Jo Clayton - Shadowkill

Quatorze was a fool. Betalli walked into his quarters, sealed the door behind him, and sat at his console. He called up his plans and sat frowning at the schematics. Fool. Yes. The man had a small mind and a big grudge. Back on the Council with his armgraft still itching, Tierce had set this crawler over him. Tierce was an enemy. He betrayed Omphalos with every breath he took. Betalli marked that down. Quatorze was too small to bother with, but Tierce, yes. When this is over, I’ve got to do something about him.

Betalli leaned closer to the screen, began going minutely through his surveillance arrangements, trying to discover any place where Seyirshi might find the leverage to subvert the system. Seyirshi would find something, he was sure of it. He knew the man too well, he’d seen him poke and pry at systems until they collapsed in ruins, all the while flaking the destruction he’d set going.

Nothing. Betalli ran the system over and over, poking at it, trying everything he could think of, simple or complex. He found no entry for manipulation, but no comfort ,either. He recognized his limitations; he was a plodder, no way he could follow the eccentric leaps of Ginny’s brain.

He tapped into the monitor, watched Ginny sit slumped on the cot, his face inscrutable, waiting with an iron patience for whatever was going to be done with him.

For nearly an hour he sat watching that stolid motionless figure. Then he called up record flakes of Ginny in his cell; he’d been over them before, over and over them, trying to discover what was happening in the man’s mind, seeing nothing he could put a finger on.

Finally he sighed, shook his head. Quatorze is a fool, he repeated to himself. Passionless words, worn-out litany. Most men were fools, that was the point of Omphalos.

He got to his feet, took off the impermasuit, the gloves, stripped to his skin, and walked into the cleansing chamber he’d had installed beside his workroom.

He sat a long time in the dry sterile heat, disciplining his mind as he disciplined his body. He had to be ready when Ginny went to the workshop, he had to watch the man’s every movement, hope he could spot trouble before it fruited.

Finally he retreated to his secure sleep chamber, lay under the flickering killights and slept, clean inside and out and weary beyond description.

Seyirshi felt the faint tingle as the ship dropped into the insplit. He tensed briefly, then forced himself to relax.

Security androids came for him, took his wrists, and led him to the workroom he’d requested. They stood in the middle of it, holding him until the release code was sent in from outside, then they separated and went to stand one at each end of the room, their scanners following every move he made.

He ignored them and walked about the workshop, checking supplies against a list on a handheld notepad, ticking off each item with meticulous care.

It took a day to finish the inventory and he logged five complaints about missing materiel, then let the androids take him back to his cell.

Betalli watched as Ginny checked his stock. It was a tedious process. Again and again he found his mind drifting off, again and again he jerked his attention back, acid in his mouth, wondering if he’d missed something. The process was being flaked, he could replay what was happening down there, examine it in detail-but that might be too late.

The day ended. He watched Ginny a while longer as he ate his supper from the tray delivered through the slot, watched while he washed, put on a nightshirt, stretched out on the cot, and slept.

Betalli left the screen lit, stripped, and went into his scrub room.

When he came out again, Ginny was breathing slowly, steadily, the readings said he was in the first stages of sleep. Betalli thinned his mouth, pulled on another impermasuit, sat at the screen and began replaying randomly chosen moments from the stock taking, slowing the action down, focusing in on Ginny’s hands. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

He tapped the screen black and brooded. The bland innocence of Ginny’s every move was not reassuring, it only meant he was getting ready for something-or he’d already done something and Betalli had missed it.

Missed it. Missed it. If he had, he had and would continue to miss it, his eyes sliding over and over the place.

He sighed and went shuffling into his sleeproom, stretched naked under the killights, and litanyed himself to sleep.

Ginbiryol Seyirshi adjusted the magnifier to a comfortable height, took a standard Eye from its pod and began peeling back its rough black skin.

He didn’t like exposing his secrets this way-the extensive modifications he’d devised for the EYEs that made them as undetectable as dreams, that enabled them to collect emotions as well as full sensory data from his targets. When the Omphalites wanted him to do this work onplanet, under the recorders of the Foundation, he wouldn’t. He hadn’t argued with the Council or the Chom, he simply said no and refused to amplify his refusal.

He began preparing the EYEs exactly according to the plan he had worked out for the subversion of Bol Mutiar, humming contentedly as he constructed then tucked in new elements. What was effective for Bol Mutiar was even more so when applied within the closed system of the ship. The Omphalites had overlooked that-or if they hadn’t overlooked it, they expected to be able to control the EYEs and him. He smiled. They’d lost control the minute they’d transferred him here with his prosthetic arm intact. If he’d been in charge, he’d have removed that arm, replaced it with one he could be sure of. They’d scanned it, of course, and found nothing except the minute forces that controlled its movements. And they’d left him with it. Fools.

He attached a notepad to the EYE, ran the program and input additional instructions, using his own intensely compressed prog-langue. When he was finished, he zipped up the EYE, set it in a vault tray, and took another EYE from its pack.

He worked steadily until his midday meal, lay down on a cot he toed out of the floor, and took a long nap. When he woke, he went back to work on the EYEs.

Betalli bent over the screen, running over and over the sections where Ginny was altering the EYE programs, trying to work out just what he was doing, calling up the inputs and studying them until he was forced to admit he didn’t understand what he was seeing; he loathed the kephali that ran most ships and many cities, he didn’t trust them, thought of them as whores giving out to anyone who tickled their pads, hostile whores who took a perverse delight in tempting men into destructive situations. He had no choice now, he had to turn the program analysis over to the kephalos and try to prevent the results from going to anyone but him.

He set the analysis going, then replayed the dayend records. He watched Ginny put the EYE he was working on into its slot in the vault tray, pack up his tools, watched him hold out his arm for the android escort and go placidly off to his cell.

The second android lifted the tray of EYEs and, carrying them delicately, took them to the heavy vault that Betalli had installed in the workroom. The android set the tray on its insulated shelf, tugged the door shut and set the time-lock, then settled in front of the vault, keyed into guard mode, ready to burn anything that moved in the 180 curve of his watch area.

Smooth. Not a glitch anywhere he could see, nothing he could smell, taste, nothing but a cold certainty that Ginny was plotting something. What? That scratched at him, an irritant that wouldn’t go away…

He touched the screen black, stripped and went into his cleanroom, sat in the heat until his brain was baked, then lay brooding under the killights until he finally managed to shut down his mind and sink into a dream-ridden sleep.