Crystal Heat

1

When the Pillory shuttle landed, Shadith stood, the servomotors of the exo doing most of the work and the muscle braces shifting to optimize their restraints. She sagged everywhere-which was disconcerting because she had thought she was in fairly good shape. And Digby was right about the Kliu trying to template her; she could feel the exo’s defenses powering up as probes licked at them. The interference waves gave her a low-level headache that was like an itch inside her skull.

The shuttle was the one the Kliu used to transport prisoners. The seats were fitted with massive restraints, there were ominous apertures with metal snouts in them, the unpainted walls were scratched and dull, marked with stains she didn’t want to think about.

She tapped alive the robot mule, clicked along behind it to the exit and stood waiting for the lock to cycle open, wondering as she waited if transporting her in this thing was a deliberate insult. It seemed likely. Well, Shadow, take it as a warning and let Autumn Rose be your model. Cool is it. Losing your temper isn’t an option.

She wrinkled her nose as the slide chunked back, exposing a battered wooden ramp shoved up against the shuttle. The air smelled like the backside of all the Star Streets she’d ever walked through.

She let the mule haul her gear outside, then followed it down the ramp, happier with the exo as it settled into the performance mode it was made for. A juvenile Kliu was waiting at the foot of the ramp, a crocodilian centaur, his six stubby legs stirring up the noisome dust of the enclosure, the lips of his eating mouth clicking together with disgust and disgruntlement. His ears were rolled tight-which was another sign of discourtesy if the-diplo guide Digby had secured for her was accurate. He was signaling that nothing she said had-enough worth for him to bother giving her mOre than the most marginal attention.

He swung his body around and marched away as soon as she reached the end of the ramp, his clawed feet going stomp stomp crunch crunch creak creak, the thick arms swinging, hands closed into fists. Digby said they squealed as if he were chewing on their soft parts when he insisted his agent look over the scene herself. He had to threaten to give back the advance three times before they capitulated. It was obvious they grudged every second of her presence on planet. Their suspicions weren’t all that unjustified either, considering Digby’s instructions about remembering and reporting everything she saw.

With the mule humming beside her and the exo doing its job, cradling and supporting her and powering her walk, she followed her escort through a series of dingy, badly lit corridors. Empty corridors. Servant stairs. So I won’t offend their delicate eyes with my alien verminhood.

Muttering in his guttural Kliubre, the guide plunged ahead, turning corners until Shadith was dizzy with the circles she was being led in; finally, though, he slowed, slapped at something on the broad belt where his horny torso joined the horizontal portion of his body. The thing let out a blat like a hungry tantser calf and repeated the blat at fifteen-second intervals as he went stumping down a broader corridor.

Shadith followed, her annoyance increasing. She didn’t think much of being treated like the carrier of multiple plagues.

Her guide waved at a door, shut off the blatter, and settled into the Kliu equivalent of parade rest. She exoed past him, the metal sponge pads of her soles clinking and scraping against the metacrete floor, the ’hot mule humming beside her.

The Kliu subadministrator inspected her in heavy silence. His speaking mouth made a few preliminary twitches; the sound that came out was a musical tenor that made her want to giggle at the absurd contrast with that mass of muscle and armored skin. “We have few facilities for srin in the Island Chains.”

Srin, she thought. Small itchy pests that infest the anal glands. That’s not what the book says, but it’s what you mean. I can see you sniggering with your peers at how you’ve got over on those stinking aliens.

“The prisoners we get here are a dangerous, desperate lot,” he said. “Lifers, all of them. Many of them are political with very little concern for the lives of those who do not share their particular beliefs or belong to their genetic group.”

Takes one to know one.

“You must understand, we do not guard the prisoners. We guard the world. Those who refuse the work we offer are provided with materials and tools so they can build their own shelters, and with adapted seedstock so they can raise their own food. We have a series of satellites watching them to stop any activities we consider dangerous to us and we do occasional ground checks for various reasons. Otherwise we leave them alone. It will be difficult, if not impossible to protect you in these circumstances.”

Bite your tongue, Shadow. You don t want to tell ol’ crocface he lies in his fangs. That’s not tactful. “Come now, Exalted Cheba, I’m sure you don’t mean that the island where you harvest the crystals is unguarded.”

His ears crumpled, the edges rolling inward, and a film dulled his large black eyes, nocturnal eyes, unused to strong sunlight. “That is another difficulty, Desp’ Searcher. The exact location of the island and the Taalav beasts is a security matter. You’re a pilot, a view of the night sky, even a strange sky, would yield sufficient data for you to work out the island’s location.”

Shadith blinked at him; she found that degree of idiocy in a subadministrator rather hard to swallow. “It may have been a secret before now,” she said as mildly as she could, “but it has certainly lost that status with the departure of the thief. Right? In any case, I need to study everything the thief left behind, and of course, the physical requirements of a Taalav array. That last will set important parameters to the search for the world where they were taken. I’m sure you understand that.”

“You’ll need living quarters. That will take time to arrange.”

“I assume you have a new xenobiologist in place by now. Is that person Kliu?”

“The Kliu do not concern themselves with such matters.”

Why was 1 so sure what your answer would be? Halt/ “Another prisoner? Or have you gone outside this time?”

“It is not necessary for you to know that.”

“In any case, you will have set up accommodations for this person and his aides. It should not be difficult to find a spare room for me in that facility. Especially since you’ve known I was coming for over a month standard. And that I was female-if that is to be your next objection.”

She read his burst of anger with no difficulty, the overtones of petulance and distaste. Her exoed hands clasped in her lap, she waited with stiff patience for him to realize that stalling to the point of forcing her to walk out on him would win him nothing but a reprimand from his superiors.

He ignored her last response as if she hadn’t spoken, tapped a sensor with the longest of his eight fingers. When her erstwhile guide shuffled in, he flung a spate of Kliubre at him in the expectation that Shadith wouldn’t understand what he was saying. She listened carefully. A lot of cursing and nasty epithets, but basically he was doing what should have already been done, ordering a flier and pilot to take her to Glin Paran which was apparently the name of the island in question.