Jo Clayton: Crystal Heat

A moment later the lights were back and a faint current of air tickled at the tiny hairs that curled about her face.

“That’s to remind you what happens if you drive me too far,” he said.

Shadith laughed and enjoyed the look on his face when he heard the freedom of the sound. “I’ve died twice already, why should I fear a third death?”

“Then why bother with your friends out there?”

“If I had to go, I wanted company. You’re wasting time, you know. My offer is still open. Leave me and mine alone and we’ll leave you your secrets and your life.”

“So I have to run every job past you to make sure I’m not violating your precious ambiance?”

“Leave legalisms to lawyers, Digby. You’re trotting out problems that don’t exist. Go about your ordinary business and there won’t be a pattern. If by chance you and I meet as adversaries, we can work out an accommodation or declare all-out war and see who emerges at the end. If you go after us again, you’ll make a pattern and we’ll know it. You haven’t any notion of the capacity of a Vryhh-designed kephalos; I suggest you don’t try to test it. If you do, we’ll come after you, the ones you know and the ones you don’t.”

“I could still fight this out. My Sanctuary is land-based and the atmosphere will limit the weapons your friends can bring to bear on me. Plus the fact that you’re sitting here, more vulnerable to them than I am.”

“Don’t count on that, Digby. There’s a lot you can’t know about Aleytys. Or Vryhh tech.”

“Threats about what I don’t know get thin very fast. I do not like the thought that I exist on your sufferance, Shadith. In fact it’s so unappealing, that I find myself just about ready to call you back in here and take my chances with your champions.”

“You can try.” Shadith sighed. “I’m not going to argue with you, Digby, or let you distract me. Agree or fight. Make up your mind.”

There was a long silence.

Shadith stretched out her legs, shut her eyes, and waited with what patience she could scrape together.

An hour later, the screen lit, split into cells with Digby’s simulacrum in one, Harskari and Aleytys in the other two.

The simulacrum put on a wry ruefulness and spoke.

“Let it be, then. A year’s gross profit into a specified account on Helvetia. And I give my word that I will not search out you or yours with hostile intent. Is that sufficient, Shadith?”

“It is sufficient.”

Worm

Delala giggled as Worm swung his gathering scoop at the scuttling greel, missed, and swore as it dug itself back into the sand. She took her digging stick, popped another greel from his hole, and cooed as Worm got this one and dumped it into the basket.

Later, as he followed her along the path to the village, he heard a long, low whine and raised his eyes to see the bright seed of a lifting ship arcing across the sky. He watched it a moment, groping for a memory that wouldn’t come.

Delala looked over her shoulder. “Ke mo?”

“I’m coming, I’m coming, I don’t want to spill this.” He forgot about the ship and walked beside her, his mouth getting itself ready for the feast that night, his naming feast and his formal welcome into the Tung Bond.

Lylunda

The perpetual party in the Loft of the Buzzard’s Roost had come alive again two days after Lylunda reached Sundari Pit.

She wandered in, glanced around, took a glass of white wine from a serviteur’s tray, and went to lean against the wall, sipping at the wine while she watched Virgin and Hopeless dance a strutting pavanne to a tune provided by Henry the tentacled centaur as he used his physical advantages to play a harp-guitar.

“No pelar?”

Lylunda looked round, grinned at Qatifa. “You might say I’ve gone off the whole drug scene. Right now anyway. Didn’t expect to see you here, Qat.”-“You clear of that mess at Marrat’s?”

“Uh-huh. Why?”

“I’ve got this deal… a good one, it’ll set your belly grumbling when you hear it. But it needs two to make it work. You interested?”

“Sure. Been out of it too long, Dragoi’s all shaped up to run.”

“I’ve got a room over Junker’s Bar, say you meet me there tomorrow, Pit noon?”

“I’ll be there.”

Qatifa’s nose quivered with Caan laughter, her eyes were narrowed to golden slits. “‘Less you want to come home with me?”

“After the job’s finished, Qat. I just got out of one mess, I-don’t want to make another.”

“Po po, you were more fun when you were on the pelar. See you tomorrow.” Qatifa twitched a mobile ear, wriggled her nose again, and ambled off.

Lylunda emptied her glass, set it on a window ledge, and began her own circuit of the room. She was back in her chosen world, the scattered anarchy of the Pit Stop circuit; she had prospects for a job that was certainly dangerous and probably interesting. At the moment, life was very good.

Shadith

Supported by one of Harskari’s exos, Shadith sat on a tussock of rotten stone held together by the complex root system of the grasses that grew over it. She watched the Taalav moving with noisy cheerfulness about their adopted home, rambling in and out of the reddish shadow cast by the translucent shades Loguisse had set up for them, tending the shoots of the polychrome reeds that were already breaking the surface of the water in the smalllake at the heart of this equatorial island. The other plants Harskari had snatched off Pillory seemed to be rooting themselves and growing with a similar enthusiasm.

A horde of infant body beasts were running about, getting underfoot, hooting with tiny but exuberant joy, and infant head beasts lay in slowly heaving piles, contributing their modulated hums to the noise. Most of the worm forms of the Gestalt had settled themselves in the mud at the edge of the lake, but here and there she could see a bright pink fingeroid popping out of the water to snap at the bugs skating on the surface.

Harskari and Loguisse were some distance off, supervising a clutch of ’bot gardeners as they set more plants in place.

The sun Avenar was warm on her back and the air heady in her nostrils. The gravity pulled at her and she was growing tired, but she was happy as she looked at the Taalav arrays working so diligently at settling into their new home.

It’s anobject lesson, she thought. One phase of my life has closed and I don’t know where I’ll go from here, but at least I can rejoice that nothing is finished and everything is new again.