by Eric Flint
“You’re a hot witch, Captain! You can handle the Sheewash Drive,” said Goth, automatically supportive.
“Like just about every other witch,” said Pausert.
“You’re way stronger than most. Stronger than Maleen, and our family are known to be some of the best. And you can do the Egger Route. And you’re probably the best vatch-handler ever.”
“And as a result we have little to do with vatches these days,” said Pausert. “Except Little-bit and her like and they come and go, and there’s not a lot I can do about them.”
“Just keeping the big ones away is pretty useful. Super useful actually. They used to use us as playthings. Now they leave us alone. That’s huge.”
“I suppose it is useful. It just didn’t feel that way. To be honest with you, I keep feeling as if the vatches are still around, just on the edge of my perception. They can be as sneaky as humans, if you ask me.” He glanced around, as if expecting one to appear. “Anyway, Goth, klatha is something we use but klatha using isn’t what makes you. Goth is who she is. And she’s also Vala, the girl of my dreams when I was a boy growing up on Nikkeldepain—when I knew absolutely nothing about klatha or you using it. I just thought you were wonderful. That was enough for me, then, and I haven’t actually changed that much.”
“I know,” said Goth, gruffly. “You’re pretty solid, Captain.”
At this point the Leewit peered in the manhole on the turret. She looked disapprovingly at them. “Huh. I need some advice about what to do with silly people in love with real stinkers. I reckon you would be the right people to ask.”
“What have we done to be stinkers this time?” asked the captain, cheerfully.
“She,” said the Leewit, pulling a face at her older sister, “should have talked to me.”
“That’s different,” said Goth equally cheerfully. “I’m usually a stinker for talking to you.”
The Leewit sniffed. “Crumping kranslits to both of you. Now what am I going to do with these people? It’s not right to let them go and be slaves on the Mantro barges. But it is what they want to do. What they will be happy doing. I know it’s just the Arerrerr’s work, not real. But what it has done to them is real to them. I don’t know what to do now.”
She stroked Tippi’s sleek head, which had popped itself out of her shirt, looking to be petted. The rochat did seem to do that when people were distressed, and the Leewit plainly was distressed. “I can fix them, I could even make them forget, but…it’s a bit like Ta’zara and the Megair Cannibals. They don’t want to forget. Even the guy with the bomb in his belly. The one we rescued, and transported to Marbelly. Farnal. They’d rather be dead than be without what it’s done to them. Most of them would probably kill themselves in despair—having had it and then having had it taken away. My teaching pattern…says people often do that when they lose what they love. The best I could do is make them forget what happened. And in this case that is hard. It’s a primitive part of the brain. We respond to smells at levels far below the thinking part of the brain. And this got hooked into all their emotional feedbacks and pleasure centers without any throttling down. They could forget the incident, but they will always know that they lost something. Something they found really precious. They don’t want to forget it.”
“Bit different from wanting to forget,” said Goth. “From what I can work out, the Arerrerr was a pet. It needed looking after, and looking after it made the aliens feel good. Maybe even happy. A bit like Tippi. The Arerrerr doesn’t need much, just some leaves and some petting. In some ways it doesn’t give much, rather like Tippi. I don’t think it loved its aliens. Oh, it misses them, because they did a good job and it was comfortable, well petted and looked after and happy. But I am pretty sure they loved it. The image of them telling it they were coming back for it…it was heartrending. And loving it and looking after it made them happy. Just like looking after Tippi makes you happy.”
“Yeah. I reckon you’re right. They all look like you two dopes. But I still don’t see what I can do about it. If they realize I’m going to take that away…it’s going to take more’n Ta’zara to hold them still.”
The captain looked thoughtful. “Is it possible to turn this change in their minds away from loving sea-squill smell? I mean, now that it is set.”
“You said it was pretty simple,” said Goth to the Leewit.
“It is. I think it will reinforce the more exposure they get. But at this stage, it’s just one neuron path. It’s associated with smell. Very basic neural function.”
Goth smiled to herself. You could hear the teaching pattern helping the Leewit. She skipped from her usual language, clinging to the fact that she was the youngest and liked being the youngest. “The guy with the bomb. Can you claim he needs treatment to take it out?”
The Leewit scowled. “Not too keen on surgery, Goth. I’m still sort of scared of it.”
“Teleport surgery? I know they do it on Karres. Mother told me. We did a small bit with the nursebeast on Nartheby.”
The Leewit brightened. “Oh. Yeah. Hang on.” She stood, plainly referencing her teaching pattern. “Yep. We can try anyway. It won’t hurt him. You and I work together…touch talk. I could direct you and you ’port it out of him?”
“If I know how big it is and can get a mental handle on it. If I get the wrong bit, it could do some damage, but it wouldn’t be cutting him open. And while you’re in there…you shift that neural pathway.”
“Yeah. Um. Maybe. But to what?”
“Each other?” suggested the captain. “They’ll need someone not to take advantage of them. At the moment they desperately want to please… Mantro barges and the stinking work on them. Make it any one person and that person could take terrible advantage of them. If they’re looking out for the best they can do for each other, well, that would stop that.”
“I like that,” said the Leewit, thoughtfully. “Even though they’d be like you dopes, but still. Come on, Goth, Captain, we’re going to need your strength. Me’a can guard us with the tank.”
“So what do you need to do the change? They used scent vials for the Arerrerr,” said Goth.
“Hadn’t thought of that. I’ll need a scent sample from each and all of them. That could be hard.”
“Separately?”
“No, all together will probably do. The reaction will trigger off any of the molecules, even in low concentrations.”
“No-shape, and if you give me something to collect the samples on, I could do it,” said Goth.
“There’s a first aid kit here, with some absorbent swabs,” said the captain, producing them.
“Perfect,” said the Leewit. “And I will make them sweat a bit for you. I got a new whistle for that!”
So Goth went out, unseen, and simply took dabs off the skin of the suddenly sweaty and slightly nervous happy people.
When she came back, they did a changeover, with Me’a taking control of the tank, and the others going to the wary group.
It was obvious that the Leewit’s whistle hadn’t made them easier to deal with. “You all got your nose filters in?” asked Goth of her companions.
The others nodded. “Okay. I’m going to crack a vial of sea-squill smell.”
“Make it real quick,” said the Leewit. “They don’t need to smell a lot of it, and neither do we.”
So she did. It worked. “Look, we need to do a follow-up medical procedure on you,” the Leewit explained to Farnal. “You’ve got that bomb in you, which will eventually blow up.”
He nodded earnestly. “That could hurt others. Innocents.”
“Well, I couldn’t do this earlier, because my sister wasn’t with me. But I reckon we can help.”
“But how? It was a major surgical procedure to put it in,” said Farnal.
“You leave that to us,” said the Leewit. “We’re using new techniques. Trust us. We rescued you, saved all those other slaves, treated your injuries, and then got you off Cinderby’s World.”
�
�This is all true. You have displayed your goodness, and I think you have been a hand of Irad. I will trust you,” said Farnal.
They took him into one of the dormitory rooms, and got him to lie down.
The Leewit put her hands on his shoulders. “The transdermic injection may sting briefly,” she said—and touching him obviously induced some kind of nerve-based anesthesia.
“You’ve been watching those medical shows,” said Goth to her sister.
“Yeah,” said the Leewit. “Need to fake something besides klatha being used. Goth, hold onto my shoulders and I’ll try and lead you in. The teaching pattern says I can do this. I hope it works. Captain…if you lend us strength.”
Goth found it nearly as disturbing as reading history from objects was. She found herself seeing the layers of tissue and blood vessels that her sister moved her power through and along, with the man’s heartbeat loud in her ears. The Leewit transported her down between the ropes of intestines and their rhythmic movement and little gurgles, to a spheroid with a couple of spiky protrusions, one of which had plainly connected to the spine, and the other to a major artery. Suddenly the vision zoomed in, and she could see those connections were closed off with some hard white substance. And then they zoomed out and did it again. She could hear the Leewit’s voice somewhere in the distance, yet within her. “That’s it. Can you take it out? Not breaking the blockers I put in.”
’Porting always took careful visualization, but she had that now. So she took it out.
She was not really prepared for being in the middle of an earthquake.
When the shake and tumble had stopped and she found that she was still somehow seeing the world from inside the gut cavity through the Leewit’s klatha senses, she asked, “Did it go off?”
“No, you dope. Just the bomb suddenly wasn’t there in his abdomen,” said the Leewit’s distant-near voice. “Everything rushed in to fill the space. I nearly lost control for a bit. I got a few minor bleeders to fix. All right. You can go out now.”
“Not sure I know how to.”
“Just let go of me. You’re squeezing a hole in my shoulder.”
So Goth did. The bomb from Farnal’s belly lay on the floor rocking slightly…inside one of the captain’s transparent force cocoons.
“I didn’t know if and when it might go off,” he said. “Best to be safe I thought.”
“Swab,” said the Leewit.
So Goth gave it to her.
A few moments later she pulled her hands away, and smiled at the two of them. “That was easier than I thought.”
“I feel like I went through an earthquake,” said Goth.
“Well, next time we shouldn’t actually be in there when you do it. And my shoulder is sore. But the job is done. He’ll wake up in few minutes. He’ll be a little sore, but no longer in love with anything that smells of sea-squill.”
“That’s a win for him. So what about that bomb? Will it go off?”
The Leewit shrugged. “My teaching pattern doesn’t cover bombs, and the captain hasn’t given me any to ’speriment with. And I did so ask him to.” She stuck her tongue out at the captain.
“Yeah. Well, it is sitting in a cocoon over there. What do we do with it?” asked Goth.
“You ’ported it here? You dope,” said the Leewit. “Don’t you think somewhere else would have been smart?”
“Easy, you two,” said Captain Pausert, grinning at them. “Here. I brought two of the ration bars from the tank. You’ll probably need them and they might make you better tempered. I don’t know that much about bombs, but it’s safe in the cocoon. Vezzarn’s the right man to ask, but Ta’zara or Me’a might know more.”
They both took the ration bars, and ate. “Tastes as bad as Me’a’s energy bars, but not as hard on the teeth,” said the Leewit at the end of it.
“Better than nothing, but not nothing better,” agreed Goth. “How hard was changing the Arerrerr’s work?”
“Piece of cake. Quick too. Easier than chewing that ration bar. I could do the others without them even knowing, now I’ve done one.”
“So let me hide you in no-shape and we’ll go and do it. It’ll be easier than getting them to trust us first.”
“It is sort of without consent,” said the Leewit.
“Uh-huh. If any complain you can undo it, and make them want to work on the Mantro barges to smell sea-squill all their lives. We don’t want to spend too much time on this. The Soman crowd probably still outnumber us. They’re just in a mess right now.”
“I guess,” said the Leewit.
So they went out.
* * *
The captain looked at Ta’zara, still standing at the doorway, and sighed. “I suppose I should be used to them.”
Ta’zara smiled. “As the man said of storm wind: ‘There is no stopping it, so you may as well go with it. Who knows where you may end up?’ It is good that my mistress considers what she does, though. She is growing, Captain.”
“Yes. Both of them are. I’m the one who feels like he is shrinking. What do we do with this fellow? What do we do with this bomb?”
“Leave both, I would say,” said Ta’zara, calmly, looking out of the doorway at the group of people. “I think I can work out where they are.”
“Why? Is Goth’s no-shape less than perfect? She would want to know.”
Ta’zara shook his head. “Come and look. The ones they’ve treated are quite obvious.”
They were. The faces and postures showed it. They glowed with happiness, with pleasure at being with those their modified nervous systems told them they adored.
“I don’t want it done to me, but I can see how it works,” said Pausert quietly. “And how they made such good slaves. I’m glad we’ve put a stop to it.”
“It is a particularly evil thing to take advantage of,” agreed Ta’zara. “Still. I believe they were very expensive, and therefore treated quite well. Ordinary slaves are often not treated well because they are quite cheap.”
“I don’t care. It had to stop,” said Pausert. “And we need to make sure it doesn’t start up again.”
“On this we are in complete agreement, Captain. The Arerrerr’s power can be terribly misused. Besides slaves… Soldiers could be made into utter fanatics. I am not sure quite how the Leewit plans to do it, though.”
Ta’zara seemed convinced she had a plan. Privately, though, Pausert wondered how such a creature’s abilities could ever be kept safe from abuse.
While he was still pondering this, Goth and the Leewit returned. “Done. I think. They kept milling around,” said the Leewit, tiredly.
“I kept track,” said Goth. “Being able to know where things are in space goes with ’porting them. People are no different. How’s the patient?”
“Breathing fine,” said the captain. “But I’m not much on medical matters, as you know. He’s been stirring a bit.”
“He’s waking up,” said the Leewit. “He’s about due.”
And indeed, Farnal sat up a few minutes later, and blinked at them. “Did you succeed? You seem so young for a surgeon.”
“Look on the floor,” said the Leewit.
He did…and then flung himself hastily on top of the bomb. “Get out! Get out quickly!”
“It’s shielded,” said the captain. “A hyperelectronic bomb-disposal shield.” It was simpler than trying to explain what that actually was. And, for Karres and its operatives it was far safer to keep its mechanisms secret.
The man got up, rubbing his plainly bruised stomach. “Good, dear ones. I was so afraid you would be killed.” There were tears in his eyes. “I thought you would just deactivate the switch. It is not possible to remove it from the body without activating the timer. It only has a brief time before exploding. I think you should still leave. I could not bear it if you were to be hurt.”
Goth looked at the Leewit. And the Leewit looked back at Goth. “We both held the swab.”
It took Pausert a few moments to work it out. “Well
. At least we know they won’t attack us. I suppose we can leave this bomb here. Unless you have another use for it, that is?”
“Thinking,” said Goth. “Come on, Farnal. There are lots of people out there who will be happy to see you. And you them.”
They went out of the dormitory room and left him to join the others, returning to the tank. Me’a had been busy in there. “I’ve used the spatial maps and the data to position a remote probe in the passage leading to the gateguns. I used that for a direct line-of-sight spy-ray penetration. They’re preparing a counterattack. I’m listening in on their planning. I’ve even managed to penetrate their systems. I’m trying to use that to circumvent their comms shield. I am stealing all their data while I am in there… Here. Let me put the sound and visual up on screen. Ta’zara, we need to plan.”
Her fingers danced across the hyperelectronic keypad. Onto the tank’s central display screen came the image of the people of the Soman Consortium—or what was left of it, in the fortification behind the gateguns.
There were still quite a lot of heavily armed men. There were even a couple Goth recognized. Bormgo…and the obnoxious Jaccy from the sheen clipper Sheridan. He must, somehow, have gotten them to not to condition him as a slave. Yelissa was there too, clinging onto him. Well, Goth understood that now. It was still a surprise to see them there.
“That’s the nasty piece of work who drugged me on the ship! The one who wanted to send me here to be turned into a Karoda slave,” said Goth.
Pausert cracked his knuckles. “Which one?” he demanded.
“Can you keep it down?” asked Me’a. “I’m trying to listen. It always pays to know what your enemies are thinking and doing.”
“It might pay better to ’port them a little bomb,” said the captain, tersely. “It was, come to think of it, really intended for them. I think delivering it might stop them thinking or doing. Can you do that, Goth?”
“No problem. I can see where it is going. But will it go off? What about the cocoon?”
“I can take that off anywhere. I made it. I know it. I don’t have to see it or touch it. We can take it off here and we can set the trigger.”
