Hidden in Sight (17 page)

My scales became swollen and refused to relax again.

We couldn't discuss our next move, not in front of our passenger, bound and silent behind us, his eyes boring holes into our backs.
Not that there was much to discuss,
I thought. I could call up the list of ships fin-down, legally and otherwise, from memory, and saw only one choice. I couldn't go home, if the word applied to Picco's Moon and Ersh's corpse. Largas knew we'd planned to go there. Paul couldn't go home, if the word still applied to Botharis and the family who thought him dead. Kearn knew he lived, and we couldn't know if he watched for Paul's return.

Above all, we couldn't risk any ship controlled directly, or indirectly, by Largas Freight.

Last, but not least, I wouldn't go to any system containing a member of Paul's Group. Something I hadn't told my Human yet. I didn't expect him to be happy about it, especially when he knew why.

I finally believed in the Prime Law.
No one outside our Web could be trusted.
Ersh would have been proud.

 

I didn't like remembering. I liked watching bubbles released from my swim sacs as they floated past my oculars. I didn't like the pensive glances Paul gave me. I liked it much better when he stretched out on the floor to sleep. Or pretend to sleep—it didn't matter to me which, as long as he refrained from conversation.

I very much liked my suit. It made me tall and graceful. It protected me from the filth of this cargo compartment. It nourished and cleaned me.

Paul should have endured his. Then he'd be safe from all harm. To be safe meant to stay hidden. I knew what mattered. Stay hidden; stay safe. If we were hidden, everything would be fine again. In the suit, no one would be able to see what he was or know his name.
He should try again
.

I couldn't disturb his sleep. Sleep was important. I'd been trying to sleep since the freighter went translight. I'd found a spot between a rack and a pair of tables, where I could lean my lovely suit against the former, and push with my poles against the latter. Oietae are rocked to sleep by the waves of their home ocean—well, those who did wilderness swims were. Urban dwellers managed nicely by clinging to the vibrating rope of their choice.

No matter how I tried, the rocking was never right, either too rough or too frequent or too . . . I was growing exhausted. It was most annoying.

I'd been wrong.
How odd
. Paul wasn't asleep. He was standing in front of me, a lump of netting in his hands. His face was weathered ice, chipped into a down-turned mouth and grieving eyes. He didn't speak, becoming busy with the net and some cable, so I kept trying to rock myself.

Then I wasn't rocking—I was rising in a most alarming manner. Before I could do more than flail my poles and flash red with indignation, the Human deposited me into his net. The last desperate movements of my arms tangled me in the dreadful device. I gave up and lay still, peering up at him. “I'm sorry you vomited in your suit,” I said very clearly. “But that's no reason to take your revenge on me.”

“Shhh.” He shoved the mass of net and suit that was me away from him. I swung toward the ceiling, slowed, then swung down and past him, the water in my suit sloshing as inertia fought momentum. He gave me another, gentler push, let me pass, then another, even gentler.

“This is nice,” I admitted, fading to amber.

“I've had practice,” he said quietly. “Now, shhh. You're so tired I'm afraid you'll blow a hole in the deck soon.”

I clenched my swimmerets, courses of yellows playing over the suit. Laughter. “Silly Paul. I won't do that. I'm safe now.”

“How so?” Softer still.

“I'm hidden—right here. Look. You can't see, see—” for some reason I was finding it hard to concentrate. “Me. You can't see me, can you?”

Push and swing. “Does that make a difference?”

“Yes. No. Yes.” I would have kept this going but lost track with the next upswing. “You should put on your suit. I like my suit.”

“The suit keeps you hidden,” he repeated cooperatively.

I flashed a contented amber. “Oh, the suit does much more than that, silly old Human. Put yours on—it's so much better in the suit.”

“What's better, Es?” I cringed at his tone, its bright edge of suspicion.
Ersh used it too.

This body wanted to curl up suddenly. I tried not to let it, to keep relaxed and enjoy the motion. I could fall asleep so easily, if he'd stop talking.

I thought he had, and let myself drift. The swinging slowed without Paul pushing, but continued to soothe.

Until the swinging stopped with a jerk. I focused on the Human, now leaning over me. His suit trailed from his hand. “Oh,” I said happily. “You're going to put it back on.”

“I think one of us blissed out of our gills is enough.” His voice was an odd mix of frustration and pity. I didn't like the sound of it at all. I didn't like stopping either, and tried to get the net swinging again by wriggling. He tossed his suit behind him and reached for mine. “Hold still, Es. I've figured out the adjustments from mine—”

If I hadn't been wrapped in the net, I would have been able to defend myself. As it was, I made Paul's misguided attempt to sabotage my suit as difficult as possible, managing to hit him with my head twice, the second time drawing a pained, “Oof! Es, will you stop that!” from the Human.

But it didn't stop him.

There was no way around it. We had to leave Joel somewhere. It didn't help that Minas XII was showing her finest fall colors, namely the black of storm clouds and the white of a too-early snow. I waited for Paul, not knowing what to do, not knowing what a Human as old and angry as Joel could withstand.

I did know how dangerous he would be to us both, now. It made me wish for a form that could weep.

The storm was moderate by local standards, meaning you were judged moderately insane to be flying in it. Couriers stayed in the air, for-hires did not. Port Authority would play it safe. I didn't think our attackers would.

It made for scarce traffic. A good thing, given the view out any port was of complex whorls of suicidal snowflakes all heading straight for us, despite physics. Paul would be relying on scanners. He had, I'd noticed with a thrill of fear, disengaged the automatics. I understood why. The nav system was interactive with the mains at Port Authority. Fishertown didn't have much in the way of flight control, but it did provide a navigation grid. If Paul linked us to it, we could be followed by those with the right equipment—and motivation.

It seemed we'd joined that category of inhabitant who couldn't afford safety.

“Don't drop me near any of the family,” Joel said, his voice strained but calm. “And not in the ocean. Leave them a body to space, if you have any feelings for them at all.”

A muscle jumped along Paul's jaw, nothing more.

I levered my jaw over my shoulder so I could stare at Largas in horror. “We would never hurt you, Joel.”

“Don't use my name.” He squirmed like a trussed bird of prey, unable to believe its wings were tied, frantic for freedom. “Don't use it! I don't want it in your monster's mouth.”

“Leave her alone.”

I couldn't bear Paul trying to protect me from Joel's honest hate. “I won't use it again,” I promised. “But we mean no harm to you or anyone.”

“If you meant no harm, why did you follow us here? Hadn't you done enough to us? And him—” words seemed to fail the older Human as he glared at Paul's back.

I opened my mouth, then saw my Human shake his head very slightly. He was right, of course. There was nothing I could say that Joel Largas would believe, nothing he'd want to hear.

Especially from the mouth of a monster.
The window nearest me was fogged despite the efforts of the internal ventilation system. It was my fault. I was dumping heat to hold this form, and the warmer, moist air near me was condensing on the frozen plas. I rubbed it clear with one hand.

The aircar dropped. As we passed through an eddy in the snow, I spotted the lights of a familiar landmark.

Paul was taking us to Joel's house.

I hoped my Human knew what he was doing. The home of the Largas' patriarch was not only filled to bursting with hardened spacers at any given time, those spacers owed their lives to our new and deadliest enemy.

There was something wrong. An imbalance grated along every nerve fiber I possessed; the way the universe tilted made my head float. Perhaps my swim sacs were infected again. The feeling had been similar. Lesy had kept an ointment in her cupboard that was most effective, if one could get past the unpleasant part of having to squirt it between one's fifteenth and sixteenth segments . . .

“It's a hangover.”

The sound vibrations initiated a wave of fire down my body, colored white with pain. I tried to remember how to cover my ears, then couldn't remember where they were. Or if I had any.
I must,
I thought, feeling clever,
if I could hear Paul.

Paul?

“Paul?”

His answer dropped into the silk covering my lap: a tiny vial of powder and a knife. I stared at them, my hands retreating to clench at my sides. Skalet-memory recognized the vial. It would deliver its contents—poison, disease, drug—into the face of a victim, to be absorbed through whatever structures were sufficiently open to air. Well suited to Human anatomy, with its porous skin and the moist linings of mouth, eyes, and nose.

The knife? Skalet-memory knew too many knives.

I looked up at my Human.

There's no other way
, that flash of gray eyes meant.

I'd seen Paul like this before. I judged it a Human trait, that such a gentle being could turn dark and dangerous, could become something far more perilous than a hungry Ycl or rampaging Ganthor. They, at least, were following the passions of their nature. Paul, at such moments, abandoned his, as if the contradiction between what he was and what he might have to do was unendurable.

The aircar was circling, bouncing as Paul fought gusts that threatened from one side, then the other, as if Minas XII couldn't decide how best to knock us from the sky. I couldn't bring myself to touch either vial or knife, not even for him. He shot another glance at me, then said curtly: “Take the controls.”

I'd barely gripped the bar in my hands, feeling how the aircar battled any correction and reasonably sure we would now crash so all other concerns were unimportant, when Paul swept the vial from my lap and aimed it over my shoulder. He sat back down and took the controls, relieving me of responsibility for our lives. “Cut him free and hide the bindings. Quickly. We can't stay up here much longer. It will look suspicious.”

Without knowing if I'd have a source of mass, I couldn't cycle from this form, so it served Paul right that my spacious hips required most of the front seat—both front seats—in order for me to turn and reach where Joel Largas lay. I sighed with relief. He was breathing. Unconscious and flushed, but breathing.

Paul might not have my hearing, but he couldn't very well miss a sigh rumbling millimeters from his ear, especially a sigh through lungs the size of my present ones. “You thought I'd killed him,” he accused. “Damn it, Esen, you know me better than that!”

“Of course I do,” I told him, more than willing to lie for friendship's sake. “I'm—It's not been a good day, Paul.”
For us
, I thought darkly, imagining a celebration of sorts probably underway among the Humans in black.

The bindings cut easily. I shoved the pieces and the knife into one of the rear cupboards, then straightened Joel's arms and legs, relying on form-memory to choose the most comfortable positioning.
There
. If I didn't know better, I'd assume Joel was sleeping off one of his famed visits to the Circle Club. His face even had the same mottled flush.