Contact Imminent (9 page)

Sànalàn had rounded her shoulders, comprehending her former dominant's insult. “And if Feres does not overcome his wound completely, then what? He is still not as he was, still not-Feres. What then, Tsecha? How then do we treat this incompletion?”

“I maintain that even an incomplete Feres is yet something-of-Feres, and as such still recognizes his particular Way, at least in part.” Tsecha sat forward, left hand clenched in a fist. “That part must be allowed to continue Feres's journey until as much as possible has been done to recover all of what he was. Humanish act as thus, preserving as much as possible of what was, conserving, aiding the soul in adapting to the trauma of the loss. Otherwise, you allow to die one that would have lived, and affected, and labored. You mock life by surrendering too readily to death.”

Sànalàn's voice deepened as her anger grew. “I have said before, humanish fear death too greatly.”

“And Vynshàrau fear it not at all, which leads to waste. Which is the greater sin, Sànalàn, to labor greatly to preserve, or to turn one's back, and do nothing?” Tsecha turned on Shai so quickly that she flinched. “You are not qualified to decide the merits of our arguments, Shai, or questions of theology. I will enter my protests of this mockery to Temple as well. This is not a decision to be made quickly. The physician-priests must research. Arguments must be prepared—”

“As Feres's soul stumbles on some path not his own, on some path inconceivable to any godly idomeni.” Elon knew she did not speak aloud, yet she heard her words. As did Tsecha, who looked from her, to Shai, then Sànalàn, and curved his mouth in a humanish smile.

“You reached your decision before you heard any argument, this I know and truly. No matter my reasoning, no matter if Sànalàn remained silent and declined to speak at all, your decision would be the same. Feres must die, so order may be maintained. Feres must die, so that your souls may rest as content. But of Feres himself, you do not know, you will never know, because he will never be allowed to speak.” Tsecha stood and walked to the door, his shoulders so bowed it was as though he could never straighten. “Each time we meet for argument, you disgust me more.”

Sànalàn rose to her feet, even as Shai sought to pull her down. “You have not been given leave to go by your propitiator, Tsecha!”

Tsecha turned. “Then let me say to you, Sànalàn, whom I reared as a youngish, whom I sought to instruct in the ways of the gods, and so failed. Let me say to you here, so that all may know—I do not recognize you as propitiator. The Chicago Haárin do not recognize you, for you condemn the innocent to death. It is you who are as anathema. You whom the gods disdain!” He strode to the entry and out before the
door even swept aside completely, before Shai's suborn could attend him.

Shai took on the same posture as Tsecha's. Time passed before she spoke. “It is most as convenient, is it not, that Tsecha spoke as he did on an official transmission. Thus verification of his words has already been accomplished.” She gestured to Elon. “Go, and do as the gods compel. I must confer with Sànalàn.”

Elon slid off her chair. Her broken hand had swelled past the wrist, and burned to the touch. She felt as though she ran even as she moved quite as slowly. “Glories of the evening to you, nìaRauta Sànalàn,” she said as she awaited benediction. But Shai and Sànalàn already conferred, and no longer saw her even as she stood before them.

Elon followed Shai's suborn to the entry, stepped into the hallway, waited as the door closed behind her. Then she saw the physician-priest's suborn standing at the hallway's end, and followed her without a word.

 

Elon entered the journey room, then stepped to the left side of the entry. The room held little. A bed in its center, surrounded by the instruments and machines of the physician-priests. A side table, draped with an altar cloth and set with a scroll along with the handhelds and scanning devices used to test response and level of consciousness.

Ghos stood at the foot of the bed, head high, hands raised above his head, his prayer voice a keening that resonated within the bare room.

The physician-priest stood at Feres's swaddled head, from around which the bracing framework had been removed. She held out her hands, palms down and slightly cupped, so that they covered his face as a hovering mask. Then she walked to each monitor, each instrument in turn, and deactivated them.

Elon remained near the door, even though custom required she stand behind Ghos. She feared sickness, as did
every idomeni, especially those who traveled beyond the worldskein. Unprotected by a blessed environment, surrounded by tainted air and soil, any occurrence, any accident, infection, fever, could leave them as Feres was now.
Such is what happens when we leave our godly home. Such is what happens when we live in the damned cold places.

Her thoughts stopped as Feres made a sound. Quiet, almost as nothing, a soft gasp. Ghos ceased his prayers. The priest returned to the head of the bed.

Elon waited for another sound. Any sound. She watched Feres's hand, rested atop the bed covering, still as the sculpture in Shai's room, and listened. Listened. Listened.

And heard nothing more.

The physician-priest brought together her hands so the cupped palms faced one another, still above Feres's face. Then she reached outward and opened them, sending Feres's soul to Ghos, his dominant.

Ghos lowered his hands, crossing them before his chest, capturing Feres's soul and holding it close. Then he turned to Elon, head tilting in question when she delayed drawing near.

With a stride so heavy her boots scraped the floor, Elon stepped deeper into the room, holding out her hands just as Ghos dropped his arms. Feres's soul fled to her for safekeeping, feeling as a weight within her broken hand, stopping her breath in her throat and causing her heart to pound, her own soul to ache. She walked to the side table and stood before the scroll. If she had stood on the godly soil of Rauta Shèràa, she would have walked outside and offered Feres's soul to the sky that in the end would claim them all. In its stead, however, she could only show him this construct of parchment, wood, and gilt from his birth house. Such would he inhabit until the next transport ferried him to the Shèrá homeworld, where a Temple propitiator would release his soul and send it upon its godly way.

Elon placed her hands upon the open scroll until her hand
ceased paining, and she knew that Feres's soul had left her. She then closed the cover.

The three of them stood in silence. Then the physician-priest stepped back from the head of the bed, and in doing so pronounced their vigil finished, and Feres's life officially ended.

Elon watched the priest's suborns enter with the floatbed. Muttering prayers, they removed the bed covers and lifted the remains of Feres's body onto the hovering platform. She contemplated the still face for the first time, and found it as pale and smooth as stone, strangely undamaged by the impacts that had destroyed his brain and body and forced him to the end of his journey.

Why?
Because Tsecha, whom she had fought, prophesied a joining of races, and because Feres, as a member of the security skein, had pledged to protect the holders of such chaotic opinion whether he believed in such himself or not. Feres, whose soul stumbled in blind pursuit of that which all godly idomeni merited without question, an orderly death.

An orderly death
. She followed Ghos from the room, and contemplated such.

Elon sat in the veranda enclosure, cradling her bandaged right hand in her lap. Her physician-priest had berated her about the damage she had inflicted upon herself, as she had expected him to. An assault to the soul, he had said, to rebreak bones that had already been set and mended. Thus had he shielded the hand in a poly case and bound it with strips of altar cloth. Thus, as well, had she come to sit upon the veranda in the middle of the damned cold night, with a command to pray to Shiou to bestow a sense of order upon her soul.

“There is no order.” Not in this place. This she now knew, and truly. Even Shai and Sànalàn, whom she trusted, had in the end shown more concern for trapping Tsecha in his admission of heresy than for the state of Feres's soul. From Shai, this might have been expected—she believed that the only way to prevail against humanish was to act as they did. Thus had she prohibited godly disputation in their presence, and altered her own posture and gestures so that even those who knew her since youngish days could no longer determine her thoughts.

But Sànalàn…Elon had expected more from the one who had displaced Tsecha. There had been no benediction at meeting's end, and no prayers for Feres. For one who en
joyed the special esteem of both Temple and the Oligarch, Sànalàn had shown herself most unworthy.

Elon lay back her head against the stone, blessedly warm from the heating devices set within. The veranda consisted of a series of enclosures such as the one in which she sat, walled-off spaces furnished with floor mats or low chairs and tables, where Vynshàrau could meditate in solitude or gather to engage in godly disputation. She could overhear one such debate, far off in one corner, a marvel of contention involving some point of Council law. She listened for a time, taking solace in the raised voices as she sometimes took such in the sound of the lake waves striking the shore, or the heat from a flame that reminded her of the blessed warmth of home.

“Elon?”

She flinched at the sound of her name. Such was not her habit to take to the veranda in the middle of the night. None whom she knew would think to look for her here—

“Elon?”

—except one.

“Ghos.”
Elon strained for some sound of movement.
“I am here.”
She waited.
“Ghos!”

A shadow fell across the enclosure entry. Then a looming figure in shirt and trousers, a boot in each hand.

“What good does it do for you to walk without sound when you shout my name and I must shout yours in return?” Elon pushed the low table to one side with her foot so that Ghos could unroll one of the mats and seat himself. “Your hearing has not yet returned from the night of the mine. You must go to your physician-priest.”

“I have had enough of priests.” Ghos lowered to a crouch, then fell back onto the mat, a sign that his muscles still ached from that night as well. “Hearing returns with time. This I know, and truly.”

“Not at all times, and if the damage is permanent, it must be repaired or you risk injury to your soul!”

“Hearing returns with time.” Ghos pulled on one boot, then the other. “Breaker of fingers.”

Elon bent one leg to her chest, sheltering her bandages from Ghos's view. “Why are you here?”

“To report of the embassy, which I could not do as we attended Feres.” Ghos took up the handheld that hung from a cloth wrap about his waist and activated it. “The border with Interior is active, as always. Their guards have not ceased patrol since the night Minister van Reuter faced arrest, over one of their years ago. Whatever they search for, they have not yet found it.” He tapped the display with his knuckle to change the entry. He spoke Vynshàrau Haárin, his voice completely stripped of gesture, as was his way when he reported to Elon. “The border with Exterior is quiet, as always. Interior should send some of their guards to them, I most believe.” Another tap. “The lake is as quiet. We detect demis in flight well north of here. Service exercises, one assumes, but we await confirmation.” Another tap. “The biodefense trials have been completed. The research dominants fear, and truly, that revised pink is not yet deployable throughout the embassy as a way of protection. It attacks all humanish biodevices evaluated, but it also damaged certain types of medical implants, as the material your physician-priest used to remend your broken bones. It attacks some of our device boards, rendering them useless. The biologics dominants fear contamination. Humanish have walked these halls since this building began its function. Vynshàrau have interacted with humanish, then entered the laboratories.”

Elon gestured in disagreement. Most unfortunately, the action required the use of her right hand. She could not curve her fingers properly, and felt the anger rise as Ghos bared his teeth. “The workers are trained in methods to prevent such cross-contamination, and laboratory air systems are configured to remove such as well.”

“One might believe.” Ghos deactivated the handheld and returned it to his belt. “It is my feeling that embassy systems have not functioned as properly since Dathim Naré's time. He understood them, how to maintain them.”

“Dathim Naré now lives over the water, Ghos.”

“He should return to this place, where he belongs.” Ghos raised his gaze and looked Elon in the face. “It is a matter of security, as the humanish say. We would be more safe if Dathim Naré resided here. Therefore, he must reside here.”

Elon regarded Ghos just as openly. “He will not do so, nor will Shai compel him. He is more outcast even than Tsecha, and thus she does not trust him.”

“Within the worldskein, such would not matter. He would do as he is bid.”

“We are not within the worldskein, Ghos.”

“No. We are outcast, beyond all godly bound.” Ghos looked away. Then he pulled the low table toward him and reached for his belt once more. “Feres's scroll has departed for the embassy dock at Luna. His remains have been burned and dispersed by Sànalàn's suborn, whose training I most doubt.” He removed a small bag, untied the opening, then poured the contents atop the table. Pattern stones, which caught what light there was and reflected it in ever-changing spirals of blue, green, and yellow.

“This is no place for games, Ghos.” Despite her displeasure, Elon found herself drawn to the stones, marking the patterns as they changed, watching Ghos align those that matched, then deducting the points he lost as the patterns changed before he finished.

“No. This is a place of discussion.” Ghos gestured frustration as the spirals altered to lines just as he constructed the final row. “And what will we discuss, Elon? How little Shai has informed us of her discussions with the Service humanish concerning the mine? How humanish reporters speak of Feres as though his error killed the technician Wode, and not the reverse?” His fingers played over the stones, never stopping even as he spoke, aligning them as quickly as the patterns reformed—whorls, sprays, lines—yet not completing the sets in time. “How much we are hated in this city, yet we stay? How with each humanish day, we lose more of our souls as the injury that is this place wounds us, never to heal? How we are damned?”

Elon picked up one of the stones, ignoring Ghos's mutter that she interfered with his game. “We are all those. There is nothing to discuss.” She turned the stone over, held it to the light. A yellow and blue whorl, tightening to a spiral, then swirling into concentric circles. “Is there a remedy? Such is what merits discussion, Ghos.” She bared her teeth as Ghos looked her in the face once more. She relished his strangeness, his grey eyes against paler skin than hers, much as his body-mother, who was as Sìah. “Ghos of the stones.”

Ghos did not respond to her humor. He concentrated on his patterns, as he always had when he contemplated action. “If the Oà challenge Cèel, we will be called back to Shèrá to fight. Oà must not succeed. They have never ruled as rau. They have not the experience to deal with humanish.”

“Oà will not challenge without the Haárin, and the Haárin follow Vynshàrau.” Elon set the stone back upon the table. “For now.”

Ghos's hand stopped in mid-play. “Explain.”

Elon watched the pattern of the stones change.
Ghos has completed only half the lines—he has lost too many points
. Yet she knew from his attention to her that he no longer cared of stones. “Tsecha repudiated Sànalàn when his plea to maintain Feres's life failed. He said he did not recognize her as his propitiator. Cèel will thus move against him. When the Haárin learn of this, and they will, some will remove their support from Cèel.”

“For what reason?”

“Tsecha is dominant of the Chicago Haárin, and as such is considered by most Haárin as their dominant as well. Thus will they turn from Vynshàrau and support the bornsect that Tsecha supports, whether such is Oà, or Pathen, or Sìah.” Elon touched her bandaged hand, which had numbed. “We will not know what may happen for some time. First Shai must tell Cèel, then Cèel must confer with Council and Temple. Then the word will spread throughout the worldskein, and all will know…” She listened for the sounds from the other side of the veranda and heard nothing. Did they listen
to her now as she spoke of Tsecha's heresy? “It becomes most as complicated.”

“Politics.” Ghos mixed his stones together, then waited for the new pattern to form. “Blood is cleaner.”

 

“—and it should be a pretty good party.” Cashman dragged the beer dispenser out of the skimmer boot and lowered it onto the two-wheeler he'd appropriated from the apartment building's utilities chase. “I invited the bullpen crew, and some of the folks from SysAdmin, and Court's bringing a couple of friends.”

Micah hoisted the last bag of food out of the boot and set it atop the dispenser. “The exam for Comtech One is in a few weeks. I need to hit the manuals.”

“That's my Fabe. They finally give us a day off from all this inquiry crap, and you decide to celebrate by studying.” Cashman slammed down the boot hood, then dragged the two-wheeler around in a wide circle and pulled it across the garage toward the lift. “This was the first day in two weeks that we didn't have to record some poor bastard's inventory screw-up or requisition miscalc or scheduling cross-over, and I for one intend to take full and complete advantage of it.” Without warning, he yanked the cart into a sharp turn and headed toward the locked cage that housed the building's delivery slots, row after tightly packed row of lockers set aside for packages and other bulky personal mail. “Only take a second. I haven't checked in a few days. Last time I let it go too long, my sister sent me real ice cream. Who the hell sends anybody real ice cream? Stuff melted. Stunk up my box for a week.”

“I remember.” Micah waited as Cashman keyed into the cage, then followed him in. His heart tripped—he felt a warmth spread through his body that was almost embarrassing.
It's been over three weeks
. He approached his locker as if it were a girl waiting for him, his emotions warring. Eager to the point of euphoria. Terrified enough to turn and run.

“Not even a snack food sample from the exchange.” Cash
man slammed his locker door closed. “I need to call my folks and make them feel guilty.”

Micah palmed open his locker—his hand sweated so much that he needed to press it down twice.
Please…please…
He caught sight of the familiar white mailer amid the trashzap chargers and building announcements, small and battered, bearing the mail code of an off-base holo Vee store.

“Looks like some of us have friends.” Cashman grabbed for the mailer, wresting it from Micah's grip.
“Whoa ho,”
he cried as he read the mail code, “I know what this is!”

Micah froze, his heart still pounding, mind racing.
This place gets too much traffic
. He glanced at the rows of lockers, the narrow aisles that separated them barely wide enough to walk down.
Couldn't hide a body here
. At least, not for very long.

Cashman gave the mailer closure a half-hearted tug, then tossed it back to Micah.
“Studying.”
He grabbed the two-wheeler's handle and pulled it out of the cage. “‘Space Vixens from the Planet Clitoris'—that's what you'll be studying.”

Micah gripped the mailer so tightly his fingers cramped, and still he held on. He wanted to shout
How dare you! That's what you think! You're wrong!

But a wilier part of him interrupted.
Let him think that. Let him think whatever he wants, as long as he doesn't guess the truth
. He tucked the mailer under his arm and walked out of the cage. Closed the gate after him. Headed for the lift only to find Cashman waiting, sly grin in place.

He stepped aside so Micah could board, then let the door slide closed. “So.” He watched the floor numbers creep upward. “Can I borrow it when you're done?”

Micah sighed. “Sure.” That meant he'd have to waste tomorrow's lunch break on a trip to the shop to search for something appropriately smutty.
It's called cover
, the wily part of him said. He thought of Captain Pascal and his mis
cellaneous accounts.
This is what it feels like
. He pondered it, and found it good.

 

Micah keyed into his flat, pausing until the door opened completely even as his nerves screamed. Stepped inside, waited for the panel to slide closed, then activated the lock.

“Space vixens.” Sometimes he despaired of his fellow Spacers, their lack of imagination. He set the mailer atop the storage cabinet. Then he hung up his coat, activated the kitchenette and bedroom lighting, all the usual first-few-minutes-at-home business that he did every day. He already wore suitable clothes, base casual pants and a heavy knit athletic pullover. To ease his grumbling stomach, he raided his cooler for a dispo of milk and a candy bar. Hunger dulled if not sated, he returned to the cabinet and picked up the mailer.