Shadow of the Warmaster

4. LEDA ZAG.

Place: Raz EFKLARA MARKAT at the southern edge of the Grass, the western lobe of the Duzzulkas.

Headprice: 7000 gelders.

A hand clamped down hard on her mouth; close to her ear, a male voice whispered, “Listen.” Interlingue. She relaxed and moved her head slightly to let the intruder know she’d heard. The hand came off. “One Nameless wants you back. You want to come?”

She sat up cautiously. Enough moonlight filtered through the slats to show her the man beside her, him who thought he was her master; he was lying with his eyes cracked, his mouth sagging half open. She poked at the soft flesh of his upper arm. He didn’t change expression or move. “Stunned?”

“Yes. Well?”

“You really need an answer?” She threw the covers off her legs, slid from the bed. “Let me get dressed.”

She was tiny, maybe a hand taller than Pels; her breasts were suggestions, her pubic hair a few silky threads. She looked about twelve, but he knew from the data provided by ti Vnok that she was over a hundred; her genes had been scrambled to keep her a pedophile’s darling. She moved quickly about the room, selecting what she wanted to wear, shoving jewelry and bibelots into a sack, not a wasted movement. She was back in moments, her eyes glittering, the loot bag slung over her shoulder; she was dressed in a loose robe that swayed about her ankles; it had long sleeves cuffed at the wrist and a high neck; she’d pulled on soft boots, her feet made no sound on the floor. “Let’s go.”

Altogether I collected twenty-seven slaves from the Duzzulkas and three transfer stations. Then I began on the cities of the Kuzeywhiyker Littorals.

Night after night, explaining who I was and what I was doing and why I was doing it, packing individuals of assorted shapes, sizes and dispositions into the skip and keeping them happy until I decanted them at the Base. In the shelters Kumari stocked and policed, the numbers increased in drips and spurts. It was coin piling up for us, but it was also hard labor, boring, sometimes dangerous, mostly sitting in an overloaded skip, freezing my tail and wishing for a coat of fur like Pels and sorry I ever got into the rescue scam. It was coping with Adelaar who was fretting about her business and what was happening to it without her, it was soothing the Hanifa, who got more nervous and mistrustful as each day slid past. Blessed Kumari, she kept them both off my neck as much as she could. The days did pass. Day by interminable day, they passed. Never again. Never ever again. I was not in love with pain. Or sweat work. But I’d given my word and I meant to keep to it.

5. ILVININ TAIVAS, SUKSI ICHIGO, SHNOURO, SLEED TOK and others not on the list.

Place: AYLA GUL SAMLIKKAN, eastern Littoral.

Headprice: ILVININ TAIVAS: 5000 gelders; SUKSI ICHIGO:1500 gelders; SHNOURO: 2500 gelders; SLEED TOK: 1000 gelders.

The city was burning when I brought the skip down low over the rooftops and tiptoed around clots of trouble until I managed to slip onto the roof of the pen at the textile factory. The streets were thick with homegrown guards and Tassalgans shooting sprays of pellets at the yizzies whining overhead and scrambling away from gouts of fire as the inklins retaliated. Gangs of youngers were screaming words that didn’t exist in the vocab I learned from, darting across housetops and through alleys behind the men in the streets, running dangerously close to count coup on them, scrambling yip-yip-yip away around corners or leaping from roof to roof, waving the paint guns they’d modified to squirt acid drained from eksasjhi veins, the eksasjhi being a lethargic crustacean that lived in the shallows all along the east coast. It left a knotty purple scar that marked the head coup for all to see and silently gloat over, it was briefly agonizing and did not do much for the target’s eyesight if it happened to spatter into his eyes. A hit on the head and the yell was yipyip ya TEN. A hit on a torso was yipyip ya ONE. No scar, at least none visible. A leg was five, a hand six. Houses were burning, men were burning, inklins shot out of the sky were screaming as their firetanks burst over them and they burned or lay with shattered bodies among the bodies of the men they fought, children fell from roofs or squirmed and screamed in the hands of men who beat on them with limber gray prods.

While Pels drifted about the cluttered roof, checking the shadows, making sure no guards or homeless grasslanders were sleeping up there, we didn’t want some local waking up at the wrong time and yelling, I crouched by the trap, set the pick working on the lock, then I settled on my heels and looked around. No yizzies buzzing over this quarter; the nearest noise was half a dozen streets away and moving off toward the bayshore, but there was nothing to keep the inklins away. If they took a notion to fire this place, they could be here in seconds. Nothing clears the sinuses like knowing you’re not just a fool, you’re a damnfool.

Kumari cornered me after the last dip and told me there was chaos in the east. Take two skips, she said, one for backup, and someone to watch them while you’re breaking loose the targets. I know you don’t like to double the risk on long hauls, but you can separate the two skips, go in mirror arcs, it’ll make the run longer, maybe you’d have to find cover and spend the day somewhere, what of it? Irritating to find she was right. I’d have passed on this one, but this dip was worth ten thousand gelders, besides, one of them was Ilvinin Taivas; the Helvetian Seven were hot to get him back, him and Leda Zag. I had her, I needed him. Ah well, it was a mess, but none of my business; I’d seen the backwash from disturbances in other Littoral cities, but they were closer to Base and we were able to stay outside until the fires died down, the injured were carried off, and the fighters on both sides went home. These should have cleared out by this time, it couldn’t be more than an hour or two before daylight, but no, the fools had to keep on killing and getting killed.

The pick buzzed. I pulled it off. “Pels.”

“Yeh?” He materialized beside me; I jumped, that little spook was hard to see even when you knew where he was.

“You mind going down the hole alone? If Luck takes a hike, some maniac on a broom might take a notion to barbeque the skip.”

“No sweat. Only a couple of guards and Kumari said they’re usually half asleep.”

“Don’t count on that tonight. Hmm. Take a buzbug and yell if you hit trouble.”

Pels growled, sniffed. “If it’ll make you squat happier, li’l mama.”

“Here.” I held out the pick.

Pels looked at it, shook his head. “Snooper cameras inside, Kumari spotted them. I’ll have to pop the lenses and that’ll start bells ringing somewhere. I’ll use the cutter on the chains, it’s faster. When I give a whistle, you have the skip ready to hop.” He tapped me on the shoulder. “A minute,” he said and trotted away.

As Pels fished in the toolbox, I lifted the trap and clamped it open; I shook it, made sure the spring would hold and turned in time to take one of the matched pair of buzbugs.

Pels worked the bug through the fur on his throat, screwed the plug in his ear. “Don’t massacre too many infants,” he said and dropped through the hold.

I pasted the phone on my throat, pushed the plug into my ear and touched the bug on; I winced as Pels’ breath came roaring into my head, threatening to blow my eardrum. I tapped on the AFT which I should have done before I stuck the thing in my ear, head dead, yes, I wiped the tears from my eyes. With a faint chuff-chuff in my head, I got to my feet and inspected the roof. There was a fat tapering chimney a little taller than I was, several padlocked sheds, half a dozen blocky bins, stacks of drums, huge spools, piles of scrap lumber, bales of fiber; the flat space behind the parapet was a kind of storage area for anything the factory wasn’t planning to use anytime soon, all of it throwing complex shifting shadows in the double moonglow. The fires that spread along the waterfront and the slum areas near it put hard edges on those shadows; the black square hole of the open trap stood out stark against the pale roof. Made me nervous. I salvaged a chunk of two-by-four from a scrap pile, laid it across one corner of the hole and lowered the trap on it. The skip was squatting like a dark toad in one of the open areas, far too visible for my peace of mind, but I couldn’t do anything about that except hope if the yizzy inklins came close enough to see it, they’d think it was something belonging to the factory. I dropped onto the roof tiles, sat with my back against the chimney, some broken boxes beside me to thicken its shadow and break my silhouette. The launch tube balanced across my knees, a clip in the slot, I waited.

I watched the firefight move farther from us and breathed easier; the thought of having to shoot children out of the sky put a sour taste in my mouth, though that wouldn’t stop me from blowing the tailfeathers off any snooping yizzy even if it meant I’d send shrapnel through the body of its pilot. I listened to Pels breathe and thought I’d been in some lousy situations before but I couldn’t remember any this bad. Children fighting a war their elders funked. No, not fighting, destroying to scratch an itch, to drive off futility. Hanifa, I thought, if this goes on much longer, what you’ll get when you win won’t be worth the price. You and Pittipat are birthing a generation of killers and vandals and they won’t settle into model citizens once the battles are over.

“Snoops,” Pels breathed into my ear, “audio and video. Three of them in the ceiling where I came off the stairs. I popped them, probably set off an alarm. One guard on the stores level, got him; another round the corner just ahead.” A breathy chuckle. “The maffit is farting like a misfiring engine. Fui! Be doing the world a favor when I hit him. A minute.” The breathing didn’t change; slow and steady, little hunter stalking his prey, go Pels! “Got him. And there’s door 5. Tsa! more lenses.” A moment’s silence. “Got them. Five minutes, then we’re on our way up.”

As I listened to Pels go through the routine speech, picking up echoes of the targets’ responses, I looked out across the burning city and felt a deep relief that I was going to be getting out of this. I got to my feet and took a step toward the trap.

A darkness huge and ominous dropped through the shredded clouds. Light beams walked across the city, seeking out and touching the yizzy inklins. Dainty delicate killer blades darting out to touch and kill, clearing the sky. The inklins tried to run, they scattered like leaves in a whirlwind, but it did no good, the lines of light rotated out with an awe-full precision, touch and fry, immense and eerie lightshow.

I swore; it wasn’t fair, dammit. “Pels, trouble up here. Stay where you are. Pittipat’s brought the Warmaster down.”

“Huh?”

“I know. Swatting a fly with a maul, but it’s happening. No way I can take the skip up; the Warmaster’s knocking everything out of the air.”

“Shit.”

“Yeh.”

“Ah, what about the skip? It’s not airborne, is it safe?”

“Haven’t a clue. Hmm. If it weren’t for those snoops…”

“Yeh. We got to get out of here before company arrives.”

“Let me think… um… the Warmaster is concentrating on the waterfront, most of the trouble is over there. I think you’d better try the streets. Go south and west, make your way out of the city. Watch out for lice.”

“Better them than frying. What about you?”

“Sit it out, I suppose, till the ship leaves. She won’t hang around after she’s finished. You go to ground as soon as you’re out of the city. First fair cover you can find. Me, I’d take to the forest somewhere round the river. If you do, don’t go in too deep, I want to use the bug to locate you.”

“Swar.”

“What?”

“Can you get to the skip without exposing yourself too much?”

“Yeh.”

“Thing is, the scanners on the Warship can pin a flea… “

“A throw of the dice, eh? She spots it or she doesn’t.”

“Yeh. Get the spare com, I don’t feel like walking home.”

I had to laugh. “Point to you, furface. But I won’t move till you’re clear. Give me a whistle when you’re a few streets off.”

Silence for a moment, only the chuff-chuff of his breathing. “A couple things I want to do before I leave. Give me a commentary, huh. What’s happening up there.”

“The ship has finished clearing the sky, her nose is over the harbor now. I can see gouts of steam so I suppose they’re going after boats or swimmers.” A mutter from Pels was a faint background noise to what I was saying; he’d turned the volume down so he could talk to the targets while he listened to what I was saying. “She’s going out farther, that’s one huge mother, Pels, her belly’s still over us here, the tail is out in the hills where the rich folk have their houses. Wait till you get a look at her. Hmm. Whatever she was after, she got it. She’s starting to swing around; it’s going to take her a good half hour to finish that turn. Hunh. She just picked off something else, I can’t see steam this time. It’s pretty far offshore, might even be one of the Sea Farms. If it is, Pittipat’s going to have more trouble on his hands than a few juvenile delinquents. Hmm. She’s stopped the massacre, for a while away. You better get a move on, Pels.”

“We’re on our way. Better not transmit for a while. I’ll keep the plug in place, wait on your beep. Luck, Swar.”

“Keep your nose cold, teddybear.”

“You’ll be sorry for that, you apostate Scav.”

“I hope. On your way, babe.”

“Rrrr.”

The hum in my ear broke off. I dropped into a squat, my back against the chimney. The ship continued to turn, slowly, ponderously, so huge it obscured a quarter of the sky.

A whistle in my ear. “Gotcha.” I eased to my feet, set the launch tube against a box. Glancing repeatedly at the ship, I edged around the chimney and walked slow as a weary sloth from junk pile to pile of junk, staying in the deepest shadows as long as I could, breaking my motion at irregular intervals, using everything I knew to avoid alerting a watcher, whether that watcher was a program or a man. The wind swept over the roof, carrying past me the stench of burnt meat, faint cries from the wounded, hoarse yells from the hunters in the streets below me. The air was cleared of fliers, but the ground fight was going on, more deadly than before, there were no yipyips, no more coup games, these were rats slashing at rats. I crept a few steps, stopped, went on, until I was crouching beneath the skip below the toolbox. The Warmaster was still turning, dark, silent, massive, no more lightblades though. I eased out, got the box open and dug around for the spare handset. For a cold moment I thought I’d gone off without it this time, the ready-check was so automatic I could have been careless, then my hand closed on the padded case. Pels must have moved it when he got the buzbugs. I lifted it out, slipped the strap over my shoulder, pulled the box shut. I looked up. Still turning, measurably closer.

I patted the skip, shook my head and started rambling back toward the chimney. When I got there, I picked up the launcher, looked from it to the Warmaster and had to grin.

A moment later I lost all desire to laugh, the lightblades were out and rotating, wider beams this time, cauterizing the city; where they passed, the crowded tenements and warehouses exploded into ash and steam. One minute, two, three, four. The barrage stopped, the Warmaster continued drifting south.

For a breath of two there was a hush. Nothing was happening, in the air or in the streets. Then, as if it were a kind of joke, a last giggle after the great guffaw of the slum clearance, a skinny little light needle about as big around as my thumb came stabbing down close enough I could feel the heat leaking off it. It hit the skip, melted her into slag that ate rapidly through the roof and dropped in a congealing cascade through the floors below, starting more fires as it fell.

The Warmaster began to rise, lifting so fast it sucked air after it, creating a semi-vacuum and then a firestorm as air from outside rushed in. Fire roared up out of the hole in the roof beside me. I had to get out of there. I slung the tube’s strap over my shoulder and ran for the rope ladder coiled near the front parapet. I flipped it over and went down in something close to a free fall. I had a moment’s regret for the slaves still chained in there, but there wasn’t anything I could do, the place was a furnace by the time I hit ground. Besides, with all the death in this city tonight, it was hard to feel horror or anything else over a few more corpses, however grisly their end.

Stunner in my hand, I ran through the dark streets. No one tried to stop me. The few Hordar who saw me, looking from windows or crouching in doorways, were shocked into inertia, too afraid, too horrified to do anything but gape. In a section with taverns and small shops I rounded a corner and came face to face with a Tassalgan who was hunting inklins or anyone else he suspected of treachery, which seemed to be just about everyone not Tassalgan. I stunned him as soon as I saw his dark wool uniform, blessing the amnesia effect of the charge; I was clearly not Huvved or Hordar and I didn’t look all that much like an escaped slave. I glanced back before I went round another corner and saw ragged children swarming over the downed guard. A wiry boy drew a knife across the Tassalgan’s throat and howled as blood spurted over him; he and the other children fought over the blood, wiped their hands in it, licked it off their palms, off his neck. Off the pavement. Hanifa, Hanifa, how are you going to civilize little animals like that? The boy looked up and saw me. I took off. I avoid weasels and all such vermin; they can kill you because they don’t know when to give up.

It took me almost an hour to work my way out of the city; it was a big place, bigger than it looked from the skip, and I had to move more warily once I got into the suburbs; there were guards on the walls and they were trigger happy. I picked up some shot in a shoulder, a hole in my leg that missed bone and most of the muscle but hurt like hell and a new part over my left ear, bullet whizzing by entirely too close. By the time I made the park south of town, I was losing blood from my shoulder and my leg and feeling not so good.

The park was on the edge of a forest preserve that spread over the hills south and west of the city on both sides of the river that emptied into the bay. It was open and grassy with rides winding through huge ancient trees, past banks of flowers and fern, glittering with dew whenever the canopy let through light from late-rising Ruya, the silence broken by a rising wind, hot and dry, blowing off the city, punctuated by snatches of sleepy birdsong; dawn was already reddening the east. I found a bench made from rough-cut planks, eased myself down, not sure I should because my leg was getting stiff and I wasn’t all that convinced I could get up again, but I had to locate Pels and I couldn’t do that traveling. I pried the mike off, used the nail on my little finger to turn the screw, then started the beeper. I waited with some anxiety but not too much; I knew Pels and I expected him to be curled up somewhere, warm and comfortable and enjoying himself.

The earplug beeped. I turned the screw back and stuck on the mike. “Gotcha, Pels. Glad you made it.”

I found out why Pels had turned down his mike. Looking a bit sheepish, as well he might, he showed me what he’d done. In the hollow thicket where he’d found shelter he had the four targets and around twenty more fugitives, the rest of the slaves housed in that barracks. He was as sentimental as a daydreaming dowager, but I couldn’t complain too much because I was… well, call it pleased to see, they weren’t roasted after all. He knew it too, blasted teddybear.

I gave Kumari a call. She wasn’t happy with us. You forget that tap? she said. What am I supposed to think when Adelaar tells me the Grand Sech is ordering the Warmaster to gul Samlikkan? I tried to reach you. Flashed the call light. No answer. I couldn’t use the buzzer, I didn’t know who or what might be listening. What took you so long? I’ve been sitting here eating an ulcer in my belly wondering if the two of you were alive or dead. Stay there. I’ll send Adelaar to fetch you. How many did you say?

Adelaar got to us late the next night, brought both skips, the second droned behind. The Warmaster was back in orbit over Gilisim Gillin, she said, just sitting there like it was brooding over what to erase next. According to the tap we didn’t have to worry about its scanners; the crew was too busy putting its insides back in order. And gul Samlikkan was still burning and the locals were concentrating their attention on containing the destruction and restoring order and they weren’t worrying about what was going on in the hills.

We packed half the fugitives in the skips, Pels and Adelaar flew them out. I stayed behind with the leftovers. There was some argument about that, Pels was determined I should go back and get some sacktime in the tub’s autodoc, but I didn’t want to face that long flight the way I was feeling; I could easily pass out somewhere along the way and I wasn’t about to trust any of those ex-slaves with the com. The autopilot could handle a lot, but things come up no flakehead can cope with. Adelaar didn’t go maternal over anyone but Aslan, she didn’t care what I did. She told Pels he could do what he wanted, but she was going now. And she went. Pels worked over me until I was as sore as he was satisfied, then he slapped bandages on my punctures and lacerations, shot me full of antipyretics, blood-builders and painkillers, left the kip’s medkit beside me and took off.

One of the ex-slaves who volunteered to stay behind was a Froska named Jair, an officious little male, precise and self-contained, stoic to the point of insanity like a lot of his species. Pels warned me about him, said he was sure to be a nuisance, he didn’t obey orders, he’d do what he wanted no matter how irritating that was to the rest. When the bunch of them got settled in the brush hollow to wait for me, Jair decided to go off on his own hunting water. Without bothering to tell anyone what he was up to, he peeled off from the group and went exploring. Being nocturnal and forest bred, he was the best suited for nightwalking in strange places, so it was a reasonably sensible thing to do; what wasn’t sensible was sneaking off. Self-contained was one thing, Pels said, carried that far, it was crazy. There wasn’t any need to ooze away like that, what could we do? Sit on him? Thing is, he’s been here over fifteen years; I suppose his natural tendencies were warped all to hell by that. Hard to argue with success, though. He found a small stream about half a kilometer deeper in the forest, rooted around till he located some large seedpods, cleaned two of them out and filled them with water. When he got back, I was furious with him, Pels said, but apart from some growling I couldn’t say much because several of the others were suffering from water loss and on the point of collapse. While they finished off the water, I wasted some time trying to get him to see where he went wrong; he listened, blinking those frog eyes at me, nodding like a good little Froska. Like he heard and agreed with everything I said. Hmm. Not a hope. Swar, if you lose the little bastard, don’t bother hunting him or waiting for him, it’s his own fault.

The moment Pels took off, Jair tapped two Kouri on their fore-shoulders and slipped away into the darkness with them. I saw that, but what with the painkillers and general exhaustion I didn’t feel like starting an argument I was sure to lose. The three of them were back soon enough, hauling more water and a load of empty pods. I hadn’t thought to ask Kumari, but she sent empacs with Adelaar, two tea bricks and a self-heating thermos. Jair trotted briskly over to a female Svigger and stirred her out of her sleep to make tea for us and convert some of the meatflakes into a thick soup that tasted like empac rations always taste, no one not starving could get them down without gagging. The tea helped, woke up appetites; besides, the food the Huvved had been giving them the past months wasn’t all that much better so they were hungry and got the soup down without complaining. I stuck to tea and some CVP wafers.

The next night Pels came earlier than I expected. He’d lifted off before sundown, taking a chance on being spotted before he plunged into night. He just grinned when I snarled at him. Adelaar was plugged into the Warmaster, ready to warn him if it moved, he said, and as for ocean traffic, there was one whingding of a storm blowing through the strait, no seagoer would be out in weather like that. No droned skip either, I said, but he just shrugged. I made it, he said. By the time we got back, it should be blown out, so that was all right.

The AP’s had killed my fever and this body heals fast, so I was in better shape than yesterday; the trip back to Base was no problem, just tedious. I let Pels take the lead in his skip and do most of the watching and my autopilot did most of the work for me, so I spent the greater part of that miserable night sleeping, cramped, cold, drifting from one nightmare to another. And swearing for the umteenth time I would never again commit us to anything like this.

6. 23 days after the meeting at Gerbek.

Aslan put the Ridaar down, looked at her chron. An hour till noon. She had time for another interview, maybe two, before she met her mother for lunch, which was set for midafternoon when Adelaar turned over the Tap feed to Kumari and took a short break to eat and exercise a little. She rubbed at her temples, feeling drugged by talk, hammered at by talk, exhausted by the need to listen attentively and ask the right questions to get the story down in all its aspects of feeling and event. One thing you had to say for this experience, she was going back to University with an enormous pile of data; scholars from a dozen disciplines would be excavating it for the next decade, maybe longer. It could hoist her higher on the tenure list, dearie dai, ooh-yeha.

She looked up, saw Parnalee standing in the doorway of his work station, watching her. Hastily she got to her feet, looked around for something that would give her an excuse to go somewhere else. The Jajes were starting up the path to the lake, small dark figures like wingless black bats. She hadn’t interviewed them yet, they were shy creatures and self-absorbed, they allowed very few intruders into their yiuriu. They probably wouldn’t talk to her, but they were the draw she needed. She started after them.

When she reached the plateau, they were nowhere in sight, but she saw Kumari stretched out in the shade of a broad squat tree, a pitcher of fruitade beside her, a book on her stomach.

Aslan chewed on her lip, looked over her shoulder. She was alone, she couldn’t see the tug or the shelters, which meant anyone down there couldn’t see her. She moved hesitantly nearer the figure under the tree, she’d rather talk with Quale (nothing to do with her lust for his body) or Pels, they shared enough of her background to make her comfortable with them, she didn’t even know Kumari’s species, let alone the basic assumptions of her culture. But during the day Quale and Pels were sleeping or conferring with Parnalee and at night they were gone. She walked forward feeling decidedly unwelcome. Kumari continued to read, no sign she even knew Aslan was there. More than that, there was a strong indication that anyone who came by should keep on walking.

“Despina Kumari,” Aslan said, “It’s important I talk with you.”

Kumari turned a page. “Second hour after noon, your mother’s work station.”

“No. I’m sorry. That’s not possible. I don’t want Parnalee Proggerd aware I’ve spoken to you.”

“Sit there.” Kumari closed the book, pushed up; she checked to see that the panicbutton was in reach, then scowled at Aslan. “Why?”

Aslan dropped to the grass, sat cross-legged, her hands on her thighs. “I don’t want him putting his mind to killing me. I have a feeling he’d manage it no matter how I squirmed.”

“Your reasons?” Kumari sounded skeptical but not wholly unconvinced. Aslan felt herself trembling, fooled with her breathing until she was calm enough to go on. The past two weeks had been more of a strain on her than she’d realized.

“He said it, don’t screw me up, he said, I’ll twist the neck of the one who tries it. He was talking about something else at the time, but I doubt he’s changed his mind. He’s crazy, you know. Not just a little warped. I’m talking about seriously bent. It’s not my field, I don’t know the technical terms for what he is, but he’s focusing all his energies on one thing, making Huvved dead. Some little Huvved snot had his Tassalgans hold Parnalee down while he beat on him with his czadeg, you know, those gray whips they use on anyone who annoys them, cut his back and buttocks into dogmeat. I was there while he was healing, I saw it eating on him. He’s not the kind of man who enjoys a little bondage now and then, no, and there was something from when he was a boy, some sort of trouble, he dreams about it when he’s under stress, nightmares, very noisy. I woke him once, tried to get him to talk about it. He punched me around a bit, broke a couple of ribs, gave me enough bruises to decorate an SM sanctum and kicked me out, made me finish the night on a garden lounge, which I preferred to his company, believe me. If he gets a chance at the Warmaster’s armory, he’ll boil Tairanna down to bedrock. As long as he gets the Huvved, he doesn’t care who else he ashes.”

“How do you know?”

“Nothing tangible. Watching him. Stripping down those productions he did for Tra Yarta, you know, the Grand Sech. Some things he’s said, awake and asleep. Body language more than anything, though he’s very good at hiding what he’s thinking, that’s part of his professional training, isn’t it.”

“No proof?”

“None.”

“Not even in the Ridaar?”

“He wouldn’t let the Ridaar anywhere near him. Made me stow it while I was living with him.”

“Elmas Ofka wants him with us at Lift-Off. Without proof…”

“Oh.”

“Don’t fret it, I agree with you. My fa’ali clanks like a cracked bell when he’s around. Unfortunately that’s as intangible as your unsupported observations. He reports to our Hanifa regularly, feeds her suspicion, I don’t know how, I didn’t realize what he was doing until a few days ago.” She shook her head. “I’ll talk with Swar and Pels, we’ll watch him, if he tries anything,” she sighed, “maybe we can stop him.”

Aslan got to her feet. “Have you seen the Jajes? They were my excuse to come up here, so I’d better find them and see if I can get an interview.”

Kumari swung her feet around, stretched out on the pad. “They went toward that clump of trees down there by the hook inlets, I think those ancients remind them of home.”

“Maybe they’ll feel more like talking there.” She brushed her hair back from her face and started off, trudging along the lakeshore vaguely dissatisfied though she was glad she’d finally spoke her speech about Parnalee.

7. 25 days after the meeting on Gerbek.

Conference on Chicklet’s bridge: Quale, Pels, Kumari.

Quale scratched at his jaw, his eyes on the screen and the swarm of very assorted beings moving about outside. “How many we have so far? I haven’t bothered keeping track.”

Kumari called up the figures. “One hundred and twenty on the list, one hundred fifty altogether. You two keep acquiring extras.”

“Money total?”

“306,900.”

He grinned. “I could live with that.”

“Add in the targets in the Palace, it’s close to 400,000.”

“Which brings up why I had us meet. We can’t use the skips to clear out the Palace targets. We’d have to make, what? four, five trips even using both of them. Better to take the tug and get them in one. Which means we have to wait on that till the Hanifa is ready to jump. You talked with her this morning, Kri, what do you think? If we moved Lift-off forward say four days, make it tomorrow, could she handle the speedup?”

“Four days, what’s the point, Swar? Better stick to the schedule. If you feel like keeping clear of Kuzeywhiyk cities, we’ve got some targets here on Guneywhiyk.”

“I don’t see how you can say those sneezes with a straight face, Kri.”

“Practice, Swar. I’ve had to learn the Cousin Speech you babble in and Interlingue. If you knew the liquid crystal loveliness of Pilarruyal, you wouldn’t ask questions like that.”

“Mmp. All right, see what you can do about maps. The Proggerdi won’t be any help down here.”

“Which brings up something I think you ought to know. Day before yesterday I left Adelaar on the com and took a book up to the lake to get some rest and reading. Aslan followed me up there about an hour later. Listen…” She sketched out what Aslan told her.

Quale stroked his fingers along his moustache. “Chatting up the Hanifa?”

Kumari nodded. “Trust you to put your foot on the main point. Yes. Every night. Soon as you and Pels are gone. He’s talked our Hanifa into hiring him as a watchhound. We haven’t a hope of leaving him behind.”

“You mean she’d actually shut down Lift-Off if we refused to take him?”

“It’d be a tight call, but I suspect, yes she would. She never trusted us all that much and he’s been working on her.”‘

“You’ve been monitoring him, why didn’t you stop it?”

“Because I was too dumb to know what he was doing. Not until he’d been doing it long enough to really get under her skin. When I did, what was I supposed to do about it? If you can explain how, it’s more than you’ve done before this.”

“Shit.”

“Precisely.”

“Well, I suppose we do what we have to. And watch our backs.”

8. 26-28 days after the meeting on Gerbek.

Ayla gul Iltika, gul Mizamere, gul Pudryar, one by one Quale and Pels dipped into the Littoral cities of Guneywhiyk and pulled out slaves, some on the list, some of them extras they couldn’t leave behind without telling the world there were Outsiders on Tairanna.

Ayla gul Ukseme was the largest city on Guneywhiyk, in size as well as population; it was a confused sprawl thrown along the inner curve of a skewed half-moon bay. Out where the baywater mingled with the sea there were several Sea Farms, small offshoots of the elder Farms off the coasts of Kuzeywhiyk. There were dozens of freighters tied up at the wharves, linear clusters of one- and two-story warehouses, open-air markets that never shut down; beyond these were stores and Houses spread out along a web of winding streets which climbed over hillocks like horripilation on a cold man’s arms. When he saw the satellite fots, Quale swore fervently and nearly gave up on the city, but Kumari did some snooping and discovered that some of those on the list belonged to the Fehdaz who rented them out during the day and made sure they were back in the pen at the Fekkri by day’s end. Which was very helpful of him. Made it easy to locate them after dark.

The Fekkri was a massive pile with dozens of towers packed in clusters and a mooring post with a pair of midsized airships nose-locked one above the other. The pen was a small excrescence tacked onto the backside of the pile, a low structure with a waist-high parapet around a flat roof cluttered with bales, crates and assorted discards.

As Quale came in over the city, the air was heavy with damp and the promise of rain. The winds near the ground were tricky, gusts to twenty kph one minute, almost nothing the next, downdrafts with the drag of an octopus, updrafts that threatened to capsize the skip. As a final irritation, the pen’s roof was so cluttered with discards, the only open space available was over the trap. Quale landed the skip there and spent the next several minutes sweating and cursing under his breath as he and Pels shifted bales and useless scrap so they could move the machine off their entry point; they had to lift and carry and set down gently, no tossing, no rolling, nothing to make their lives a bit easier; they had to keep the noise down so one of the guards wouldn’t get a notion to check out why the rats in the rafters were so noisy that night.

He left Pels dealing with the lock and strolled to the parapet. On the way in as he was circling so he could put the skip’s nose to the wind and make a smoother, quieter landing, he’d seen crowds in the streets; quiet crowds, no yizzies, no counting coups, no fires, just hordes of people. Something about them bothered him; he wanted a closer look to see if he could figure out what it was.

The street that went past the pen was a broad tree-lined avenue. He saw half a dozen dark forms standing under the trees. They weren’t talking or even moving much. They simply stood and stared at the outer wall of the Fekkri. As he watched, several more figures came round a corner and joined them. By the time Pels summoned him, there was a small crowd down there, silent, motionless, eyes fixed on the wall in front of them. Spooky. He answered Pels’ hissing call with a tooth whistle and turned away, glad to have an excuse not to look at them any longer.

He followed Pels through the trap, went down a steeply slanting ladder to a dusty littered storeroom. Its door was locked, but a quick jab of the autopick took care of that. The EYEs Kumari had run through here reported that there were three sleeping cells, four slaves in one, three in each of the others, ten in all. Seven of them were on his list. If Luck had been a trifle kinder the targets would have been in one room waiting for him, but this was her night to be a bitch.

While Pels stood guard, he slashed through the bolt and pulled the first door open. “Listen,” he said, “You want out of here? Right. Is there one here…” he looked around; no jajes so he didn’t bother reading those names, “called Roereirein Lyhyt or Ikas Babut se Vroly or Touw se Vroly?”

“I am Touw se Vroly. Ikas Babut is my mate, he sleeps the next cell over.” She was an attenuated figure with a grace even weariness and the wear of servitude had not yet taken from her. He heard a faint clash as she pushed a pair of armbands up past her elbow, by the pallor of the metal they were silver or platinum. She looked around, caught up a shawl and draped it over her shoulders. “What of the others here?” Her arm bands clashed again as she made a wide curving gesture that took in the other two females in the cell, a Froska and a small shadowy figure with more hair than features.

He crossed to her, set the pick working on her collar lock. “What I’ll do, I’ll unlock the collars and the other two can stay here or leave by the street door, whichever they prefer. If they want they can give me their names and homeworlds and the names of kin I should notify, or you can do that later if you know them. I can’t take all of you, the skip just won’t hold that many.”

Next cell. “Ikas Babut se Vroly, Roereirein Lyhyt?” The third in the cell was a Miesashch tetrapod with the jitters, his split hooves tick-tacking aggressively against the floorplanks. “I’ll unlock the collars on all of you. You, despois,” he told the Miesashch, “can stay here or leave by the street door whichever you prefer. If you want you can give me your name and homeworld and the names of kin I should notify. I can’t take more than those on my list, the skip just won’t hold that many.”

Next cell. “Weggorss Jaje, Otivarty Jaje, Krathyky Jaje, Imagy Jaje? Good. The Bialy Vitr think highly of the Bond Jaje, they have offered one thousand gelders for the return of each lobe of the Bond, there are four Jajes in my camp already, eight thousand in my hands when I set you all down on Helvetia’s pavements. Be assured I shall take very good care of you.”

There was a spate of whispering among the Jajes, they were using their highest register; the fugitive sounds tickled his ears and gave him the beginnings of a headache. The boldest of the four moved a step toward him, a velvety black female invisible in the twilight inside the cell. “This one is Otivarty Jaje. What is the calling of the Presence who speaks us?”

“Swardheld Quale, ship Slancy Orza out of Telffer.”

More whispering. Otivarty stepped away from her Bond again. “The calling is known, the word is acceptable, we will come.”

Quale started for the storeroom and the ladder, his seven hustling along behind him, anxious to be out of there. Equally anxious, the extra three hurried the shorter distance to the street exit; the Froska had Quale’s cutter, she sliced through the lock tongue and began lifting the bar.

Pels was in the storeroom already and on his way up the ladder. Quale shooed his herd of ex-slaves through the door and was about to follow when he heard a rumbling mutter, then an exclamation of shock and fear from the Froska as the door was wrenched from her hand and sent crashing against the wall.

Blankfaced, muttering Hordar came stomping in, hands like claws reaching for the outsiders, mouths open, lips fluted to produce a whistling growl, eyes wide with no one home behind the shine. The extras took one look at them and ran the other way. Quale waved them past him, played his stunner across the front rank of the mob. Five Hordar fell. The Hordar behind them marched over them, stomping heedlessly on them, crushing them.

“Shit,” he said. “Oh shit.” He slammed the door, reached for a bar that wasn’t there. The door quivered as the Surge crashed against it. He went up the ladder faster than he’d come down it, slammed the trap and yelled at the ex-slaves to help him shove bales on it.

They got the first bale in place as the trap shuddered and started to rise, rolled another over beside it, then a third. The bales quivered as the Hordar below pounded and shoved at the trap, but they had to stand on the ladder to reach it and couldn’t get enough leverage to shift the weight piled on it. The barrier held.

Quale scowled at the faces turned hopefully toward him. These Vrolys were both slender, the four Jajes added together wouldn’t make one of him. Lyhyt was vaguely vegetative like Kinok, though not Sikkul Paem; he was broad and tall, but maybe not as massive as he looked. The Froska female wouldn’t take much space and would suffer in silence for pride’s sake, but the Miesashch could be a problem if he panicked. The third from Touw’s cell was a fragile nocturnal whose species Quale didn’t recognize, but she at least looked fairly calm. “Listen,” he said, “I’ll take a chance I can lift off with all of you. It’s a wild gamble, you might be safer finding a place to hide up here where you can ride that mess out…” He broke off, looked up as he heard the tinny clatter of a yizzy.

A fireball came straight at him. He dived away, rolled over, dived again, rolled behind a stack of crates.

The second fireball missed him by the width of a hope, splashed on the roof and started it smoldering. The others had scattered almost as quickly, hunting cover, but the inklin didn’t waste more fire on them. The yizzy swept past, went soaring up to the mooring tower; the rider began working on the airships. More yizzies converged on the towers. The airships were as fire safe as chemistry could make them, but with a dozen firethrowers heating them up, even the heavily sized yosscloth was beginning to smoke. Before long the heat would kindle the hydrogen in the ballonets and the conflagration that followed would melt more than the tower.

While Pels was helping the ten pack themselves into the skip, Quale risked another look over the parapet.

The street was packed with Hordar moving and breathing as if they were limbs of a single beast. The whole city was coming to press against the Fekkri, the Hordar flowing like a river of ants over the few Tassalgan guards stupid enough to try stopping them. The Surge tore them apart, tore off arms, legs, heads, anything one of the many beasthands could get a grip on. He saw a pair of guards trapped in a doorway trying to shoot themselves clear; pellet guns on automatic, they emptied clips one after another at the mob, the pellets scything across the front ranks, knocking down dozens of men and women. The Surge ignored them, came on without noticing the dead and injured, cast them aside like sloughed skin cells. The guards panicked, tried breaking into the House behind them. They couldn’t get away. The Surge threw off a tendril which flowed after them and pulled them back to the street; it hurled them against a wall, knocked them again and again into the stone, rocked them back and forth under casual undirected blows, it kicked them off their feet and stomped them into stewmeat. The chatter of the guns, the yells of the guards, their final screams were lost in the SOUND coming from the Surge, a hooming howl/growl without words, only a rage so tangible that the hair stood up on Quale’s arms and rose along his spine. He backed away and ran for the skip.

Pels had got the weight of the passengers distributed as well as he could, but the machine was still dangerously overloaded. Quale eased into the pilot’s seat and punched on the liftfield, cycling it gradually higher as the drives warmed and tried to take hold. They whined and shuddered; after a tense moment when he was sure they weren’t going to bite, the skip lumbered clumsily into the air. He held her an arm’s length off the roof while he tested her handling. She was sluggish and crank, the slightest misjudgment on his part might flip her or send her into a slip and that would be that for all of them. He eased her higher, a hand span at a time, until she was finally high enough to clear the parapet.

Two yizzies backed away from the siege on the airships and came swooping at them. Quale turned the skip through a wide gentle arc, gradually accelerating, cursing under his breath at the impossibility of losing the inklins fast enough. Pels slid over Touw se Vroly’s lap so he could snap loose Quale’s stunner, which had a longer reach to it than his own. One of the inklins squirted fire at them, but a gust of wind carried it wide. Back in his cubby, Pels bared his tearing teeth, hissed with satisfaction and put that inklin out; he got the second inklin before she could release more fire. The two collapsed in their saddles; strapped in so they didn’t fall, they went drifting off, ignored by guards on the ground and their fellows in the air.

Quale relaxed and nursed the laboring skip through the city, picking a circuitous route that avoided the taller buildings, the speakers’ minarets, mooring towers, and the like. Below them the Surge went on, spreading from precinct to precinct, leaving death and destruction behind it as it moved.

Quale brought the skip down slowly, carefully, landing her in a grassy swale between two groves, one a collection of nut-bearers, the other ancient hardwoods. There was a small, stream wandering vaguely westward across the middle of the swale and a tumbledown shelter tucked away under a lightning-split cettem tree still alive and heavy with green nuts. He left Pels and four of the ex-slaves there to wait for his return and took the others to Base.

He started back at once, reached gul Ukseme shortly before dawn; he circled over the city to see how the Surge had developed. It was very dark, both moons were down and the storm that had threatened at dusk was on the verge of breaking. No yizzies. The streets were empty. The Fekkri was a burnt-out husk. There were bodies everywhere, trampled into rags on the paving stones, men and women, impossible to say which body was which; dead children who were recognizable as children only because they were littler than the others. He was too high to smell, the stench, but it was thick in his nostrils despite that; he’d seen more wars than he cared to count, he’d seen his own body, the one he was born in, flung down in a ragged sprawl, he knew that smell, he knew the look of bodies thrown away, flattened, empty. He’d never gotten used to the smell or the look of the violently dead. Grim and angry at the futility of it all, he swung the skip around and got out of there; fifteen minutes later, with wind hammering at him and rain in cold gusts drenching him, he picked up Pels and the Jajes and went back to Base where life was marginally saner and the folk living there full of juice and hope.