A Prison Unsought (21 page)

He dove deeper within, deep, deep, guided by the blue fire
dancing on ahead. He swooped and soared, watching the glorious inter-workings
of the cells, and within the cells the molecules.

He stopped when he saw before him a curving ladder to
heaven, the double helix. Blue fire lanced up and down it like heat lightning,
the patterns within the helix glowing like gems. Patterns within patterns, all
with the same fourfold foundation. It was like music, like the carvings of the
cathedral of New Glastonbury, it was like nothing he had ever seen, and yet
partook of everything he’d ever known.

The blue fire coalesced into a sort of hard buzzing point,
dimensionless yet potent, and he began to sort the patterns, reading the facets
of each, and searching deep within one, then another. And each time he touched
the double helix, like an instrument of unparalleled complexity it responded to
him with bursts of memory, snatches of experience, pulses ranging the spectrum
from suffering to ecstasy.

Ivard hesitated, confused. None of this was him, and yet . . .
The blue fire swelled into a sphere of meaning. It knew, and so he knew, and he
stood looking back down the long years of experience preserved in his germ
plasm, and those who’d gone before greeted him whom they had become.

Then Ivard sensed, far in the distance, the slow booming of
his heart, and knew that it ought not to be so slow for long. He must not
linger here.

So he found the string of facets that shaped the working of
his eyes, and using the new-taught abilities flowing from the point of blue
fire dancing deep within, he grasped the critical gem and shifted it over and
over, sorting the facets until he found a better pattern, and set it into
place. Turning his awareness away from the helix, he sensed the changes
radiating outward into his body, cell by cell; he wondered how long it would
take before he saw the difference.

Next his mucous membranes, quelling their sensitivity to air
changes, and then his sinuses and larynx, adding the resonance and flexibility
demanded by the Kelly language that came so easily to him now.

Then he located the gene that had cursed him with the easily
burned pale skin. Changing that, he delighted in the melanin released, which
would slowly suffuse his skin with protective color. A last alteration, to help
his muscle structure learn more quickly, and he rose back to consciousness,
looked around, and discovered that he was profoundly hungry—but he was also too
tired to move.

So he sat in the light for a time as the itching faded, his
eyes closed and upturned to the brightness of the diffuser far above, enjoying
the evolving patterns in the darkness behind his eyelids. A gentle breeze
caressed his skin. Welcome at first, it strengthened steadily, and then Ivard
realized that it was blowing, not across his body, but down on his head. A
faint pungent scent, like herbs and smoke, tickled his nose.

Then a subtle change in the sound of the open space around
him snapped his eyes open, and he looked up into the hideously deformed face of
some horrible alien creature, brown and deeply wrinkled with a rubbery
sphincter gaping in a ghastly frown above dark brown eyes in deep sockets. . . .

After a moment of utter terror his mind grasped the scene
properly and the face resolved into that of an incredibly ancient human hanging
upside down in front of him within a faintly shimmering bubble of energy. The
wind flowed from the bubble, and the ancient smiled. Ivard stared back
doubtfully, wishing he had his clothes on.

“Ho there, Little Egg,” said the
man, his voice somehow identifying his gender. “You are the one the Kelly are
hatching, no?”

As he spoke, the bubble slowly rotated, bringing him right
side up. This man was a nuller, like Granny Chang, enclosed in a gee-bubble to
insulate him from the acceleration of Ares. The geeplane drive of the bubble
was generating the downdraft.

“I’m Ivard,” he managed.

“More or less, yes,” the nuller
replied, laughing. “Rather more now, I’d say.”

Ivard shook his head, confused. He sensed no sarcasm; the
man was not laughing at him. His amusement tasted of approval. Ivard thought of
Greywing, there on Desrien—she had approved, too.

“The Kelly asked me to assist your
hatching,” the nuller continued.

“Hunh?” Ignoring his own nakedness,
Ivard stood up, bringing his face more on a level with the nuller’s. The man’s
body, wrapped in some brightly striped cloth, was shrunken, with stick-like
arms and legs protruding from his garment, but his wrists and hands were almost
full-sized, gnarled but strong-looking. His ankles, too, were larger than one
would expect, and his feet quite strangely shaped, as though all of their
strength was in the toes.

“Breaking out of your shell, Little
Egg. Don’t you feel it? The Kelly said you would about now.”

Ivard stared at the man. Did the nuller really know what he
had done within his body, guided by the Archon’s fire?

The nuller merely waited, smiling.

“Who are you?” Ivard demanded, heat
prickling up his neck.

“Ho! Six hundred fifty years I’ve
seen, and the answer to that question would take as long. But nobody has the
breath for that, so I answer to Tate Kaga, and other names as well, which you
may discover. Or not.”

Perhaps because of the man’s strangeness, Ivard felt
comfortable with him. The nuller seemed to see him as a whole, without judging
him. Like Eloatri.

“Why do you call me Little Egg?”

“It’s more descriptive than
‘Ivard,’ which is just a noise your parents dubbed you with when you had no
choice in the matter. A name should tell your story, and you’ll have to find
your real one for yourself, and soon, but for now it’s Little Egg.”

Ivard said, “Ivard is a good name. It’s my favorite hero
from the vids.”

“Ah! You will wear that name well,
and it will tell a new story.”

Ivard grinned. “What story does Tah-tay Kah-gah tell?” he
asked, saying the name carefully the first time.

“Tate Kaga is my name, Makes the
Wind, and that tells many stories. Two I’ll tell you now. A third you must
discover. More you will find if you live long enough.”

“Your bubble!” exclaimed Ivard. “It
makes wind.”

“Ho!” exclaimed the nuller,
sounding surprised. “This egg is swift, but is it wise? What’s the second?”

Ivard shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“Wise it is. Few among my fellow
Douloi would admit their ignorance so readily.” The nuller cackled loudly.
“Beans!”

“Beans?”

Tate Kaga pursed his lips and made a rude, wet noise.
“Beans. They make me fart. And I love ’em.”

Ivard laughed.

Tate Kaga laughed, too, and his bubble spun around, end over
end, making Ivard dizzy. “Only damned physical pleasure left to me after nearly
seven hundred years—that and a good dump, but that name’d tell a different
story, and not mine, thank you very much. I leave that to my fellow Douloi.”

Ivard laughed harder, remembering some of the nicks he’d seen
so far on Ares. When he finally caught his breath he asked, “And what’s the
third?”

Tate Kaga stopped smiling, and his bubble halted its
rotation, leaving him upside down. “That you must discover,” he repeated. His
bubble began to accelerate upward. “Come visit me.”

Ivard stared up as Tate Kaga’s gee-bubble disappeared into
the soft dazzle of the diffuser, then a wave of dizziness warned him of his
depleted state and he walked back into the suite.

Ivard dialed some nourishing food and ate it almost without
noticing the taste. As soon as he had eaten, he dropped onto his bed and closed
his eyes.

Ivard no longer
dreamed alone. Bypassing the long necklace of interconnected memories that the
Kelly Archon’s genome had bequeathed him, he sank into more familiar
dreamscapes, pursued by the whispering voices he now knew were the Eya’a.

One-who-hears-three
has amended herself?

I’m a he,
Ivard
corrected sleepily, looking for a likely dream pattern to leap into. He was
learning how to control his dreaming, but sometimes it didn’t work. He hated
some of the things he saw sometimes. . . .

Then a distinctive
voice came in, cool and soft-toned: Vi’ya.
Don’t try, Firehead. They’ll never
get it straight.
Her amusement was like a thin stream of golden light.

How come I can hear you like this?
Ivard asked.
I’m not a
tempath. And you’re all the way up in the Cap.
As he sent the thought, memory
flickered: Vi’ya and Lokri, locked together in rage-fueled passion.

Perhaps she could
catch his words, but—relief—not his images. She returned the answer he’d
already figured out:
Your connection with the Kelly and mine with the Eya’a
seems to have brought us into contact this way. And the Eya’a are impatient for
you to add your focus to a project of theirs—but not yet. Not until you are stronger.

What is it?

We have to locate the
Heart of Kronos. But do not think about it now, and do not, ever, discuss it
with anyone else. Sleep. Regain your strength. When you awaken, Jaim will visit
you. We will talk about this later.

Ivard sent his wordless
compliance, and Vi’ya’s presence vanished. But behind his obedience, somewhat
to his surprise, an obdurate bit of self complained: But Tate Kaga is a nick.
Why that came to mind he didn’t really know. Then memory supplied an acid
comment from Greywing:
You can’t trust someone just because they talk nice,
but
the blue fire added its weight of experience with the observation that the
ancient nuller tasted good.

Oh, shut up, all of you.
Interior silence fell, but the
good feeling he’d gotten from Tate Kaga lingered, and Ivard slid gratefully
into a pleasant memory-dream of the good days when Greywing was alive, and
Markham, and they were all together on board the Telvarna, and free.

o0o

“Two duels?”

Vannis turned away from her mirror and looked down at the
woman lying across her bed.

The corners of Besthan’s smile deepened sardonically. “You
did not know, child? Where have you been hiding?”

Vannis laughed. “I was sleeping off an illness.” She would
not admit to anyone that she had used what Srivashti’s accursed Shiidra tea had
done to her as an excuse to wait for a repeat visit from Brandon vlith-Arkad.

“Were I coarse-minded,” Besthan
said in that same dry tone, “and were we on home ground, I would recommend a
stroll through the Whispering Gallery some evening.”

“I’ll be spending days making
amends to those I offended yesterday,” Vannis said with a sigh.

“You shouldn’t have had your maid
tell them you were still ill,” came the imperturbable answer.

“Because no one believed it.”
Vannis still felt enervated, which made her petulant. And being able to freely
vent her emotions was a rare enough luxury to be cherished. “I should have said
I was in bed with somebody’s cook. Everyone would have believed that, because
then they could despise me for it.”

Besthan laughed. “There is no getting away from Arthelion’s
understood rules.”

“Which are binding us ever more
tightly now that Arthelion is out of reach. The truth is disgusting enough. Srivashti
gave me some Shiidran hell-brew. Which, of course, he identified after I’d
drunk it. Would you want the medtechs spreading that all over—even if they have
a remedy, which they probably don’t?”

Besthan wrinkled her nose. “No. No one needs a reputation
for deviance at this moment.”

Vannis closed her eyes and rubbed her temples. “Srivashti
probably hoped I’d do just that.”

“What does he want?”

Vannis sighed. “On the surface, he wants to know what the
Navy attacked Arthelion for. And of course he wants, as everyone does, to find
out how and why Brandon survived the bombing of his Enkainion. More than that I
can’t yet guess.”

Besthan considered a mote in the air, one thin hand rubbing
gently at her lower belly. Vannis watched, distracted by the gestures. She’d
grown up loving Besthan as the “aunt” her own blood relations never had been,
but she did not really understand the woman. Why, for instance, had she
suddenly decided to birth an heir at seventy years of age—and insist on
incubating it herself?

That was risky enough, even with the best medical care, but
the sudden onslaught of Eusabian’s Rifters had forced Besthan, spouse, and
family to flee their home in the only ship left operational after the initial
attack, an old merchant vessel with only the barest medtech onboard.
She’s lucky she made it to Ares in time.
Vannis felt a chill, knowing that neither Besthan nor the infant would have
survived a natural childbirth.

“I miss your mother,” Besthan said.
“Has the High Phanist said aught of her?”

“No, and I haven’t asked. People
disappear on Desrien all the time—and she might not have even used her real
name.”

“Fifteen years is a long time for a
religious pilgrimage, especially for a woman who had no religion,” Besthan
mused.

Vannis signified assent with an airy gesture. She had made
her peace with the truth, that the only one she’d loved among her many powerful
relatives had abandoned her. “I know what to do. I’ll give an intimate
breakfast. For those I supposedly snubbed yesterday.”

Besthan nodded, rising to her feet. Then she leaned against
the bed table, pressing her hand against her middle. “Childbirth!” she
muttered, so low Vannis had to strain to hear her. “But we are alive, at least.
As soon as I can stand up long enough to smile at everyone I must invite, I
will hold the Name Day.” She smiled. “Speaking of. Time for me to visit the
little heir.”

“Tell me as soon as you decide.
I’ll help any way I can.” Vannis kissed her and saw her to the door.
And it is time for me
, she vowed,
to go visit the great heir
.