Shadow of the Warmaster

by Jo Clayton

  The park was on the edge of a forest preserve that spread over the hills south and west of the city on both sides of the river that emptied into the bay. It was open and grassy with rides winding through huge ancient trees, past banks of flowers and fern, glittering with dew whenever the canopy let through light from late-rising Ruya, the silence broken by a rising wind, hot and dry, blowing off the city, punctuated by snatches of sleepy birdsong; dawn was already reddening the east. I found a bench made from rough-cut planks, eased myself down, not sure I should because my leg was getting stiff and I wasn’t all that convinced I could get up again, but I had to locate Pels and I couldn’t do that traveling. I pried the mike off, used the nail on my little finger to turn the screw, then started the beeper. I waited with some anxiety but not too much; I knew Pels and I expected him to be curled up somewhere, warm and comfortable and enjoying himself.

  The earplug beeped. I turned the screw back and stuck on the mike. “Gotcha, Pels. Glad you made it.”

  I found out why Pels had turned down his mike. Looking a bit sheepish, as well he might, he showed me what he’d done. In the hollow thicket where he’d found shelter he had the four targets and around twenty more fugitives, the rest of the slaves housed in that barracks. He was as sentimental as a daydreaming dowager, but I couldn’t complain too much because I was… well, call it pleased to see, they weren’t roasted after all. He knew it too, blasted teddybear.

  I gave Kumari a call. She wasn’t happy with us. You forget that tap? she said. What am I supposed to think when Adelaar tells me the Grand Sech is ordering the Warmaster to gul Samlikkan? I tried to reach you. Flashed the call light. No answer. I couldn’t use the buzzer, I didn’t know who or what might be listening. What took you so long? I’ve been sitting here eating an ulcer in my belly wondering if the two of you were alive or dead. Stay there. I’ll send Adelaar to fetch you. How many did you say?

  Adelaar got to us late the next night, brought both skips, the second droned behind. The Warmaster was back in orbit over Gilisim Gillin, she said, just sitting there like it was brooding over what to erase next. According to the tap we didn’t have to worry about its scanners; the crew was too busy putting its insides back in order. And gul Samlikkan was still burning and the locals were concentrating their attention on containing the destruction and restoring order and they weren’t worrying about what was going on in the hills.

  We packed half the fugitives in the skips, Pels and Adelaar flew them out. I stayed behind with the leftovers. There was some argument about that, Pels was determined I should go back and get some sacktime in the tub’s autodoc, but I didn’t want to face that long flight the way I was feeling; I could easily pass out somewhere along the way and I wasn’t about to trust any of those ex-slaves with the com. The autopilot could handle a lot, but things come up no flakehead can cope with. Adelaar didn’t go maternal over anyone but Aslan, she didn’t care what I did. She told Pels he could do what he wanted, but she was going now. And she went. Pels worked over me until I was as sore as he was satisfied, then he slapped bandages on my punctures and lacerations, shot me full of antipyretics, blood-builders and painkillers, left the kip’s medkit beside me and took off.

  One of the ex-slaves who volunteered to stay behind was a Froska named Jair, an officious little male, precise and self-contained, stoic to the point of insanity like a lot of his species. Pels warned me about him, said he was sure to be a nuisance, he didn’t obey orders, he’d do what he wanted no matter how irritating that was to the rest. When the bunch of them got settled in the brush hollow to wait for me, Jair decided to go off on his own hunting water. Without bothering to tell anyone what he was up to, he peeled off from the group and went exploring. Being nocturnal and forest bred, he was the best suited for nightwalking in strange places, so it was a reasonably sensible thing to do; what wasn’t sensible was sneaking off. Self-contained was one thing, Pels said, carried that far, it was crazy. There wasn’t any need to ooze away like that, what could we do? Sit on him? Thing is, he’s been here over fifteen years; I suppose his natural tendencies were warped all to hell by that. Hard to argue with success, though. He found a small stream about half a kilometer deeper in the forest, rooted around till he located some large seedpods, cleaned two of them out and filled them with water. When he got back, I was furious with him, Pels said, but apart from some growling I couldn’t say much because several of the others were suffering from water loss and on the point of collapse. While they finished off the water, I wasted some time trying to get him to see where he went wrong; he listened, blinking those frog eyes at me, nodding like a good little Froska. Like he heard and agreed with everything I said. Hmm. Not a hope. Swar, if you lose the little bastard, don’t bother hunting him or waiting for him, it’s his own fault.

  The moment Pels took off, Jair tapped two Kouri on their fore-shoulders and slipped away into the darkness with them. I saw that, but what with the painkillers and general exhaustion I didn’t feel like starting an argument I was sure to lose. The three of them were back soon enough, hauling more water and a load of empty pods. I hadn’t thought to ask Kumari, but she sent empacs with Adelaar, two tea bricks and a self-heating thermos. Jair trotted briskly over to a female Svigger and stirred her out of her sleep to make tea for us and convert some of the meatflakes into a thick soup that tasted like empac rations always taste, no one not starving could get them down without gagging. The tea helped, woke up appetites; besides, the food the Huvved had been giving them the past months wasn’t all that much better so they were hungry and got the soup down without complaining. I stuck to tea and some CVP wafers.

  The next night Pels came earlier than I expected. He’d lifted off before sundown, taking a chance on being spotted before he plunged into night. He just grinned when I snarled at him. Adelaar was plugged into the Warmaster, ready to warn him if it moved, he said, and as for ocean traffic, there was one whingding of a storm blowing through the strait, no seagoer would be out in weather like that. No droned skip either, I said, but he just shrugged. I made it, he said. By the time we got back, it should be blown out, so that was all right.

  The AP’s had killed my fever and this body heals fast, so I was in better shape than yesterday; the trip back to Base was no problem, just tedious. I let Pels take the lead in his skip and do most of the watching and my autopilot did most of the work for me, so I spent the greater part of that miserable night sleeping, cramped, cold, drifting from one nightmare to another. And swearing for the umteenth time I would never again commit us to anything like this.

  6. 23 days after the meeting at Gerbek.

  Aslan put the Ridaar down, looked at her chron. An hour till noon. She had time for another interview, maybe two, before she met her mother for lunch, which was set for midafternoon when Adelaar turned over the Tap feed to Kumari and took a short break to eat and exercise a little. She rubbed at her temples, feeling drugged by talk, hammered at by talk, exhausted by the need to listen attentively and ask the right questions to get the story down in all its aspects of feeling and event. One thing you had to say for this experience, she was going back to University with an enormous pile of data; scholars from a dozen disciplines would be excavating it for the next decade, maybe longer. It could hoist her higher on the tenure list, dearie dai, ooh-yeha.

  She looked up, saw Parnalee standing in the doorway of his work station, watching her. Hastily she got to her feet, looked around for something that would give her an excuse to go somewhere else. The Jajes were starting up the path to the lake, small dark figures like wingless black bats. She hadn’t interviewed them yet, they were shy creatures and self-absorbed, they allowed very few intruders into their yiuriu. They probably wouldn’t talk to her, but they were the draw she needed. She started after them.

  When she reached the plateau, they were nowhere in sight, but she saw Kumari stretched out in the shade of a broad squat tree, a pitcher of fruitade beside her, a book on her stomach.

  Aslan chewed on her lip, l
ooked over her shoulder. She was alone, she couldn’t see the tug or the shelters, which meant anyone down there couldn’t see her. She moved hesitantly nearer the figure under the tree, she’d rather talk with Quale (nothing to do with her lust for his body) or Pels, they shared enough of her background to make her comfortable with them, she didn’t even know Kumari’s species, let alone the basic assumptions of her culture. But during the day Quale and Pels were sleeping or conferring with Parnalee and at night they were gone. She walked forward feeling decidedly unwelcome. Kumari continued to read, no sign she even knew Aslan was there. More than that, there was a strong indication that anyone who came by should keep on walking.

  “Despina Kumari,” Aslan said, “It’s important I talk with you.”

  Kumari turned a page. “Second hour after noon, your mother’s work station.”

  “No. I’m sorry. That’s not possible. I don’t want Parnalee Proggerd aware I’ve spoken to you.”

  “Sit there.” Kumari closed the book, pushed up; she checked to see that the panicbutton was in reach, then scowled at Aslan. “Why?”

  Aslan dropped to the grass, sat cross-legged, her hands on her thighs. “I don’t want him putting his mind to killing me. I have a feeling he’d manage it no matter how I squirmed.”

  “Your reasons?” Kumari sounded skeptical but not wholly unconvinced. Aslan felt herself trembling, fooled with her breathing until she was calm enough to go on. The past two weeks had been more of a strain on her than she’d realized.

  “He said it, don’t screw me up, he said, I’ll twist the neck of the one who tries it. He was talking about something else at the time, but I doubt he’s changed his mind. He’s crazy, you know. Not just a little warped. I’m talking about seriously bent. It’s not my field, I don’t know the technical terms for what he is, but he’s focusing all his energies on one thing, making Huvved dead. Some little Huvved snot had his Tassalgans hold Parnalee down while he beat on him with his czadeg, you know, those gray whips they use on anyone who annoys them, cut his back and buttocks into dogmeat. I was there while he was healing, I saw it eating on him. He’s not the kind of man who enjoys a little bondage now and then, no, and there was something from when he was a boy, some sort of trouble, he dreams about it when he’s under stress, nightmares, very noisy. I woke him once, tried to get him to talk about it. He punched me around a bit, broke a couple of ribs, gave me enough bruises to decorate an SM sanctum and kicked me out, made me finish the night on a garden lounge, which I preferred to his company, believe me. If he gets a chance at the Warmaster’s armory, he’ll boil Tairanna down to bedrock. As long as he gets the Huvved, he doesn’t care who else he ashes.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Nothing tangible. Watching him. Stripping down those productions he did for Tra Yarta, you know, the Grand Sech. Some things he’s said, awake and asleep. Body language more than anything, though he’s very good at hiding what he’s thinking, that’s part of his professional training, isn’t it.”

  “No proof?”

  “None.”

  “Not even in the Ridaar?”

  “He wouldn’t let the Ridaar anywhere near him. Made me stow it while I was living with him.”

  “Elmas Ofka wants him with us at Lift-Off. Without proof…”

  “Oh.”

  “Don’t fret it, I agree with you. My fa’ali clanks like a cracked bell when he’s around. Unfortunately that’s as intangible as your unsupported observations. He reports to our Hanifa regularly, feeds her suspicion, I don’t know how, I didn’t realize what he was doing until a few days ago.” She shook her head. “I’ll talk with Swar and Pels, we’ll watch him, if he tries anything,” she sighed, “maybe we can stop him.”

  Aslan got to her feet. “Have you seen the Jajes? They were my excuse to come up here, so I’d better find them and see if I can get an interview.”

  Kumari swung her feet around, stretched out on the pad. “They went toward that clump of trees down there by the hook inlets, I think those ancients remind them of home.”

  “Maybe they’ll feel more like talking there.” She brushed her hair back from her face and started off, trudging along the lakeshore vaguely dissatisfied though she was glad she’d finally spoke her speech about Parnalee.

  7. 25 days after the meeting on Gerbek.

  Conference on Chicklet’s bridge: Quale, Pels, Kumari.

  Quale scratched at his jaw, his eyes on the screen and the swarm of very assorted beings moving about outside. “How many we have so far? I haven’t bothered keeping track.”

  Kumari called up the figures. “One hundred and twenty on the list, one hundred fifty altogether. You two keep acquiring extras.”

  “Money total?”

  “306,900.”

  He grinned. “I could live with that.”

  “Add in the targets in the Palace, it’s close to 400,000.”

  “Which brings up why I had us meet. We can’t use the skips to clear out the Palace targets. We’d have to make, what? four, five trips even using both of them. Better to take the tug and get them in one. Which means we have to wait on that till the Hanifa is ready to jump. You talked with her this morning, Kri, what do you think? If we moved Lift-off forward say four days, make it tomorrow, could she handle the speedup?”

  “Four days, what’s the point, Swar? Better stick to the schedule. If you feel like keeping clear of Kuzeywhiyk cities, we’ve got some targets here on Guneywhiyk.”

  “I don’t see how you can say those sneezes with a straight face, Kri.”

  “Practice, Swar. I’ve had to learn the Cousin Speech you babble in and Interlingue. If you knew the liquid crystal loveliness of Pilarruyal, you wouldn’t ask questions like that.”

  “Mmp. All right, see what you can do about maps. The Proggerdi won’t be any help down here.”

  “Which brings up something I think you ought to know. Day before yesterday I left Adelaar on the com and took a book up to the lake to get some rest and reading. Aslan followed me up there about an hour later. Listen…” She sketched out what Aslan told her.

  Quale stroked his fingers along his moustache. “Chatting up the Hanifa?”

  Kumari nodded. “Trust you to put your foot on the main point. Yes. Every night. Soon as you and Pels are gone. He’s talked our Hanifa into hiring him as a watchhound. We haven’t a hope of leaving him behind.”

  “You mean she’d actually shut down Lift-Off if we refused to take him?”

  “It’d be a tight call, but I suspect, yes she would. She never trusted us all that much and he’s been working on her.”‘

  “You’ve been monitoring him, why didn’t you stop it?”

  “Because I was too dumb to know what he was doing. Not until he’d been doing it long enough to really get under her skin. When I did, what was I supposed to do about it? If you can explain how, it’s more than you’ve done before this.”

  “Shit.”

  “Precisely.”

  “Well, I suppose we do what we have to. And watch our backs.”

  8. 26-28 days after the meeting on Gerbek.

  Ayla gul Iltika, gul Mizamere, gul Pudryar, one by one Quale and Pels dipped into the Littoral cities of Guneywhiyk and pulled out slaves, some on the list, some of them extras they couldn’t leave behind without telling the world there were Outsiders on Tairanna.

  Ayla gul Ukseme was the largest city on Guneywhiyk, in size as well as population; it was a confused sprawl thrown along the inner curve of a skewed half-moon bay. Out where the baywater mingled with the sea there were several Sea Farms, small offshoots of the elder Farms off the coasts of Kuzeywhiyk. There were dozens of freighters tied up at the wharves, linear clusters of one- and two-story warehouses, open-air markets that never shut down; beyond these were stores and Houses spread out along a web of winding streets which climbed over hillocks like horripilation on a cold man’s arms. When he saw the satellite fots, Quale swore fervently and nearly gave up on the city, but Kumari did some snoopin
g and discovered that some of those on the list belonged to the Fehdaz who rented them out during the day and made sure they were back in the pen at the Fekkri by day’s end. Which was very helpful of him. Made it easy to locate them after dark.

  The Fekkri was a massive pile with dozens of towers packed in clusters and a mooring post with a pair of midsized airships nose-locked one above the other. The pen was a small excrescence tacked onto the backside of the pile, a low structure with a waist-high parapet around a flat roof cluttered with bales, crates and assorted discards.

  As Quale came in over the city, the air was heavy with damp and the promise of rain. The winds near the ground were tricky, gusts to twenty kph one minute, almost nothing the next, downdrafts with the drag of an octopus, updrafts that threatened to capsize the skip. As a final irritation, the pen’s roof was so cluttered with discards, the only open space available was over the trap. Quale landed the skip there and spent the next several minutes sweating and cursing under his breath as he and Pels shifted bales and useless scrap so they could move the machine off their entry point; they had to lift and carry and set down gently, no tossing, no rolling, nothing to make their lives a bit easier; they had to keep the noise down so one of the guards wouldn’t get a notion to check out why the rats in the rafters were so noisy that night.

  He left Pels dealing with the lock and strolled to the parapet. On the way in as he was circling so he could put the skip’s nose to the wind and make a smoother, quieter landing, he’d seen crowds in the streets; quiet crowds, no yizzies, no counting coups, no fires, just hordes of people. Something about them bothered him; he wanted a closer look to see if he could figure out what it was.

  The street that went past the pen was a broad tree-lined avenue. He saw half a dozen dark forms standing under the trees. They weren’t talking or even moving much. They simply stood and stared at the outer wall of the Fekkri. As he watched, several more figures came round a corner and joined them. By the time Pels summoned him, there was a small crowd down there, silent, motionless, eyes fixed on the wall in front of them. Spooky. He answered Pels’ hissing call with a tooth whistle and turned away, glad to have an excuse not to look at them any longer.