Skeen's Leap (2 page)

Night. Have to find a hole. She drifted through the darkening streets, searching for the right sort of Soak. Slipping through the shadows, pushing against the curfew, watching, watching, prying into cul-de-sacs, using skills she'd learned a lot too young. She'd stopped being a child somewhere around her sixth birthday. Her nose twitched. A gust of sour stink. A stooped squarish gnome in the shadows ahead. She followed him, staying well back, having learned respect for the instincts of these braindead Soaks; they smelled trouble before it happened and reacted without having to think.

The Soak led her deep into the Warehouse District, in among the smaller older structures, mostly abandoned, beginning to rot into the meager soil.

One minute he was walking along a wall belonging to one of these, hand slipping over the wooden clapboard, the next he'd vanished. She squatted in a doorway across the street and waited.

A horn wailed. Curfew.

She didn't move. Let him get settled in. There was time, a little, before the saayungkas were turned loose in the streets, more time after that before they reached this part of the city. She waited until she heard the howls a few streets over, then unfolded slowly from the squat, tightened and loosened her muscles a few times to work the kinks out, slipped across the street and moved along the wall until she reached the area where the Soak had disappeared.

The wall looked solid enough. She ran her fingertips along the boards, applying an intermittent pressure until she came on a section that gave a little. Wedged it during the day, most likely, latched it at night. She continued testing the wall until she located the spot where the latch was.

The saayungkas were getting closer, she could hear the rattle of their harness, but she ignored them as she worked. A hairfine cutting beam, a quick waggle, the stink of hot metal, then a bit of the wall swung inward enough to let her scramble through on hands and knees.

She crawled into a cubby made of piles of broken crates, the dusty hole dimly visible in the pale gray light coming through cobwebby glass in windowslits high up under the eaves, clerestory effect. She listened, keeping her mind shut down, her eyes closed. A heavy silence broken only by a few insect sounds and maybe something like a snore, too soft and distant to pin down, a sound just at the edge of her hearing.

Satisfied, she swung round and inspected the latch. It was a hook and eye, some cheap alloy she could bend with her thumbs. The cutter had sliced through the shank. One part hung down, rattling as the wind blew the door; the hook was still caught in the eye. She pushed the two parts back in place and used the little laser to weld them together. Impossible to hide all traces of her interference, there was a sway in the shank, an uneven knot about the weld that wasn't obvious to the eye but clear enough to the touch; she could only hope he was too far gone to notice. Well, the patch was good enough to hold the thing shut—that's all that mattered. Tomorrow, she'd arrange her own way in, once the Soak left for another day's drifting and caging. Right now, she'd better get busy fixing herself some place where she could sleep safe from interference.

COUNTING TO PRESENT, TENTH TO FOURTH NIGHT. A WILDLY IMPROBABLE WAY OUT.

For several nights the Soak was aroused and suspicious, prowling about the warehouse at odd hours and swinging an ancient torch that put out a yellow light dimmer than the gray glimmers the waning moon sneaked through the cobwebs of the clerestory windows. He never looked up, so he never discovered her. She'd made herself a sleeping platform among the rafters close to one of the windows. It was drafty up there and could be cold, but she gathered piles of shaving and flocking from the junk scattered about the floor (fire hazard of the finest kind) and made herself a cozy nest.

In spite of free lodging for the nights and care in spending, her money was dwindling rapidly; she fed herself on bread and sausage, adding to this meager diet apples plums oranges carrots celery, whatever she could filch without getting caught. Water was a problem. Getting enough to drink took considerable ingenuity; washing herself and her clothing was far down her list of priorities, though she had to keep herself neat enough to avoid the attentions of stray P'jaa looking for able-bodied vagrants to feed into the work camps. Djabo be blessed for eddersil, at least her tunic and trousers didn't need washing, she could shake them out, getting rid of accumulated grime and body oils with a few sharp snaps of the wrists, but she was beginning to acquire the odor of poverty, an effluvium that cried pauper pauper pauper to a discerning nose. Her undershirt and underpants were grimy and stiff with the exudates of her body, but eddersil was irritating against the tenderer parts of that body so she couldn't discard them. And she couldn't wash them so she never took them off; she knew she couldn't make herself put that filth back against her skin.

The Soak finally relaxed. No more snap searches of the littered warehouse looking for he didn't know what. That didn't mean he was any quieter. When he wasn't moving his bedding about, something he did two or three times a night, he was mumbling to himself, now and then yelping like a tortured pup, now and then belting out snatches of song. After the first few nights she found she could ignore this; sometimes she thought if this limbo-existence went on much longer his noises would be like lullabies singing her to sleep.

Toward dawn on her sixth night in the warehouse, she woke confused and a trifle disoriented. At first she didn't know what had jarred her out of her sleep, then she heard a scrabbling and a muttering beneath her and nearly gagged as a mixture of chigger fumes and human stink came gusting up at her. The Soak. He'd settled himself right beneath her. She cursed under her breath, then lay still, listening to mutters punctuated with the splash and gurgle of liquid.

“Roon.” He giggled. “Roo-in roo-in roo-in. Bare and bu bu bu blasted.” More chigger down his gullet. He giggled again and started singing, words swallowed by the mush his pickled brain made of his mouth; he finished his song with a long rolling fart that blended with his usual gamy stink and the fumes of the chigger to produce a stench so overwhelming she curled into a tight ball, pinched her nostrils shut and concentrated on not breathing for as long as she could manage. He started muttering again. She strained to hear, ruins, what about ruins.

“Gate.…” Something something something. “Shaunhaa.…” Probably saayungka. High-pitched titter. More sloshes. Scrapes and scrabblings. “Shtu pid junks. Shtu pid bal dies. Wor ked out. They say they say. Hoo hoo hoo.” Slosh, spit, cough. Another fart. More coughs, juicy and strangling. Heels beating, muffled ragged drumming. “Tolchorok. Hee hee hee. Tol tol tol chor rok ok ok. Gon na gonna get back there. Gon gon gonna get back.” Cough, belch, snuffle. “Roons roo ins my roo ins. Wor ked out they say they say they say.…” Something something something, she couldn't make out what he was saying and chewed on her thumb to hold back a hiss of frustration. “Hee hee hee Ol' Yoech he know he know bet ter. Tol tol tol chor rok rok rock. Treas sure rok rok rok. Yoech es treas sure. Tol tol tol chor rok ok.” Coughing spasm, more muttering she couldn't make out. Clouds of stink, hot, sour-sweet; the acrid bite of urine, sudden, like a shout. She heard grunts and mushy sounds that might have been curses. The rustle of cloth as Yoech shucked his trousers, dragging sounds as he tore his bedding apart and moved the dry bits away. The sounds faded into the darkness and the stench began to dissipate.

She was on fire with possibility, trying to calm herself, telling herself it's a braindead's wet dream—you can't think of believing him—it's foolishness—you can't afford foolishness, but while she was telling herself all that, she was also thinking, I know Tol Chorok—first colony ruins—two, three days walk into the mountains—nothing there. They say. No, Skeen, don't be a fool, a Soak? You couldn't believe him if he said it was dark when the sun went down. Tol Chorok. Treasure?

BACK TO PRESENT TIME, SKEEN RUNNING THROUGH THE MOUNTAINS, KEEPING AHEAD OF THE SAAYUNGKAS BUT ONLY JUST.

Skeen heard the whine of a float and flung herself into a patch of brush, lying very still, willing it to go away. It hovered a moment. Heat seekers, she thought, and fought down a panic she'd kept off till now. A laser bolt stabbed into the brush a few paces downslope. A bull hijjik bellowed and went crashing away. The float whined on.

Hijjik. Where there's one.… Dawn was close. Clouds were gathering in the east, piling up over the worn peaks; there was that touch of heavy dampness in the air that meant rain. She started moving toward the clouds, working her way higher into the mountains. If she could keep loose until it rained, she was loose forever. Well, just about. Maybe jump a herd of hijjik cows and use them to cut her trail. She settled grimly to a slow grope through darkness the cloud cover made total, keeping her line as best she could with little faith in how well she was doing. Cities were her natural domain; in a city there was always something to measure against, every face a city showed you was different, not this eternal tree and rock, rock and tree, with one peak so much like the last it might have been cloned from it.

She broke out of trees into a marshy meadow, a large herd of hijjik cows and their calves in sleepstand out in the middle of the grass. She slithered to a stop, tested the wind, then went cautiously around the edge of the meadow, keeping in the thick shadow under the trees, moving as quietly as she could. When she reached the stream that ran along one edge of the meadow, she took off her boots, gathered small water-polished stones and filled them, then eased herself into the water. Stumbling, sliding, tottering, she began working her way upstream, jamming her toes, banging her ankles, scraping skin off, the cold intensifying the pain and at the same time numbing her feet until she could barely feel them; walking grew increasingly chancy and it certainly wasn't silent. She felt like a marching band. The herd took no notice of her and continued to doze placidly out there in the lush soggy meadow. The wind was still her friend. She stopped when she was a little past the herd, found relatively firm footing, dug into a boot, and brought out a handful of stones. All right, you cows, get ready. She let out a shrill warbling whoop and side-armed the stones at the nearest hijjik.

Yelling and hurling handfuls of stones she exploded the herd into a wild honking flight into the trees, tramping in a wide band across her backtrail, spraying the musk of their terror over her scent. Wiping out her traces. At least she hoped so.

Before the uproar of their flight faded, she started moving upstream, sliding, tottering, bruising every bone in foot and shin, shivering from the cold, cursing everything and everyone—the night, the world, Tibo, P'jaa, Atsabani, Honjiukum, Yoech, herself—as she plodded on.

After what felt like a hundred kilometers she climbed out of the creek and stood shivering on a flat stone, her teeth clicking together, her feet so numb she could not feel them at first, then shot with a thousand tiny pains that added up to one fuckin' huge hurt. The eddersil of her trousers shed the water caught in its fibers in an icy whoosh. She yelled and hopped around, then rubbed instep and sole on her pantleg and hoped about some more as she pulled her boots back on. She stomped her feet down in them and sighed with a combination of pleasure and pain. Hands warming in her armpits, she listened. Nothing but the usual night yammer. She moved her shoulders, took a few tentative steps, and decided her feet would hold her a while longer. She looked up. The cloud cover was too dense to let much light show through. Should be raining sometime soon. Just let me keep loose until then, hah! and the Junks can go suck a duck.

TURN BACK THREE DAYS. PUTTING A FACE ON FANTASY.

Hunting Yoech in the dark, hypospray in hand charged with songbird jellies. Tracking by his smell, his mutters.

Prowling around him in the dusty dark, him nervous and jerking, wary as a hijjik calf with a pack of rii sniffing around the herd.

Working closer, closer, nozzle against the neck, songbird spraying through his skin.

“Sleep, old Yoech, sleep, no danger, no hurt, sleep, sleep, no need to fight, sleep, sleep ahhh.…”

She knelt beside him. “Friend am I, friend to Yoech. Who am I, Yoech? What's my name?”

“Sessi? Sessi-girl, coming for me?” Breath whined through his awful nose, fighting with the snot. “Comin through the Gate?”

“Yes, it's Sessi. Sessi come to see my love. Where's the Gate, my Yoech? I've forgot. I'm frightened, my Yoech, I want to go home. Help me, tell me how to find the Gate.”

“Tol Chorok, Sessi, I tol you and tol you, Tol Chorok.”

“Where is Tol Chorok, my Yoech? This is Chukunsa, how do I get to Tol Chorok from here?”

“Everybody knows Tol Chorok.” He wriggled under her hand and she wondered if she should shoot him again. She didn't want to; Djabo only knew how it'd mix with all that chigger in him. “Uh. Uh. Uh,” he said. What he meant by it she had no idea. “Dry valley right up there under Chol Dachay, highest peak around with the tip bent over like it's broke.” He giggled and started groping her. “I ain't broke, Sessi, I ain't broke, feel it.” He fumbled at her arm trying to get hold of her hand. Before she had to decide what she'd do about that, he went vague and forgot what he was doing, and started mumbling to himself like he had last night. “Wouldn't believe me. Said I was era zy said I was dream ming chig head dream ming.…” He went on muttering about pull and crazy and gate and this peculiar female named Sessi and going back to Somewhere.

She listened until she was convinced she'd learn nothing useful, bent over him, and tugged at his beard. “Yoech,” she said, “my Yoech, tell me about the Gate.”

“Running,” he said, “Pack, uh, pack uh, there. Thing. Grabbed me. You know. Grabbed me just me, I fell through on you, you know.” His eyes filmed over, and he no longer seemed aware that she was there with him. She listened to his mutterings. They were incoherent and wandering with almost no sense of time so he talked of things he'd seen yesterday in the street, events on the far side of the Gate, the accident that stranded him here on Kildun Aalda, running from the saayungkas, the words mushing up more and more until the time came when she couldn't understand a thing no matter how hard she listened. He grew restless. She stroked her hand over his matted hair trying not to think of what she was touching.