Sliding Scales (11 page)

He would have stayed to watch, but the last thing he wanted to do was keep someone as important as Keliichu waiting. Waiting for what? As he strode purposefully through the corridors of the complex, his sandals slapping on the smooth floor, Takuuna's worries deepened. The pleasures of a few timeparts ago were waning rapidly. Had he done something wrong? Had he done something right? What was so important that it could not be conveyed via communicator and required a tooth-to-tooth meeting?

A sudden thought so alarmed him that his pointed tongue shot out reflexively between his front teeth. Fortunately, there was no one around to witness the lapse. The human! This had something to do with that execrable excuse for a sentient that he had providentially knocked over a cliff, sending it to its doom. As was proper, his report on the incident had been filed immediately. By now he thought it had long since been reviewed and accepted. Had something unforeseen cropped up to compromise his carefully crafted tale of alien deception and desperate self-defense? As he walked, he mentally reviewed what he had scribed. He could find no fault with it. His failure to do so only rendered him that much more uneasy.

Dodging irritably around a couple of slowly hopping, visiting Vssey, he entered an appropriate lift and soon found himself at the entry to Keliichu's workplace. As befitted someone of such high status, it was located just below ground level, with a narrow horizontal port offering a view of carefully maintained external landscaping.
It was as close as one stationed on Jast could get to a homey panorama. Trying not to let his unease show, he flashed his presence.

Keliichu was waiting for him. The primary administrator's expression, posture, and tail position gave no indication of what the respected sandering was thinking. He appeared preoccupied, barely acknowledging Takuuna's entrance and elaborate salute as the newcomer sheathed his claws, turned his head to the right, and exposed his jugular. Nor did Keliichu come around the work desk to lightly grab Takuuna's throat in a polite gesture of greeting. Takuuna did not miss the gesture because it was not expected. This was not a personal encounter. Determined to stay calm, forcing himself to still the rapid side-to-side twitching of his tail, he waited silently.

Keliichu turned to him. Not on him, but to him, Takuuna noted with relief. An AAnn could read more into a body movement or gesture than even the most perceptive human, and there was nothing in the way the primary administrator held his hands or his head, his shoulders or his tail, to suggest enmity.

Keliichu wasted no time. “You have heard about the deathss at Morotuuver?”

Takuuna gestured swift acknowledgement. Who had not? The horrifying incident was the talk of the AAnn community on Jast. “A terrible tragedy. Sso many good nye dead in the accident.”

The senior administrator executed a brutally sharp gesture of disagreement muted by third-degree consideration. “It wass not an accident.”

His visitor was taken aback. This was not the conversation he had expected to have. “But all the reportss indicated that—”

Keliichu did not let him finish. Noted for his patience, the primary administrator was exhibiting all the signs of
one for whom time had become shortened. It occurred suddenly to Takuuna that even someone as senior as his host could come under pressure from above. That in turn suggested the involvement of authority beyond the merely local, perhaps stretching all the way back to Pregglin itself.

What had happened? And how, by all the heat of all the sands of home, did it involve him?

“It wass an act of ssabotage,” the administrator informed him moodily.

Takuuna's head was spinning as he tried to keep up. “Ssabotage? But by whom, and to what purposse?”

The administrator's head came up and he met his visitor's eyes squarely. Another time, another place, it might have been interpreted as a personal challenge to combat. But not here, not in this office, not during a prescribed meeting between superior and subordinate.

“You, of all nye, sshould know that, Takuuna.”

His thoughts raced. Why would anyone suppose that he would be familiar with … ? He began to smile inwardly. There was a childhood legend about guiding stars that favored certain newly born. He was beginning to believe that his was shining brightly. He could foresee the diminishment of a subjunctive already. Having arrived full of ignorance and worry, he strove to adjust his posture to reflect inner confidence. It was something he was beginning to feel.

“Truly,” he responded ingenuously. “Why wass the event reported as an accident?”

“To keep both AAnn and localss from leaping to unefficaciouss conclussionss. To maintain the public calm. While our possition here on Jasst is ssecure, it iss not ever-lassting. Whether that will eventually come to pass awaitss further decissions by the Vssey. And as you know, what a nye can decide in a
tssing
, it takes at leasst three Vssey a
month to work out. Sso we remain, and quietly purssue our interessts, and try not to give offensse to our dithering hosstss. But there are evidently ssome Vssey who can reach decissionss more sswiftly than the resst of their ssluggissh brethren. Thesse unknown hosstile elementss have decided to take action againsst uss.” To relieve his restlessness, he reached down with a clawed finger and traced abstract patterns in the disc of colored sand that reposed on his desk for that purpose.

“Forenssicss found tracess of oxygen-ssenssitized explossive in the wreckage of the dining area at Morotuuver. Additional ressearch revealed that a complete identity package for a Vssey worker at the facility had gone missing ssome months earlier. Sso the attack wass well planned.” His expression was grim. “Thiss initial hint of rebellion againsst our pressence here musst be sstamped out immediately! Our friendss among the Vssey have promissed uss full cooperation. Ssuch violence dissgusstss them equally. Or appearss to,” he added, his tone softening.

“What hass thiss revelation to do with me?” Takuuna thought he knew, but needed to hear it from the administrator himself. Keliichu didn't hesitate.

“It wass you who propossed that the unexpected appearance on Vssey of a sseemingly unconnected, apolitical human wass ssuggesstive of ssomething more than it appeared to be. When you returned from traveling with it to the backcountry and declared that you had been forced to kill it, I musst confess that I wass among thosse dissinclined to take your sstory of deception and sself-defensse sseriously.” With the inner will that had always sustained him, Takuuna kept his expression unchanged.

“Then along comess thiss terrible incident at Morotuuver. It sseemss that I, among otherss, may have been wrong in our initial assumptionss, and that your ssusspicionss
of human involvement in esscalating Vsseyan animossity to our pressence on thiss world may in fact have been correct.”

Takuuna reacted with a becoming modesty that positively oozed. “I wass only doing my besst, respected Keliichu, relying on my insstinctss and training to analyze all that I wass obsserving.”

Keliichu hissed softly. He had no time for such unctuousness, but was willing to tolerate it. His personal feelings toward this Takuuna were irrelevant to the situation at hand.

“It hass been decided that a sspecialized invesstigative unit sshould be created, whosse sstaff will be drawn from ssome of the ssharper mindss within the Authority. A unit whosse purposse will be to root out and identify ssourcess of Vsseyan resstlessness that are ssufficiently disscontented to resspond to our pressence on Jasst with violent demonsstrationss. By decission as well as review of record, it hass been decided that you are pressently the mosst qualified nye to command and direct ssuch a unit.”

Takuuna stood stunned. What a wonderment of sand-falls the morning had brought! First the delicious encounter with the dynamic female Geelin. And now this. Anticipating condemnation over the outcome of his encounter with the intruding softskin, perhaps even a formal questioning by an interrogation panel, he instead found himself promoted! Any last vestiges of doubt he felt over terminating the visitor vanished beneath the import of the primary administrator's words.

“Doess thiss appointment include the formal divesstiture of a perssonal subjunctive?” Had a human in such a situation made the inquiry, it would have sounded pushy. For an AAnn not to do so would have been unnatural.

Hence, Keliichu was expecting it. “No. The appointment doess not carry that kind of hierarchical weight.
However,” the senior administrator added in response to Takuuna's obvious dissapointment, “the ssuccessful ressolution of the ssituation we are facing and that you are being assked to deal with would almosst certainly produce ssuch a ressult.”

Coming as it did from an official as high up in the local chain of command as Keliichu, the response boosted Takuuna's spirits even more than they had been already.

“Resst assured, venerated primary adminisstrator, that I will undertake to excisse thiss ssocial cancer with the utmosst vigor of which I am capable.”

“I am ssure you will.” Keliichu's tone was dry and polite. He did not know Takuuna well enough to dislike him. Such things, anyway, were not important. “Your mandate and directionss will be waiting for you in your office. Upon commencing your work, if you find that you require additional ressourcess, do not hessitate to bypass normal channelss to request them. Thiss iss a priority assignment.”

After offering a heartfelt “truly” and taking his leave, Takuuna departed the chief administrator's sector. He had to force himself to walk and not bound down the corridor of the complex. A special designation! Everyone would be watching him. Naturally, too, everyone would be hoping for him to fail. But this was an exceptional circumstance. He would be operating for the safety and welfare of all nye. The cooperation he could expect from those who would normally be his competitors would be atypical, and could not be refused. He was in a unique and enviable position. In fact, in examining his new circumstances from every possible angle, he could find only one potential complication.

To the best of his knowledge, there
were
no violently subversive groups operating among the Vssey.

Certainly the human had never vouchsafed any interest
in such. That had not stopped Takuuna from killing him. Just as the likely absence of any widespread organized opposition to the AAnn presence on Jast was not going to stop Takuuna from carrying out his newly assigned duties. In the absence of a reason to kill the softskin, Takuuna had managed to do so, anyway, neatly manufacturing a rationale after the fact. With the native authorities having promised to cooperate in any investigation, there was nothing to hold him back. Striding purposefully and proudly down the corridor, he hissed a happy threnody as he contemplated the first spate of anticipated arrests.

H
e remembered what rain was, but the remembering of it did nothing to sate his burning thirst or restore any more of his missing memory. Clearly, it rained in this land. There were too many growing things for it to be otherwise. He could not put a name to any of the growths around him, but many were very green, and he knew that meant the presence of moisture. So he kept walking and stumbling in the direction of the distant green line he had espied when he began to leave the great canyon behind.

The flying snake was light on his shoulders. Apparently she was accustomed to resting there, because she repeatedly touched down and settled herself without hesitation. That was interesting, he reflected. In addition to giving the creature a name, he also somehow knew it was female. What else did he know that awaited only a chance glance, a quick flash of insight, for him to remember?

If he did not find water soon, he knew, whatever he did or did not know would not matter. As days passed, the green line came closer, faded, darkened anew. He was near enough now to make out individual bits of foliage, strong and sturdy. Some of the growths were notably larger than himself. They obviously required a good deal of water, more than occasional rain could supply. So, where was it? He couldn't see it, couldn't smell it. Neither, if she had any heightened senses in that regard, could Pip.

The nearer he drew to the oddly squarish green growths, the steeper and more treacherous the route he had chosen became, until he found himself walking along a ledge running above a narrow gulch. The gully wasn't deep or wide, and he welcomed the shade it provided from the heat of the day.

He was growing delirious. He knew that was the case because for the better part of the morning he had been hearing the sound of running water. But there was no running water. The surface underfoot was solid rock, the bottom of the ravine dry and sandy, and no life-giving waterfalls cascaded from either rim. Already deprived of memory, his traitorous mind was playing further tricks on him.

An airborne Pip was gliding along parallel to him, occasionally crisscrossing the bottom of the gulch. Periodically she would climb up from the bottom of the ravine to flutter in front of his face before dipping downward once more. He did not find the behavior odd because he could not recall anything of her normal behavior and therefore had no history with which to compare it.

Then he misstepped, his right foot bent sideways, he overcorrected to keep from spraining the ankle, and down he went. Faithless as it was, he still tried to protect his head as he tumbled over and over. At least, he thought as he fell helplessly, the sand at the bottom of the canyon looked soft. It was, but not in the way he had expected.

Faced with the fact that the large gangly object accelerating toward them was not going to halt, the pack of somnolent creek browsers, who spanned the watercourse from bank to bank and whose natural camouflage consisted of adjoining flat backs that looked just like a sandy surface, inflated the myriad of tiny airsacs concealed beneath their skin and rose into the air of the gully. Still tumbling uncontrollably downslope, arms and legs flailing
in a feeble attempt to halt his plunge, he caught a quick, wild glimpse of the free-flowing creek the ascension of the rapidly rising browsers had exposed. Then he splashed noisily into it. He lay there in the shallow water, stunned by dual sensations of wet and cold that were as welcome as they were unexpected.