Eric Flint - The Sorceress of Karres

And to make matters more complex, she was relling vatch. "Little-bit?" she said in her mind.

Watching. This dream is very strange and complicated. The big dream thing Pausert tastes odd now. Like the other dream thing with the thing that came out its nose.

The Leewit could probably get it to help. She took a deep breath. "I just need some space," she said to Marshi. "And the Leewit needs to get suited up and webbed into position. You could send Ta'zara to help. He would make it quicker. It would help if the captain could help me."

"No. Captain Pausert cannot."

If Goth understood the flat voice properly, it was not that Marshi would be unwilling to let Pausert help. Just that he would not be able to, because right now he was not the captain. He was a part of the plant.

The Leewit was casually walking off down the narrow passage, followed by Ta'zara. The Na'kalaufer was sneezing his head off for some reason. Well, if they lived through all of this he could be sick properly later.

"Let the captain stay with me, then. I'll make me feel better," said Goth. "You can keep anyone else you like here, but they need to be strapped in."

She knew that there were only two chairs in the control room. There were several more crash couches yards away in the observation lounge with acceleration straps and webbing. If a plant was going to come out of the captain's nose she didn't want it seen. But perhaps the plant would know about it anyway?

"Mistress," said Ta'zara quietly.

"Yes?" said the Leewit equally quietly.

"I have just sneezed out a small version of that thing that came out of Mebeckey's nose. I think that was one of the spores she put onto me."

He doesn't taste funny, said the vatchlet.

The Leewit took a deep breath. "Ta'zara. I don't know if this is going to work. But I want you to pretend that you are just like all these others. Be our secret agent. Watch them without them guessing."

Like the other one. The one that's hiding in the space up there.

"What?"

I think you call him Vezzarn. I've been helping him, but he can't hear or see me.

They'd arrived at the suit-bay and Ta'zara helped her into her pressure suit, and then into the strapping they'd set up at the grav-tractor inside the cargo airlock.

"You there?" said Goth in her headphones. "I'm ready when you are."

The Leewit opened the outer airlock and looked out into space. "Ready. Let's go."

The Sheewash drive blurred space. They closed on the bright suns of the Megair cluster. The Leewit kept a lookout for Phantom ships. She saw them, soon enough. But they were all well out of range, and appeared to her not to be following the Venture at all. Instead they seemed to be holding position.

Goth confirmed that. "They're not chasing us."

She left off the Sheewash drive, and the universe stopped hurtling past. One of the reasons the scientists of the Empire were so mystified by the Sheewash drive was that it did not alter a ship's momentum. The Leewit had heard the phenomenon explained on Karres as being due to the fact that the universe moved around the ship rather than the ship moving through the universe. She didn't understand the explanation-but she suspected that the adults didn't understand it, either. Adults were given to pretending a lot.

She closed the airlock and waited. A few minutes later one of Marshi's impassive-faced goons came and fetched her.

"You may need us again," said Goth calmly.

The pilot who had come in with Marshi looked at her with wide, terrified eyes. Goth decided he was probably not part of the plant. "What was that?" he demanded.

"Not something you can do," said Goth, dismissively.

One of Marshi's goons-she must have them packed three deep in the Venture- undid the strapping. Goth got up slowly. It had been at least twenty minutes now since she'd 'ported those tablets into the captain's stomach. Yet he was just sitting there, staring into space. No plant was leaving him by nose.

"I'd better stay close," she said. The goon stopped what he was doing, and Pausert got up and let Marshi's pilot take the controls. Pausert stood there, as if awaiting orders. Goth wondered just exactly where they were going to: the Megair cluster… but where?

"I need food," she said. "Both of us do, if we are going to be able do that again."

Wordlessly one of the men left and returned a little later, with a plate of food from the robo-butler. Goth ate slowly. Deliberately, chewing each mouthful. It was hard after klatha use when she just wanted to wolf it down. She certainly wasn't saying anything to Marshi but the behavior or the Phantom ships had been… well, very different. She wished she knew why.

The Leewit had been taken to one of the smaller rooms at the back of the vessel. Plainly, Marshi's goons had been sleeping here too, but it had been emptied to make a prison for her. They also brought her food-which was good, because she was starving.

The Leewit took advantage of the privacy to send a note to Vezzarn, via the vatch. And Ta'zara came and quietly knocked and asked if she was all right. So the Leewit sent a second note to Vezzarn, telling him that Ta'zara was still part of their side. Vezzarn might wonder where the notes came from, but during all this time of mixing with Karres witches, he'd probably learned not to wonder too much, just to fit in with their plans.

A little later, Goth was pushed into the room too. The Leewit knew her sister well enough to know that she was worried and upset.

When the door was locked, Goth activated the spyshield in the chronometer on her wrist. "It didn't work. The pills didn't work."

The Leewit sighed. She wondered if she could cure the captain, if he was still infected by the plant. She wasn't sure. She wasn't even sure that she could cure the captain of the addiction, once the plant was gone. She had had no effect on Mebeckey's mind. Yet she'd healed Ta'zara-and he'd been damaged more. The difference might be that Ta'zara had been damaged and had known it, and had desperately wanted to be healed.

"Well, the good news, for what it's worth, is that Vezzarn is alive and free, and hiding in the crawl-spaces. And it seems that for some reason Ta'zara wasn't affected by the plant spore. He sneezed it right out again, and I think it was dying. It was going black on his handkerchief. And he still seems to be on the loose."

There was a faint rattle at the door, and it swung open, to reveal Ta'zara and a rather disheveled Vezzarn with a lockpick. "Your Wisdoms," he said, locking the door, "I can't tell you how glad I am to see you! I didn't think you'd come and get me this time. We're heading straight back to Megair 4. I saw the co-ordinates."

"You mean the Megair Cannibals are Marshi's whatsit… what did Mebeckey call them? Illtraming? They clumping deserve each other!"

Goth nodded. "I'd feel sorry for any species that had been slaves. But I guess just having been a slave doesn't always make you too nice. Still, I wish I knew how we could get the captain free of this thing. Those pills had no effect."

"And yet," said Ta'zara. "I must have poisoned the plant."

Vezzarn coughed. "Your Wisdoms. Do you remember when that Mebeckey told us about these Melchin, how their slaves got some disease that killed the plant? And they ended up as the Illtraming?"

"Yep. That is why the plant that is Marshi wants to find their world. So it can have a host again. A proper one. Not us."

"Well, if Megair 4 is the Illtraming homeworld and the Megair are these hosts," said the old spacer, "maybe the disease is still there. It didn't affect the animals, the way I understood it. So maybe it's something that Mebeckey caught while he was there. Ta'zara was also there. They didn't do anything else together."