Caught by a bunch of off-world traders, he groused to himself. He opened his eyes fully, knowing the pretense was a failure.
But, then again, so was his assessment, apparently.
The face moved back as his captor straightened in his seat and Viggo noticed the roughspun robe and the weather-beaten face. If this was a trader, then he must have been marooned here for a long time.
The face matched the language. He mostly looked like a Human though his features tended to look a little stretched out from top to bottom. Probably from Tauhento.
“You are being hunted, Viggo Rickson,” his captor said softly in Court-Dheema but an old dialect of the language. “Why?”
They know I’m in trouble but don’t know why? He pushed himself up slowly, grimacing from the headache. His dry mouth had a strange, tangy taste in it. “Who are you?” he finally managed to ask after translating it into the more modern version of the dialect, the one used as a lingua franca among the various worlds of the alliance and the republic.
“A friend of your father’s,” he replied.
“He never mentioned you.”
“Which is one of the main reasons we count him as a friend and not a dead enemy.” He leaned forward slightly. “On the topic of enemies, you seem to have a few of them. There are hundreds of your people out in the jungle, searching for you. It seems abundantly clear that you don’t want them to find you so we wonder why that would be.”
Viggo knew the question was coming, of course, and he’d already probed about his captor’s claim to know his father. The few questions had met with reserved answers but this comforted him. He’d already shown that he valued Rick’s discretion and that matched with his reluctance to part with information.
In Viggo’s experience, liars were more ingratiating. “The folks who used to rule things in the old days are trying to take over again,” he told the fellow. “My parents are off-world right now, so they’re trying to take advantage of that absence.”
“And that makes you a loose end,” the other finished for him. “They want to use you as a bargaining chip to secure their position.”
Viggo was surprised at how quick he’d come up with that and it must have shown on his face.
“Hey,” the man spread his hands in mild indignation, “we’re monks but we’re not idiots!”
It all fell into place then. “Monks?” Viggo asked. “The same monks who built all those ruins? We thought they got killed off because they never bothered with palisades to keep out the animals…”
“Yes, well…” The monk’s shoulders slumped a fraction. “We’re not complete idiots… anymore.”
“So you were here with us, all this time?”
“All the time you and your ancestors have been on this world,” the monk confirmed. “Plus, there’s also the small matter of the three thousand years before that.”
“Fair enough,” Viggo conceded, “but why stay silent? Why not make contact?”
He shrugged, managing to convey an unshakable habit of pragmatism. “We’d managed to achieve harmony with this world,” he explained. “That was the whole reason for our coming here in the first place. We’d started out all wrong, building sprawling temple complexes, proclaiming our mastery over timber and stone rather than seeking to fit in.”
“And got eaten?”
“We had some initial setbacks,” he conceded, nodding slightly. “We found refuge in a cavern, not unlike this one.” He gestured around them.
Viggo followed the gesture and he noticed how the roots of a spice-tree were woven together in a net that supported the rocks of the chamber. One of the roots was severed but scabbed at the end, hanging over a stone basin.
“We avoid your people because we have no wish to disturb what we’ve achieved. We exist in balance with this world.” He held up a hand as if to forestall a protest. “I mean no insult to your way of life. Your people lived here for generations in that old ship of yours and you’ve achieved a balance of your own, first in the ship and later in your ‘arco’.”
“It’s meant to limit our presence to a small footprint,” Viggo said.
“And it works well,” the monk acknowledged, “but it’s a different way of life, supporting your aims. It would not work so well for us, nor would contact between our two peoples. Your father was able to understand this. He’s protected our secret for longer than you’ve been alive and, because of that, we’ll protect his son.”
“You’re offering sanctuary?” Viggo asked, a feeling of dread building. “I’m not sure that’s wise. They won’t stop searching for me. They can’t afford to face my parents without proof of my capture. Sooner or later, they’ll find this place.”
“They might. We’re evacuating to the southern abbey. Nobody would think to look for you so far from your city.”
“But they’d still find out about you,” he protested. “They’d see this place and…”
“And they’d see nothing more than an old habitation,” the monk cut him off placidly. “We’d throw some rubble here and there, drop a layer of dust over everything and they’ll find evidence that a mating pair of chimera are using the place – droppings, discarded scales…”
“And you just keep that kind of stuff laying around?” Viggo shook his head at their blithe innocence. “Even if you find a nest, it’s not so easy as you make it sound. As soon as you disturb a chimera’s…”
He trailed off in confusion. The monk was humming but it had a low, warbling harmonic to it, reminiscent of…
Viggo’s entire body tensed in shock, every hair rising as the long, scaled face of a chimera doe nuzzled its way up under the monk’s right hand from behind him. Her long fangs were still retracted, folded away beneath her upper lip.
She let out a low, throaty warbling purr as the monk drew his fingers back between her hearing apertures, gently pressing down on the scales.
“You have a chimera for a pet?” he hissed. His sphincter tightened as the creature snorted.
“They don’t like that word,” the monk told him. “She recognizes quite a few words in Dheema but, even if she didn’t, she’d understand the electromagnetic signature of that particular thought.”
The beast gave the monk a friendly thump with the side of her head.
“Friend is a much better description of the relationship we have with them.” Another thump, as if to confirm her agreement.
Viggo saw the danger in his coming outburst of surprise and disbelief. He spent a moment, testing the alternatives and, frankly, coming to grips with what he’d just seen and heard. He took a deep breath and looked the deadly creature in the eye.
“I apologize for my presumption,” he said, fully meaning it.
The creature raised her head sharply, the monk’s hand sliding off. She looked intently at Viggo for a moment, then surged forward, poking him in the gut with her snout.
He already knew it was coming and he laughed at the playful gesture. I’m making friends with a chimera! he marveled. His hand reached up to the back of her head and he drew his fingers gently down along the scales to the base of her jawline. He knew it would elicit a warbling purr of approval.
This was fascinating but he knew he’d have to pay close attention to his precognitive ability if he wanted to keep his head attached. The monk was gratifyingly impressed.
“She took to your father as well,” he said. “It took our people generations to learn how to survive an encounter with her kind. Perhaps your precognitive abilities make your people a good match for the chimera?”
“He told you about that?”
A smile. “We found him with a broken leg and, though we usually just leave your people to live or die on their own, he’d seen us so we had to decide whether to kill him or risk our secret getting out.
“As I’m sure you know,” the monk smiled wryly, “your ability makes your kind uniquely persuasive. We brought him here and kept him till his leg mended. In return, he told us how he’d been able to convince us. That
admission was the beginning of the trust that your father has honored ever since.”
“And he met this particular chimera?” Viggo’s people had no idea how long they lived but it was assumed their span was a decade, at the most. Hearing this one had met his father challenged that assumption. How old do they get?”
“For her, in particular,” the monk said, pausing to consider, “there’s at least four centuries of interaction with our people that we know of.”
Four centuries? “She keeps her nest here, with your people?”
“And her family,” the monk added, “which is why none of your pursuers would ever think this was still inhabited by humanoids. There are still the remains of the two people she and her mate dragged in here from your hideaway.”
He nodded anticipating Viggo’s next question. “We were there.”
Do they have precognition as well? He wondered. This monk was born on 3428, after all. “You can direct her actions?”
“Not quite.” He shook his head. “They know what we’re thinking, so if they’re feeling particularly helpful…” He spread his hands. “That’s why we didn’t kill the one who was still alive – gratitude for their assistance in saving you. They prefer their meat fresh; alive is even better.
“It’s hard watching the kits feeding on a live fantail, harder still to watch a fellow Oaxian, paralyzed but able to comprehend what’s happening to his body.” He shrugged. “Harmony is not always pleasant.”
He stood. “We should get moving,” he said. “The rest of this cell have already left. A handful of volunteers remained behind to help us navigate the rapids.” He waved a hand toward the exit and the chimera left Viggo’s side, trotting out into the next chamber, warbling a call to her family.
Viggo turned sideways, sliding his feet to the floor. He was about to stand up but took a moment, seeing the fall he would have taken.
“Still groggy?”
“A little.” He looked up to see the monk staring down at him in fascination.
“We understand, on an intellectual level, about your ability,” he said. “It’s quite another thing entirely to watch you avoid taking a tumble because you’re seeing it right here in front of me.” The monk shook his head. “I just can’t imagine viewing the universe through your eyes.”
“Nor I you,” Viggo replied. “There can be a comfort in not knowing.” He pushed his hands down on the mattress slightly and grimaced. “I think I can get moving, Brother…?”
“Roj.”
“I can get moving, Brother Roj, if you’re willing to lend me a shoulder to hold onto. The longer we sit here, the greater the danger to you and your brethren.”
The monk helped Viggo up and they shuffled out into a larger chamber where the supporting wood looked more like trunk than root. It still looked to have been painstakingly trained over centuries to grow into the right locations. An adult chimera and three kits loped past him, heading for an arch at the far side where the sound of bubbling water mostly masked the sound of voices.
They followed into a large cavern dominated by an underground river. Viggo almost took his hand away from Roj’s shoulder at the sight of a young woman in the same rough-spun clothes the monk was wearing. She was loading packages into a ten-meter long boat. What are you thinking? he demanded of himself. Trying to show her how strong and manly you are by falling over?
Thorstein’s main job in tutoring Viggo might best be described as the ‘court cynic’. He taught the young man to question everything, especially his own motives. Viggo was getting pretty good at it but he was still a teenager, after all, and he was prone to foolishness where the opposite sex was concerned.
At least he was aware of it.
Two young men came in from a side entrance, their clothing filthy. “Place is a mess, Roj!” one of them said. “We’re all set to go.”
“Grab the gunnel,” Roj told him. “Let’s get our guest safely aboard.”
Viggo did take his hand away from the monk’s shoulder this time. Not to impress her, he told himself. I need to push myself, work off the effects of that dart instead of holding onto others.
He took a precarious step, paused to avoid falling into the boat, which, incidentally, would have landed his head in the woman’s lap, and then stepped down into the small spice-wood vessel. He saw, with relief, that his bow and arrows were stashed under the thwarts.
The others followed and the chimera, two adults and three kits, bounded across the dock to jump into the bows. The water nearly came in over the gunwales when the weight of the large male landed on the keel.
It wasn’t lost on Viggo that the deadly beast probably understood what would happen if he’d let his weight fall against the planks of the lightly built hull. The kits had tumbled in recklessly but the two adults had been very precise.
The woman slipped the mooring line off its post and one of the men shoved a paddle against the dock. They drifted out, the current catching them as they grabbed paddles to orient themselves. Viggo fished out a paddle of his own but the woman took it from him and wedged it back under the thwarts.
“You need to lean out over the gunnels to paddle effectively when we get to the rapids,” she told him. “You were just shot with a knockout dart, so we don’t want you falling out and getting yourself caught in a hydraulic.”
He couldn’t argue with that, so he simply sat there and watched as they kept the boat in mid-stream with an economy of strokes.
The tunnel was growing darker and he suddenly realized he hadn’t noticed any light sources in the caves or here in the tunnel. He turned to look back at Roj. “Bio-luminescence?” he asked, pointing up at the tunnel roof.
The monk nodded. “Only grows near a chimera den. A good reason to make friends with them, don’t you think?”
“Yeah, I…” Viggo frowned, turning his head to look forward, into the darkness. There was a growing roar echoing its way up the tunnel. “Rapids?” he asked, turning back to the monk.
“Don’t worry,” Roj replied, “the tunnel makes it sound much closer than it really is.”
“OK,” Viggo replied slowly, “but, still, rapids?”
“Yes, rapids.” Roj darted his hand out to catch a small package that had just flown past Viggo’s head.
The young Human turned, already knowing that Roj was about to indicate that he should do so. The young woman had her hand down the front of her tunic and she pulled out more small packets from what appeared to be a pouch suspended there by a thong about her neck.
“Pour it into your mouth and hold it there till the disgusting taste is gone,” she told him, tossing one of the packets. “It will help you see in the dark.”
He caught the small packet, awkwardly aware of its warmth and where that had come from. He pulled at the end of the leaf stem and it unraveled to reveal a light gray powder. Looking up again, he saw her and the other man at the front of the boat pouring the powder into their mouths.
He shuddered at the taste to come.
He took a deep breath and tilted his head back, dumping the powder onto his tongue. The taste was acrid, metallic in a rotting flesh kind of way, though that didn’t seem to make any sense.
Not that he cared about making sense. It was all he could do to keep the foul mixture in his mouth. The only thing making it easier was the distraction caused by its effects.
Even though he knew they were still moving deeper into the darkness of the river’s tunnel, it actually seemed as though it was getting lighter. It was also getting blurry. Objects were taking on a hazy, greenish glow and the woman in front of him seemed to leave a faint trail in three-dimensional space as she moved but only relative to his eyes.
They were moving at a fairly fast pace on the river and she wasn’t leaving any sort of residual image from that, only when she moved in relation to Viggo. The tunnel walls were much harder to make out, looking more like a lumpy green soup as they flashed by.
She spat a few times into the water and Viggo took that as his cue
to get the foul tasting powder out of his own mouth.
He looked forward. He’d seen chimera eyes at night before. They had a reflective layer beneath the retinas that gave their eyes a reddish hue but, under the influence of the drug, they were a brilliant indigo, at odds with the green he saw elsewhere. He grinned at the bright eyes.
The female chimera blinked, all three pairs but one at a time in sequence so there were always two open. It was like looking at landing lights, though there was far less comfort on offer at the end of this particular approach.
“You’re enjoying my reaction, aren’t you, elder sister?” he called out.
The chimera tossed its head, warbling in amusement, and the woman turned to give him a curious look before shrugging and returning to her work with the paddle.
The tunnel began to widen out but then suddenly narrowed and the roar stopped increasing in volume. It had reached its zenith. They had come to the first rapids.
“Left!” the woman shouted, leaning so far over the gunnel that Viggo thought she was sure to fall out, but she had one foot wedged under one of the thwarts. She drove her paddle deep into the water again and again.
A rock, less blurry because they were heading straight for it, loomed up over the bow. Seemingly at the last possible moment, the jagged mass blurred to the right and they passed it with a meter and a half to spare.
“Eddies ahead!”
Viggo grabbed the gunwale, leaning over to search the water’s surface. He might not be able to help with a paddle but if he could pull this Eddie fellow out of the… He leaned back in, seeing what was coming and laughing at himself silently.
The boat started bucking, trying to turn but in no discernible pattern. The four rowers labored constantly to keep the bows pointed in the right direction, the young woman occasionally shouting a warning as rocks showed up in their path.
After what seemed an eternity, they bounced out of the last of the eddies and into the straighter but still treacherous currents. “Hole!” she shouted. “And it’s got a hells of a big frown!”
Viggo leaned out again to see what she could possibly mean by a ‘hole’ in water. His eyes grew wide at the sight of a large, swirling dip in the surface just a few meters ahead.
Asymmetry Page 10
