was Krystie’s style to send on the initial team. The more he knew the less likely he was to wrong-foot a delicate situation. Tam Harris needed facts not gossip.

  He knew all about the Archives.

  When he’d got the Induction Pack, he’d read, visited and understood and made notes.

  Harris arrived just as the Archivist was thinking about shutting down, and spending the last thrilling minutes skimming that popular page-turner, Traditions and Ritual Etiquette of the Donn. Making his courteous request, Harris was slightly shaken when the Dimitrion’s features contorted into two blue-lined thunderclouds and a six-pack of balled lightning.

  “I came in with the Donn in Medical,” he expanded with a faint smile. “She’s turning into the kind of young woman anyone would want to find out more about.”

  That didn’t go down so well, either.

  “Traditions and Ritual Etiquette,” snapped the Archivist, producing the cone and a prepped elio so fast that Tam took a startled step back. “Chapter Three, page one-three-four. We close in thirty minutes so please get a move on. Right? All right? Got that?”

  “Thank you.” Polite if mystified. “Kind of you. Much obliged. Be quick. Right.”

  The Archivist smiled a cobra smile, his nostrils quivered. “Sub-section three.”

  * * *

  Inside his quarters, Mark lay on his bed, shut out the stars, stared into darkness and examined empty from the inside out. It was pitch dark in the tidy room. Everything was in its place, nothing unneeded was visible and there was no clutter. Mark’s obsessive tidiness was a neurosis as far as Jenson was concerned but it was how the Donn lived. He hid his stuff. The habit was so deeply ingrained he’d never lose it. He’d learned it young, always on the run, up and off at a moment’s notice. Then he’d switched to the orphanage where if you didn’t keep your stuff safe it got nicked. There wasn’t much stuff anyway, there never had been.

  He was suppressing a desperate need to rant and rage and trash his quarters.

  And you can’t do that, never, because if you did you’d give yourself away.

  Then people would know… Nobody could know… The Prodders would come...

  Control was absolute. Control was everything. Control was survival.

  Control was the word and the spirit and the letter of the law.

  Control. Never let anyone in.

  Get on with what needed to be done because that was the only way you’d make sure there was a tomorrow to deal with. It hurt to think of Ellis, it hurt not to think of Ellis. So intense, so fast a strike, he couldn’t cope with it. His crime – was it a crime or just a balls up? He didn’t know. He didn’t want to know. He needed to store it for later. In time he’d get it all sorted out, because Mark always did. But it would be in his time, on his terms.

  Sightlessly staring into dim nothingness, he forced himself to concentrate on the faint trace of the other Donn, the boy he’d discovered and more or less forgotten since he’d landed on Harth Norn. The faint mental trace had tasted of harsh ranges and fencing and a strange sky full of moons and a huge planet. Nowhere known and the traces were faint.

  The boy could still be sensed but the touch of his mind had changed.

  Fleeting desperation, fear like poison, all pushed into a thin strand of panic.

  It was as if the boy had swapped modes, was he calling for a parent?

  Mark sat up, concentrating fiercely, head in his arms on his raised knees.

  It was possible to pierce the cry and some parts were a weird mockery of Macluan’s mental signature. But the boy didn’t want him, no way was he calling Mark. Alone, quite alone, abandoned, he was as scared as Mark had once been. The pain haunted, and Mark remembered how he’d screamed for his father after the Prodders had hauled the older man off to put him down like a dog. Mark could help the boy if he would only stop yelling.

  Stop screaming at me, he sent urgently, listen, just be quiet and listen...

  The door alarm buzzed.

  Mark jumped.

  “I know you’re in there,” announced Jenson to the voice-vent. “Open up, let me in.”

  Losing the link was like a punch in the stomach and the vent came close to incineration. That was Jenson’s three-parts-pissed-and-caring voice and not welcome.

  There was a pause and a massive martyred sigh.

  “Ok. If that’s the way you want to play it, then fine, that’s fine by me,” HStJ informed the door quietly and with terrifying sincerity. “I just wanted you to know I went and did some research and I read about it, I need to do more…” He hesitated. That sounded wrong, pompous and pious. Did it matter? His good intentions were all clear and bright and sparkly, and Mark would know. After waiting a minute for a reaction that quite patently never was going to come, he ploughed on. “Ok, fine. One question. One question is all.”

  Mark clamped his eyes shut and cursed friendship forever and a day.

  “Why?” appealed Jenson. “Why are you acting like this? It’s stupid.”

  * * *

  Emir Carolli also lay sleepless that night.

  It was the night that Imperious and her specially selected armada broke through to their first muster-point on the edge of Harth Norn’s system. Before they began the slow trail to their target, breaking at specific intervals for build-up exercises. Imperious was taking her time, using every opportunity for training drills, and it would still be some days before the fleet finally arrived over Harth Norn. Yet it was only then that Carolli realised that Krystie’s game zone neatly barred the planet from the nearest Bylanes window. Another infuriating unscripted set-back. Daringly, as Imperious’ security was tighter than his XT-1 and part of the reason he’d taken his previous voyage, Carolli used his Crack-Crystal scrambler to warn Belthan about the Imperious’ exact location. That done, still simmering about Krystie and his damned beginner’s luck, he sifted probabilities, factored in changes, calculated again.

  And he smiled.

  For at the end, despite all possible Union tactics, he knew he couldn’t lose.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  The sound of heavily
irritated breathing and the cloudy impression she was not alone woke Ellis. She opened her eyes and was relieved when her lids didn’t stick together.

  Something inside her was still fighting. Too many bad awakenings, too recently.

  There was a stone-slab of a teal uniformed woman busily fiddling with complicated dials at the foot of the canopy panels that hemmed her bed in on three sides. She was attacking several pads like a woodpecker, including one rogue. Even groggy Ellis spotted the potential of a faulty receptor and she lay back and watched. So far as she could tell it was the pilot-sensor monitoring her health and for some reason it wasn’t registering wide-awake Donn. So far as Ellis was concerned exploiting such a thing was in with her job specs and she decided to give it a nudge, partly to test if it was as easy to move as she though it might be. It was. The sensor gave a hiccup, began to do its job and in the distance an alarm burred.

  The woman swung. For a crucial second she was fazed. “Hello?”

  No time for the social niceties. Without skipping a beat, despite choking on a dusty throat, Ellis grabbed the unsuspecting Biotech’s eyes. “Where are my things?”

  The Biotech hardly struggled. “Your clothes? Incinerated.”

  “No,” Ellis shook her head. “I had some other stuff. A lucky charm, I need to know where it is. It was a white metal intaglio disc I wore on a thong around my neck.”

  “Everything is in your locker with the credit bars.”

  Ellis let her go, mostly because she couldn’t hold on any longer.

  The dazed Biotech swayed for a moment, then righted with a gasp.

  Life in cubicle 11/1/81 revved up. It was hours before Ellis was left alone but she didn’t care, after the first burst she caved in and kept dozing off. Waking properly, later in the evening, she hijacked the locker panel. Clutching the only souvenir of Beven’s inn she cared for, Ellis curled up, tucking her hand and Rocket’s key safely under her pillow.

  Sleepily she blinked up at the malfunctioning master-sensor pad.