Jo Clayton: Shadowkill

Rohant roared his own rage as he got stuck in the gradually narrowing space between the doors as they beat at and crushed the bench between them. He freed himself and plunged inside.

Rose rolled onto her knees.

A hand grabbed her ankle.

She twisted around, shot along her leg, swore again as she hit her foot as well as the guard.

She pushed up, went limping to the door. She crawled over the bench, swung herself inside, her leg dead from the knee down.

Lissorn was racing toward Ginny, stunner forgotten, claws out. He was only a few steps away, but the man wasn’t moving; he stood watching unperturbed near the front rank of the pulochairs. It seemed to Autumn Rose he was more interested in the degree of his attacker’s rage than in any danger to himself. Directing his own death? Ginny Seyirshi’s last and best?

No.

He raised a hand.

Four cutters flashed from overlooks, hit Lissorn in mid-stride.

For an instant the Dyslaeror was a black core in the furnace where the beams met, then they winked out and there was nothing left, not even dust.

Rohant roared, his great voice filling that room. He lifted the stun pistol.

The other Dyslaerors spread in a broad arc, converging on Ginny.

Shadow stood at the edge of the bidfloor, staring at Ginny. He turned, nodded at her, started to lift a hand… Autumn Rose shivered, touched her head…

A hand closed on her arm, small, warm…

Pulled at her… no… she couldn’t move…

Oppression… her head, her head…

Things moving slow… ly… slooow… ly… slooow… lyyy.

Blackness…

Nothing…

She remembered and understood. Null vibrator-they must have triggered it when they went charging in. Or Ginny had…

Null-field. She bit her lip, her head wasn’t working right, field must be operating still, on low power to keep the lid clamped down.

Kikun. The Null hadn’t affected him. Odd. What’s happening? Who’s doing this? Ginny? He went down, I saw him go down. That means diddly. He killed Lissorn. Why’d he kill Lissorn if…

The corridor was empty. She was surprised at first, then annoyed at herself. Kikun wouldn’t be taking her along here crippled up like she was in her head and leg if the way wasn’t clear. Clear for now, but not for long… There was a powerful urgency in him, he was almost carrying her. Shayss damn, my head’s not working. She couldn’t seem to concentrate on anything, mind skittering about hibbity dibbity.

He hauled her out onto the gallery, dragged her a few feet along it and pushed through ragged draperies into a room thick with rat droppings and cobwebs and the kind of smell you get down an alley on any skidder road.

“Egya cill’haiya, Rose. Missuk shai gavan cillahai’.”

She stared at him, the syllables sliding off as if her brain were waxed to a high gloss and impermeable. Slid off and fell dead-echoes were paralyzed in here, like everything else in this catafalque of a room.

He hissed and shook her. “Dyslaer,” he breathed. “You know it.”

“Oh.” She forced herself to concentrate. “Say again.” She stumbled over the Dyslaer words, repeated them. “Say again.”

“We have to have a ship, Rose. We have to get out of here.”

She rubbed at her head. The stench was hideous, every breath gave her stomach spasms, and her knee was hurting more by the minute. She shifted her stunned, leg; moving eased it a little. Think, Rose, think . “Shadow…”

“She was too far in.” His eyes glazed over. “I had to leave her. If we’re taken, there’s no one to follow…”

“Follow who?”

“Does it matter?”

She brushed at a bit of dusty cobweb clinging to her hand, shuddered as she saw the desiccated corpses of half a dozen spiders. She loathed spiders. “There’re the Capture Ships out beyond the Limit. We could call one in.”

“No.”

She heard the anguish in his voice and didn’t press. “I’m fogged, Kuna, I don’t know… what’s happening?”

“Don’t you understand? I don’t know. I don’t know anything.” His slitted nostrils fluttered, the muscles of his face worked under the soft loose skin. “I’m following voices… no… it’s not… I’m not… listen to me. We have to get out of here.” The panic was beginning to break through his control.

“Klar, ’s klar, Kuna. Calm down. Let me see…” She looked at her robe. It was filthy with dust and thick soft webs, but those would shake off well enough. The privacy fields in their cowls were gone-from the burns on her neck which were starting to hurt like bites from the devil, the Null must have shorted hers out when she went down.

They could pull the cowls forward and avoid lighted areas, it might be enough.

“You have your tools?” She shook her head. “Of course you have or you couldn’t ’ve popped me awake. Any idea where the nearest shuttleport is? Vision or whatever, we’ll run with it.”

He dropped to a squat, closed his eyes, pressed his hands hard against them.

She went to the door, stood beside it listening. Heavy silence. Not even the scratch and scrabble of vermin. She could hear her own heart beating, could hear Kikun’s too-rapid breathing. Then a sound like a door closing, a clang of metal against metal. Footsteps. Someone talking, word fragments, scattered, nothing she could make out.

A hand closed round her arm.

She started, swallowed a yelp.

“I see it,” he whispered at her, the see hissing against her ear. She flinched, she didn’t much like snakes. “Let’s go,” he said, pushed past the torn curtains, and scurried off along the gallery.

Rose grimaced, limped after him, catching up with him when he stopped at a gate into the pneumotube system. He reached for the caller.

She caught at his arm. “Wait,” she said. “What about alarms?”

“If there are, there are.” He pulled loose, tapped the square. “You want to walk a thousand kays?”

“Nothing closer?”

He made a small irritated hiss, but didn’t say anything. She tried a grin, small to match his hiss. “Be kind, Li’l Liz, and consider it the Null-effect.”

Kikun took her on a twisting, roundabout route across the gutted worldship.

Between pneumotubes, he tugged her along faster and faster, ignoring her protests, tossing her over his shoulder when her left knee threatened to fold on her, lifting her over nulled-out Holers lying where they fell when the vibrators went off, pushing her into murky stench-filled side ways when the sounds of men walking broke the eerie stillness.

She never saw them.

She had a feeling of soft secret doings all around her in the dust and decay, but she saw none of it, only the sprawled bodies of the Holers.

There were no alarms going off. Nothing.

“Whoever’s doing this thinks he’s bagged the place,” she said aloud.

Kikun hissed again and she shut up. All right, you’re right, Li’l Liz. Shayss damn, I feel like I’m drunk and I didn’t even have the fun of getting there.

Kikun propped her against a wall. “Almost there, Rose. You wait here till I check it out,” he whispered and glided rapidly away, vanishing into the murk of the dusty, long unused sideway.

She slid down until she was sitting on the crumbling mat, Kikun gone from her mind the moment he turned the corner. As the colored lighttubes painted a patchwork of bright transparent shadows on her and the newly oiled floor around her, she shook her head, trying to shake the fog out. It didn’t work, just made her dizzy. She hauled up the robe, then her trouser leg and began massaging the muscles from knee to ankle. Riding in the cars had eased up on her knee some, but her leg wouldn’t be right till she got time in an ottodoc. Her flesh felt like clay, cold and unresilient, as if it belonged to someone else. Z’ Toyff! Got to get out of here.