Shadowplay

Chapter 3. Riding the flying spiderweb

The door whooshed closed behind Bossman, expanding as it moved to fill the whole space of the opening as if it erased itself to underline the futility of trying to escape the cell. Hands clasped behind her, Shadith scowled at the seamless wall. "Mashak! Dafta! Your soul smells like dogshit."

There was no response. She didn't really expect one and shrugged off her depression as she began inspecting her new home-from-home. Four walls and a floor with warts. All the'comforts of hell. Sari

She kicked at a wart, stretched out on the cot' that unfolded from the wall and contemplated the gray monotony of the place. If Prissface left her in here too long with nothing to do, hallucinations would be the least of it.

Time.

In the diadem she was essentially immortal. She'd abandoned all that when she had Aleytys decant her into this body. I must have been out of my alleged mind.

That struck her as funny and she giggled, but the spurt of humor was quickly dissipated. Time meant more now. In a century or two she was going to die; she'd accepted that, but the idea of wasting any part of those counted hours in a hole like this with nothing to see, nothing to do, made her wild. She spent some hot, passionate moments loathing Bossman and all his satellites, then she took another minute to curse the Transit Guard's disembodied soul-Lute had to've shucked him from his body by now. If it hadn't been for him she wouldn't be in this mess.

Still muttering imprecations and incantations, she fished in her bag and pulled out the battered book, but when she tried to read, she found the light in the cell so se and dim it was like looking through a frosted screen. It made her eyes burn, her head ache. There were poems that book she'd read over and over, sucking the flavor from them one by one as if they were the sweets she was far too fond of, but when she looked at a page this time, she couldn't make sense of the marks on it. Besides, she was too upset to concentrate, especially on multi-layered poetry in outmoded and esoteric word forms. She gave up, dropped the book beside the cot and began searching through the bag for her box of lemon drops.

No box. She must have missed it when she collected her things. She swore, threw her bag across the cell, glared at it as it bounced off and plopped onto the floor. She rubbed at her eyes, got herself calmed down. All right, Shadow, let's not sit round whining. Well, lie around. Funny, why should whining sound worse lying down than sitting up?

She folded her hands over her stomach, wriggled around until she was as comfortable as she could get on that narrow cot, then she closed her eyes and reached, searching for other eyes, single or compound, large or small, anything she could look through. Somewhere, somehow, Bossman must have left a crack she could 'worry at until it was big enough to let her crawl out of this.

She touched down, looked through one set of eyes, moved on to another, then on and on through a bewildering progression of sense structures, insect compounds, arachnid multiples, vertibrate bi-and tri-polar vision, her brain struggling to adjust to and make sense of the data pulsing into it from such wildly varying sources.

In a small second hold she found the two captives that Bossman called Avatars (of what? for what? not knowing gave her an hitch in the psyche). They were lying prone on tatty mattresses and tethered to the wall by thin almost invisible cables of Menaviddan monofilament. She slipped from a spider weaving a web beneath a catwalk into the body of a small furry like a rat but not a rat that was nosing at the big man's foot. The furry nibbled at a boot, but didn't like the taste of polish; he spat out the fragment of leather, scrubbed at his tongue with supple forepaws. Ears twisting like radar dishes, he moved along the man, nipping at him, sniffing at him, put off by the tough cloth of his trousers and tunic. The man's hand was far more interesting. The furry patted a forepaw at short silky hair that ran in a vee up the back of the hand, pale hair like wood ash in his eyes-his vision was sharp at short distances but he saw mainly in shades of gray with a few stark patches of black or white. The man's palm was broad, the fingers long and tapering, with stiff curved claws rather than the fiat nails more common to bipeds.

The furry darted away when a finger twitched, edged warily back and nipped at the thumb.

A thready beam of light shot from a lens set some two meters high on the nearest wall, tapped the furry on the nose. He squealed and scuttled away, heat flaring through his body; he wasn't hurt but he was startled enough to keep away from the captives after that.

The big man had large semi-mobile pointed ears that twitched continually even though he was sodden with comealong. His hair was thick and rather coarse, a dread-locked mane that reached his shoulders, middlish brown as far as she could judge, several shades darker than his skin. His eyebrows were darker yet, extravagantly tangled angular arcs with a few white hairs shining in the brown. His mustache was dark as his brows, like them, threaded with white; it hid most of his upper lip and drooped in long, thin tails at the corners of his wide mouth. He had broad shoulders, long sleek muscles; his sleeves were rolled up, showing thick wrists and powerful, hairy forearms. A Dyslaeror. And an alpha at least, Ciocan maybe. Pippon on a crab! Tippy muh toesies in a ocean o shit. Bossman, oooeeehhh, he's coot crazy and sliding for hell.

No sane being would play games with the Dyslaera, they had a history of blood feuds that went back over a thousand years. They weren't a hasty people, they didn't take umbrage lightly, but family bonds were strong and they never gave up till they got whoever injured one of theirs. Especially the females never gave up, the Dyslaerin. If Bossman loped off so casually with an alpha male, a Ciocan, the chosen mate of a Toerfeles, a Clanmother, well, that didn't say much for Shadith's chances of surviving this game of his, whatever it was. Or of getting away from him.

She gathered less about the other man because the local life walked wide around him; they didn't like the way he smelled, there was something dangerous about it. He was short and slight, with a smooth pebbly skin; she thought it was a dusty gray-green but it was hard to be sure, it might be memory overlaying present image, he reminded her of the small busy lizards that ran about her mother's garden.

His tabard was made from coarse thread the color of clean sand, thread almost thick enough to qualify as cord, knotted rather than woven into a complex pattern whose flowing textures had a subtle beauty that intrigued her, a design that resonated with her soul in ways she couldn't put into words despite her cultivated facility. She didn't recognize his species and the comealong was still smothering his mindpatterns so she couldn't get a feel for who he was that way-except for a fugitive impression of a strangeness unlike anything she'd come across before. Odder even than the vegetative Sikkul Paem doublet Kinok-Kahat who lived in Swardheld's ship and worshiped the stardrives.

She'd stayed away from the Bridge until she'd prospected the rest of the ship, now she went jumping from mind to mind until she ended inside the head of a small simi chained to the high back of the immense Captain's Chair. His was the most intelligent of the animal brains she hitched a ride on that day; he was also nearsighted and bad-tempered. He chattered noisily as she tried to shift-his head, went into an angry dance back and forth along his perch. She loosened her grip, afraid Bossman would notice his pet's agitation, have one of his unpre dictable flashes of insight and shut her down before she knew what was happening.

The Pet gibbered some more, then he folded his long skinny arms and gloomed at the woman seated on his right.

She was a small dark woman, wiry, athletic; she wore a black allbody shipsuit and a loose vest that fell in graceful folds about her, black suede, soft and supple as silkvelvet, with black zippers everywhere. She sat at the pilot station, legs crossed, one foot swinging as she flipped through the pages of a magazine, the reader on her knee, her thumb dancing on the jak button. The swinging foot bounced now and then as she came across something that interested her, orPasionally she read a snippet aloud to Bossman who was sitting at a com station on the far side of the Bridge pulling up data on a screen. He ignored her except for a meaningless mouth noise he produced at irregular intervals.

Before Shadith had time to get bored, Lute came in. The Pet fidgeted nervously and kept a wary, myopic eye on the slight tigerish figure. Number One was just behind Lute, hauling the harpcase and her travelpouch. The mere dumped his load on the floor beside the pilot and left immediately. Lute dropped into the Co's seat to the left of the Chair and waited for Bossman to acknowledge his presence.

Bossman finished his task at the sensor board, frowned at what he saw on the screen, swung round to face the Lute. "Well, Puk?"

"Couldn't help it, Ginny. That kaak was chargin around like his tail on fire and maybe it was. He had a herd of his lodge bros huntin with him. Took me a time to get him off by himself. I blew a leech on his neck and soon's he was out of it, I tipped him down the nearest incinerator chute. He's sludge brick by now. No trouble showin when me and the merc connected, but I got a feelin we sled leave soonest. What you think?"

"Your instincts are infallible, my friend. Ajeri tiszteh, is it possible?"

The pilot lifted her eyes from her magazine. "We have a window in half an hour, then one after that every fifteen minutes for the next hour. You name it, you got it."

"We will leave soonest as Puk suggests. When you have completed the necessary arrangements, Jeri, I would like you to look through the girl's baggage."

Ajeri the Pilot set the magazine reader aside, thumbed the sensor that sent the prerecorded message; she waited for the acknowledgment, then looked around. "What for, Ginny? She's just a kid."

"I wonder. She was quite calm when she did not think someone was watching her. And there is that association with the Hunter."

Puk the Lute stirred, "Playin games," he growled.

Ajeri slid from the chair, went to poke at the travelpouch with her boot toe. Over her shoulder she said, "Some of the Cousins look like babes until they turn into little old people. What's MEMORY tell you, Ginny? The lbexines like that?"

"I do not believe so." He glanced at the screen, turned back to the Pilot. "Although there is very little information available about Ibex. Except for the trade enclave Yastroo, it is a closed world."

"You think the girl's been feeding you lies?" Ajeri was squatting beside the harpcase; she looked up, raised her brows.

Puk stirred. "Sure she was. They drop from the womb, women lie, the first breath they take, they lie. It's their thing."

Ginny the Bossman ignored him and answered the

Pilot. "Not exactly, Jeri tiszt, I think it more likely that she is not telling the whole truth."

That sent chills through Shadith because it was too close to what she'd actually been doing. He kept having them, those flashes of insight. Spooky. And frustrating. It was impossible to fight because you never knew when it would strike and undo all your plotting. He had an exalted view of his Luck and maybe he was right to have it.

Ajeri had the harpcase open; Shadith winced as the Pilot plucked the loosened strings at random, then heavyhanded a muddled arpeggio. "Maybe you ought to dump her, Ginny. She sounds like trouble we don't need."

"No, Jeri, she is a gift from my Luck; to throw her away would be a stupidity and dangerous. Would Luck stay if I rejected her and her gifts? Think of it, my friend. Without my looking or seeking, the girl came to me, a musician who knows old songs, old music. A child, virginal and pure. She is the last ingredient in the mix, Jeri. The third in the holy triad, Nataminaho the Hunter, Opalekis-Mimo the Holy Dancer, and now NikamoOskinin the Virgin Singer. We can proceed immediately to Kiskai, inject them into the mix, and let it ferment. There is more time for the news of their arrival to spread and stir the people up, it will have a wider impact-and we will have time to extend the drama to an explosion of blood and rage at the Culmination of the Pakoseo. Think of the intensity we can get, Jeri, what a grand finale. Ahhhhh. We will burn our candles to Luck this night, my dear, we will…" He stopped and pulled himself together. "Jeri tiszt, the harp seems harmless enough. Please continue looking through the girl's impedimenta and tell me if you find anything that troubles you."

Puk the Lute sat up with a jerk. "Ginny, we need more of a buffer. I think you should get hold of Betalli and turn him lose on makin fuckin damn sure we can't be traced backward forward up down any which way. I don't like that. Hunter bein involved with the girl. She'll be nosin after every ship that leaves here around the time the little bitch disappeared. Spotchals, I knew it was goin to be trouble, they a herd of needlenosed assholes wind you up so tight with their fuckin rules you strangle y'self. We're not deep enough covered, Boss. Luck or no luck, that's the truth and you know it."

"Puk, I've told you before, I will not have Language in my ears. You will be Penitent tonight in our Praisesong."

"Yeh yeh, I hear you." When Ginny scowled, Puk got hold of his impatience and spoke more soberly. "I apologize, sir, but I must respectfully remind you of the gist of what I said. Buffer, sir. Betalli, sir. Hunters Inc, sir."

"I will consider the matter, Puk. And your apology is accepted; I understand you spoke from the heat of your anxiety, but courtesy is a virtue that must be assiduously cultivated. Cultivate, my friend, cultivate. Ajeri tiszteh, have you finished? Is there anything in that pouch that I should see?"

"Only that the girl's hauling along a young arsenal. Seems an odd lot to be carrying to University of all places, makes me wonder what she was thinking. There's a stunnertype I've never seen before, looks hand-built. And this." She held up a tiny needier; it almost disappeared in the palm of her hand. "I'd swear it's a Pa'ao special. I know the Pa'ao Teely don't make weapons for everyone and they charge an arm and a leg, but she's got such high-powered friends, it probably is. Can I keep it, Ginny? It's a beautiful thing."

"We are not thieves, Ajeri Tiszteh. Put the needier away."

Mumbling under her breath the Pilot tucked the weapon back where she'd found it. "I tell you again, Ginny, singer or no, virgin or whatever, I think you should dump her."

"I will not so question my Luck, Ajeri tiszteh. You displease me by your lack of faith. You will join Puk as Penitent. Do you accept?"

"Yes, sir; I acknowledge my failing, but remember, dear sir, it is grounded in my affection for you and my respect for the artistry of your productions."

In her cell Shadith blinked, so startled that she temporarily lost touch with the Pet's brain. She finally decided it was some kind of game they were playing. Weird.

Shortly after that she felt the ship come alive and knew they were on their way.