A Prison Unsought (15 page)

Vi’ya’s nose wrinkled at the cursing-powder and old boots
smell of the Kelly as the Eya’a glided rapidly to threm, their movements
somehow more fluid. The little sophonts piped shrilly, their emotional
signature intense as the scream of shearing metal. She turned physically,
longing to turn psychically, and here was that old woman from Desrien.

The mind-noise of the Eya’a made other minds hard to hear;
Vi’ya gave the black-gowned woman her blankest stare. In response she got a
pleasant smile, empty of any other message, and a slight nod. Then the Kelly
spun across the deck toward her. Again she braced herself, this time against
the comparatively lesser trespass of the highly-physical Kelly greeting.

Eloatri saw the tension in Vi’ya’s flare of nostrils as
Portus-Dartinus-Atos gave the Dol’jharian an equally enthusiastic greeting.
Beyond her, Commander Buersco, the medical officer from Xeno—fitted with an
ajna
, no less—observed the Eya’a, his
throat working in synchrony with an arrhythmic thinning and bulging of the
semi-living lens on his forehead.
He might
not like hearing that it looks like he’s trying to grow a horn
. An
appropriate image, she decided, as the man’s department head had used influence
to horn Buersco into this occasion, displacing the LTC who’d followed Ivard’s
treatment so far.

Buersco tried to hide his thoroughly unprofessional thrill.
If this goes well, it will make your career
,
his chief had said.
And if it’s a
disaster, you’ll make a fortune selling your images to the novosti
. Buersco
had said everything his chief expected to hear, but oh, what he truly wished to
witness was a meeting of polysemous minds.

He noticed the High Phanist’s considering gaze, and tendered
her a respectful salute.

When the Eya’a moved toward Eloatri, everyone but the Kelly
stilled, Vi’ya with her eyes closed, and the Marine guards shifting uneasily.

When Eloatri met the faceted eyes, the sophonts chittered
softly as they tilted back their heads. The Eya’a drifted past to inspect a
diorama on one wall as the hatch opened. Two Kelly headstalks whipped sinuously
to take in Ivard, and the two dogs who apparently had played an important role
in keeping him alive, followed by more Marines.

With them, the Chief Wrangler of Ares Base, a plain,
muscular woman whose incandescent smile transformed her. No wrangler needed Eloatri’s
welcoming nod, but the forms were important, especially when dealing with
someone well into a liminal state with regard to oneself; Eloatri felt the
impact of that smile like a lancing ray of sunlight through the interminable
clouds over Desrien.

M’liss was more than half in love with Eloatri, despite
being less than half her age. Her promotion to Chief—now no longer Acting—was a
gift of the war, as for so many others; in the normal course of events, they
would never have met, but the High Phanist had been firm in her insistence that
M’liss be present. She drew in a deep breath of intense pleasure: this scene
was a wrangler’s dream. All but one of the known sophonts together in one
space, plus the first Dol’jharian she’d ever seen, sibling Arkad dogs . . .

. . .and the Rifter youth Ivard, who, she’d already decided,
didn’t seem to fit any of those categories. M’liss watched Eloatri’s customary
inscrutability altered subtly to tenderness as her gaze rested on Ivard.

Buersco choked on an exhalation, a hand to his mouth.
How is that youth even alive?
Although
he’d followed LTC Dorn’s reports closely, the reality was more disturbing, the
effect heightened by the complex scents of the Kelly slamming the limbic system.

Buersco focused the ajna on Ivard as the youth stumbled
toward the Kelly in a boneless lurch. It looked like the two Arkad dogs were
the only things keeping him upright. He could see the muscles in their
shoulders and haunches bunch as the youth’s weight came down on them
erratically; nonetheless, each had one ear cocked at Ivard, the other alertly
forward, flicking to the side occasionally.

Buersco’s gaze arrowed to the green ribbon embedded in
Ivard’s wrist. There, replicated by the strange biology of the Kelly ribbons,
which were both sexual and neural tissue, resided the last trace of the Archon
and threir memories. It should have killed Ivard.

He focused the ajna in close. Ivard had begun life ugly,
with the pale, blotchy skin of an atavism and improbably red hair, now patchy
from the trichotillomania that had presented this last week. Add in the gawky
coltishness of late adolescence compounded by malnutrition, the unsettling
bonelessness to his movements (not to mention their three-four rhythm), and the
greenish cast to his skin, deepening to emerald on his arm . . .
Ivard had crossed well over into the uncanny valley.

Portus-Dartinus-Atos also found Ivard uncanny, though not
for the same reason. It was the wafts of the Third of Three’s personality
emanating from the youngling with increasing strength, and Ivard’s new habit of
plucking out his hair, recapitulating the death and dispersal of that Elder
following the bombing of the Arkad princeling’s Enkainion.

Threy greeted Ivard gently, guiding his hands away from his
head as threy noted further degeneration of his condition. The Third of Three
would burst this vessel soon; thus this desperate effort, whose efficacy the
humans seemed to take for granted. Portus-Dartinus-Atos would let events
confirm or collapse that assumption which, for now, upheld the humans’ spirits.

Eloatri sensed the infinite tenderness in the Kelly’s manner
as they swarmed around Ivard, honking and hooting. Ivard honked back, startling
Eloatri. She hadn’t known a human throat could make such noises. It could, but
not comfortably; Ivard broke off, coughing.

The Kelly pressed in closer around Ivard, and Eloatri’s
perspective underwent a dizzying change. She’d accepted the stereotype of the
Kelly as a comical race of sophonts, taking an unlikely delight in copying
various elements of human culture. Now she comprehended that for the protective
camouflage it was.

These sophonts represented a culture ancient with a weight
of ancestral memories that in humans were accessible only in dreams, if then.
For the Kelly, the memories of those passed into the embrace of Telos were
vividly present and immediate. And threir Archon, murdered on Arthelion by
Eusabian, was the repository of threir most ancient knowledge: only that Kelly
trinity remembered the awakening of the race to sentience, a million years past
and more.

By contrast, M’liss concentrated on the dogs, suppressing a
spurt of jealousy at the ease with which the Kelly so effortlessly conversed
with Trev and Gray. Freed from supporting Ivard by the embrace of the Kelly,
the two dogs gamboled in a complex pattern among the nine legs of the trinity,
often rearing up to push their noses deep into the fleshy ribbons of threir
pelts and then sneezing in an ecstasy of scent-sorting.

M’liss wrinkled her nose and sneezed, too; some of the
scents Portus-Dartinus-Atos emitted were reminiscent of something any dog would
be eager to roll in—carrion was too bland a word for it. Several of the Marines
wrinkled their noses and backed up slightly as the dogs returned to Ivard’s
side and sat down.

“All are here,” announced the Kelly in a mellifluous
woodwind chorale, a sinuous triplicate motion toward Trev and Gray. “The
collars must be removed from these two of Ivard’s three. All must play their
role here freely, with moral agency intact.” All three head-stalks arched toward
M’liss, who reddened.

“You can’t do that,” said the Marine squad leader as M’liss
stepped forward. “The dogs are to be collared whenever they are with the
Rifter. Our orders are clear.”

“So are mine,” replied M’liss as she bent over Trev and
pressed her fingertip to his collar. “To assist in this procedure as may be
requested or directed by Portus-Dartinus-Atos as the representative of a
sovereign nation.” Her boswell clucked and the collar fell into her hand. She
freed Gray and straightened up. “And I’m Chief Wrangler, and you’re not,” she
said with a big smile.

The smile was instinctive, but she could see its impact on
the Marine;
That smile is your secret
weapon
, her mother had insisted.
Going
from plain to dazzling can throw almost anyone off balance, if your timing is
correct.
M’liss had hated that lesson in manipulation—it was perhaps one of
the many reasons she had chosen to work with non-humans—but she’d found it
bearable when her mother had added trenchantly,
Keep your heart clean, though, or your smile will become an
insufferable smirk.

Buersco let out his breath. The truce was holding. Greater
access to the Eya’a had been the prize for his chief at Xeno; the upper ranks didn’t
care about the dogs.
Their mistake
,
he thought; he’d spent all his internship studying the Arkad dogs.

Eloatri was surprised by the pang in her heart when M’liss
smiled. She’d been alone so long she’d thought it in accordance with her
calling. Now she doubted that, but even if she had the time for personal
pursuits, she would never drag M’liss into the lethal politics of the Tetrad
Centrum Douloi. Eloatri knew herself untouchable, but only so long as she
remained alone.

Buersco fell in next to Eloatri on the way into the Embassy
proper, acknowledging M’liss at her other arm with a polite nod. “Was Ivard
this bad before Desrien?”

“He was even less coherent. I was told he was dying, his
immune system overwhelmed by the Kelly ribbon. Afterward he seemed to . . .
not recover, but to experience a remission.”

Buersco gestured at Ivard. “What happened, then? Why the
relapse?”

“The Dreamtime apparently wasn’t done with him. It may be
that today is when it releases him.”

“As much as it releases anyone,” said Buersco under his
breath.

That explains his
irenic attitud
e, Eloatri thought.
He’s
a haj
. She bowed with the inflection of one returned from a pilgrimage to
Desrien, which Buersco returned, confirming her supposition.

The Kelly ushered all but the Marine guards into the warm
interior of the building, which was humid and evocative of the spicy atmosphere
of the Kelly home world, suitably filtered of its usual load of anaphylactic
triggers, prions, and similar unpleasant or lethal agents. Eloatri’s first
impression was of overwhelming greenness, against which Ivard’s red hair made a
startling contrast, while the Kelly became oddly hard to see as threy and the
youth and the dogs pirouetted ahead of the rest of the group.

Down a short, oddly-proportioned corridor an archway opened
into a spacious room with a pile of colorful pillows in the center that glowed
in an atrocious medley of colors, as if in challenge to the viridian splendor
of the lush foliage that obscured the room’s perimeter. As the Kelly moved with
Ivard to the pillows, Eloatri saw another Kelly approach. No. Mirrors stood
among the foliage. Her understanding of the space around her opened up
abruptly, and she shivered as echoes of the Dreamtime stirred within her.

Ivard’s movements had become less uncoordinated; he dropped
with a semblance of ease and relaxed into the nest of pillows, snorting and
snuffling, while the two dogs, as if commanded by someone unseen, sat on guard
to either side of Ivard’s knees, ears and eyes alert.

Vi’ya took up a stance nearby, breathing with less effort as
the psychic pressure of Ivard’s fear and anxiety eased to something near
euphoria.

“They’re gonna take my ribbon,” Ivard said to her, and held
up his skinny arm with the startlingly bright green ring in the skin.

On his other side, Eloatri observed his hand gripping
tightly on something small—she spotted a tuft of silk protruding beyond his
little finger.

“Wethree can only take from you the genome,” the Intermittor
said in her reedy voice. “The Archon now is part of you, and you of threm. That
was accomplished far from here, and not by any art we know.” The other two
blatted agreement, their headstalks writhing in a complex pattern.

Ivard sat up on his elbows, and asked in the half-cocky,
half-frightened manner of adolescents everywhere: “Will it hurt?”

The Kelly trilled laughter. “Perhaps a little, but only
briefly. Wethree shall bear you up, O small seeker.” The Intermittor pranced
behind Ivard while the other two Kelly disposed themselves in front of the
youth, making the three apices of an equilateral triangle around him.

The dogs wormed in against Ivard’s sides.

At a gesture of invitation from the Intermittor, Vi’ya knelt
between the two Kelly in front, facing Ivard. The Eya’a remained behind her,
their faceted eyes glinting in the now subdued lighting.

Everyone stilled. Gradually Eloatri became aware of a low
hum. As it intensified, the voices blended and separated in hypnotic harmonics.
The head-stalks of the three Kelly undulated in a slow, compelling pattern, the
fleshy lilies of threir mouths oriented on Ivard, who began to blink, as if
fighting sleep. His eyes closed.

The alien threnody resonated in Eloatri’s chest, rhythms
syncopating within the polyphonic drone. The light dimmed until the ribbons of
the Intermittor glowed with a subtle phosphorescence that fluctuated in
synchrony with the crooning of the Kelly. The poignant sound evoked a
complexity of emotions; Eloatri wondered if her response corresponded in any way
with what the Kelly were experiencing.

Ivard’s ribbon also glowed, fluctuating in the same rhythm
as the sound deepened and intensified, catching Eloatri up in a dizzying
current of emotion. The palm of her hand tingled, the burn inflicted by the
Digrammaton after its impossible leap vibrating in time with the swelling
rhythms of an impossibly complex harmony; it sounded like an entire choir of
Kelly. Eloatri found herself swaying. She let go of fear, let go of self,
though she sensed the proximity of a million-year precipice as she peered back
and back into the natal history of a people civilized before humankind achieved
speech.