Jo Clayton: Fire in the Sky

Tryben grunted. “Not the truth, that’s sagg. I’ll give you the witness’ tale later; for now, Med First Muhaseb, tell him what you found.”

Hunnar’s eyeridges wrinkled, the inner lids slid forward until they were just visible.

His shoulders coming up in submission, Med Muhaseb fixed his eyes on the floor and spoke to the tiles in front of Hunnar’s feet. “We found certain… ahhh certain residues in the bodies of both techs. To put an ordinary name on it, we suspect they were drugging themselves with something local. It’s not a substance on the List, that’s why I say local.” His shoulders hunched higher and he began choosing his words with extreme care. “It is… ahhh… difficult to determine the precise effects of the substance… we’re only beginning to test it… but I would hazard a guess that it’s both powerful and dangerous. The locals we’ve… ahhh… studied are not greatly divergent from the general run of Cousins and there are sufficient… ahhh… resonances with Chav… ahhh… physiology to… ahhh… make it reasonably certain that the locals will be aware of such a substance and its effects.” He stopped talking but kept his eyes fixed on the floor.

Hunnar flexed his fingers, retracted his claws. “Right. Get on with your analysis. I don’t expect miracles, we’re not equipped for those, but I want a report on my desk by the end of the month, you hear me?”

“We hear, Ykkuval.”

Memur Tryben slid a flake into the player but didn’t touch the sensor. “Fayl Skambil-he’s a good, reliable tech who knows how to keep his mouth shut. He belongs to a minor house, one of our affiliates, so he knows where his loyalties lie. Skambil was out scouting the foothills for locals, spotting the infestations so we can shift them once the factories are in place. Doing his own piloting, marking the grid and flaking the settlements.”

Hunnar clicked a claw on the desktop; but Tryben didn’t hurry himself. He was a methodical Chav; it didn’t matter what his listener knew, he was going to say what he had to say and keep on till he was finished.

“He happened to be in the area when the two techs came by. They had deviated from the straight flight back to base and were having themselves some fun burning jellies. He was busy mapping possible habitations in the trees beneath him and paid little attention until he noticed the techs whipping their flier back and forth through thick gray-white smoke, windows dialed open, the inside so white with the smoke he couldn’t make out the form of the pilot. He said he thought it might be a good idea to record what he was seeing, so he slipped in a new flake. And he said he thought it would be best that none of it go on public record. He saw the possibilities in that smoke. Could be profit for the family.”

Tryben touched the sensor then and stepped back.

The sky was a brilliant blue, cloudless, the forested hills a dark nubbly green. The flier was a black bug diving through and through and through that column of smoke, each swing wilder and wobblier than the one before-until, finally, the flier looped completely over and went racing down down down-this time not turning, apparently no attempt to bring the nose up-down and down until it smacked into the earth.

He stopped the movement, left the image pinned in that moment. “When he saw that, Skambil slapped his intakes shut and went on bottle and scrub. The flier was on fire and the smoke got so thick he thought for a while the whole forest was going to go. He hung about until the worst of the burn was finished, then went closer to inspect the scene.” He ticked his claw against the plaque and the play moved forward again.

The techs’ flier was a heap of twisted, blackened metal in the center of a large meadow filled with interconnected pergolas, the lattices thick with ancient vines whose leaves for the most part concealed the ground beneath them. Where it’d crashed, the columns and horizontal latticework were broken; Hunnar could see large fibrous brown lumps in grassy nests-near the wreck they were almost completely burned to ash, but deep in the shadows they were only charred and smoking.

Tryben tapped at the sensor plaques with the tips of his claws. The image of one of the more intact lumps enlarged, filled the frame. “You can see those things are tended with considerable effort and care. Look how the grass is woven around the base there, not just grown but trained into place. The vines on the pergola have a combination of flowers and ornamental fruits, but there is no debris on the ground. There are possibly several hundred of the lumps there and each one is like this one. We don’t know what they are, but they seem to be important to the locals.”

He switched the scene to the worst of the burned areas. Wisps of greasy smoke were still rising from the lumps. “You will recall how the techs took their flier repeatedly through that smoke. It seems reasonable to me that the smoke is the vector for those… mmm… substances the medics found. As to their source, I’d say it was either those lumps or the vines. I suggest you haul in your pet and ask him some questions. I’ll get back to the med techs and make sure they keep their mouths shut.”

Shaking so uncontrollably he could barely walk, Ilaцrn shuffled into the room. Without being told, he seated himself in the probe chair and waited passively as Hunnar locked down his arms and legs. When the crown was lowered about his head and he felt the faint tickle as the fields began their mapping, he shuddered, licking his lips.

“Open your eyes. Tell me about that”

When Ilaцrn realized what the image was, he moaned and for the first time in months tried to fight the probe. He knew well enough it was futile, but he tried.

“What is that place? Answer in words, cho.”

“Sleeping Ground.” Ilaцrn was shivering and sobbing as he spoke; the urge to babble was almost irresistible, but he shut his teeth on the words that wanted to come pouring out.

All of it was there where Hunnar could see it, he knew that, he’d seen flakes of earlier sessions. Hunnar made him watch them to grind the lesson in that there was nothing Ilaцrn could hide from the Chave. The Ykkuval didn’t need the questions, but they focused attention and made him form his thoughts in the Chandavasi tongue; more than that, they were another twist of the knife and Hunnar enjoyed that.

“Tell me the meaning.”

“When Denchok feel their time pressing on them, they go to the Sleeping Grounds.”

“To die?”

‘hewn writhed in the chair, fighting the restraints; blood oozed from his scalp and trickled past his ears, his eyes shut tight, tears squeezing out and mixing with the blood. His mouth spoke, and he couldn’t stop it. “To change. They eat the melodach and grow the husk around themselves, and when it is finished, they sleep until the change is complete and the Eolt is born.”

“You mean those things that walk around like mobile gardens, they turn into the jellies?” There was a tension in Hunnar’s voice that Ilaцrn felt even through his distress.

“Yu… yuh… YES.”

“Open your eyes, look at the image.”

Again the dark flier dived at the smoke column, passed through it and through it, looped up and crashed.

“Why? What got to them?”

“S sss smoke. Hu HUSK!” The pressure was too strong. He babbled, betraying his sioll, betraying his harp, his people. “They must have been ripe, nearly ripe, ready to wake and fly, when the husk is green the dreams are few, when it cracks and the Eolt fly free you can fly with them, the sioll bond is set then, the pairing is complete, the music blends, burn the husk and breathe the smoke and fly…” He started to sing, his voice cracking with the pain that racked him.