Aftermath (28 page)

I should have known her sexual impulses didn’t necessarily predicate her true thoughts. Should have realized she had been too helpful, agreed too easily. Desperation made me stupid, careless, and now I’d pay the price.
If they knew how much people on Nicuan would pay to get me just like this . . .
Mary, it didn’t bear thinking about.

I always thought I would die on my feet.
I lay with my eyes closed, trying to make sense of what I was hearing, but my heart thudded in my ears, making that difficult.

Two females, nearby.
I couldn’t pick anything up from them, so either they’d sedated me, or a Rodeisian fist worked wonders at shutting down my ability.

“What in Mary’s name have you done, Tanze?” A woman with a low, rasping voice sounded exasperated. “I wanted Hon, along with his ship. Half those diggers he delivered for the mine don’t work!”

I opened my eyes a slit, risking a look to assess how much trouble I was in. They’d bound my hands and feet, with a filament that would slice my skin if I struggled. They weren’t screwing around, then.

Two females, one human, and one Rodeisian, the same one who tricked me, then knocked me out. Rage almost overwhelmed me, but it wouldn’t do any good to struggle when they had me tied. No, I had to figure out what was going on here—and what they intended to do with me. Maybe I could play along, offer whatever they wanted. They probably wouldn’t be fool enough to trust me, though.

Tanze didn’t appear overly concerned. “Plans change. This guy came on board instead of Hon, and I figured you’d take what you could get. We can keep the ship in recompense for the busted units. You don’t need trouble with offworlders, Mair. Bringing Hon to Lachion would complicate the whole plan.”

What plan? Where was Lachion anyway? I fumbled through my galactic geography and came up blank. It couldn’t be an important tier world; I’d killed on most of those. That would limit my escape options.

But Mair must be the old woman. I stole another glance. She was small, but wiry, still strong-looking despite her age. I didn’t make the mistake of counting her out. Her white hair stood up around her face like a cloudy nimbus, as if she hadn’t combed it in weeks, and she’d caked altogether too many cosmetics on her wrinkled face.

“That’s true enough,” she agreed with a sigh.

“And this one needs you,” Tanze went on. “He’ll die if you don’t help him. I don’t know how he’s made it this long without going mad or being scooped up by the Corp, but he’s on the brink, now.”

Every muscle stiffened.
What the frag’s the Rodeisian on about? Does she know? How could she?
Being discovered was my worst nightmare, and here I lay tied, listening to it happen. It was bad enough when I thought they just might sell me back to the Nicuan nobles, but if Farwan found out that I made it through adolescence without being chipped, it would be exponentially worse. I knew all about what they did to people who violated their rules. After all, they did it to my father first, leaving me with a stepmother who hated me, and a half sister who needed me to provide for her.

Crazed with the voices in my head, I started fighting in the streets, and unscrupulous people noticed my way with knives. They hired me to do what they didn’t want to, Jax. Quiet jobs, dirty ones. I didn’t care as long as it paid. And that’s how I got started as a merc.

I didn’t know then if it’d ever see Svet again. I feared most that she’d think I had run off without a word, like I promised I would never do, no matter how many times I shipped out. When she was a kid, I did it time and again, joining whatever private war paid best to keep her in school. And now I wonder if you’re suffering that same fear—that I think you chose to go wherever you are. This is my answer: I know you couldn’t help it, and I’m trying my damnedest to bring you home, love.

Anyway, about Svet . . . I’d taken to buying her a little gift from wherever I traveled, something she could look forward to, and hold in her hands when I went away again. She liked shiny things, rings and necklaces that sparkled, no matter how cheap. If I hadn’t long ago lost the ability to weep, I would have. But I had no tears then. I hadn’t met an angry, gray-eyed woman yet who could save my soul.

“Brain scrambled, is he?” Somehow, the hag made the cold words seem almost kind.

“Not quite.” I heard a shrug in Tanze’s voice. “I’m not even sure he’s salvageable. But you might have a go before we put him down.”

They would, too. And maybe they’d be right. A hard shudder rolled through me. It was no use pretending I wasn’t awake, listening. The old woman knelt beside me, peering into my face. I couldn’t move.

“What do you say?” she asked, running her fingernail down my jaw. “Shall we try to make something out of you, you pretty, doomed thing?”

I’d never been called pretty before. Somehow, that only added to my silent horror. I knew I wasn’t. Even then, I had a strong, ugly face, and a strong, scarred body.

Finally, I managed to rasp out a question. “What are you going to do with me?”

“I’m going to break you into tiny pieces,” the old woman said with an awful smile. “And then put you back together again.”

When her mind touched mine, I screamed.

You know the rest. How she saved me and taught me to block. How she awoke my conscience and turned me into something more than a monster. But Mair’s the reason I won’t give up on you now, the reason I can love you so fiercely that it has no end and no limits.

We’ll keep looking. And I’ll play this for you when I find you, as proof that I always knew you were coming back to me.

 

The distance is deceptive. Eventually I stop running
because I’ve covered only half the measure to the ruins, and a stitch crimps my side. I’m stronger, but I haven’t had the freedom to run in longer than I can recall. Vel doesn’t chide me, though he has to know I was foolish and impetuous. He merely matches his pace to mine, and we continue on while I hold my side.

It’s not just the cramp. The bite hurts as well, and I shouldn’t have exacerbated it, but Mary, the idea that we might finally make some progress? Irresistible.

“When do you plan on telling me the truth?” he asks quietly.

“About what?”

“Your injury.”

“I didn’t want you to worry.”

“I have heightened olfactory sense, Sirantha. You smell worse than usual, quite apart from our hygienic challenges.”

Trust Vel to cut to the heart of it like that. “Sorry. But I don’t think there’s anything you can do.”

“You are correct, sadly. But I should examine you nonetheless and sterilize the site, if nothing more.”

I’m so dirty that when he peels away the Nu-Skin, it leaves a clean spot, but the wound itself is hideous. Worse than it was when I peeked at it . . . shit, I’ve lost track of time. It’s been two weeks since we arrived. I think. The gray webs all the way to my ribs, nearly to my breast, and it feels hot, sore, when he brushes a claw against it.

Wordlessly, he tends to the problem as best he can, spraying with antibacterial, then he applies fresh Nu-Skin, which is supposed to promote healing. Something in the creature’s saliva is prohibiting that bond, however, and not allowing my flesh to heal.

“Let’s go.” I set out without further discussion of my infirmities.

The remnants of these structures defy my sense of reality in the same way the underground gate did. Some of the towers have fallen, but others remain in impossible spirals, as though the ancients understood secret laws of physics. Unquestionably, these buildings came from an advanced culture. Even now, they gleam, the metal alloy shining silver, untarnished after all these turns.

There is no sound save the wind whistling through the broken spaces, no movement except our own. We’ve found another dead, lost place, but maybe there’s some technology that can help us here, provided Vel can figure it out. And my credits say he can.

“Are you taking footage?” This is another occasion that ought to be logged for posterity.

“Of course.”

We enter the ruined city cautiously, keeping an eye out for monsters like the ones from the jungles, but this place is abandoned. Or so we think, until we pass between two fallen buildings, and hear a rumble ahead.

“It sounds big.”

He tilts his head, listening. “Not organic life, I think.”

The noise grows closer, and I hear what he means; the hum of motorized parts is unmistakable. A bot whirs into view, quite unlike our own. This one is smooth and sleek, fashioned after the number eight with a narrow head and waist. I can’t tell its purpose just by looking at it.

The bot stops when it detects us, and a green ray of light beams up. I freeze, thinking it’s a weapon, but instead the machine appears to be scanning us. Then it speaks, but I’ve never heard the language before. If I had to guess, it’s a verbal version of the signs we’ve been seeing cut into the stone tables along the way.

“Can your chip make any sense of that?” Vel asks.

I shake my head. “It’s just noise. Yours?”

“My linguistic chip includes a complete database of all human languages, including the dead ones, and this is unfamiliar.”

“Try Ithtorian?” That makes sense. The Makers are so old, and the Ithtorians were one of the first races to travel the star lanes; therefore, their paths might have crossed at some point, long before the nuclear winter that changed the face of their planet. But I’m not sure how much the language has evolved.

In response, he switches to his native tongue, and asks, “What is your purpose?”

A green light flashes on the thing’s head. Well, what
would
be a head if it was remotely human. It’s very other; I can tell an alien intelligence designed it. The twinkling continues for a good several minutes. And then it answers in what sounds a language similar to Ithtorian, but my chip can’t process it. So I glance at Vel for clarification.

“An archaic form not included in your language set. There would be no purpose to it, as it has not be spoken in over five thousand turns.”

“So how old is this bot, then?” I ask in wonder. “And what did it say?”

“I have no means of ascertaining that without functional equipment. And ‘I safeguard the truth.’ ” After translating for me, he converses with the bot for a few minutes, then says, “We are to follow it.”

“Where?”

“To the truth, of course.”

I flash him a dark look, but he’s already turned. The machine reverses, and it leads us through the ruins, through twists and turns. It hovers when necessary, avoiding obstacles far easier than we do. Then it leaves us entirely, zipping up to a floor to which all staircases have collapsed.

“Shit.”

“We must find a way up. It spoke of Maker archives.” He hesitates. “It called them the Sha-Fen.”

The words mean nothing to me, which means they’re so old as to have been lost from all records. Except, possibly, the ones up there, out of reach.

“Build a scaffold?” It will take time, of course, but without working technology or a gate back to Marakeq, we have nothing more pressing to attend.

It takes two days to pile enough rubble in such a way that we don’t die trying to climb it. In that time, we finish the last of my paste. If we don’t find food or civilization soon, we might find ourselves wishing we’d stayed in the jungle, where we could, at least, eat what we killed, even if my stomach churns at the prospect.

I ascend first. Vel says it’s so he can catch me, but if it were me, I’d want someone else to test the integrity of the structure. He’s like me in that respect. I don’t argue because I’m dying to see what’s up there, and tired of sleeping on the hard ground. At least this place has a roof, and it appears to be mostly intact. Not that it’s rained since we’ve been here.

With care, I manage to scramble over the broken lip of the wall and into the tilting floor. The bot is waiting for us patiently, as if it has no concept of time. Most likely, it doesn’t, or at least, not in the same way that we do. It knows time has passed, but it’s irrelevant to something that can keep going for thousands of turns. While I wonder how that’s even possible, Vel resumes his discussion with it.

At the conclusion, it takes us through two solid double doors, which it unseals as it goes. Air hisses out as if it hasn’t been opened for a long, long time. Behind Vel, I enter a vault of some kind, filled with unfamiliar technology. Panels with rows of colored lights, silver coils twined around a flat disc with notched edges.

“Can you use any of this to repair our gear?”

“Perhaps,” he answers. “Or to replace it.”

Devices whir to life in our presence, and the bot circles the room, performing what I take to be maintenance. I’m already bored, in addition to tired, beyond filthy, and hungry, so I sit down on the pristine floor while Vel communes with the machines. At some point, I doze off because the next thing I know, he’s waking me.

“There are terabytes of data here, Sirantha, a treasure trove of immense and unbelievable proportions.”

“Did you fix your handheld?” While I’m happy that we’ve discovered the mother lode of Maker data, I must focus on practical concerns first.

“I did.”

“Learn anything about the bot?”

“It is ten thousand turns old.”

That leaves me wide-eyed in astonishment. “How?”

“It is self-maintaining, self-sustaining. Its power core appears to be solar-powered, and it can generate replacement parts here.”

“Which is how you fixed your tech?”

“Precisely.”

“I don’t suppose there’s a kitchen-mate.” Damn, I’m hungry.

“Not here, but I have not explored the whole complex by any means.”

“There’s more?”

“The vault has a back egress, accessible only from within. I believe we have only discovered the tip of their marvels.”