Pets in Space® 4

by S. E. Smith

  A silvery object caught her attention, like a splinter catching a thread. Something told her to look at it again. She did. And her heart nearly stopped.

  It wasn’t possible.

  It corresponded exactly to what the Monitors knew.

  They just didn’t know how significant it was.

  Kev’s situation escalated to a heated argument. The Fence’s confederates gravitated that way in case their services were needed. Balanced on a knife edge of indecision, Sara only had moments to decide what to do.

  A kind of cool clear focus took over and made the decision for her.

  With a swirl of her robe, she returned to where Kev and the other fighter glared at each other while the Fence grinned. She gestured at the other fighter with her thumb. “How much is he offering?”

  “Five gold coins,” Kev growled. “But it’s mine. My name is engraved on it.”

  “You lost it. Losers weepers.” The stranger smirked.

  Sara peremptorily put seven gold Fair coins on the counter in front of the Fence.

  “Done.” The Fence handed the long white shield to Kev, who eagerly seized it. The other fighter glowered. “Better luck next time,” the Fence told him.

  “Come on,” Sarah told Kev. On the landing of the stairs leading up, she whispered, barely audibly, “I got it.”

  “What?” he breathed. “How?”

  “Let’s go outside.” The dank air here, or her certainty that it was the criminal Underworld below them, made the hair on the back of her neck stand up.

  She found a low ledge on the outside of the building and sat down with him. “My aunt taught me sleight-of-hand tricks.”

  “Why am I not surprised?”

  “So I swapped the victory cup for this while you were arguing. There’s no empty spot. I’m sure the Fence and his men watch for empty spots. Both things are silvery-looking so there’s not a change of color to attract notice either.” She might be babbling. She definitely felt light-headed. She needed Kev to see why. Keeping her prize out of the light from the nearby door, she took it from the pocket of her robe and nestled it in her lap. It resembled a silver cup or bowl, except its rim was deeply fluted. “I think it’s real,” she whispered.

  He covered it with his hand to experimentally pick it up an inch. “Real titanium. The Medievals had ceramic vessels, or stone, maybe glass. They didn’t have titanium chalices or anything else.”

  “There’s an alien culture that once did.” She traced the incredible shape. “The shape is made for intelligent birds to drink out of. Their beaks fit in the fluting. It’s a Trilling chalice. Only three other cups like this are in the possession of any human institution across the stars.”

  The wheels in his head finally started turning. “How valuable?”

  “Incalculable.”

  “And you’re sure?”

  “The shape is unmistakable. Besides, my aunt Lana put me up to this quest in a message today. I wouldn’t be surprised if she got wind of it all somehow! In a later message, though, she told me to forget about it and leave it alone.”

  “So you should. At least, give me that.” Concealing it in both hands, he hid it in a pocket below his belt, sealing the pocket shut. “It may be too hot for the Monitors to handle.”

  “I know. It should go to Aunt Lana’s department or better yet the campus police—” Sara suddenly became aware that the refectory inside the Monastery had gone silent. The hairs on the back of her neck went up again.

  Silhouetted, the Death Angel stepped out of the lighted door. Light shone through its cocked translucent wings. Scowling, it pointed at them.

  Six

  Door and Window

  Galvanized, people streamed out of doors and windows and looked down from the roof. Some reached for their weapons. All the attention was focused on Kev and Sara, and none of it was healthy.

  “To the Door!” Sara took his hand. They ran across the Field of Blood in twilight. “That’s the Death Angel I saw before the avalanche—”

  “Right!” No—wrong was really how it felt to Kev. The most dreaded player in the Fair being in on a scheme to steal or smuggle the Trilling chalice felt very wrong.

  So did feel of the sand underfoot. The sand began to shift. Only his fight training told him what to do. He seized Sara and threw her backwards with all his strength. Inexorably, he skidded into the pitfall, sliding toward the bottom with sand sluicing through his clothes. Sara rolled to her hands and knees at the edge of the hole in the sand and looked down at him wild-eyed.

  “Run!” Kev yelled at her.

  Arrows and rocks fell near him, aimed more excitedly than accurately in the failing light. He whirled around, knowing a pitfall meant becoming a certain casualty—unless there was a way out—

  One wall of the pitfall had a dark mouth. A tunnel. Kev ran into it. He paused long enough to snap the point of his spear out and take the Window Key in his hand. When he held out his hand toward the deeper darkness of the tunnel, the Key buzzed.

  A drone mote crawled out from under his collar. It clung there emitting light. Another joined the first one. They gave him just enough light to see the shadowy turns as he jogged through the tunnel. With his luck today, the tunnel probably ran under the Monastery. He just hoped he found a Window before he found too many enemies. Doubling back to the pitfall was not an option. It sounded like at several fighters had jumped into the pitfall to chase him.

  At branches in the tunnel, the Window Key buzzed in one direction each time. Finally he came out in a place he instantly recognized—right below the stairs in the Monastery. Confused people ran up and down the stairs.

  A Crusader blocked his way. Kev deflected the Crusader’s sword with his shield, sending pain through his hand. He slammed his shield against the Crusader’s head and that attacker staggered away. Then an Arab came at him. Kev rammed the point of his spear into the Arab’s mail-shirted midriff. The mail held but the Arab collapsed with the breath knocked out of him.

  The Key directed him to the Fence’s tunnel. Gritting his teeth, Kev sprinted through it, overturning a table to buy maybe ten seconds. The Key took him left at the next ill-lit tunnel branch. A square outline glowed in a wall ahead.

  Pushing didn’t open the Window though it felt loose in the wall. Faintly remembering how some old-fashioned windows worked, he scrabbled at the bottom of it with his fingers. The Window slipped upward. Kev threw himself through the Window, slamming it down in front of the fighters on his heels.

  The box he was in—he was in a box and not a very big one—tilted backwards.

  Seeing Kev trapped in the pitfall with armed people swarming out of the Monastery made Sara’s heart constrict in her chest. But she couldn’t help him here. She ran for Winter’s Door. She avoided tripping and falling down only because her motes swarmed around her feet and lighted the way.

  At Winter’s Door she dared look back with her heart thudding at the trouble she was in. We’re separated—he’s in danger—

  And so am I!

  The Angel had launched himself into the air. He flew toward her like death on the wing. With a sob, she threw herself through Winter’s Door. Inside the translator, she shook with delayed reaction to stress and anger.

  A few minutes later, she stepped out of the translator in the pine forest where she’d first met Kev and Jerad. The snowy branches were glazed with starlight and threw deep black shadows.

  She held the finder ring over the guidebook. There was no responding light, no sign of Kev. She found where the guidebook indicated a Door to Safe Haven. It was far enough to be daunting in a cold night, alone. The robe was warm and she wasn’t going to freeze to death, but she was sick of the Fair and sick with fear for Kev. If only she’d kept the Trilling chalice….

  If she had the chalice now she’d be lost and alone with an artifact worth the budget of all the sciences in the university and criminals combing the Fair for it. Not good either.

  Tears trickled down her cheeks and felt icy in th
e cold wind.

  Then a soft snort startled her into looking up.

  Like starlight incarnate, a slender, supple shape stepped out from the shadows. The fluted horn gleamed on its fine-drawn equine head.

  Too stunned to keep crying, she rose and held out her hand. The unicorn extended its muzzle. She felt its velvet skin and warm breath and smelled its warm hide—like horse smell with a floral note. Its delicate ears tilted toward her. Oh. This creature was not just a silly chimera, something genetically stitched together for no good reason. It was beautiful and horselike. That was when she saw the problem with her original plan, besides it being dishonest and risky. How could she hurt an ethereal horse? Just where on its silver coat had she intended to break the tender skin?

  Patting the unicorn’s sides and legs, she found the gravity braces. They were ingenious and well fitted enough not to abrade that tender skin.

  The unicorn pushed against her. It wanted her to go somewhere. Which was a better idea than anything else she could think of. She’d thrown the guidebook down. She quickly stooped to pick it up. It had opened to its centerfold, with the map of Winterfair.

  Sensing the finder ring on her finger, a red dot glowed.

  She dropped to her knees. The motes hovered, the better for her to read the map.

  The unicorn impatiently took the braid of her hair in its teeth and tugged.

  The Window was to a Door like an ancient dumbwaiter to an elevator: more fit for cargo than people. After a jolting joyride—the thing moved too fast for comfort—it spilled Kev out on a rough dusty floor.

  Dust? He’d seen dust in the Fane. A Window was supposed to end up somewhere with some kind of relationship to where you started. Had the Window spirited him from the tunnel under Axledoom to a crypt under the Fane? Holding his breath, he cautiously felt around. He found a smooth stick. It scraped against the floor unpleasantly when he moved it. The drones crawled back out onto his collar. Evidently they were programmed to take cover and hang on in situations of flight or flight. The dronelight showed him that the thing he had his hand on was—

  A bone. The rest of the skeleton sat against a rock wall staring at him with empty eyes. Dusty dishes, jewelry, and weapons were scattered around the skeleton. A gold crown rested crookedly on its skull.

  Kev’s heart thudded with the scare of seeing the faux skeleton—and a realistic fear on top of that. If this was a make-believe burial chamber, could he only get out by the Window? He didn’t want another Window ride, especially not if it took him back the way he’d come. If he was in a sealed chamber underground he’d have to try it anyway.

  But he felt a cold fresh draft like an exploratory finger of winter wind. Sure enough, he located a narrow way up and out of here.

  This was a replica of a type of burial chamber that had been older than ancient on Earth. It was just the kind of place they’d have put another Grail, he thought, but he wasn’t looking for a Grail anymore. He was leaving one. Inspired by Sara switching the victory cup for the Trilling chalice, he swapped the chalice for a dusty, dented goblet and carefully heaped other grave goods over it. The goblet, he dropped into his pocket.

  He wriggled up through the fissure to the outside world. There he shook out his winter cloak and wrapped it around himself. It blocked the cold wind of Winter and warmed his shoulders almost immediately.

  He was high on Mount Zaber. To his surprise, he saw that he hadn’t just crawled up out of a cave-grave. He’d come out from under a tall stone that loomed against the night sky. He experimentally pushed against the stone. It didn’t move. Faux stone or whatever, it was solid. It would do to hide the Trilling chalice until he could tell the authorities where it was.

  He made sure to step on stone and turf, not snow, so as to leave no tracks. Some distance away, when he came to the edge of the pine forest, he turned on the tracer in the Window Key. Then he opened his guidebook to verify that it was working. It was.

  The guidebook told him that a Door to Safe Haven lay uphill. He started that way.

  He walked fast. The Trilling chalice was no longer his problem. Sara was. He had to find her or let her find him. Or find the authorities to report a missing person in danger.

  Sara twined her fingers in the unicorn’s silky mane. He was so surefooted that she stopped watching her feet and just trusted him to avoid rocks and roots. Sara knew horses. Her parents had a horse farm in a Goyan province. She’d come to Wendis to get away from the dull province, but she knew and loved horses. With this horse made of starlight lightly walking beside her, she felt safe.

  She saw Kev’s shield before she saw the man. Slung on his back, the shield was a white patch moving among the trees. The man himself, in a dark winter cloak, was harder to see. But the shield showed how he walked. She would have recognized his walk anywhere.

  “Kev!”

  He stopped like he’d hit a brick wall.

  She ran into his embrace. She cried. He laughed.

  Finally, she said, “Is you-know-what OK?”

  “Should be. I hid it. We’ll tell the authorities about it and be done.”

  “Good!”

  They stood beside a small clearing—a meadow. The unicorn delicately cropped sprigs of grass. “And now it’s with you?” Kev asked quizzically. He meant the unicorn.

  “Not it. He.” The light was bright enough to paint the nether parts of the unicorn’s equine anatomy. “He found me. Some stallions do that, they pay special attention to human females.”

  Kev wrapped his arms around her somewhat possessively.

  Sara took a deep breath. “I have a confession to make and I’m going to make it now.”

  “What is it?” His voice was calm and unsurprised, which gave her the courage to go on.

  “My original plan today was to find a unicorn to sample its blood. The unicorn keepers keep researchers away, but there’s a hypothesis that the unicorns are very, very old genetic engineering related to markers of genetic engineering in several other terraforming species. If I could get some of his blood for analysis I could prove—or disprove—that.” She took another breath. “But it would have violated the spirit if not the letter of the university honor code.”

  Kev turned her around and looked into her eyes. “You know, you resemble your aunt.”

  “Is that good or bad?”

  “Both. But knowing who you are, good and bad, strength and weakness, is what enables you to change for the better.” He looked sad. “It’s what I’ve tried to give my home world with my work. They’re having none of it.”

  “I will.” She held him close, feeling a tremor run through him that wasn’t about being cold: it was about strong feeling inside him that she didn’t understand, not yet. “Let’s go to Haven.”

  The Door to Safe Haven was uphill through the forest. Soon they reached the treeline. From here on up, there were no more trees, just landscape washed with starlight. Overhead, the spar in the heart of the world was a river of stars, reflected in from the universe outside.

  The unicorn came with them, as well he might. His home was up here.

  Spinward, the mountain fell away into a deep canyon full of trees. At the mouth of the canyon rose a tall, many-spired building: the Winter Palace. It was illuminated with colored lights. Sara said, “I hope Jerad and Paolo are OK.”

  “He’s a good young scholar and maybe less naïve than he was this morning. Paolo is a crafty old Wendisan who’d be hard to hoodwink. I think the two of them won’t be ambushed by anything. And who knows? Jerad may even get the girl.”

  He didn’t say whether he wanted a girl too or for more than a day. Sara didn’t dare ask him, for fear of what the answer would be.

  At a high-domed, deeply folded rock formation, something shimmered in a recess in the rock. A complex patch of blue light flitted out and danced in the air. Sara halted and stopped Kev. “Look! A flurry!”

  The unicorn stepped toward the rock. The flurry flitted to the unicorn’s horn and clung there as the unicorn li
fted its head high. It looked like a greeting between friends. Sara watched in amazement.

  “Animal, vegetable, mineral?” Kev sounded puzzled.

  “Ions and plasma.” Another light danced out of the recess. Sara held her hand out toward it. This flurry, a purple one, touched her fingers with a tingling sensation.

  The mental sensation that followed was very unusual, something she’d felt once before, when she was very young and didn’t have words to explain it. She had an impression of bright curiosity that belonged to this little thing, this animated origami made of plasma. It has a mind, she thought, astounded.

  “I think you’re a true mage,” Kev said quietly.

  “That’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever told me!” she blurted.

  The two flurries flitted toward each other, sparkled together, and zipped away into the night.

  She led Kev and the unicorn around the dome of rock. A similar rock dome stood farther uphill with a recess so deep that it was like a section out of an orange. That was the gate to Haven.

  To get there, they followed a low channel framed with waist-high rock walls. A snowmelt channel for springtime, Sara thought. It resembled watercourses on Goya, with stony footing and cold puddles. There was even a deadfall of limbs heaped beside the channel, as though the stream at full flow had scoured the land and deposited the scourings. Not quite realistic, Sara thought critically. After all, they were above the tree line here. Snowmelt would run downward not up.

  The unicorn gave a sharp snort with a toss of his head. It couldn’t be anything he smelled, because the wind was behind them. He must have seen something with his large dark eyes.

  “He reacted that way to the Baron showing up this morning.” Kev slid his shield onto his left hand and gripped his spear.