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Authors: Joan Slonczewski

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NIGHT OF CINNABAR
 
 
TWO DAYS AFTER the first prisoners were taken, natives at another raft system a hundred kilometers away appeared at a garrison asking after their “sisters.” Visitations soon spread to other bases, halfway around the globe. Even more annoying, the natives would not leave when put off, but grew in numbers and stayed by day and night until guards hauled them out to sea.
Realgar was stumped, on several counts. Why should natives risk life and limb just for a few “sisters” off a raft somewhere across the globe? For that matter, how the devil did they find out in the first place? By
insects
, as that trader claimed? If that was it, insecticides would wipe every insect off the planet.
He simply could not permit this widespread response, especially to such a minor incident. If he imprisoned all the visitors at his eighty garrison bases, it would be enough to fill the main penitentiary of Iridis.
Worst of all, five natives from Raia-el appeared outside the main base at Per-elion. These five, including Merwen, could not simply be put off. Not only was Merwen the “Protector,” her mate was the one practitioner of forbidden science who would assist Siderite without coercion.
So Realgar decided to receive them in his office at the Per-elion garrison. A conference with the local Protector—at least he could get a good press clipping out of the deal.
Two aides ushered in the natives, whose broad feet gently slapped the floor as they walked. One was visibly pregnant. Their nakedness jarred with the polished angular setting of the office; it disturbed Realgar more than it had in their own home. Acutely aware of his officers, he realized that any incident could easily make him look foolish.
With a hum of unseen gears, five chairs rose out of the floor. Realgar gestured, “Have a seat, ladies.”
The natives casually sat on the floor in front of the chairs and crossed their legs. The press footage would require some touchup, he decided, in order to pass the palace censor. Fig leaves, at least.
Realgar peered down over his desk at Merwen. “Greetings, Protector.
What can I do for you?” He found himself adopting the tone of voice he used for his daughter's friends who came to play.
“We seek our sister Sharers,” Merwen said.
“Who might they be?”
“Lerion Nonthinker, Ronesha the Coldhearted, and Oo the Jealous, who were last seen with Valans on Nri-el raft.”
So those were the names of the prisoners. Realgar now knew more than what Jade had got out of them. He felt at once frustrated yet perversely pleased with himself. Let them hang themselves by their own tongues. “Why did your sisters fail to cooperate as well as you do?”
“They were in whitetrance.”
“Why were they in whitetrance?”
Merwen hesitated. “The clickflies did not say.”
Clickflies, indeed. Not for long, he vowed. “Your sisters entered whitetrance in order to defy my orders. When your sisters cooperate, they will be released.”
Eyes widened. The pregnant one said, “They are safe, then. I knew they would be. Well, we have to share speech with them, although if they're in whitetrance still, it would be better for you or some other child to speak first. They left two small daughters behind, one of whom needs her mother's milk. We must see them at once. The Gathering insists,” she added almost apologetically.
Realgar fumed inwardly during this speech. He should have told them the three were dumped in some remote region. He could release the prisoners, since Jade could pick up plenty more elsewhere, but that would only put off the day of reckoning. Glacially he eyed the one who had called him a “child.” “What is your name, my lady?”
“Shaalrim the Lazy. And yours, sister?”
“Shaalrim, you may put in a visitation request which will be processed by Palace Iridium.”
“Is that where our sisters are?”
“Their location does not concern you.” They were still at Satellite Amber, of course, in Jade's facility. “I must regretfully terminate this interview,” he concluded, sorry that he had granted it in the first place.
Merwen said quickly, “We still seek our sisters.”
“Then you, too, may file a visitation request. The aide will show you how.”
“As you wish, but you see, we cannot leave until we have seen our lost sisters. We promised the Gathering.”
Realgar crossed his arms on the desk. “Merwen, you are addressing the High Commander of the Valan Protectoral Guard. What
you
must see is that from now on you and your sisters will do as you are told.”
“We understand very well,” said another, the long-nosed one. “You wish us to sit on your steps for a while, as the traders did. But that's such a bother for all concerned. And you can't leave an infant without her mother's milk for days on end.”
Realgar was amazed. Did they really have no idea what they were up against? “One of your sisters is dead,” he barked. “Now do you understand?”
Their faces fell and shoulders drooped, sagging with their breasts. A few fingers whitened. A small voice asked, “Which one?”
“How can I—” Realgar caught himself. No need to admit Jade's probe had failed to get even a name out.
“
Death-hastener
,” the fifth native called at him in Sharer tongue. She was built like a wrestler, that one. “Death-hastener,” she called again, hoarsely. “Death hastens those who hasten death.”
He kept to Valan. “Death is part of my job.” He mouthed each word distinctly. “Remember that, next time.”
The native said nothing more, but her breath came hard, and every muscle was a coiled spring. That one, Realgar told himself, would end up lobbing bombs at his garrison. What an odd assortment these natives were.
“Is it true,” asked Merwen, “that Death pays a fair wage?”
Realgar watched her as she sat: still, except for fingers that tapped lightly at her knees. This one clearly knew more that she let on, but he had yet to figure out her game. “When needed,” he said shortly.
“What is the wage of Death?”
What was the point of this; bribery? Realgar clasped his hands. “Ladies, I regret that our time is up. The aides will show you out.”
None moved. The door hissed open, and the aides quietly reached for their neuralprobes.
The natives were losing color, slowly but steadily. Realgar watched with fascination as they bleached, first the webbing and fingers, then arms, legs, and overall, translucent with the blue veins showing
through. He had never before observed the actual process of transition. His pulse quickened, and the reaction annoyed him. Silently he cursed the lot of them but did not let a gram of frustration show. “Show them out,” he ordered. “Fifteen kilometers.” Perhaps they would not make it home this time.
Later, Siderite was apoplectic. Though all five natives had made it back to their raft, every adult in sight was now mourning in whitetrance for the dead prisoner, and Torr only knew whether Usha would ever deign to “learnshare” with him again.
The scientist's fury amused Realgar. Such a typical indignant citizen, full of impotent blustering. “The natives are scared, at last,” he assured Siderite. “It's better for them. You'll see, they'll cooperate twice as well as before.”
MERWEN DID NOT stay in whitetrance long. There was too much to be done, too many decisions to make. That night when she fell asleep, she had a vivid dream.
In her dream she was swimming in an ocean, alone without a raft in sight, much as when the soldiers had left her that afternoon. Yet it was not a natural ocean, it was an extraordinary hard shade of blue, and its waves were a thick clear paste that merged into sky without a seam of horizon. She could make little headway; her arms were not free to pull because they cupped something between the hands, a spark that glimmered out between the fingerwebs, a spark of something so terrible that she had to hold it fast and never let it escape. But it did escape, and the flame spread, a pool of waterfire so brilliant that it shone by day. It engulfed the ocean, and then sky as well, nothing left but fire all around, as if she had fallen into the heart of the First Door … .
It was just after sunrise when Merwen awakened. She squinted into
the sun's rays that reached her from a slit in the seasilk. Lightly she patted Usha, who still slept; then she pulled herself up. Her leg still ached from a careless twist by the Valan who had thrown her overboard the day before. It was extraordinarily dreadful to be treated as a cold object by another sister.
She had to find Nisi. Questions compelled her that only Nisi could answer, Nisi whose own lovesharer was the most flagrant hastener of death. In Chrysoport, she remembered, that bearded one had said that Death paid a “wage.” Merwen herself had barely come to comprehend “wage” and “payment,” those concepts the traders valued above life itself. Yet she would have to puzzle out the source of that wage that Death paid, and only Nisi might have the key.
Merwen took a boat out through the branch channels. Most of the raft blossoms had fallen, and in the distance occasional dots of seedlings appeared. Merwen was not up to rowing, after her exhausting swim the day before, so she summoned a glider squid with a bit of attractant powder. Valan motors were long out of use, not that it mattered, now that another noise drowned the starworm's song completely.
At Leni-el raft, Nisi was actually glad to see her. They embraced, and Nisi held her very tight. Nisi's eyes were moist. “I heard what happened. I—” She swallowed, and her voice croaked. “I don't know, Merwen. What will become of us?”
Merwen brushed Nisi's head with both hands, and the tiny hairs pricked her palms. “Whatever you do, don't share fear. Better to die in a day than to live an endless death.”
Nisi's smile flickered. She was getting thin, unnaturally so. “You do believe that, don't you.”
“Would I say what is not?”
“No, you would not. But there are things you have not seen.” Nisi laced her fingers, like the warp and weft. “Merwen, there's still a chance, I think. You can still turn back, and follow the Patriarch. If not, then …”
“Then?”
“Then you'll share a current of blood. Do you understand?”
Merwen sighed. “Shora has many blood drinkers, from fleshborers to shockwraiths, even most Sharers, who eat the lesser sisterlings.” Most considered Merwen's abstention from meat an affectation, or at least eccentric. They might think twice, had they been to Valedon,
where there lived small thickly furred creatures whose semihuman existence reminded one of the continuum of flesh. “Nisi, what is the ‘wage' of Death?”
“A ‘wage'?”
“For someone like your lovesharer,” Merwen suggested, although it could be anyone.
Nisi shuddered. “A ‘soldier' has a ‘wage' for hastening death when necessary.”
“When needed? When is that?”
Nisi looked away. “You won't know, until you find out.”
Merwen tried a different tack. “If this ‘wage' is something like the ‘wage' that a trader needs, then it makes sense for us to share with soldiers what we shared with traders.”
“Yes, it's a start at least,” Nisi mused. “Is there a Gathering today?”
“Yes, to decide what next. Will you come?” Merwen's spirits lifted. “Do you think that it's—”
“It's unsafe, I know that. But I'll defend my freedom as hard as anyone, thank you.”
Merwen felt a fluttering at her scalp as she heard those words. She thought suddenly, sisters had gone Unspoken for less than what Nisi had meant to say. But Unspeech would not help Nisi now, nor the Gathering, which needed to hear her, to know her for what she was, as Merwen did. Another voice warned her, but again, it was too late. There was so little time. Would Spinel ever return?
Nisi, meanwhile, was thinking that if anyone was to survive, herself included, Sharers would have to learn to fight back. Oh, they thought they knew how, with witnessing and Unspeech, but in the end, the only thing a death-hastener would respect was another death-hastener. Sharers would find that out, one way or another, preferably before it was too late.
For now, Nisi figured, she would bide her time to gain the trust of the Gatherings. With luck, Realgar might still hold off a bit … .
Ral
. The pain of his betrayal consumed her again, and she nearly fainted from despair. Never mind that, now. Sharers would kill well enough, she thought, once they set their minds to it. Usha already commanded a virulent arsenal, although she herself would hardly call it that; not enough to wipe out an army, Nisi guessed, but enough to give those soldiers a run for their stones.
 
 
The Gathering decided to swamp the Valan headquarters with as large a witness as could be mustered. Clickflies were released by the thousand, saying: This soldier-place at Per-elion is where death was hastened; send your witnessers here.
Lystra rowed out to the soldier-place with Mithril, who chatted nervously about their new raft and about how her mothersharer hoped to start a child. Lystra, too, was tense, but she only uttered occasional gruff remarks.
The soldier-place stuck out of the sea, a bloated squid of a building upon an artificial “raft” of whatever dead stuff Valans used. At least the traders, thought Lystra, had kept a decent raft. Around the perimeter of the soldier-place stretched a fence of shiny black mesh, like a clickfly web frozen to coldstone. Valan soldiers stood behind it, some of them malefreaks, all with muddy blue plumage and insect-stiff limbs.
Already, several Sharer boats bobbed on the waves nearby. About twenty sisters were standing before the fence. Lystra saw no place to moor the boat, so she drove out while Mithril searched further. To her immense relief, she recognized Trurl and Yinevra as she joined the group, most of whom were from other rafts.
Behind the fence was a Valan malefreak with a red face and a puffed stomach who waved his arms and gesticulated. “Just the rules, lady. You want to see prisoners, go fill out a form.”
“I did that,” said Trurl, “but nothing happened.”
“It takes at least a week to process the form.”
“But our sisters are needed now,” said Trurl. “Their daughters are crying for them. One is an infant who needs her mother's milk.”
“Lady, what do you want? A wetnurse?”
Another soldier stopped him, a “normal” sister, with more bright things glinting on her plumage. “What's this about? You got nothing better to do than stare at catfish?”
The malefreak grew redder yet and shifted nervously from one foot to the other.
Trurl said, “If it's too much trouble, we would be glad to come in and share searching of your home, as you have shared ours. All we wish is to find our lost sisters.”
“Nonsense,” said the “normal” one. “Secured area. Look, just go home quiet, okay? ‘Share parting' or we'll ‘share it' for you.” She mixed in garbled Sharer words.
“We would be delighted to share parting,” said Trurl. “So would our lost sisters, I think. Their daughters are crying for them, and one is an infant … .”
By now, nearly a hundred Sharers were crowding about the fence, nudging each other as politely as possible The smell of sweat came in waves. Boats were still coming; Lystra had never heard of a witness this size in Per-elion. More soldiers were coming out, too. She wondered how long before they would drag everyone out to sea. The thought itself brought a taste of nausea.
Someone bumped her in the elbow and apologized. “I'm Shian the Restless, of Cara-elion. Are you local?”
“Yes. From another system you come—that's a fair boatride.”
Shian wrinkled her nose. “We'll come from farther still, I'm sure. This new breed of Valan—they're the worst yet. Do you—” A large boat unloaded, and everyone jostled to make room. “Do you think they're really human? The Impatient One came to Cara-elion to share that with us, but now I'm not so sure They look more like crabs to me. Overgrown crabs.”
“They are human,” Lystra snapped and looked away. The crowd would soon surround the entire garrison, she saw, yet nearly all the soldiers had vanished. Were they creeping fearfully into their shell?
Her ears sharpened. Something funny was happening at the fence, something she could not see. There were gasps and moans; a shiver ran down her spine.
Lystra doubled up, coughing and wheezing. The air had gone foul, stifling, burning the lungs. Sisters were pulling away; the sea splashed as they plunged in. Lystra turned instinctively to the sea, but thought, What if she never got her breath? To her horror she glimpsed white bodies already floating still among the boats. Red and black spots filled her vision. She sank where she was, and there was nothing, nothing at all.
 
At Satellite Amber, Realgar observed a light-image of the spectacle at Planetary Headquarters. Bodies lay unconscious, all around the perimeter fence, and those in the water were white. It was not a pretty sight, but something had to be done The natives would awake with a splitting headache, wiser for the experience. “Any casualties?”
“None,” said Jade. “They were pulled in from the sea before any could drown.”
“Excellent.” Though Realgar felt just a touch of … disappointment? A regrettable lapse of emotion. Now the question was, What to do with them all? There were ten times as many as Headquarters could hold. Sabas could ship them out to other bases, but some of those were getting “invasions,” too. Besides, Jade could only work on a few at a time, and she had enough for now. Better to let these go and warn others against such foolishness. “How are the new prisoners?”
“I cracked one,” said Jade. “Got her before she could bleach out—no problem.”
“Excellent. Why didn't you tell me at once?”
“I did not wish to interrupt you with trivial matters.” But Jade's eyes gleamed with satisfaction.
Realgar allowed himself a smile. “I should have known I could count on an old hand like you. Did you learn anything?”
“She's not a spy, so what can you learn? Her mental profile was normal overall: standard levels of aggression, ego drive, affection, and so forth. Only one feature stood out: an extreme, almost pathological depletion of fear.”
“A lack of fear.” Realgar was intrigued. “If they don't know what killing is—”
“But their lives are full of dangers, General. Seaswallowers, storms, splintered rafts—you name it, her memories are full of it. It's her approach—” Jade broke off, perplexed. Her lashes lowered. “Catfish look straight ahead and follow it, whatever ‘it' is. So far, they consider us just a distraction, like an exceptionally bad season of swallowers.”
“They did, that is. Perhaps today will change their minds.” Realgar watched the light-image. More natives had arrived at Headquarters, but this time they were carrying away their fallen sisters. Soon the deck would be clear; Sabas had everything under control. Still, what an odd campaign this was. Usually, Headquarters lay well behind the front lines, but here there was no “front line.” Or rather, the front line was everywhere. Or had the real front line yet to appear?
Jade's mention of swallowers reminded him that the return season would be on in a few months. The Lunar Development Consortium was having trouble coming up with a good toxin for those beasts. Something would have to be done; Realgar would not tolerate such a strain on his operations.
“How are the lab warren ‘inspections' working out these days?” Realgar asked.
“The usual. A few more rafts are deserted; it seems to be a growing trend.”
Already one in ten were “deserted” by the inhabitants. Surface searches produced nothing. Sabas was starting with submarines, but it was a dicey business. Nobody liked to mess with the undersides of those rafts.
A pathological lack of fear. Yet fear was only an instinct for survival, after all. Without knowing fear, those natives should all have died out years ago.
BOOK: A Door Into Ocean
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