Flesh and Gold (26 page)

“Not go back . . .” Skerow murmured. “And what about my sisters? They don't live far away.”

“They are not on the fault line, and quite safe. Tikrow is within the cordon, and says she is thinking of moving in with her sister-in-law in Broad Plains, and of course Nesskow invites you to stay with her.”

“Yes . . . I see.” The food and liquor had lost their flavor. She wet her lips, and said faintly, “Perhaps it is only an old shipwreck.”

“I am afraid that does not matter, it is so ancient. There will be a great deal of excitement over it no matter what it is. People are always looking for Gods. I had all of this arranged in my mind to tell you, but I never thought it would be in the light of what you have had to endure already.”

“No matter what it is I guess I must face it.”

my
desert has
exploded with stars
. . .

“There will be religious reformations,” she added, feeling an edge of hysteria in her voice. “Our Diggers and Inheritors will discover that there was indeed a right place to dig, the Watchers and Hatchlings will be satisfied that we have indeed been delivered by burning Gods in an enormous Egg.”

“Perhaps,” said Evarny, watching her with a sympathy she felt a stab of anger at. “Have you definitely decided to step down from the Lectern?”

“I have sent a message to the Court to tell them that. Tomorrow I will make the formal announcement. I suppose after that I must decide what place to stay.”

“That was why I brought up my separation from my wife. My wife-house here is unoccupied and I hope you will take it in good part if I offer it to you . . . It would be a base when you are not traveling and I don't believe that at our stage of life the two of us would be subject to much gossip.”

“Thank you, Evarny. I couldn't possibly be insulted at such a generous offer—but my head is quite whirling—from everything—and I must have time to think.”

“Of course. Then let us have another cup of white-thorn and one more slice of that delicious meat. The air is cooling and the colors in the sky are still beautiful.”

“Yes.”
In Starry Nova they are probably overcast grey with rain, and the only bright colors will be in Zamos's windows . . . I wonder if my swimmer will be saved, if ever I will come to see her again . . . if I will see my desert again
.

Evarny said, “Now that you are leaving the trial I may also mention some rumors that will probably be obscured by news of the Egg, of a very suspicious linkage between Zamos and Goldyne.”

“I am not surprised at that, somehow,” Skerow said.

“There will be a much more serious and powerful investigation of Zamos and its doings—and your steadfastness has had much to do with that. The trial, for all its trouble and expense, may yet be declared a mistrial.”

I did nothing. She called out to me for justice. It does not matter to me what they do about that trial now. It was not the important one
.

I am an exile and my coming here was worth nothing except that I learned something from Nohl, poor fool. If I had not come, Eskat would be alive, I would not have been nearly killed, I would not have had to deal with Evarny, or my feelings about Thordh . . . but if I had not come, I would have felt the quake and strangers would have come to tell me I must leave . . . I would have been driven away from my
home like Sainted Skaathe in the Legend of the Ungrateful Daughter
.

Evarny offers me a slice of meat. No, he offers his house . . . he has kept it vacant all these years. Tikrow will take her wealth to her sister-in-law, and Nesskow's cold slice will come grudgingly from her husband. My hearts are striking at each other and I can hardly breathe from tiredness. It is too late that he cares for me, but for now, I think I will stay with him
.

Fthel V:
Zamos's Brothel and Cleopatra's Rug

It is your old friend Kobai here, that has been telling you this story, swimming and dreaming the long times without day or night, no lantern light to bring me home. In my belly is growing a little fluttery thing like a fish wriggle when it come between my hands, in the waters where I live, where I used to live. Iron Man tell me it is my baby that move and swim in me. But he don't tell me when I get to go home. When we get to go, we two sure don't go swimming home from here . . .

:Iron Man, tell me we will swim at home and be free, even if it is not so!:

:I have never told a lie in my life. Kobai, you will swim and be free on your home world. By the Soul of the Cosmos, I will make it so.:

:I love you, Iron Man.:

“And I love you, Kobai,” said the Lyhhrt.

“Lebedev, I think I am going mad. I truly love that woman. I have sunk into depravity and individualism. I am a pervert.”

“You are lonely,” Lebedev said. “There is no shame or
crime in that. I'm sure I am nearer insanity from endless days of dealing skambi than you will ever be.”

“From only twenty-five days?” The Lyhhrt stood for a moment like a stopped robot. “Are you making one of those incongruous remarks, Lebedev? A ‘joke'?”

“It will be no joke if your masters discover that I am faking a blood disease to be able to come and speak with you. Either I will be fired because they are worried that my medical expenses cost too much or they will simply find out and kill us both—alternatively I will become really sick because you are taking so much blood from me, and then they will fire me, if I do not die first.”

“You will not grow ill or die, and you will not be discharged until I arrange it so. All three of us—four to include the unborn—are leaving in one tenday at three stads and fourteen minims past the point of midnight.”

It was just two tendays since the Lyhhrt had mentioned leaving, and Lebedev had hoped that the idea was a mere brainstorm, a mad whim. He had not cared much for the talk of blood and egg-layers, after his encounter in the corridor with the strange being the Lyhhrt had been speaking to; he did not trust the Lyhhrt to save Kobai, and his mind had been prickling with plan after discarded plan.

His hope of making an ally of the O'e woman, Ai'ia, had been blasted; her being demoted and degraded was a bad sign for him as well: he was careful to avoid her, and in a few days she reappeared in the Gamblar, but looking fearful and sparkless. He had managed to get out of the brothel with a coveted employees' pass to the black market and spend half his earnings on fresh hydroponic fruit and vegetables; even contrived to pass a message to his contact, but no new instructions had come for him. He had cooked and feasted grandly, but nervously.

He thought of the Lyhhrt spiriting Kobai away in her
tank, as if it were a package to be smuggled away under a jacket. “You have a witching hour, and will roll her up in a blanket, I suppose, like Cleopatra.”

“I know nothing of a cleopatra or any hours but Galactic Standard. Sarcasm is something I know well.” The Lyhhrt started a centrifuge by some invisible signal. “I am sure you are not an ignorant man but I doubt you know much about the Ix.”

“Nothing.”

“You saw me talking to one of them and asked if they were Neutrals.”

“Ah.” Sparkles and flashes. He felt his mind trying to twist away at the thought. “Egg-layers.”

“Also they emit a pheromone very much like nerve gas, a sense-disrupting drug. I, of course, in my workshell, am not affected.”

Lebedev did not ask what the Ix looked like to the Lyhhrt. “Blood,” he said.

“They do not lay eggs in blood. They would like to lay them in Lyhhrt.” He stopped the centrifuge and directed the computer to steady a pacemaker in one of Zamos's clients. “Many years ago when the Ix discovered Lyhhr, we were peaceful Neutrals with no defenses except the powers of our minds. Unfortunately I'yax is our nearest living neighbor. Its people came from their dark fouled world to invade our caves and marshes, and discovered that they could rejuvenate themselves in our bodies.

“We fought them with all of our mental powers, but those were not enough to drive them off more than once. Even with all our crafts we could not armor millions, and we had radio, but no space flight. We looked for help from Galactic Federation. Because we were not members and at the time were not doing work for them, they gave us none.

“I do not blame them in a way. My people, like those
snobs the Khagodi, would not even speak to those they considered lesser mortals then, and the category included all outworlders and especially non-telepaths. It is only within the last hundred and fifty years that we—like the Khagodi—learned to do so. Also, of course, other species did not find us attractive. They felt about us much the same as you do, Lebedev, and were just as frightened.”

Lebedev shrugged. He could not say that he had changed his mind.

“Galactic Federation did, however, recommend our problem to Zamos—not the brothel-keepers' division, but the scientific one, the Zamos Foundation in Surgical Techniques, which was always working on new materials and practices, manufacturing blood and flesh to heal bodies destroyed in wars that worlds and nations should not fight. They provided an artificial organic medium for the Ix to lay eggs in, and after that they left us alone.

“We swore an oath and signed a contract selling our souls to Zamos for one Cosmic Cycle—one hundred and twenty-nine of our years—and agreed to serve them in whatever capacity they chose. We learned to be physicians and surgeons, lawyers, metalworkers, and philosophers, then at last joined Galactic Federation and served their worlds—but Zamos came first. Even when we learned how to build ships and arm them we did ugly things because our world was saved and we swore that oath. Zamos had made us whatever we are.

“The Cosmic Cycle ends in ten days on that hour I named for you. Zamos's people refuse to let us go, they say we are too valuable to them and know too many secrets. They have been sending the Ix to us as a warning. They have broken their part of the oath completely.”

“It usually happens with those soul-selling deals,” Lebedev said.

“But we are leaving. I might have stayed longer, but they are planning to move her two days later. Their plan calls for a private yacht to take her to Shen Four, to the Headquarters of the Zamos Foundation.

“Lebedev, I do not interfere in Zamos's business in providing what men believe is pleasure, in a place that conducts a legal business, and even if I had wanted to I have been powerless because of my oath. But now that the oath is broken and both of us know what is going on it is time to move out. You will demonstrate the proofs to your superiors, and I will help you deliver the evidence.” He gestured toward the wall behind which Kobai was swimming. “Before you came I made the mistake of persuading her keepers to put her in the window, to attract people like you and Skerow. That was naive—how many such people are there who pass by a brothel?—and it was difficult convincing her captors that she was not suitable as a brothel toy. She is lucky to be alive. If I could not save your friend Jacaranda Drummond I saw how she was revenged, and I will save this one.”

Lebedev was less interested than Manador in revenge. “How will you bring her out?”

“You do not really want to know yet. I have sworn to deliver her to her home waters and keep her available to the World Court on Khagodis.”

“That's well and good, but I also need evidence to build the case against Zamos here.”

“You have Ai'ia.”

Lebedev stopped to think. His mind had been so full of everything else about the Lyhhrt's wild schemes that he had not thought of her as an actor in them. “If I can get her out of this place she must have shelter . . . I suppose I could arrange for that.”

“Good.” The Lyhhrt took a tube from his centrifuge and
poured a drop of liquid on a blotting paper. It looked like blood.

“Yes,” said Lebedev. “One more question.” Lebedev felt a dizziness and a dart of pain in his ear that he knew were not merely physical: dread underlay them.

“Yes,” said the Lyhhrt. He picked up the blotting paper and held it up in his bronze hand as if it were a passport to the world of Lyhhr. His sundisk head turned toward Lebedev. “How I get myself out of here. Cleopatra in the rug. Not in all these beautiful casings you have seen me in all these days, that everyone knows from forty
evvu
distance. That is something you do want to know.”

Lebedev could not bring himself to say that he wanted to know it.

“I will leave inside you, Lebedev. In your stomach pouch or between the muscle layers of your belly or back. I believe your digestive acids would be harmful even to my reinforced integument, and since I have satisfied myself with samples of your blood and the tissue of the cyst in your ear that they are compatible—most likely the latter. Small opening, no pain, scarless mending.”

He watched Lebedev throwing up into his spotless sink and said, “I cannot understand why you are so distressed, Lebedev. I am the one who is taking all the risk. Whatever happens, I am going to inhibit you from telling anyone of this—something I have done only once before in my singular existence. It is a grave matter to me. Speak up now if you cannot bear it. I have sworn to free her, and if necessary I will stay and die here—a life spent here is not worth living—but if I died Zamos's minions would not learn the lesson you and I both feel they need so badly. Say now, Lebedev.” He offered a square of white linen.

Lebedev took it with an infinitely slow hand, spat into it, wiped his mouth and said, “Yes.”