Jo Clayton: Fire in the Sky

“Reports?”

“Mocha, idiot.”

“Why not.”

After the waiter left, Aslan started talking, her eyes vague, her, hands busy preparing the mocha. “The Callidara Pseudo-Cluster. Busy place. Round a thousand systems less than a light-year apart, two hundred of them inhabited, mostly colonized from other worlds. You might remember something about it, Shadow. That’s where you and the Dyslaera flattened that bunch of Omphalites. Up until last year everyone thought that only ten of the systems had indigenes.”

“Up till last year?” Shadith dropped a dollop of whipped cream into the rich chocolaty kava, swirled a spoon through it, watching the white lines turn ivory then pale brown. “What happened last year?” She scooped up a spoonful, rolled it on her tongue, smiled with pleasure.

“A little rat caught his tail in a trap. Good, isn’t it. I love Nik’s mocha. As the Yaraka Rep told it, a Lommertoerken smuggler called. Cassecul found himself in difficulties both financial and criminal. The Rep was a handsome twerp. Nice fur and a mouthful of major words.” She wiped whipped cream from her upper lip. “Our hero scratched about for something to buy himself a bolt-hole and came up with the location of an unlisted world. Bйluchad. The local name.

“In the Callidara? I do remember the place. So much traffic round there the insplit shakes with it.”

“Even the Callidara’s got places nobody looks at. This one was in the upper right quadrant, tucked away in a nest of multiple stars some of which do have planets, but they’re basically sterile rocks, the orbits are eccentric and the radiation’s fairly lethal, so the usual scouts didn’t bother nosing about there.”

“Yesss, teacher.”

“Snip. If you were in my class, I’d smudge your record. So listen. Up till Cassecul’s hm indiscretion, maybe half a dozen free traders and a handful of smugglers worked Bйluchad. Knowing Quale, you’ll have a fair idea how much they weren’t talking about the place.”

“What’s there for a smuggler to fool with?”

“Don’t know. I expect it’s one of the things we’ll find out when we get there. Now comes the kicker. He sold it twice, our Cassecul First to Yaraka Pharmaceuticals, then to Chandava Minerals, guaranteed exclusive each time.”

“Enterprising, maybe. Stupid, definitely.”

Aslan nodded. “From what the Rep said, he had to duck and run real fast, with Chave, Yaraks, free traders and smugglers all out for a piece of his hide.”

Finger following the brown lines burned into her cheek, Shadith frowned. “You said Yaraka Rep. Yaraka’s financing this?”

“Yes.”

“Lan…”

“I’m not happy about that, but I can live with it. Shadow, even if you set aside what happened the last time I went out, it wasn’t easy for me to decide to do this but somebody is going to exploit that world; the word is out and it can’t be erased no matter what we may wish. Lesser of two evils is the best description of the choice I had.”

“Convince me.”

“Right. According to the data I pulled from the files, the Yaraka have a history of co-opting and corrupting the locals rather than making them slaves or simply wiping them out. In other words, there’s something left when they get through with a place.”

“And the Chave?”

“Not so nice. They’re Minerals, Shadow. They use satellite mapping to locate likely areas, their mines are automated, locals just get in the way. And Chandava is a closed society. They’re from Cousin stock. From is the right word. Long way from. Stratified, custom-ridden, xenophobic. Outsiders are considered the moral equivalent of trained beasts, even other Cousins. They don’t recognize the relationship as ‘twere. You can see where that would lead.”

Shadith nodded.

“At the moment, an advance force of Yaraks and another of Chave are hunkered down on separate continents, while the homeworld Reps sit on Helvetia and press their claims, snarling and threatening and each trying to get the other to back off.”

The cold mocha was bitter on Shadith’s tongue, so she didn’t finish it. “How much of a war did your Rep say they had going?”

Aslan sighed. “Mostly sniping and nasty tricks. Anything too overt would get recorded and used as ammunition in the Claims Trial. Naturally the Rep said we wouldn’t be involved in that side of things. I believed that as much as I believed his high and noble speech about Yaraka’s respect for the lives and culture of the indigenes.”

Shadith pleated her napkin, running her fingers slowly along the smooth white linen. “And just what are we supposed to be doing there?”

“Recording the cultures, you know, my usual thing. Facilitating the interchanges between the Yaraks and the Bйluchars so the Chave will have less of a chance of causing trouble by stirring up the locals. Persuading a local to allow a template for the Translator. That sort of thing.”

“Glorified shills, sounds like. What are limitations on me?”

“Ah. You’ll be listed as musical and linguistic consultant, but you’re not a Scholar and not bound by the University Canon of Professional Conduct. If you manage to embarrass the Governors, they’ll rescind the offer of the Voting Share, but I can arrange to bank your fee on Helvetia and I doubt they’ll fight me over it. Basically, it’s be discreet, do what you want.”

“Registered Contract?”

“Right. With what I said spelled out in much more decorous prose.”

Shadith stretched across the table, clicked her cup against Aslan’s. “Here’s to friendly sabotage and noble savages. When do we leave?”

2. Harp to Harp

Maorgan lay along the branch of the Solitary Oilnut, trying to focus the ocular on the fenced enclosure being built by the mesuchs infesting the Land. He was having trouble because the enclosure was a long way below the mesa where the Oilnut grew, between the arms of the Sea Marish, next the inlet from the Bakuhl Sea where the Denchok Smokehouse used to stand and because he still wasn’t easy with the device which that imp Glois and his confederates among the Meloach stole from them down there, Chel Dй peel their tender hides. Which the mesuchs might do all too soon without divine help.

“Hmm.” The image had finally come clear; he could count the nagals chewing at the wood of a building, so many of them the wall looked plated in black iron. He smiled. Another day and all they’d leave would be rotten shards.

His smile vanished before it had fully bloomed.

A nagal whose shell was big as his thumbnail shuddered and fell away from the wall, then another and another; an instant later the wall was clear. He shifted the field of the ocular, fought down the dizziness and nausea the disorienting motion produced. “Interesting. Wonder if they’ll sell that effect.” The nagal were lying belly up, the black threads of their legs pressed against their pale pink underbellies.

He clicked his tongue, slid the viewpoint over the house bubbles, slowly this time so he wouldn’t trigger the vertigo, and scanned the dealing tables on the paved flat area outside the enclosure’s main gate.

“Ihoi!”

The mesuch were doing a brisk trade. Maorgan saw three barge Kabits he knew, half a dozen merchants from Dumel Alsekum, and a handful of farmers. The chaffering was intense, though all in sign, the mesuch taking produce from the farms, vials of perfume, bottles of distilled liqueurs, lengths of embroidery-in fact, all the things Bйluchars were accustomed to using in their barter with the occasional smuggler or free traders who set down on Bйluchad. What they accepted in return were mostly small devices and the batteries to keep them running.