Spider Wars: Book Three of the Black Bead Chronicles (21 page)

“
So, you think it might be
a variation of a terraforming device?” Bohea asked.

“
Perhaps the Spiders are
testing a new weapon. One that can kill all the humans on a planet
but leave the surface intact. All one would need to do is reverse the
process to make it habitable again allowing them to establish their
own colonies.”

“
It is too cold,”
Cheobawn she said softly, trying hard to understand the things in the
ambient. “It is killing them.”

Her words drew Bohea’s
eyes, his face still, his eyes as intent as any predator’s.

“
What did she say?”
Bohea asked.

“
The cold is killing who,
clever child?” Oud asked, touching a finger to Cheobawn’s cheek
to catch her attention.

“
The babies,” Cheobawn
said, “inside the eggs. It is quite sad, really. We need to tell
them to stop because their babies are dying. What is the point of
sending seeds if the seeds cannot germinate and grow?”

Bohea and Oud became oddly
quiet. She looked around. They were both staring down at her. Bohea
looked ill.

“
What do we know about
Spider reproduction and physiology?” he asked the room. Both he and
Oud listened to something Cheobawn could not hear. Bohea nodded. “Not
enough, apparently. Cold kills the eggs but what happens when the
snow melts? Will they thaw out and become viable?”

Bohea listened for a long
time, his face becoming harder and more forbidding.

“
I will be damned if am
going to let the Spiders establish a base of operations on this side
of Consortium space,” Bohea said through clenched jaws. “Not
while I am in command, do I make myself clear? We need to hunt every
one of these eggs out and destroy them, starting now. If that means
sending every CPC recruit available downworld to dig them out by
hand, so be it!” He was shouting by the time he was finished.

“
You cannot,” Oud cried
in alarm, her flesh gone totally dark. “The treaty forbids it.”

Cheobawn watched as another
ball of light fell into the magnetic storm over her head, flared
iridescent, and then whirling away. Mora was not going to like it if
thousands of Spacers started tramping around in her forests nor would
she appreciate a plague of spider babies. Bear Under the Mountain
really wanted her to pay attention to something.

Bohea cursed the treaty and
cursed Oud and cursed the Spiders and all their children as his image
began to flicker and fade. Bear wanted him to stay and listen.
Cheobawn reached out a hand and caught at his sparkly armored arm as
it disappeared, trying to hold him in this place.

The icy plain under the sky
full of stars disappeared.

She stood in a metal room
dominated by banks of machinery being attended by dozens of people
dressed in black, some with gold bits on their shoulders and collars.
Half a dozen bowl shaped, padded couches filled the center of the
room. Bohea sat in the one in front of her. He was pulling a cap full
of wires from his head and loosening the collar of a suit of similar
makeup when he looked up and saw her. A look of consternation flashed
across his face.

“
Am I still connected to
the neural network?” he asked a young Father who sat nearby in
front of a panel full of display screens.

“
Uh, no, sir,” the boy
said, staring at her. Cheobawn saw Oud across the room, a golden
sphere imbedded in a bank of machinery under her hands. The Scerron’s
presence in this strange new place disconcerted her. She looked back
to where Oud should have been standing to make sure she was not
losing her mind. Oud had not moved. The Scerron was still at her
side. There was an uneasy look of surprise on her violet face.

“
Mother, why are there two
of you?” Cheobawn asked her, deeply puzzled.

“
That is my sister,” Oud
said, her voice trembling. “How is it that you and I are here,
Lady?”

Cheobawn put her hand out.
It passed through Bohea’s arm and the side of the couch as well.
Bohea jerked his arm away. She laughed. “I am not here, but one of
Old Father Bhotta’s stone is, isn’t it. Not the one in your
temple. The one that Colonel Bohea kept. Am I right?”

The Scerron who was not Oud
nodded as she very slowly took her hands away from the sphere she was
touching. Nothing changed. The Scerron flushed darkly.

Cheobawn could feel all
three stones; the one in her lap down on the planet, the one in Oud’s
hands somewhere on the other side of the galaxy and the one in this
room. Three stones, naturally bonded in the making but now lying in
the hands of three powerful adepts, all of whom had been
concentrating on a single unified moment still talked to each other.
That was all it took. That one moment. Now a triangle of power burned
in the back of her brain, energy arcing through all three stones in
an endless loop using the psi connections between the sister Scerrons
and herself. If she thought about it hard enough she could almost
reach out and touch Oud’s stone, even though it was infinitely far
away. She resisted that urge, focusing on Bohea instead.

“
Somebody had better start
explaining this,” Bohea growled as he climbed out of the couch.
“Why do we all see her without any of us touching an array?”

“
I believe she has already
told you, Colonel,” Oud said faintly. “What you see is not real.
She is in your head and because I am in her head, I am here too.”

“
In my head? What does
that mean? I am not imagining this,” he growled.

“
No, indeed
you
are
not,” Oud said. “
She
is. The bloodstone in this room is
her receiver and her transmitter. Because you are all in close
proximity to it, she has been able to co-opt your own brains into
believing she is here. Does that sound correct, Lady?”

“
As you said, distance has
no meaning,” Cheobawn said with a shrug. “It is not the stones
but the people handling them.”

“
Ah, yes, I see,” Oud
sighed, amazement on her face. “A circle of three.”

“
Gah! I don’t care how
it is done,” Bohea shouted. “Get her out of my head.”

“
I think that if you did
not want to talk to me, you could keep me out quite easily,”
Cheobawn said, a smile playing on her lips as she thought of Sam and
his new Ear. It was so odd to see Bohea unnerved. “Me, I like to do
math in my head. It seems to help shut out the noise of other minds.
But do not do so until we have talked, I beg you.”

“
I have an invasion to
stop, Little Mother,” Bohea seethed in fury. “Need I remind you
that the war with the Spiders had fallen into an uneasy truce before
I listened to you; before we sent a bloodstone into Spider controlled
space. What is it that you think I want to hear?”

“
She is just a child,”
Oud protested. “You cannot blame a two thousand year war …“

“
Ah, ever the disclaimer
from the Scerrons,” Bohea snapped in irritation. “Ever the
messengers of doom. I weary of your convoluted politics, Your
Holiness. I am a soldier, first and foremost and I must do my job.”

It occurred to Cheobawn, in
that moment, that Bohea was not much different than her Da; that he
was a warrior who owed his allegiance to a First Mother somewhere and
that his life was bound up in rules and traditions and the wishes of
others. Bear Under the Mountain rumbled softly somewhere under her
feet. Things stood in balance, it told her, like the stones in a
scree and she was the mite and the flea and the pica busy burrowing
under the one stone that might upset the balance in a direction that
would cause the least damage.

Cheobawn wished for silence
and the compartment on the battle cruiser faded. She found herself
back in the white room, its walls once again lost in the mist of
infinite distance. Colonel Bohea stood before her, dressed in his
black uniform, the bits of gold on his collar gleaming every bit as
brightly as Oud’s eyes. He lifted his head and looked around.

“
What is this? More mind
tricks?” he asked scowling. “I have no time for this.”

“
No, nor do I,” Cheobawn
agreed. “The Elders hunt for me even as we speak and I do not have
time to dally words with you. Give me your hand. I have a gift.”

“
Forgive me if I am leery
of your gifts, Little Mother,” Bohea snapped.

“
Do not be such a baby,”
she snorted impatiently. “It will not hurt. Hold out your hand.”

The Colonel did as she
asked, albeit reluctantly. She put the tip of one finger in the
center of his palm.

“
Look up,” she said
softly. “What do you see?”

A blue ball of light fell
out of the darkness and flared, brilliant blues and greens dancing
over its surface before it tumbled away. It was still glowing when it
fell to earth and disappeared over the edge of the world.”

“
The eggs?” he asked.
“So?”

She poked him harder with
the tip of her finger.

“
They are magnetic. It is
the planetary magnetic fields that is launching them so far to the
south. Also, they glow in the dark. It is called bio luminescence,”
she said.

“
I know what it is
called,” Bohea said, staring up at the sky. She replayed the memory
again.

“
What else do you see?”
she prompted.

“
The flare in the magnetic
fields? It is not an optical illusion caused by the aurora?” he
wondered out loud.

“
In the deep of night, it
should not be hard to find them, given the right equipment, don’t
you think?” she suggested.

Bohea looked down at her,
suspicion in his eyes.

“
This was your invitation.
You wanted the Spiders to come. Now you want me to kill them. Why the
sudden change of heart?” he asked.

“
Spider kind has always
been greedy. Old Father Bhotta remembered that. That is why his kind
went down to the shores to eat the arthropod young every spring. Too
many is just as bad as too few.” she explained. “Bear Under the
Mountain wants you to find them. Most of them, anyway. If a few
escape your hunt, the bhottas will find the rest when they wake in
the spring. It has been a very long time since the bhottas had such a
feast.”

“
Then we are back to where
we started,” Bohea said, shaking her confusing words out of his
head. “No, we are worse off. The Spiders will be angry at your
treachery and the tensions between our species will ramp up just a
little bit higher.”

“
Oh, no,” Cheobawn said
with utter confidence, “Star Woman and Bear Under the Mountain will
hide a few eggs from the eyes of all the hunters just as they hid the
dark door from Spacer eyes. Neither you nor the bhottas have enough
magic to stop it. A few will eventually make it to the warm salty
seas. The Spiders will have to be content with that.”

“
I do not, cannot, believe
in magic,” Bohea said with utter finality.

“
That’s alright,”
Cheobawn said with a laugh. “I do.”

Bohea did not like losing a
war of words. He closed his eyes and pushed, disappearing from her
mind. Cheobawn found herself back in Mora’s office. Lifting the
sphere out of her lap, she dropped it back into its place inside its
box. It was only as she rose to her feet, the box in her hands, that
she realized she was not alone in the room.

Cheobawn
stared at her Truemother. Mora sat in her chair behind her desk, her
face a perfect mask, the wall filled with golden spheres behind her
like a grotesquely huge diadem above her head. Her icy blue eyes
betrayed nothing of what she was thinking. Cheobawn remembered to
breath; then she remembered she was holding a dampening box and her
hands were growing numb. Well, there was no lie that would get her
out of this one. She turned and climbed the step stool, standing on
her toes to slide the box back in place next to the other dampened
stones. Hopping down, she stowed the stool and shook the feeling back
into her hands. Mora was still staring at her when she turned back
towards the desk.

“
How much did you hear?”
Cheobawn asked. And more importantly how much did the stones behind
Mora sync with her own and rebroadcast the other side of her
conversation with Bohea?

“
What comes at us from the
Waste?” Mora asked.

“
What?” Cheobawn said,
not sure of the context of her question.

“
You warned the First
Prime of a threat coming at us from the Waste,” Mora said slowly,
each word pronounced with surgical precision. “Were you referring
to the smoke leopard when you said that?”