The Crimson Claw

by Deborah Chester

  “Matiril has a question for you.”

  She looked down the row at the Kelth. “What is it?”

  “When I be cleaning down Zrheli row—,” he began, but everyone groaned, interrupting.

  Shevin made a gagging sound. The Phivean, who never criticized anyone, flailed her tentacles, and Paket backed his ears. Pacing, the Samparese female, called Chean, emitted her gruff cough of scorn.

  “Niruo did that to you again?” Paket asked Matiril. “What you done to him this time, he got it for you so bad?”

  Matiril yipped. “A Zrhel is a Zrhel. Nasty, filthy things. That rookery ain’t never going to be clean. But that don’t be what I want to ask. In their lab, there goes through a big pipe, shielded, and it goes through the wall into a Viis lab on the other side of the wall. It making a weird sound today. I start thinking something be wrong, so I go over there to sniff it.”

  He shook his head, wrinkling his nostrils. “Terrible smell, like a gas escaping. I asked what it is, but the Zrheli just laughed at me. They said not to worry about a little zeron—”

  “Zeron?” Ampris echoed, her voice suddenly sharp. She pricked her ears forward, staring at him intently. Fear curled cold tendrils around her heart. “Are you saying there’s zeron gas here?”

  Matiril swiveled his ears. “Yeah, I guess. What it be? I figured you’d know.”

  Ampris told herself not to panic. There was no point in worrying the others about something they couldn’t do anything about. But neither was she going to lie. Her determination strengthened, and she knew she had to escape soon.

  “Zeron is a radioactive gas,” she explained. “It’s very dangerous, unless it’s shielded properly. Matiril, did the Zrheli actually say there was a leak?”

  Matiril was panting in alarm. He flattened his ears. “No, they said not to worry.”

  “They should know,” Ampris said, but inside she was not so sure.

  “I smelled it,” Matiril said worriedly. “My nose be going to fall off?”

  Paket yipped with laughter, and Matiril growled at him.

  “No,” Ampris said before they could throw themselves at the wire partition separating them. “You smelled a companion gas that’s used to encase the zeron. I can’t explain how it works. One gas is heavier than the other, or their molecules bond somehow, but the companion gas is part of the protective shielding. I think if you smelled it, that meant everything was well.”

  They all stared at her, worry in their eyes.

  “You don’t sound sure,” Paket said.

  “I’m not sure,” she replied honestly. “That’s what I remember from my science lessons. But listen. The Zrheli wouldn’t be calm if they thought they were in any danger.”

  Even as she spoke the assurance she wasn’t sure she believed it. She knew all too well that the Zrheli were brilliant and fanatical. They were perfectly willing to die if it meant accomplishing their goals. Perhaps the engineers had made a suicide pact and were sabotaging the protective shielding around the gas.

  Her heart shrank inside her, but her comment seemed to calm the others. They relaxed visibly and began to chatter.

  “Besides,” Paket said, “we’re going to be out of here before winter. Right?”

  “Right!” they agreed, laughing.

  “But how?” Shevin asked.

  “That Kaa, she don’t be able to keep her throne much longer,” Paket said with relish. “The newscasts got all that official talk about new programs and reforms, but she got too many enemies around her.”

  “Yeah,” Matiril agreed. “The Myal workers today were saying things are bad in the government. Maybe she get herself overthrown. Abiru can fight if they get the chance. That be a good chance then.”

  “But that’s nothing to do with us,” Shevin said worriedly. “How we getting away before I have my lits and Ampris has her cubs?”

  “Shevin, you got to look at the whole picture,” Paket said.

  She backed her ears. “Got to look at me and my lits. That be what matters, not some kaa on a throne somewhere I ain’t never going to see.”

  “We can’t count on Israi being usurped,” Ampris said clearly over their argument. “She has problems, yes, but she should never be underestimated.”

  “What else we got to hope for?” Matiril asked.

  “We can count on ourselves,” Ampris said. “Now—”

  “What’s all this?” demanded Niruo. He suddenly appeared in the doorway, shining a handtorch into their eyes so that they had to squint and duck away. “What’s this noise? What are you doing?”

  They fell silent, staring at him with their ears backed in resentment.

  Ampris wondered how much he had overheard. Niruo had no loyalty at all to his own kind. He would betray them without hesitation if he got the chance.

  “What are you doing?” he asked again, more loudly. “Plotting? Trying to think up ways to escape? You fools, you can’t get out of here.”

  “Maybe we can,” Matiril said hotly.

  Ampris growled to herself. Why couldn’t Matiril hold his tongue? Niruo knew nothing as yet. He was just trying to provoke them into betraying themselves.

  “You can’t,” Niruo said. “You’re locked in. Every building is locked. The Toth guards patrol the outside day and night. And there’s the compound wall. You’re going nowhere. So shut up and get to sleep.”

  “Go lick Ehssk’s toe,” Paket muttered.

  Ampris snorted in amusement. She ducked her head, trying to control herself, but then she guffawed.

  Everyone stared at her in shock, then Paket laughed too.

  Matiril joined in, then the Phivean, then the rest, all laughing and banging on their cages.

  Niruo glared at them, his jaws parted helplessly. His ears snapped back, but there was nothing for him to say. After a moment, he retreated to his cramped closet, which he grandly called the trustee quarters.

  Their laughter rolled on for several minutes more, until they were spent and gasping for breath.

  Ampris wiped her eyes, feeling fond of all her comrades. “Now,” she said, her voice low and no-nonsense. “As soon as the next deliver transport comes in from Lazmairehl, we must find out the new schedule. Then Matiril and Ophah should use their cleaning details to work on scouting what kind of locks are used on the doors.”

  “Automatic locks, security grades one, four, and nine,” Matiril reported proudly.

  She grinned at him, and if she could have reached him at that moment she would have licked him between the ears. “Well done. You know how to pick locks, then?”

  “Not those kind,” he admitted, rubbing his muzzle. “But I’ll study on it. Can’t be much different from security grade two locks, which is mostly what I know.”

  Ampris wished with all her heart that Elrabin was here. He could have handled the locks with ease. But at the same time she was glad Elrabin would never know this kind of nightmarish place.

  A whirring noise overhead made her look up. “Cams,” she said in warning, halting the discussion.

  They all went silent immediately, arranging themselves on their shelves as though they were idle and innocent.

  Seating herself, Ampris stretched her leg and settled back to rest. Overhead, the cam whirred back and forth on a tiny track attached to the ceiling. A red light winked on it, showing it was active. The surveillance cam was seldom activated. She guessed Niruo had reported they were talking too much.

  She sighed. Niruo presented a problem. As long as they feared him, he stayed happy and not too observant. But their having laughed at him was probably a mistake. He would hate them—particularly her—more than ever.

  The ancient transport lurched and weaved as though it might topple over and crash to the ground at any moment. Rusted through in spots and looking ready for the scrap heap, it wheezed and clanked across the Dry Sea and finally turned its nose toward a dusty heap of buildings clustered on the horizon.

  Coated with dust, frozen through, and stiff from sitting hun
ched up in the back scoop on the rear of the transport, Elrabin sneezed and flattened his ears miserably. He squinted against the blowing dust, and told himself to hang tight another hour or two. He’d been hitchhiking and stealing rides for days on the long journey cross-country from Vir to Lazmairehl. He was expert at stowing himself aboard, knowing how to pick the oldest and slowest transports since they were less likely to be decked out with surveillance equipment or robotic guards. Never mind that if he could have bought a ticket for a shuttle, he’d have reached his destination in a matter of hours.

  Slow and careful, he reminded himself, feeling his stomach growl with acute hunger. He was shaking with cold, despite the shelter within the scoop. Slow and careful. He’d gotten this far by not rushing things. He wasn’t going to take a stupid chance and ruin himself now.

  Which meant, with maybe two more hours of air time for the wheezing old transport, that it was about time he rolled off this ride.

  Sitting up with a groan, Elrabin squinted at the sky, gauging the sloping angle of the sun. It was already cold, and the temperature would drop sharply come nightfall. He had nothing on him but a thin, city-weight coat, his possessions belt, and a light rucksack. The idea of another long night walk daunted him.

  Worrying, he rode for another hour, then decided he couldn’t risk it any further. When the transport dipped into a shallow canyon and slowed down to sputter up the other side, he dropped out of the scoop and went rolling head over heels to the bottom of the canyon.

  By the time he climbed to the top, panting and slapping dust off his coat, the transport was barely in sight. It dropped into another dip and vanished, but Elrabin could hear it clanking and wheezing for quite some time.

  Then there was only silent, eerie desolation and the empty whistle of the wind. Elrabin stood there and looked in all directions. There was absolutely nothing to see, no sign of civilization or life. Weird sandstone formations stood like lonely sentinels, and canyons split the ground in all directions. No vegetation grew except some occasional ankle-high scrub that prickled when he brushed past it.

  Slinging his rucksack over his shoulders, Elrabin realized that the uneven ground and canyons were going to make this hike a lot longer than he’d anticipated. But it wasn’t going to get any shorter as long as he stood here. So he ducked his head against the low, slanting glare of the sun and trudged forward.

  It had taken him months to get off Shrazhak Ohr, much longer than he’d anticipated. When he ran away from Galard Stables, he’d gone straight to an abiru bar on the lower level of the central axis, an ill-lit dive tucked into a back corner. The place was crowded, smoky, reeking of illegal dust, and noisy with babbling conversations and the squeal of music.

  Elrabin edged his way cautiously around to the back, where the proprietor of the place, a masked Gorlican with a thick, spotted torso shell and fleshy, scaled arms, sat at a table with a number of Kelth females dyed various colors seated around him.

  Before Elrabin reached the Gorlican, an Aaroun bodyguard stepped into his path and gave him a shove backward. “Get lost,” he snarled.

  Elrabin held up his hands in the universal gesture of peace, desperately aware of time running out. He had to get this restraint collar taken off before his absence was discovered. “Hey,” he said to the Aaroun. “Back off, see? My business here ain’t with the likes of you.”

  The Aaroun shoved him again, nearly pushing him off his feet. Elrabin staggered back and barely kept himself from falling across another patron’s table. Nimbly, he dodged to one side, darted around the Aaroun, and reached the Gorlican’s table just as the bodyguard grabbed him by the back of his coat.

  Elrabin gripped the edges of the table. “I need my restraint collar taken off in the next twenty-seven minutes,” he said as fast as he could before the Aaroun dragged him back. He struggled in the bodyguard’s grip. “I can pay!”

  “Chofa,” the Gorlican said, his orange eyes glowing with greed through the slits of his face mask, “drop him.”

  The Aaroun released Elrabin so fast, he nearly fell to the floor. Righting himself breathlessly, Elrabin shook out his coat and gave the Gorlican his most ingratiating smile. “Thank you,” he said, pouring on the charm. “Now what kind and how fast of a deal can we make here?”

  “What grade restraint?” the Gorlican asked, cutting to the bottom line.

  Elrabin sucked in a breath, knowing he was going to have to pay dearly for this. “Grade eleven.”

  The Kelth females looked at each other and giggled. The Gorlican grunted. “Tough.”

  “Yeah, but not impossible for the one who knows how. You set this up, get it done, and I’ll pay—”

  “Price set by me,” the Gorlican announced curtly.

  Elrabin shut up, knowing he didn’t have time to bargain. “Fine,” he said desperately. “So how fast can we get this done?”

  “You work for me,” the Gorlican said. “Deliver dust—”

  “No way,” Elrabin said automatically, flattening his ears. “I been down that road before. It ain’t—”

  “Ten months you work.”

  “Two.”

  “Seven.”

  “Four,” Elrabin countered, feeling his fur itch as time kept on ticking.

  “Seven months.”

  They stared at each other, but Elrabin’s gaze dropped first. Seven months, trapped on this scrap heap with its stale air, dealing dust and probably doing every other kind of dirty job the Gorlican could think up.

  “Done,” Elrabin said.

  The Gorlican gestured, and the Aaroun bodyguard stepped up behind Elrabin, tucked his fingers inside the narrow wire restraint collar around his throat, and clipped it in half with a palm-sized cutter.

  Expecting his head to explode, Elrabin yelped in panic. “Hey! Be careful—” He broke off as he saw the thin collar dangling from Chofa’s powerful hand and realized he was safe. Elrabin’s shoulders sagged with relief and dawning astonishment. Maybe the collar hadn’t been rigged after all. And here he’d just traded away seven months of his life.

  Laughing, Chofa looked at Elrabin as though he could read his mind. He ambled over to a disposal door next to a wall bulkhead and tossed the collar inside. Then he pressed something on his cutter, and a muffled boom sounded within the disposal chute. The door dented, and Elrabin found his throat suddenly too dry to swallow. Seven months seemed a bargain.

  “Your name?” the Gorlican asked.

  “Elrabin.”

  “Now you called Frade. Now you work for me. Over there.” He pointed, and Chofa clamped a hand on Elrabin’s shoulder to hustle him to his first task.

  Now, trudging across the Dry Sea of Viisymel with dust thick on his tongue, down inside his ears, and even gritty in his eyes, Elrabin told himself to lose that memory along with plenty of others. He’d done what he had to do, and at the end of his seven months of service he’d struck another deal with his boss, spending half his secret hoard of credits to secure semilegal passage down to the planet.

  It had taken plenty of dodging and all his skill to keep from being picked up by patrollers around the docks, but he’d managed. Then he’d caught a transport headed out, and was on his way.

  Now he was close to Lazmairehl, close to Vess Vaas. He just hoped that Ampris was still alive after all this time.

  CHAPTER•SEVENTEEN

  Exhausted, but supremely content, Ampris lay curled in the maternal bed with her three newborn cubs. They nuzzled weakly against her, making their soft mewing cries, while she caressed them and crooned to them with love.

  Never mind the shock of their first appearance, when she realized that they were not entirely Aaroun. Never mind how they looked, so bizarre with their flat faces and hairless heads with only vestigial nubs for ears. Their tiny hands looked strange, too slender and long-fingered for Aaroun hands, yet their bodies were Aaroun-shaped. They were covered with a golden downy fuzz instead of dense fur. In that initial moment of realization, she had felt a flash of sheer horror, th
en she had inhaled the birth smell and each of their scents. Her maternal instincts had kicked in, so powerful they consumed her.

  Now she crooned and took care of her babies, adoring them no matter what they looked like. They were hers, these two males and one female. They were healthy and strong. Already the female was trying to lift her bobbing, unsteady head and open her eyes.

  Ampris scooped her up and cradled her close. Looking into her daughter’s precious, birth-blue eyes, Ampris recalled her earliest memory of her own mother, who had nuzzled her and sung to her.

  “You are my golden one,” Ampris told her cub. She licked her daughter’s hairless face, imprinting her scent forever. “My precious, beautiful, golden one. You are mine, you and your brothers. Together, we shall be a family. I will teach you all that I know, and you will grow up strong and fearless and free. Someday.”

  She backed her ears, thinking with regret of how their escape plans had gone awry. The delivery of supplies from Lazmairehl continued to come at random times and days. Often now, the Toth guards were ordered to unload the supplies, so that Paket and Matiril had no chance to talk with the Myal workers on the transports. Ampris and the others blamed Niruo for having betrayed their intentions. But they intended to come up with something else.

  Ampris turned back to her daughter and smiled. “It won’t be forever,” she said. “That, I promise you, sweetness.”

  The cub stared at her and mewed, then reached up a wavering, uncoordinated hand. Ampris took it, marveling at how tiny it was, yet how strongly those little fingers curled around hers.

  A bright overhead light snapped on, startling Ampris and making her cubs cry in panic. Snarling, Ampris gathered all three of them close and tried to shield their tender eyes. “Niruo!” she shouted furiously, yet when the door to the tiny birthing chamber opened, it was not the Kelth who stood there, gazing in at her, but Ehssk.

  The Viis scientist, clad in a pristine lab smock, his multihued skin shiny with oil, stared at her with eyes that shone with fanatical satisfaction.

  “Ampris, Ampris, you sly Aaroun,” he said in mock disapproval. “You had your cubs while I was away attending a conference. Why didn’t you wait for me, so that I could watch the birth?”