Jo Clayton: The Burning Ground

She brushed by one of the trees and brought the miniskip down on its struts. After a shake to convince herself it was steady, she shut off the lifters, dismounted, and reached for the black case strapped to the carryhopper.

Zot squealed and ran across to her. She almost but didn’t quite touch Yseyl, instead she slid her hand along the bar, touched the roomy saddle, then giggled. “Looks like a broom with feet. How come it flies?”

Shadith stood. “Might as well leave the disruptor where it is, Ghost. Come join us.”

“… do that, I’ll need time and quiet to shut down the Fence generators and infect the programs. So…” She tapped the maze of small, interlocking squares. “These are the living quarters. When I was watching them a few weeks ago, the Ptaks were all inside after sundown, but you can see the houses are linked together-um, these are glass arcades and they’ll be lit up like Gajul on a Feast night. A good number of the Ptaks on duty there spent half the night going from house to house, talking and partying; when they sleep, it’s in bursts of two to three hours so there’s usually someone awake. Which could be a problem because they don’t like feeling closed in, so most of those houses are more window than wall. You’ll need to remember that there are lots of eyes around. Once we reach the lake, there’ll be less danger of discovery. We’ll have trees and bushes for cover.” She jerked her thumb at the clouds. “Radio says there’s a storm front moving in. With a little luck we might have some rain up north. That’ll keep the restless inside.”

She touched the largest of the squares. “This is the building we have to get into. The Control Center. It’s shielded and there’s only one door. To get through that door, the Center’s kephalos has to recognize you and you have to have a card key. T’k. Never mind all that, my tongue got behind my teeth and I couldn’t see what I was saying. Shield means there’s something like a cousin to the Fence around the outside and across the roof of that building. The shield can recognize who’s supposed to pass through it, stop everyone else even if they have the proper ley. If you,touched it, it wouldn’t kill you, it’d be more like someone slammed you hard with a staff and you’d be unconscious for a good while. Urn, this doesn’t mean they’re expecting you people to attack, it’s more to keep out offworld agents and spies. Ptaks are like that. Overlooking them makes them nervous.”

Luca tapped her fingers on her knee, glanced from the map to Shadith’s face. “You’ve got a way in?”

“Yseyl has. In will be easy enough. It’s getting out that may be something of a problem. I already told you what I’m going to be doing, but you need to know this-the minute I start interfering with the programming, over on Ptak-K’nerol they’ll know about it and they’ll be on the com yelling for the base Exec to do something. Urn. A corn is a kind of offworld radio. No way I can block that. So we’d better be prepared to deal with aroused, frightened, angry Ptaks. And they’ll have energy weapons. Unless we’re sneaky and successful at it, some of us could be killed before we reach the hollow and the flier. I want you to be thinking about that. Hm. Energy weapons…”

Shadith shook a dull gray rod from her sleeve, a small thing, barely longer than her hand. “You see that rock where Zot was sitting? Right. Stay back and whatever you do, don’t get in front of me.” She flicked the beam setting to its finest mode, touched the sensor and sliced through the stone, then clicked on the safety. “You don’t think anything happened, do you? Khimil, go take a close look at that rock. Try to lift it and see what happens.”

The rock fell in two pieces, the inside surfaces so smooth they shone like mirrors. The mal dropped them in his astonishment, then pushed at one of the pieces with the toe of his boot. “That thing wouldn’t pay much mind to flesh and bone, would it?”

“Right. I doubt the Ptaks will use cutters like this, too much damage to their property. More likely they’ll have pulsers, sweet little things that’ll shake you into jelly without breaking the skin. I want you all to understand this before you commit to coming with Yseyl and me. All of you could end up very painfully and messily dead.”

Syon closed his bright yellow eyes into slits, wagged his head. “Vumah vumay, it’s no worse than being clubbed or shot or bored to death.”

Luca nodded. “If you really do bring the Fence down, who cares what happens after.”

“I care,” Shadith said. “I intend to come out of this alive and intact. Look, from what Yseyl told me about you all, you’re good at sliding into and out of places without getting nailed. If we have to fight, we do, but I’d certainly rather not. Now.” She bent over the map. “Once we break loose, here’s how I figure we get out…”

Shadith wormed through the patch of brush that grew across the top of a long slant of scree, moving slowly so she wouldn’t shake the tops of the bushes. The morning was heavily overcast, with an erratic wind blowing, wind that set the branches swaying, the thorns on them snagging in her clothes and hair. She was soaked with perspiration by the time she reached a place where she had an unobstructed view of the base a couple of miles below.

She snapped the glareshields onto the binocs, adjusted the focus, swept the field of view across the base. Nothing had changed; Ptaks wandered about, some were swimming in the lake, some working in the communal gardens, two young males in full mating plumes were doing a dance-fight while half a dozen others watched. Several times sleek female techs in white coats went into the Control Center, others came out. It was busier than before. She didn’t know what that meant. Trouble?

She watched a while longer. A peaceful scene, no sign of; worry in any of the faces, or bodies.. Only that increasing flurry about the Center. She sighed: “Got to see what that means.”

She gave the binocs to Luca with instructions on how to use them, told the others to take turns watching the base and getting familiar with the patterns of movement. “I want each of you to choose what you think is the best route to the lake; we’ll run through them as soon as you’ve all had your shot with the binocs. Zot, stay by me and keep watch, if you see or hear anything that bothers you, slap my arm.” She nodded as Yseyl raised a brow. “Yes, I’m going mindwalking for a while. There’re some things I need to check.”

Stretched out on a blanket, arm over her eyes, she went feeling about in the walls of the Center for a young and lively furslug. She found her mount rippling along on its double line of tiny legs, climbing a stud in the wall, and sniffing about for woodchewers. He wriggled and fussed and nearly fell before she completed her hold, clicking his teeth in extreme unhappiness as she prodded him into climbing higher, then humping along a rafter till he reached the crack she’d used for observation last time.

She gave him a quick workout, muscle against muscle, as a kind of long-distance patting, then settled him at the hole, his small bright eyes, predator sharp, sweeping the room below, his bare pink ears twitching and swiveling until they drew in the sound of Ptak speech.

“… see what it’s really like if we want more funding?”

“Vourts, what you want done with this checklist?”

“Anyone see number eight password files? I just about sifted the dust already.”

Vourts adjusted her lenses, waved away the plastic covered sheet the other tech was trying to hand her. “Chitatri! That thing looks like a swarm of krees pissed all over it.