Jo Clayton - Shadowkill

Matja Allina’s lips tightened to a thin line. “Tumaks,” she said and motioned for Kizra to keep playing. “Nothing to worry you. We’re well protected.”

Tinoopa sat cross-legged, her back against the sidewall-the one away from the main thrust of the attack. “What are tumaks?” she said. “Better we know so we can help against them.”

Matja Allina sighed. “Tumaks are hired fighters. Before you ask, no, I don’t know who did the hiring. Procagharadad Family is in Kirtaa with several other Families at this moment. It could be any of them.” Before Tinoopa could ask, she laughed and went on. “Yes, yes, Kirtaa. Private war. Mostly an exchange of snipings. It’s juvenile nonsense and… be quiet, Kulyari, I don’t care to hear you rant… and desperately wasteful, but that’s the way things happen here.” The landrover picked up speed and the jolting increased exponentially. Matja Allina ignored the difficulty, spoke around the major jounces. “There’s… nothing much you can… do, chapa Tinoopa… just learn to… find shelter quickly… when the shooting starts. Ungh! No, no, I’m all right. That was a bad one, wasn’t it.” She lay pallid, sweating and breathing hard, silent for several breaths, then took up where she’d left off. “You’ll have to watch for Brushies, too, the organized tribes don’t bother us…” she paused as the landrover slowed, settled to,a more sedate progress. “There, that’s over for the moment… but there are always outcasts ready with a knife or poison dart, so you should stay behind the Kuysstead walls. Ah yes, there were no natives on this world, the Brushies are either Contracts who left before term or the land-tied who untied their knots.” She smiled again, shook her head. “Not a good life, chapa, no way a good life. You’ll be far better off staying with us.”

Day after day the truck roared on. Matja Allina’s face got puffy and bruised, her eyes were feverish with unabated fatigue. When she wasn’t spinning wild tales, Tinoopa massaged and bathed the Matja, Aghilo held her and fed her; Kizra sang to her, eased her tensions, helped her sleep. Ignored and resenting it, Kulyari settled to a spite-filled seethe.

Day after day…

On the fifteenth day the truck passed through the gates of the stockade about the main buildings of Ghanar Rinta, the Landhold that Arring Pirs ampa Cagharadad and Matja Allina alka Pepiyadad were wringing meter by meter from the stony wilderness.

Fishing 2: A Strike

Kikun drifted onto the bridge, stood at the back watching the screen which was labyrinthine with windows inserted into windows, windows sluggishly moving, vanishing, appearing again as Autumn Rose worked over a broad sensor pad. A section cleared in front of her. There was a series of flickers across the face of the screen, the windows crawled furiously about, some changing size and shape, some vanishing altogether to be replaced by others.

When the activity stabilized, Rose settled back in the chair, scanned the results. She sighed, moved her shoulders, shook her arms.

Kikun scratched among the loose folds of skin under his jaw. “About finished?”

She looked around. “Another hour, maybe. Or two. Unless you’ve had a brainstorm you want to talk about.”

“No, but I might have a place to go once we’re ready to go somewhere.” He nodded at the screen. “I see you’ve got your fingers upto your elbows in that thing. Could you free up some starcharts and a Looksee?”

“For how long?”

He lifted a hand, twiddled his fingers, let the hand drop.

“Hmm.” She called up a status report, frowned over it for a moment. “I can cut the auxcom loose for about twenty minutes, if that’ll do any good. Give you access to the chart files and… hmm… a search-line. I’ll have to block you out of the main kephalos, you know.” Her fine blonde hair was soaked with sweat, plastered against her skull; she pushed at it impatiently. “Otherwise we could get tangled in there and spend the rest of our lives squatting on this nice but boring world.” Her eyes were blue as the sky outside and about as warm; she was still immersed in her puzzle and not all that interested in what he was up to. “Um. You’ve worked Charts before? Good. This is pretty much an idiot-proof setup. Not that I’m saying you’re an idiot, Kuna,” she added hastily. “Just that Chart functions tend to be standard and Barakaly Lak Dar installed the usual. Right, you know where the auxcom is? Good. So go, Kuna. Don’t waste your time, huh? Hit the beeper when you’re ready.”

The words blinked at him from the dark screen. Kikun scowled at them. He’d fed in the characteristics of each of the stars, their approximate distance apart. At least the Chart hadn’t humiliated him with the INSUFFICIENT DATA message. Wait. There was a note running at the bottom. See HELP. Yes, I seem to need help. He touched the sensor.

Question: POV?

What? Oh. He’d forgot. Default POV was the ship’s current position. Gaagi wouldn’t be looking from this world, he’d be looking from DunyaDzi. The center of his-my-being.

He knew the coordinates of his home sun, Lissorn had made sure of that. In case of trouble, Lissorn said. Capture teams don’t lead the safest of lives. If anything happens, he said, I want you to be able to go home. If ANYTHING happens. People change, you know, he said, get jealous of proprietary information which is what those coordinates are. Just remember them, Kuna. That way you’re free of everyone, even us, and you can go when you need to.

Kikun pressed his hands hard against his eyes. He had given Lissorn’s tocebai rest, but not himself. What Mask and Gaagi had shown him, he was feeling in his bones. He was alone, his connections to home and kin so tenuous they were close to breaking. He didn’t know what would happen to him if they did, he didn’t want to find out.

He wiped away the tear gel, scrubbed his hands on his trousers. No time for this now.

He entered DunyaDzi’s coordinates as POV and managed a smile when a familiar configuration of white dots filled the screen. He redlighted the star he wanted, saved the coordinates when they appeared, and signaled Rose that he was finished.

The screen went gray.

He lay back in the chair and closed his eyes. Metal room. Angular. Precise. He felt like an intruder here, on sufferance as it were. The curves and bulges of living flesh didn’t belong in this place-at least, not his curves and bulges.

He’d never been alone in a barebones metal room like this.

Lissorn’s ship… He sighed.

Lissorn’s ship had its angles softened by the processes of living and the Dyslaera love for hot, bright, primitive color. Paint and fabrics, carvings and hand-knotted rugs, plants everywhere. Noisy places, those ships, to the eye, ear and nose. Mixed crews, loosely organized, occasionally squabbling. Full of life.

He didn’t feel any life here-though that might come from what he knew about the owner. A man who could enjoy one of Ginny’s productions must put death and pain into everything he touched. Or a numbness so profound that… that… He had no words to describe that nullity, that absence of… of everything. Maybe Shadow could make a song that would name the void and tame it. Shadow wasn’t here. He shivered and went back to the bridge. He hadn’t found all that much warmth in Autumn Rose, but at least she was alive and friendly.

Autumn Rose frowned at the screen. “Well, I’ll give you this, the location fits. That star is just off the line we were on when you lost the trace.”