Megan eyed the offending crosshatchings. “Christ, can you imagine how they felt, a hundred and sixty-five thousand years ago, when they looked up and saw that coming at them…?”
32
When the force field was tuned to its highest frequency, even the harsh amber noon of the Fiixian sun was discouraged from entering. A silverfilm tarp hung across the mouth of the entry cylinder to complete the effect. A cool and placid twilight reigned in the Underbelly.
Susannah lit a single oil lamp. She had become used to the warmth of their softer glow. The ship’s battery lamps were unnecessarily bright, and she did not wish to wake any of the heat-drained sleepers who had at last found comfortable niches to retire to. She carried her chemical analyzer to the computer table and plugged in, then gathered her notes and samples, adjusted the lamp wick and powered up the terminal.
From each plant sample, she excised a careful slice of root, stem and leaf tissue, according to availability, the distinction between stem and leaf being moot for many of the succulents. Several hours later, the plants cut, fed in, labeled and filed, she moved on to her animal data. She filed blood, hair and tissue samples from the domestic beasts, from a cross-cut selection of Sawl patients she had treated, then unwrapped her precious single sample from the wild, her lizard’s tail. Despite its air-tight packaging, it smelled of rot and poison. She handled it with great care and protective gloves, slipped the whole chunk into the analyzer’s square maw, then stripped off her gloves and sat back, massaging her shoulder.
Preliminary analyses of the plant samples were already chattering across the screen when the tarp at the cylinder mouth rustled aside to admit a blinding slash of sunlight and a man. A gust of heat swirled in as if a furnace had been opened.
Clausen let the tarp swish back into place and stood waiting for his eyes to adjust. He surveyed the darkened Underbelly, noting each sleeper in her corner and Susannah at the terminal, then padded into the galley area. Susannah heard a quiet splashing of water, the prospector washing his hands of the clinging layer of grit and dust, and later, a hushed clatter as he fixed himself something to eat.
She had almost forgotten about him when he eased up behind her and set a steaming mug of coffee on the console.
“Hope you like it black,” he remarked amiably. His hands and face were burned as dark as the Sawls, blistering here and there. “My greatest regret over the recent unfortunate incidents is the loss of my supply of fresh hekker milk. Boycotting me, you understand.”
“You ought to stay out of the sun,” she commented.
“Doctor’s advice?” He laughed softly. “Got a tarp rigged out there now. Only problem is, the tools still get too hot to hold.” He pulled up a crate and sat beside her, sipping his own coffee, studying the screen. “What’ve you got here?”
Tasting the coffee, she described her sample population. The coffee was delicious. He had a way even with instant. It was odd to think of drinking hot liquids when it was 115° outside, but it was just what she had wanted. Noting the laser pistol snuggled at his hip, she wondered how she could feel so easily companionable with the man who had nearly murdered her lover.
“Mmmm. Interesting.” Clausen crooked a finger at the screen. “Look at your chlorophyll molecule: got a little beryllium in there subbing for some of the magnesium. Have you seen that often here?”
“This is the first detailed run I’ve been able to do, what with…”
“I know, I know. Let’s not even talk about being behind in our work.” His eyes focused on the data speculatively. “This explains all the reddish foliage, though. The beryllium would absorb higher energies—green-yellow instead of red.”
“Yes.” It was hard not to respond to his informed interest. Susannah called up another set of data. “And look at this.”
Clausen looked. “Hemoglobin?”
“Right.”
He gave her an immodest grin.
“Terran blood here,” she explained. “Mine, Megan’s. Sawl blood, nearly identical. These here are hjalk and hakra samples.”
Clausen beat her to the prize. “What the hell’s that?” he exclaimed softly. “Beryllium again. Doping the hemoglobin in place of iron!”
“Yup, and worse. Aluminum.”
“What is this?”
“The only sample I was able to obtain from a wild animal.”
“Is the concentration in the flesh enough to be toxic?”
“I believe so, at least after a while, through accumulation. The Sawls claim all wild animals are poisonous and I think they mean more than just the bite. You’ve noticed that the Sawls eat only domestic herbivores? I think this is why.”
“You think all the wild life is carrying aluminum around in them? Why doesn’t it kill them?”
“Their bodies must manage it somehow. Maybe they excrete it, or maybe it even collects, to form the venom. I haven’t been able to get a sample of that yet.”
“An intriguing theory.” Clausen nodded. “We’ll have to get you a few more samples to broaden your data base.”
“The Sawls don’t want them collected. I only got this because it attacked a child on the caravan.”
Clausen regarded her with mild amusement. “Susannah, you’re going to have to decide very soon between diplomacy and science if you’re going to get anything done around here.”
“I have plenty of data to deal with,” she replied edgily.
He shrugged, smiled, leaning easily on his elbow against the console. “Well, if I were you, I’d follow up the possibility that your hemoglobin trace metals are being replaced due to scarcity within the ecology. The planet is very poor in iron, among other things.”
The idea interested her but the look in his heavy-lidded eyes made her suddenly nervous.
“You know, it’s really very odd. Emil,” she said, partly to solicit his opinion but also to distract him. “There seem to be two coexisting closed systems operating on this world, instead of a single ecology. One, the sort of over-system, is very messy and dog-eat-dog. The other—revolving around the Sawls, their agriculture and husbandry—exists within it and seems so perfectly knit as to make you wonder if it wasn’t designed.”
Clausen laughed. “Nature’s the best designer around.” He confirmed her worst suspicion by reaching to trace the contours of her face with a sculptor’s professional flourish. He let his palm settle around her cheek. “You have only to look in a mirror to remember that.”
Her jaw hardened under his touch.
“Not in the mood?” he murmured. “A shame.”
He ran his knuckle sensuously along her lower lip, then gripped her chin gently between thumb and forefinger. His blue eyes smiled. “Sure you won’t change your mind? I haven’t been around all these years without learning a thing or two, you know.”
She did not doubt him, but crowding her mind’s eye was a vision of the wreck he had made of Stavros’ shoulder. She heard herself say in a voice of cold rage that she barely recognized, “I’m not into sleeping with killers.”
Clausen dropped his hand and sat back. “Ah.”
He sighed irritably, picked up his coffee and leaned over with his elbows on his knees, staring into the steam rising from the cup. “Like you said, dog-eat-dog. Very messy.”
Unaccountably, his barren simplicity brought tears to her eyes.
“Why don’t you care?” she demanded with childlike illogic, wishing that he did, so that she could have some understanding of this smooth, able man so apparently without a shred of conscience.
“But I do care,” he replied reasonably. “I care about getting my job done right and living to see another day. That’s pretty straightforward, isn’t it? Lord, I’m tired of explaining myself! So I’m no martyr like your friend Megan. Are you going to hate me for that?”
“But Edan, and Liphar? … and look what you’re doing to Weng,” Susannah hissed, “and enjoying every minute of it!”
Clausen swirled the coffee in his cup and drank. “Look, if my method
s turn you off, I’ve no quarrel with that. There’s other dealing we can do to make things easier for each other. How about this: you bring me the boy, I’ll drop all the charges against you and Weng.”
“The boy?” she asked stupidly, thinking he meant Liphar.
He gestured impatiently. “Come on, Susannah! Ibiá. I want Ibiá.”
“Boy?” she repeated, and laughed, unable to help herself.
Clausen stilled, eyeing her sideways. Then he softly clapped a hand to his forehead. “Fool, Emil! Of course!”
Susannah knew how an undercover man must feel upon realizing his cover has been blown. She had not understood the protection it offered her until it was gone.
The prospector ran his hand through his short sandy hair, chuckling. “Of course. I forget that what seems a young nuisance to me might seem a young beauty to you. And romantic as well, I’ve no doubt.” His voice dropped in mocking intimacy. “Is he very passionate?”
Susannah stared at the keyboard.
“Ah well.” He stretched, leaning back against the console. “There are other things I could offer, more in the way of career advancement, but there’s not much chance of a deal here, I guess, if Ibiá’s beaten me to your bed.” He chuckled again, this time with a trace of weariness. “Good for him. I like this boy more and more. He’s learning to protect himself.”
If I were a man, Susannah raged, I could hit him.
Clausen straightened, his face very close to hers. He raised his hand once more to her cheek, let it trail down to curl lightly around her throat. “You do understand, don’t you, that from now on you’ll have to watch your back? Please tell me you understand that.”
Her throat tensed within his easy grip. “Is that a threat?”
“Susannah, Susannah.” His thumb caressed the skin over her carotid artery. “I don’t know whether to be flattered or insulted that you persist in not taking the danger of me seriously.”
“I take it seriously. I’ve seen the results.”
“Yes. I know.” He said it almost lovingly, then leaned in and kissed her, parting her lips gently with his tongue. The shot of desire that wriggled in Susannah’s gut ran neck and neck with nausea.
“Are you sure you won’t change your mind?” he murmured again, then let her go, laughing. “Let me know how you do with the trace-metal inquiry.” He patted her shoulder and left her shaking, staring at the glowing screen.
Susannah ran to Stavros for absolution. He sent Liphar and Phea to make sure she had not been followed, then got up stiffly to bar the big doors.
He felt no jealousy, only worry. He prayed that rape was beneath the prospector’s dignity. He held Susannah patiently while she trembled against his bandaged chest and hoped she did not expect him to respond to her outrage with outrage of his own. He knew he had learned a major lesson in perspective when he could not muster rage enough to do more than stroke the smooth skin of her back and say, “What else did you expect of the man?”
Lately, passing the long, solitary hours of recovery, he had studied that place in himself where outrage, pique and righteous indignation used to flourish. He found there only burning determination, the result of a conservation of energies, of the focusing of all those angers into a single beam of intention. His quest for the Goddesses was his highest priority. He was grateful that rage was not now a weapon that the prospector could use against him.
“Stay away from him, that’s all you can do, until we figure out a way to immobilize him.”
“You mean kill him?”
Stavros shrugged. “Just stay away from him.”
“Stay away from him?” Susannah sat upright, her outrage spilling over along with her tears. “Down there? When he’s the only one getting this expedition back on its feet? With Taylor crippled and Weng obsessed with losing command? She’s so evasive with Captain Newman when she calls in her status reports. Sometimes I think the only reason she hasn’t aborted the mission is to avoid facing the possibility that she can’t, that she won’t be able to get the Lander off the ground or if she can, Clausen won’t let her until he’s damn good and ready!”
Her hands wrapped into fists. “Meanwhile, it gets hotter and hotter. So dry you can’t breathe, yet he’s out there all day working on the Sleds while the rest of us are holed up in the Underbelly like moles… Stav, can’t you see how crazy this has become? Work has ground to a complete halt while you guys fight your territorial wars! One man and one gun, holding us all hostage! Can’t you find a way to settle this without killing yourselves and anyone else who happens to get in the way? You’ve filed your protest, now let the Courts take care of it! This planet is going to be the death of all of us if we waste our time and energies fighting each other!”
“Whoa, whoa, hold it, easy, Susannah. Susannah!” He imprisoned her flying hands and held them tightly though his shoulder wound burned. “I didn’t set the stakes. He did.”
“Did Edan try to kill him?”
“Maybe she did.”
“He says so!”
Stavros worked his aching shoulder beneath its wad of bandages. “Well, it was certainly not unprovoked. Susannah, this is no mere methodological disagreement among colleagues. Try to see the larger picture. Remember who and what we are fighting for.”
He raised his hands, palms out. His clear palms, scored by their invisible fire. His constant reminder, his goad. He let his voice resound with conviction. “Clausen is the mud we must fight through on our way to the real battle.”
He knew this would quiet her. He had learned that she would not debate him on the subject of his mission to save the Sawls from destruction at the whim of the Goddesses. She had not yet decided how much of his tale of voids and unscarred skin to believe, how much to call deception, how much to pity as delusion. But because she loved him, and he knew she did though she had never said it, she let his claims go unchallenged, waiting until proof one way or another presented itself.
“There’s got to be a better way,” she insisted, calming anyway.
“Hush.” Stavros kissed her still-clenched fists, then pulled her down against him to soothe her with his hands and mouth, and spread the warmth of his guar-fire throughout her body.
Even then, as his cheek smoothed the intoxicating silk of her breast, he murmured, “So how is he coming with the Sled repairs?”
Slunk in the protective curl of Susannah’s arm, Liphar avoided Clausen’s mocking eye and sang the tale-chants that told of the coming of the Darkness. CRI recorded, simultaneously processing the chants through Stavros’s translation program.
“I wish Stav was here to deal with this OldWords stuff,” Megan complained low-voiced to Susannah. “However clever his program is, statistically based guesses can’t make the same leaps of faith as good old-fashioned insight.”
Danforth frowned at Weng from the depths of his wheelchair. His arms were folded tight against his chest like a barrier against opinion. “How do you know those drawings weren’t done in retrospect? One hundred and sixty five thousand years, Commander? You’d have a planet-wide civilization ten times over in that span!”
“Civilizations degrade, Dr. Danforth.”
“Or they are destroyed,” Megan added from the side. “There’s another whole mythos to cover that. Lifa, sing us a tale of the Great Destructions.”
Liphar chewed his lower lip, still raw from his ordeal, then nodded. “This is not OldWords,” he offered. “Children sing this.”
The melody was simple, mournfully sweet in Liphar’s birdlike chant-voice. Megan was sure she had heard it sung while the pyres were burning out on the Dop Arek.
CRI had little trouble providing a translation:
A fire in the sky,
Flames like rain,
A thousand avalanches roar where no snow falls.
Like ancient paper, the dry earth tears.
The rocks cry out.
The children’s weeping is not so loud.
Do they cry for the children?
The
re is no one left to hold them.
“Phew,” said Megan, to break the silence around the monitor screen.
“Liphar,” Danforth encouraged softly, speaking directly to the young man for the first time. “Sing me another.”
33
“So Taylor’s decided to listen. About time.”
“He sees many things with his sky eyes, Ibi.” Ghirra pointed upward as they walked, meaning not the stone vault of the tunnel but as far beyond as his mind could conceive. “He shows me DulValla. And he is very amaze that these Sisters play only where we live.”
“You mean the Arrah is confined to the habitable zone? His data agrees with that?”
Ghirra nodded eagerly. “This is very small, he say, for very much activity.” Stavros heard Taylor’s dogmatic tone echo through the healer’s explication. “Still he finds no understanding of the Arrah, what he calls ‘weather’. You do not use this word to me.”
“Arrah does not mean weather. Taylor’s playing fast and loose with his translations. You have no word for weather as we mean it, as far as I can tell. If I’d found one, I’d have used it.”
Stavros could not help a hunted glance along the corridor ahead where it darkened into a turn. Aguidran and two of her tallest rangers paced behind them, scanning the tunnel in both directions. “I bet I find weather in the OldWords, though weather and climate and atmosphere and all that. Tay will love the OldWords, It was spoken by guys like him.”
“Science-ists.” Ghirra ventured thoughtfully.
Stavros grinned, wanting to hug him. “Scientists. Goddamn, you’re good.” He was delighted to see the Master Healer’s lean da Vinci face light with fleeting pride. He had not seen that golden smile for a while.
“You are feel better, Ibi.”
“Thanks to you, GuildMaster.”
But Stavros was pale and aching by the time they reached the PriestHall. He leaned against the columned portal, light-headed, returning Ghirra an offhand smile as the Master Healer reached instinctively to support him. Aguidran offered her rangers a few brisk words to settle their anxiety, then left them guarding the door as she followed Stavros and her brother into the hall.
Reign of Fire Page 27
