Hidden in Sight (48 page)

 

 

TUMBLERS, as befitted a species dependent upon the accumulation of mineral salts for growth, lived within their environment, spending day and night where they could be bathed at any moment by the nourishing mists of their valleys. There were no Tumbler homes or buildings, no shelters. Having never hidden from weather or predators, they needed none. The fruits of their society were etched in stone or traveled as sound. Accident, landslide, or moonquake had been their only enemy, avoided when possible but accepted as part of the cycle of life, until the recent and regrettable behavior of the flesh-burdened.

If concealment was a difficult concept for the average Tumbler to grasp, it proved even harder to accomplish. Remaining motionless and hoping intruders would go away hadn't worked. The flesh-burdened had a disconcerting ability to spot a Tumbler and, worse, would continue to return at random intervals until the Tumbler moved—in which case they would follow until the Tumbler entered one of the sacrosanct valleys.

Wedging oneself into a crack proved distressingly permanent for at least three individuals, who, following a period of mineral accumulation, were unable to extricate themselves.

The Elders were forced to resort to extreme measures. They ordered the ramps into their valleys blocked, and forbade any Tumbler to engage in bliss until the Ganthor had cleansed their Moon of the flesh-burdened. And hopefully any revoltingly organic consequences.

Within the gentle, corrosive mists, an entire species stood and waited to be understood.

While overhead, the Matriarch of the Fleet stomped and waited to be ordered to the attack.

Not that she could wait much longer. One of the reasons Ganthor made such excellent mercenaries was also the reason they made such lousy ones.

Their infamous battle frenzy was a matter of precise timing. Not long enough, and they'd be as likely to bicker among themselves as attack the enemy. Too long?

And nothing could stop them.

29: Orbit Morning

THE antechamber to the bridge was done in whites, shocking to the eye after the dim lighting of the battle bridge. The furniture rose out of the carpeting, its shadows forming a confusion of stark lines and angles along the walls. The only color was the tray of essentials and a blood-red bottle of serpitay on the glossy tabletop, white glasses arranged around it.

For once, Skalet ignored the Kraal niceties. The instant the door closed, she turned to us. “We don't have much time. Here.” She took off the belt holding her weapon and knife and pressed them into Paul's hands. “Now. You. What to do with you.”

As I was helping myself to a handful of appetizers—this form being constantly famished—I wasn't immediately sure if she was commenting on my manners or something else, and pulled my hand back. “Sorry.”

“Not the food, Youngest. Eat if you must. But the orbits give us breathing space and I intend to make the best of it.” She watched Paul strapping on the weapon and waved his hands out of her way impatiently, making the final adjustments around his waist herself. She touched one of the compartments on the belt. “The hood is in here. You'll need it to hide your face when you rejoin the others.”

I stopped chewing. “What are you planning? A mutiny?”

“Hardly. This crew is mine now. It's what Mocktap might have waiting that we prepare for.”

“What about the Ganthor? And who hired them?” My Human-self's voice had an unfortunate tendency to become shrill. “You know the only beings who could afford this many Ganthor are the Tumblers.”

“Or web-beings,” added Paul, well aware of the fortune Ersh had amassed for us.
Several, if you counted the fact that she'd invested as a member of every species that valued personal wealth.

Skalet glared at me. I spread my open hands, after hastily brushing the crumbs from both. “He had to know,” I reasoned for her. “We live together. There was shopping.”

“If I didn't know you've been appropriately cautious in your spending over the years, Youngest, other than a predilection for tasteless silk, I'd be distinctly—unhappy—with this turn of events. Tell me, Human, is there anything you don't know about us?”

Given the look on Paul's face, the answer wasn't going to improve Skalet's temper. “We don't have time for this,” I reminded them. “Did you hire the Ganthor or not?”

Her nostrils flared with distaste. “I wouldn't do anything so flagrantly obvious.”

If she'd told me once during our lessons, she'd told me ten thousand times:
Finesse, Esen. Never use a sword when the scratch of a pin will do.
“If it wasn't you, then it had to be the Tumblers.”

“Nonsense. They can hardly bear the concept of blood, let alone the idea of it spilling over their Moon.”

“Life defends itself.” This from Paul. “There was a Tumbler killed on Ersh's mountain. There could have been more since.”

“Who would—?” For a split second, Skalet's face seemed oddly vulnerable. I understood. Not only were the Tumblers gentle, fragile creatures—for all their mineral composition—but it was Ersh's chosen form. We'd rarely seen her as anything else.

For a while, I'd wondered if Ersh lived as rock because of me. Surely it helped her endure—or ignore me—for long periods. Tumblers had emotions, primarily the calm, slow sort you'd expect from beings who could converse for a month about microfissures. Another reason Ersh liked the form.
They had
, according to her,
a proper time scale for living.
Their feelings were usually related to their surroundings rather than a reaction to the behavior of others. As a Tumbler in her own home, Ersh tended to feel calm and relaxed. Until something I did happened to change things.
Then
, I remembered nostalgically,
she'd become the only Tumbler on Picco's Moon to have a temper and lose it.

I shook myself free of memory to hear Paul say: “Then you agree. We have to do something—”

Skalet raised her hand to stop him. “I do not. You think we can make any difference in what's happening here? We'll be lucky to escape ourselves.”

“We have to try.”

“No, we don't. You see, Youngest? This is ephemeral thinking at its worst.” She walked around Paul, who went stiff and angry under this mock-inspection. “Try. Meddle. Change. Affect. Corrupt. These aren't our ways, Human. We don't interfere. We let time pass and nature take its course. We—remember. And we endure.”

This would have been more impressive coming from Ersh
. I stuffed the remaining appetizers into my pockets for later and scowled at my web-kin. “Looked in a mirror lately, ‘S'kal-ru'? You've been meddling with these Humans all along.”

“You made a home for yourself, Youngest. Do you begrudge me the same?”

Snick.
Just like that, everything became as clear to me as if her flesh were part of mine. “You.” I stepped away from the table, feeling my hands form fists. Small, but tight. “You started all this. You were here first. This war is your fault.”

“I don't know what you're talking about. I haven't been back to Picco's Moon. I told you that.”

“Hired help.” This from Paul, never slow to make connections. “You sent your affiliates to dig out the artifacts you'd hidden on the mountain. Why wait until now?”

“Ersh forbade it,” I said very quietly.

“Along with this form for two generations,” Skalet admitted freely, tracing a path from her throat to her waist with the fingers of one hand. “But when she—left us, it was necessary to make other plans for the future. I watched you, Esen, make a life for yourself. I knew I could do better. I would found a House of my own.” She shrugged. “For which I needed the artifacts in my possession. I didn't send miners. I hired a gem smuggler to retrieve them. He told me the cave was empty.” Skalet's smile was one to give any being nightmares. I felt sorry for the smuggler. “It was possible. Plausible, in fact. Ersh hadn't been—pleased. She could well have destroyed the crates and their contents three hundred years ago.”

“Someone stayed to mine the mountain.” The peak, where we'd met to share; Ersh's home, where I'd learned to hold the varied and beautiful forms of living intelligence; the diamond-dust of Tumbler children. I regretted the rich delicacies in my stomach. “To disturb Ersh's rest.”

Her eyes were sober. “Esen. I would never have permitted it. I didn't know about the mining until you and Paul told me. I first learned the smuggler had lied to me—that the artifacts still existed—when they appeared on the doorstep of an obscure little museum on Signat, the homeworld for Conell and Bract, my most powerful affiliates. No House claimed credit for their recovery. Clearly a Kraal move; potentially one against me. What could I do then? I'd lost control of the game, or it had new players. It was time to pay attention to another.”

“Me.” I glanced at Paul. He was leaning against the table, arms folded across his chest, that intent look on his face.

“You, indeed.” Skalet's smile faded. “My failure to obtain the artifacts was—inefficient. It conceivably put this form at risk, if my link to them—if my past—had been exposed. It was time to obtain what you had, Youngest, in order to protect myself. The ability of web-form to move through space. Ersh's secret.”

“Which you don't have yet,” Paul stated. “And now someone—Mocktap—stands in your way. Interesting, isn't it?”

Skalet's attention was a dangerous thing to draw. I'd practiced for years to avoid it.
Mind you, my motivation had been to limit the number of boring problems she could assign me.
She considered my Human now, as if weighing his future value against the impertinence of his question. “How did you know it was Mocktap?” I asked to divert her.

It was scarcely more comfortable having her glare down at me. Still, she answered. “I needed to learn what had happened on Picco's Moon. Not all the artifacts had reappeared. But I didn't dare go myself. I ordered my most trusted affiliate—see, I admit my folly, Youngest, will you?—to check several mountains, including Ersh's, for any activity. A training exercise. I know the capabilities of my people, Esen. If there'd been an empty ration tube on the mountain, they'd have found it. Mocktap's report said they found nothing. She lied. And ‘lies don't live alone.'” The last seemed a quote, but the source wasn't in my memory. Her face became pensive. “Only we do, Esen-alit-Quar.”

Two maudlin web-beings,
I thought, remembering my conversation with the Grigari musician.
Ersh.
I shook my head and didn't bother to argue. Although I was sorely tempted to point out that for once I hadn't been the one whose planning went awry. Only the consequences facing us made me say, instead: “We might not be alone or otherwise, if we can't resolve all of this. I hope you've thought of that.”

“I do have a plan, Youngest.” Skalet sounded offended that I might doubt her or its outcome.
Perhaps we shared blind optimism as a fault
. “You and Paul will jump from the
Octos Ra
on approach, then make your way to the mountain peak in time to meet me. While I deal with my—problem—you will find what I want from Ersh. I'll arrange for the Kraal to evacuate, with us on board.”

“Jump?” I squealed, over Paul's fierce, “What about the Ganthor?”

Skalet's eyes gleamed. “And there is a small matter of a hand weapon Mocktap likely possesses. It's effective against us, my dear web-kin. Try not to get in her sights.”

That silenced us, as I was sure she intended.

Then, I held out my hand, palm up.

“What's this?” she asked.

“I want Paul's antidote. Before you get in her sights or the Ganthor attack.” I had to look up to meet her eyes. “You are welcome to risk your own life, Skalet. I won't have you risk his. I promise you will have what Ersh remembered for us.”

The black and red of her tattoos blurred her expressions, but I thought I saw a touch of respect. Without looking away from me, Skalet gestured Paul to her side. “I have your word, Esen-alit-Quar?”

“Esen!” I didn't look at him.

“You have my word.”

Skalet smiled. Before either of us knew what she intended, she turned to Paul. Taking his head in her hands, she drew his face to hers, holding it there so she could press her mouth against his in a long, involved kiss that had nothing to do with passion.

I should have guessed she'd built her own immunity to the duras poison for more reasons than self-protection.
Still
, I decided, squeezing my eyes shut,
there were some sights that could scar a young and impressionable mind forever.

Not to mention I had to start building this form's courage before leaping out of a descending scoutship onto terrain even the Tumblers called “precipitous.”

And, I thought numbly, find a way to stop the Ganthor from attacking this world.

Giving Skalet the secret of flight while avoiding the Kraal seemed the least of my problems at the moment.

Otherwhere

 

 

IF Timri hadn't spotted him following Cristoffen, Rudy thought, he wouldn't have made it on to the
Russell III
. If Kearn hadn't convinced him he was an ally, he wouldn't be standing on the orange-touched pavement of the Literiai Plateau this afternoon, one hand on the pitted ramp of a tramp freighter, waiting for a ride.

Because no one was being allowed to land on Picco's Moon except Commonwealth military, and of those close enough, only the
Russ'
had been already on its way when the squeal from Port Authority came through.
With what was on the other side of that bright orange sky, the smart move would have been to turn around
, Rudy grimaced to himself.