A Prison Unsought (70 page)

Everyone who’d gone out for the Karusch’na Rahali and lived
through it was in a vile temper, moving stiffly as if with pain. She’d heard
about Hestik and the drivetech; she hadn’t heard anything about what had
happened to Sundiver after she went for Anaris, except the obvious fact she
hadn’t been seen since. And Moob . . . that scene on the bridge
had frightened Tat almost senseless; she’d never seen the Draco so wild, yet
the captain had forced her to back down. Tat and her cousins had managed a
precarious accommodation to conditions on the
Samedi
; now everything was changing.

The hatch opened and she peeked into the ready room. No one
was there except Fasthand. He sat facing the door, a jac on the table in front
of him. He motioned her over.

“I’m changing my rules against wearing boz’ls
on my ship. I want you to wear yours,” the captain said, his long,
unlovely face twisted in a peculiar grimace midway between worry and anger.
“Even to sleep.”

Tat nodded.

Fasthand flickered a look at her face, then away. He never
met anyone’s eyes if he could possibly avoid it; that was part of what had made
his face-down of Moob so startling. But that hadn’t lasted long. Now he seemed
more ferret-like than ever.

“I don’t trust that Shiidra-suck
Morrighon not to somehow rizz our comp,” he went on. “You are to work night and
day on breaking his codes. We’ll put you on sick call—no one’s to know.”

She nodded again, wondering who would take her place in the
already depleted prime bridge crew.

He frowned. “Tell Lar he’s got to cover you. Less comment
that way.”

Tat knew what he meant.
No
one can tell one Bori from another.
It wasn’t that they looked alike, it
was more that no one bothered unless they wanted something. Annoying, but now
was not the time to lodge a protest on Lar’s behalf.

“Keep me posted on whatever you
learn,” he said. Then he looked at his chrono and winced. “Twenty hours now.”

Tat ducked her head and scudded out the door, relieved to
get away from Fasthand. Always tense and strange, he’d been manic since the Karusch’na,
and she was afraid the information about Gehenna would eventually push him over
the edge.

Hunching her shoulders, Tat sped for the relative safety of
her cabin. With her door personal-locked, she poured herself into the computer
system, exploring its perimeter with excruciating care. Patient feelers of code
probed at anomalies; at last, she discovered by accident that Morrighon, with a
deadly cleverness, had masked most of his data by camouflaging it as scavenged
dataspace.

Meticulous and slow—for she found guardian phages zapping
back and forth, looking for invaders—she tried to find how he’d managed it. Breaking
it would be even harder.

Finally, exhausted almost to the point of recklessness, she
forced herself to withdraw and to shut down her system. Her hand moved
reluctantly, and her burning eyes stared at the now-blank screen, seeing
afterimages flickering there.

If she went back in now, she’d do something foolish and get
caught. It was time to try another way.

She turned in her pod, surprised at the ache in her neck. A
glance at the chrono shocked her: she’d been at it for nine straight hours. It
was 03:45.

She got to her feet, and a huge yawn forced its way up from
her insides. One longing glance at her nightclothes, then she rubbed her eyes
and marched to the door.

Emergence was nearly on top of them. She shared Fasthand’s
fears of what the Dol’jharians could do if they controlled the ship’s
functions.
Not to mention Fasthand—he’s
crazy-bad enough to force me out a lock.

The spurt of fear gave her a semblance of energy, enough to
move her to the rec room, which she was thankful to find empty. She called up a
mug of hot caf and stood with its warmth cradled in her hands, the steam
tickling her nose, as she thought.

It was time to do some social data-diving, in real time.
Only, how to flush Morrighon without him knowing he was being flushed?

The idea of stepping into the Dol’jharian area gave her the
shillies. And she didn’t dare run a locate—he’d know that immediately, of
course. She had long since built safeguards for herself against tracers.

But . . . her tired eyes ranged over the
galley console, and she took her underlip between her teeth. There was one
other route: find out where he’d been and what he’d ordered.

Some quick tapping,
and as a list windowed up, her heart began to hammer painfully.

ID 121-SD;
roufou
-rice,
geel
soup, caf/snithi, 03:39.

Bori food.

And—she glanced back to make sure—he’d ordered it from right
where she stood, instead of the rec room nearest the Dol’jharian area.

Which suggested he didn’t want to eat it in his room. And—she
was sure—he never ate with his overlords.

So that left the rest of the ship. She paced back and forth.
Think, think! It would be so easy, so convenient, if he’d just take it down to
the hidey that Tat and her cousins used sometimes, with the gees changed so it
seemed—

She stopped. Why not?
He wasn’t in his room, or he’d have ordered his food on the other side of the
ship. And he had never been sighted eating in the rec areas, where crew
normally ate.

And he is a Bori—of
sorts—so he might feel as comfortable as we do in high places.

Not that there were any “high places” on shipboard. But
there was one place that, with a little bit of imagination, could be turned
into one.

First she needed cover. She ordered a meal and dumped half
her caf. Then she rushed down to the transtube. As the module accelerated, she
wondered what she would say to him if she did find him.
We’re Bori, we’re both Bori
, she thought, and a weird urge to laugh
shook her.

When the module stopped, she leaned against the door, trying
to still the hammering of her heart. A few deep breaths, a sip of caf. She
still wanted to laugh—she was even less adept than Captain Fasthand at real-time
skulkery.
Which is why I’m on this ship
in the first place. I just hope I live to get off.

She shut her eyes, fighting down panic. Then, one step,
another, another, until she reached the access lock to the long missile tube.

And she knew right away that someone was there—and that he
had found, or programmed for himself, the little alteration in the grav that
made it possible to sit on the edge of the hatch and feel as if a
kilometer-long drop stretched out below one’s feet. The access lock hatch showed
a quartered circle with a single yellow quadrant rotating—quarter gee—with a
moiré pattern overlaid showing the shift in orientation.

She tabbed the hatch open, cradling her tray under one arm,
and swung herself through, twisting to land on the opposite wall of the lock,
now down. She landed lightly across the dogged-open hatch and faced the bent
figure of Morrighon.

His eyed her warily from his perch on the edge of the hatch—what
would have been its top in normal gee—with his legs dangling over the
kilometer-long missile tube.

Raising her tray, she forced a smile. “Company?”

And knew at once that he never ate in company, unless maybe
with other Catennach. A strange expression, akin to revulsion, narrowed his
already pinched features. A chill of fear roughed the skin on her upper arms,
the same reaction she’d had when she realized he slept alone. Bori just didn’t
do that—sleep alone, eat alone.

“You’re prime crew,” he said. “Why
are you awake?”

She shrugged, and a lie came to her lips as if she’d planned
it. “Half of prime crew’s on sick list, and some of the alternates. Captain got
me training for backup.” And, before he could say anything, she added, “Watch
this.”

His features tightened. She wondered if he carried some kind
of nasty weapon as she twisted over and stretched a hand out toward the console
inset. Glancing back doubtfully, she wondered if he would indeed kill her and
dump her body right out the nearby lock.
Or
he could even try his own version of that Karusch’na biznai.

But he didn’t move, so she tapped out a quick code, and a
holo-jac that Lar had installed came to life. Now, instead of the barren
dyplast and metal mesh of the catwalk stretching into dimness below them, they sat
atop a cliff, watching the sparkle of a waterfall roar past them and fall away
into darkness below. The sound was quite good—way in the distance came the
muted thunder of the water reaching a river, and the tianqi sent a strong
breeze ruffling across their faces, bearing traces of scents from Bori:
sweetgrass, oroi, carith-herbflower.

Morrighon sucked in a long, shuddering breath. His face in
the false sunlight was strained, as if he were in pain.

“You don’t like it?” she exclaimed
in astonishment. And she tabbed the control, making the holo disappear.

Morrighon said nothing, but he seemed on the verge of
speech. Tat’s heartbeat marked quick time, lump-lump, lump-lump.

“I’ve only seen Bori in holos,” he
said at last, a raspy edge to his thin voice. “I didn’t think there were any
mountains like that.”

“No,” Tat said. “Not like that.
Rivers through hills. Don’t know about desert—left when I was four. All I
remember is houses on stilts, and one flood season. Anyway, we like it.”

She reached again, watching him warily. When he didn’t move,
she tabbed the holo on again, and for a long time they sat there, while the
false waterfall thundered into a false river far below.

She said tentatively, “Never saw Bori real-time?”

“Baby.” His shoulders tightened.
His food sat, untouched, on the deck—wall—beside him, but he didn’t seem on the
verge of flight.

“Go ahead and eat,” she suggested,
feeling a trifle more confident. Things were, well, a little more
normal—whatever normal was, when both of them were confined on opposite sides
aboard this crazy ship so very far from their birth planet.

Once again the peculiar grimace, like pain, deepened the
lines in his face.

Confidence restored, her recklessness also returned. She
said, “By the way, we—cousins—thank you. You left us alone—” She waved a hand,
meaning the day before, then she gawked in surprise when Morrighon’s eyes
widened and he gulped on a laugh.

“Eh?” she said.

But he shook his head, snuffling his weird high-pitched
giggle. One of his hands flexed convulsively, then he got control of it and
drew a long breath.

“What’s funny?” she demanded.
“Meant it.”

“Because . . . because.”
His mouth stretched in a grin like a gigged frog, then he said, “You are
ignorant, Ombric.”

New horror, unlike anything she’d felt yet, suffused her.
“You—you aren’t—”

Now his grin was sardonic, and he was back in control. “Geld
us before we enter the Catennach, the Service of the Lords.”

She gasped, and still he grinned, obviously enjoying, in a
twisted way, her shock. “But—if they don’t want you making families, why not
contraceptives? Perm ones?”

“Our choice,” he said.
“We live through that, it’s a measure of our strength.”

A measure of your desire for power through the likes of
Anaris.
She had no idea whether this conversation was to any purpose she could
use—but he was talking. And my stupid reaction makes me look stupid in his
eyes.
All right, I’ll be stupid.

“Euuugh,” she said. “Dol’jharians
don’t believe in weakness like anesthesia, bet?”

He snorted.

She leaned against the wall. “So we were safe, anyway. Nice.
But, why you told captain crew would be attacked?”

“So what would happen would
happen.”

“Doesn’t make sense,” she said.
“What if more of our bridge crew got duffed, how we make it through this Knot?
No sense.”

“Kept them busy,” he said. “Knew
most of them wouldn’t brave our side.”

Suspicion sidetracked her. “Anaris know Sundiver was
coming?”

Morrighon shrugged, and wheezed a laugh. “They got what they
came for, didn’t they?”

She had to admit the truth of it, but not out loud. Besides,
the maliciousness of his tone made her wary again.

He reached for his food and moved to the transtube.
“Emergence coming soon,” he said over one twisted shoulder. “You’d best be
ready, don’t you think?” His tone taunted her, reminding her of her original
purpose.

And then he was gone.

She slumped down, staring into the mesmerizing spray of
water falling, falling.
And I found out
nothing.
Now hungry, she tabbed her containers open and munched, her eyes
on the sparkling water as she thought back through the conversation.

Or was it nothing? She had a new insight into Morrighon, and
Barrodagh as well. They slept alone, they ate alone, they couldn’t bunny.
It has to have been trained into them, by
pain and threats and the pursuit of power.
So they turn into twisty little parodies of Dol’jharians . . .

Yes, yes, she was almost onto something, she felt it.
Morrighon talked like a Dol’jharian, and he lived kind of like one, but he
ordered Bori food. And she remembered that first reaction to her waterfall.
Like pain . . . like release from pain.

That’s it
, she
thought, scrambling to her feet. Her fingers slapped at the controls, restoring
the catwalk to normal, shifting the grav, and erasing the fact that they had
ever been there.

Morrighon—maybe all the Bori servants—lived perforce like
their masters, but she was certain that they made little retreats for
themselves, in ways they wouldn’t be caught. Ways the Dol’jharians would scorn
to probe. Even in the computer.

She jumped into the transtube module, sleepiness forgotten.

“Incoming!”

The sentry’s hoarse shout galvanized the torchlit courtyard
into a scurry of sudden activity; soldiers and menials scattered in all
directions. Mindful of his dignity, Napier Ur’Comori stepped unhurriedly behind
a stone column as a small object arced through the predawn sky over the high
castle wall and thumped into the dust nearby with a wet squelch.