Jo Clayton: Shadowkill

“Savant Prime.”

Except for the direction of the sound and the different body postures, there was so little difference between the men Seyirshi had a hard time understanding why the Chom bothered to introduce the speakers. The voice distorters smothered individual tones and even to some degree different rhythms-or the Omphalites made a practice of suppressing such differences when talking to outsiders. Ginny noted all this and set it aside for later consideration. At the moment it seemed neither a weakness nor a strength, merely a peculiarity of this aggregation of individuals.

“Naturally the ship’s crew sealed the bodies into an isolation chamber,” Savant Prime said. “Then they brought them back here. Our best researchers found nothing organically wrong with the men, only a slightly lower than usual residue of chemical and electrical energy.” He fell silent, turned his head toward the Chom.

Images on the screen:

bodies and more bodies. There is no blood, nothing but the emptiness of the flesh to show that these men are very dead indeed.

“We were annoyed,” the Chom said. “We sent a larger force, filtors.”

An island rushes toward them as the POV shifts rapidly downward, a cloud of dust, smoke, tongues of fire, chaotic snaps of death and destruction.

“They set up a security dome, filtered the air, didn’t go outside unarmored. They erased the Pandai on that island except for a few saved out to be questioned. These they kept in a sterile Cell sealed off from everything, them included. You know the procedures.”

Half a dozen bewildered Pandai four square brown men, two women, one young and pretty enough in a chunky way, one an old hag with snag teeth and coarse white hair and everything drooping. At first they seem confused and uncertain, then terrified, then they huddle together, pressing against each other.

“The locals were dead in less than an hour. They just sat down, closed their eyes, and died. The filtors cremated them, burned out the Cell. More Pandai showed up. Didn’t do anything, just squatted in a circle staring at the dome.”

Men with heads shaved and blue markings on their faces. The POV sweeps around the, circle, hesitating a little at each so each impassive face is clearly visible.

Someone from the dome begins shooting. Five Pandai fall over. The rifle explodes in the hands of the shooter. Five new Pandai take the places of the dead.

“The filtors started dying. The shields went down. Instruments and weapons had their charges drained without warning. Or the weapons exploded, killing anyone who happened to be about. The dome was rotting about the filtors. They were rotting, too. Team leader gathered his men and got offworld; just barely got off. He wanted to drop a hell-burner on the place, but the ship’s captain shoved him and the remnant of his force into isolation. Later the captain had to put them all in restraints, then drop them into stasis pods when they continued to deteriorate physically and mentally. They were all dead when time came to remove them. Again with nothing to show why.”

POV moves from pod to pod, showing bloated, rot-blackened corpses.

“Whoever can control that force… mp! I leave to your imagination the possibilities. Unfortunately there seems to be no way to exploit the Pandai without losing men and materiel. We want you to devise a way we can handle them and their weapon. Turn them around so we can live down there and take control of that world.

They put Ginbiryol Seyirshi in an austere cell that was a combination office and apartment and gave him a novice to run errands.

“Just let me know what you need. Send him,” a wave of his hand at the young Omphalite, “for me if there’s any difficulty,” the Chom told him. “I’m sure you understand the limits on what you’ll get. You can have as much freedom as is prudent. Outside of that, name it and most likely you can have it.”

“We collected the researcher from University as soon as we became interested in Bol Mutiar,” the Chom said. “And all his records. You’ll find them here.” He tapped the bezel of a thumb ring against the canister of flakes he’d placed on the workstation desk. “No, you can’t talk to him. There was a regrettable accident with the probe and we had to dispose of him. I put a treat in there for your spare time. The distorter did little to hide the smirk in his voice.

Ginny ignored it. A pinprick. A nothing. His eye was fixed elsewhere.

“While the girl was in the hold,” the Chom said, “we kept her under observation, a mosaic from those flakes is in the can, labeled as such, along with the record of her interrogation and the mindwiping session. Enjoy, my little friend.”

Ginbiryol Seyirshi settled to a brood over the flake player and the canister.

He had no intention of going anywhere near Bol Mutiar, all he wanted was access to a ship, but he went carefully through the data the Omphalites provided, made copious notes. They were watching him, they knew they’d broken him, bought him. He could feel the watchers preening themselves and despising him; he wanted to keep that complacency pristine.

Bol Mutiar. A dull planet. If he had been looking for a target world for one of his productions, he would have dismissed this place. It was monochrome, no individuals, only nodules on an invisible root system, no drama, no passion. Just rot. And there was nothing aesthetically satisfying about rot.

Ten days later, when he finished the notes, he had found nothing to change his mind.

He leaned back, contented with what he had done. Not enough data in their files. They would have to send him out, send him with his tools. Yes. Nineteen days through the insplit. It was not much, but if he could not get control of the ship in that time with that much materiel at hand, he deserved whatever this lot threw at him.

His contentment soured as he watched Mutiar hanging against the spray of stars. What Omphalos was forcing on him was a wretched perversion of his art. When he destroyed worlds or societies, he was simply taking them to their ends in an act of creation that made those ends more profoundly important, more coherent and meaningful. What he did had nothing to do with control or oppression. No. He set free. He sanctified. There was a purity in death, there was none in tyranny.

Yes. Omphalos had given him the subject of his next production, but it was not the one they thought.

It was a delightful irony. Savior of the Universe. The Deathmaster Dancing to the Rescue of Life. He smiled, pleased with the wordplay.

He thought about Shadith. He wanted her in this. He needed her. She was a focus of destructive forces, a vortex that tore apart whatever she knocked against. Yes. He knew her now, he could pull her strings and twist her dance of destruction to his profit. The Dance of Rot and Nihilation.

He looked through the flakes, ignored the mindwiping session, he wasn’t interested in that, found the one that recorded her interrogation and slipped it into the player.

He stared, astounded.

It was a lie from start to finish.

He played it again, matching her statements with his memory of things she had said and done, things he had seen in the EYEs he had focused on her.

A logical, coherent, convincing LIE. Even her body language lied. She played the terrified child better than she had with him. He looked closer. Yes. Because she was not playing. She BELIEVED and that belief was so strong it colored everything that happened. She fooled the Interrogators and she fooled the probe because she had fooled herself. Formidable.