Jo Clayton: The Burning Ground

Yseyl shook off anger and began reading the forcelines in the control. It was slippery, shifting with every touch, like trying to pick up a bead of mercury. Someone knew about mind fingers and what they could do. The thought chilled her, but she pushed it away and concentrated on finding the force knot that marked the shutoff.

After a while that her heartbeat told her was almost an hour, she tweaked a fine hot line, twisted another, there was a small pop and a smell-and she was free-and falling over as her muscles spasmed.

As she got to her feet, lights came on in the hold and a voice with a lisp and drawn out vowels spoke to her. “Remarkable. Adelaris swore even the psi-talented couldn’t defeat that web.”

“What do you want? Why did you…?”

“Capture you instead of killing you? Come talk to me. I’ve got a proposition for you.”

“Have I a choice?”

“Not really. If I can’t get value for you one way, I will another. There are places that buy people like you and play with them.”

“I would die first. After I kill you.”

“Yes. I’m sure you would. Number ten on your list, hm? I’d rather not test your skills in that area if you don’t mind. You don’t like the war, do you?”

“I don’t like arms dealers.”

“Nor do I, sweet assassin. It’s not a profession I’d have chosen if I had any choice in the matter. How’d you like to put holes in that Fence?”

“What do you think? And why trap me?”

A weary sigh. “Because I want out from under. I want to buy my contract. To do that I need a thief who can pass through security like a ghost. You.”

“I see.” Yseyl found that she believed him, primarily because she could think of no other reason for what he’d done. “Vumah vumay, I’ll listen.”

“Follow the lights.”

Yseyl stepped from twilight into brightness. The furman sat in a large armchair facing the door sphincter, a heavy weapon on his lap. She leaned against the wall, crossed her arms, fixed her eyes on him. “So. Explain.”

“Heard about the others you got to the past three years. I knew two of that nine, and they weren’t gullible or fools. Three more I knew by reputation. You were sliding through wards that would stop anything up to a battle beam, anything more tangible than a ghost. I mean, you offed old Vervin, he’s snakier than Holdam viper in a snit. Well, maybe this is wasting time, but I wanted you to know why I came up with this idea.” He shifted the weapon as she changed her stance.

She forced herself to relax. “You mean you’ll promise to ferry anyone I bring you across the Fence and over to Sigoxol?”

“Would you believe me? Hah, don’t bother answering. Even I wouldn’t believe me. No smuggler’s going to chance taking passengers past the Fence, so chuff that out of your head. It’s something else I’m offering.”

“I’m waiting.”

He lifted his lip, showing his tearing fangs; it might have been a smile, but she didn’t think so. “Plenty of time, sweet assassin, before we get where we’re going. Hm, you might reach out and grab hold of that loop beside you, in about half a breath…”

Craziness. Like the time she’d smoked khu with Crazy Delelan. Chaos criscross, floating floors and gloating doors, melting and pouring, terror’s musk, puffball dust…

Then the floor was solid under her feet, the wall cold and firm behind her back.

“What…”

“Shifting to ‘split. Upsetting when you’re not used to it.”

“Where…?”

“That’s part of the tale, Ghost. Yes. That’s what I’ll call you. Ghost.” He set the weapon aside, waved his hand at the other chair. “Sit down and relax.”

Hand closed on the loop, Yseyl bent a knee experimentally, leaned out from the wall. The vertigo was gone, her legs seemed prepared to hold her, and the floor had stopped melting. She took a, step, then another. A third step brought her to the empty chair. She swung it around and settled herself in it, facing the furman. “So why have you stopped being nervous?”

“Haven’t, but I dnn’t think you’re stupid. Kill me,” he reached around, tapped a sensor. The expanse of black glass across the front of the room went an iridescent gray with loops and swirls of pale color shifting in ways that woke nausea in her upper stomachs. “And that’s where you’ll spend the rest of your life.”

“Hell?”

“Who knows.” He leaned back in his chair, crossed his legs, and dropped his hands on the armrests. “I can tell you how to put holes in the Fence. Big enough to pass a boat through and slick enough that no warning gets to the Ptaks. You want to hear it?”

“What’ll it cost me?”

“There’s a… mm… drug… a group of drugs, actually… that can extend the number of a person’s days approximately tenfold. Very very expensive. Very very desirable, hm?”

“So?”

“I want you to steal some for me.”

The Knot is the heart of all things hidden. Never cut what you can untie.

“I have been instructed to cooperate with you, but you’ll have to tell me what you want to know. I can’t have outsiders wandering at will through my files.”

Sunflower Lab’s chief security exec, by name Rez Prehanet, was a man who’d used all the resources of Dr. Denton’s Meat Chop to carve himself into his own idea of perfection. You can see his taste on his skin, Shadith thought, Brrr. Digby said trust him only as far as his own interests run and never be sure you know what they are; he’s not the idiot he looks. Hunh! Dig, I look at him and I want to giggle.

The office was brushed steel and leather with accents in rare woods, all carefully sealed in preservative so nothing could mar their perfection. No way to smell the wood, the leather, to feel their textures-they might as well have been holoas. What a waste of trees and skin.

Autumn Rose’s smile had something of the same artificiality. “Oh, you may be assured, Exec. We will only request what we actually need.”

Shadith slouched in her pulochair, her passive receptors open, trying to wring as much information as she could from the blunted emotions behind the exec’s facade. She’d looked at the chair before she sat, caught a flare of interest from the man and stopped immediately. Psi detecs. Suspenders on his sox, hunh! No doubt he’s got ticky little spytecs tasting every twitch we make. Which is interesting considering how someone strolled in and got away with a big piece of the lab’s assets.

The pulochair shifted shape and inclination as Autumn Rose leaned forward. “The reports we’ve seen are summaries only. This is not adequate. We’ll need to know your security arrangements in the lab building.” She straightened, relaxed slightly. “Don’t get your back hair up, Exec. I know you’ve changed just about everything, you’re no fool. I am not asking for flitter detail. Just an overview.”

A mildly amused look on his perfect face, he glanced at the readouts on his desk, then at her. “Nor are you a fool, given Digby’s rep. It would not be all that difficult to extrapolate the whole from even a limited amount of detail.”

“Ah. Digby’s rep. You must know he considers all client-gained data as strictly confidential. His integrity is… well, I wouldn’t say unquestioned, there are those who would question a god if they could catch him… say rather it has been tested over the years and never found wanting.” Rose crossed long slim legs and rested her hands on her knees.

Not coincidentally minimizing her contact with the chair, Shadith thought, she suspects them, too. Must have done before she even got here. Spla! I wish she’d talk to me. It’d help a whole lot i f I knew something about what she plans before she does it.