The Light-years Beneath My Feet (5 page)

This time, he told himself, he and his friends would finally go down in the ledgers of the Vilenjji as a permanent write-off to inventory.

On the way to the transfer port, their modest baggage tucked neatly in back of the large private transport, Walker tried again to thank their rescuer. In response, Viyv-pym turned in the seat that was too wide and too short for her. It might, he thought, have contributed to the irritation that underlined the words that spilled from the perfectly round mouth, though given the level of apparent prickliness that was the norm for Niyyuu speech it was difficult to tell.

“I tell you already, Marcus, no need for thanking. No one steals from a Niyyuu a contracted employee.”

Disdaining the sloping seat, Sque had climbed up onto its back. From there, she could survey the entire interior of the transport, as well as enjoy a better view of the brightening terrain outside.

“While such persistence in pursuit of a mere mercantile end suggests customs aligned with the most primitive, its aptness cannot be denied. In that regard, such diligence can only be commended.” Silver-gray eyes flashed with intensity. “It does inspire one to wonder at its remarkable timeliness.”

Walker looked over to where the K’eremu was perched firmly on the back of the seat. “I don’t follow you, Sque.”

“An occurrence in habitual accord with the normal state of affairs,” she informed him, with no more than the usual condescension. “I am referring to the question of how our self-confessedly unaltruistic liberators managed to conveniently appear in the necessary place at the astonishingly appropriate time to manage our rescue.”

George spoke up before Walker could reply, the dog’s attention focused on Viyv-pym. “Yeah. How did you know what was going on, and how to find us? The Vilenjji could have bundled us out of our complex via any one of a dozen possible exits.”

Silently, Viyv-pym stretched herself across the back of the seat. As the speeding transport rocked silently from side to side, one willowy arm reached toward Walker. This time he didn’t flinch at all. Both long, flexible fingers lightly stroked the back of his neck before withdrawing.

“You will remember,” she rasped softly. “Our first meeting. After making agreement, I touched you then like so. At that time was conveyed from me an absorptive penetrator.”

Walker gaped at her. “You put something
inside
me?”

“Liquid tracker.” Suddenly that round mouth appeared much more alien than inviting. With it she could, he noted, neither smile nor frown. “Harmless, time-delineated insertion. Will be completely gone you system in few more days.”

“But why?”

“I should think that intrinsically obvious.” If anything, Sque was amused by his discomfiture.

“Keep track you,” the Niyyuu told him without embarrassment. “Protect asset. Insure come to no harm. When alerted to unlikely movement of you person at unusual time of day/night, enables I and my staff to respond with caution.” She placed the two digits of her left hand over her mouth and spoke between them. He thought he was familiar with Niyyuu laughter. Perhaps this was the species equivalent of a smile. “Good thing do so, too. You not agree?”

“We’re very grateful, of course,” he assured her as the transport inclined slightly to the right, turning north at high speed. “But you could have told me what you did.”

“Not necessary.” Radiant yellow-gold eyes enveloped him. “Would have made you feel better to know?” Amidst the aural gravel, a flicker of concern emerged.

“Of course I         .         .         .” He hesitated. Would he have felt better knowing that some kind of alien tracking fluid was coursing through his circulatory system? Did he feel better for knowing it now? It wasn’t as if she was somehow taking advantage of him.

As was sometimes the case, George was able to better articulate his friend’s feelings than Walker was himself. “Makes you feel a little like property, does it? Remind you somehow of a previous situation?”

Walker glanced over at the dog, who was sitting up now and watching their Niyyuu employer intently. “This is nothing like our previous situation, George. We were prisoners of the Vilenjji: captives. Viyv-pym is hiring us. There’s a vast difference in that.”

“Difference, okay,” the dog conceded as he scratched at one shoulder. “‘Vast,’ I’m not so sure.”

As soon as she digested the full import of the dog’s comments, Viyv-pym grew visibly annoyed. “Captives? Prisoners? What kind insult this? I take yous Kojn-umm because of respect yous’ abilities!” One hand pointed at Walker as the tips of her slender ears quivered and her tails lashed the sides of her seat. “Unique being exhibits unique talent. That only reason I extend offer to bring yous all Niyu. You think is nothing for me to do so? Cost involved goes beyond simple hiring. I have personal reputation to maintain!”

She was truly beautiful when she was angry, Walker could not help thinking. If only she wouldn’t yell quite so much. The normal Niyyuu tone of voice was discordant enough.

“Okay, okay.” Grumbling but far from mollified by her ear-bending outburst, George finished scratching and stretched back out on the seat. “Don’t sprain your tongue—if you’ve got one.” He glanced up at the man seated next to him. “Touchy bitch, isn’t she?”

Walker held his breath, but evidently the Vilenjji implant translated the dog’s comment in a way that was consistent with good manners. At least, Viyv-pym did not respond as a human female might have. Behind them, Braouk was reciting the eighth quatrain of the
Kerelon Soliloquy.
In order to squeeze inside, the Tuuqalian had to lie flat on the empty deck at the rear of the transport. Lost in melancholy reminiscence, he paid little attention to the conversation forward.

Once Viyv-pym had calmed down, Walker was able to reflect more dispassionately on George’s comments. Had the dog been out of line, or was he onto something Walker was too excited or blinded to see? Had he advanced their cause of traveling nearer to their homes, or had he simply entered into an agreement that was little different from the one the Vilenjji had intended for them all along? Ostensibly, he and his companions were free agents, able to enter into an employment contract of their own choosing. Could they also exit it if and when they wished? They would be on Niyu—not sophisticated, highly civilized Sessrimathe—dealing with a species that, beyond their obvious physical attractiveness, neither he nor his companions knew anything about. How would Viyv-pym react, for example, if after arriving and performing his demonstrations for a few weeks he announced that he and his friends wished to leave?

Maybe he hadn’t made such a smart call after all, he found himself worrying. Worse still, he had inveigled his only friends into going along with it.

Something lightly touched his shoulder. Turning, he found himself staring into black, horizontal pupils set in eyes of silver. A two-foot-long tendril was coiled lightly against his clavicle while the pinkish mouth tube that emerged from the nest of tentacles fluttered in his direction.

“I cannot read thoughts. Evolved as we are, my kind has not yet advanced to that degree. But in the time we have spent forced to endure one another’s company I have become somewhat sensitive to your moods and expressions. You fear the consequences of the decision you have made.”

There was a time when such close proximity face-to-face with a creature like Sque would have sent Walker reeling in shock. It was a measure of how much he had adapted that he did not even flinch from the rubbery cephalopodian visage.

“Yes, I do.” A glance in George’s direction showed that the dog had laid his head down on crossed forepaws and was ignoring them both. “George always knows how to stir up my uncertainties.”

“A psychological device that should not be cavalierly employed by species unsophisticated in its use. Think a moment, Marcus Walker. If a self-evidently superior being like myself did not believe that there was more to be gained by accepting the offer of these Niyyuu than by declining it, would I have agreed to come along?”

Coming as it did straight from the K’eremu, the realization boosted his spirits. “No. No, you wouldn’t have. You would have stayed on Seremathenn no matter how much I urged you to come.”

“Precisely. Your oafish pleadings would have had no effect on me whatsoever.” The tendril withdrew. “I am here only because I believe it truly does afford me the best opportunity to journey a bit nearer my homeworld that I have been offered since our arrival on Seremathenn, however meager it may eventually turn out to be. My decision has nothing to do with any perceived affection you believe I may hold toward your quaintly primitive individual person.”

Walker was more relieved than he would have thought possible. “Thanks, Sque. I needed that reassurance.”

“It is unintended,” the K’eremu concluded, withdrawing backward to her perch atop the seat behind Walker’s own.

Sque’s indifference to his situation made her affirmation of his choice of action that much more heartening. Paradoxically, the fact that she could have cared less about how he felt showed how firmly she countenanced what they had done. He settled back into his seat, duly reassured in mind.

Now all he had to do was hope that primitive human and superior K’eremu were not equally misguided in their mutual decision.

In its perversely consistent fashion, it was comforting to discover in the course of the long voyage to Niyu that Viyv-pym was no more brusque of manner or grating of voice than any other representative of her kind. In fact, when confronted in close quarters with more than two or three Niyyuu conversing at once, Walker often had to manufacture an excuse to flee the location lest the pain from the sound of their overlapping voices lead to the kind of stabbing migraine he had not suffered since quitting football. He suspected that with time he would get used to the jarring, rasping, scratchy vocalizations. He would have to.

Their new hosts’ irritating voices did not trouble the affable George nearly as much, barking being a less than mellifluous method of communication to begin with. As for Braouk, the massive Tuuqalian was not bothered by them at all, while Sque regarded all forms of non-K’eremu modulated communication as unworthy of serious evaluation anyway.

So Walker was left to listen in solitary discomfort to the queries and musings of the crew and the other passengers, struggling as best he was able to avoid cringing every time he was subjected to a particularly screechy turn of Niyyuuan phrase. His Vilenjji implant did its usual excellent job of rendering otherwise unintelligible alien conversation comprehensible, but it could do nothing to mute the actual sound of their speech.

Weeks into the journey saw him gradually becoming inured to the effect, rather like someone who has been bitten numerous times by a poisonous snake and has consequently developed a certain immunity to the toxin. Or maybe, he decided, his outraged ears had been damaged to the point of being unable to discriminate between Niyyuuan vocalizations and any other kind.

Whether by accident or subconscious design, he found himself spending a lot of time in Viyv-pym’s company. He did not worry about relaxing too much. For one thing, she never missed an opportunity to remind him that the only relationship they had was that between employer and employee—though she was not engaging him personally. She was only acting as an agent for her government. Additionally, while her appearance and attitude was that of a beauteous alien apparition, her behavior was more akin to that of a crude visitant from some backward region of civilized space. Not that she was in any way boorish or ignorant, he determined. A lot of it had to do with the unfortunate manner of Niyyuu speech.

While he learned much from her about the physical nature of her homeworld, she was oddly reticent to discuss social mores and attitudes. “Yous find out after arriving,” she would always tell him. He got the impression she was being tentative rather than deliberately evasive.

George was less convinced. “She’s keeping something from us. Not necessarily concealing. Just skipping around certain subjects.”

Sitting in the room they shared, dog and Walker exchanged a glance. The Niyyuuan sleeping platform on which he was lying was almost seven feet long but so narrow that he had to be careful not to fall onto the floor whenever he turned over during the chosen sleep period. George had no such difficulty with his platform. It could have easily accommodated a dozen Georges.

“Why would she want to hide anything?” Walker wondered how Braouk was handling the journey. While he could bend low enough to clear the ceilings within the Niyyuuan vessel, the Tuuqalian could only fit through a few exceptionally wide corridors, and then only by turning sideways. As a result, for the duration of the trip he was largely confined to the single storage area that had been converted for his use. While his comparative isolation was unavoidable, Sque’s was voluntary. Unless it was obligatory, the K’eremu saw no reason to mix with lower life-forms on a social basis. This was not a problem, as the more they learned about Sque and the more often she was encountered, the more her self-imposed isolation suited the Niyyuu as much as it did the K’eremu.