Empire of Bones (32 page)

Sirru tried to sustain it, but it was hard. Once the proper network was established, he could detach himself from the
hi-nts
visions, but for now, he needed to act as nexus. And not only for the
kiwi
.

It was starting to work. He was beginning to receive frag-ments of
/information/impressions/emotions/

passed down the viral line that Rajira Jahan had so obligingly facilitated for him only a little while before.

The network must be growing by the day, he knew, as Rajira's lovers passed on the virus to their own sexual contacts. He glanced down at a hand that was not his own, fractionally reflected on a history of which he had had no experience, and felt fleetingly cold. The growth of the network made him even more anxious to reach a place of safety for the seed, which he could feel occasionally stirring against his side.

Sirru was so lost in speculation that he hardly noticed when the little procession came to a halt.

Jaya pushed her way to the front. Ahead, Sirru could see a door. Jaya wrenched at the door, muttering beneath her breath, then stood back and looked ruefully at her bleeding hands. Sir,ru stepped forward, intending to help, but the black-hairy person managed to open it after a brief struggle. There was a familiar smell of weed and river mud, which af-ter the dankness of the passage was almost sweet. They had reached the river.

Sirru waited patiently for the others to file outside, and then he followed them. Without proper
/sense of
place/
it was difficult for him to locate himself, but after a moment he rec-ognized the curve of the river.

Their little group had come east of the temple and were now standing on one of the huge stone landing stages that jutted out into the water. No one was about; only a
hiroi
of some kind—large, horned—splashed about in the shallows. The air was warm, and singing with in-sects. Above the landing stage, Sirru could see a representation of one of
the desqusai
Makers; following his gaze, Rakh smiled with a fierce glitter of teeth and spoke. There was a moment before the sense translated:
ISitalalMaker
of plague I
. Sirru hissed with pleased surprise. At last. It was becoming easier to understand the verbal speech of his new associates as his em-bryonic network fed information back to him.

Jaya spoke to Rakh, urgently, and Rakh pointed down-river. A barge was coming: a long, black craft covered with canvas. Baskets of some kind of fruit rested on its decks. Sirru watched the current rippling the water as it nudged the land-ing stage. Grimly and in silence, faya motioned her compan-ions on board. As he passed her, Sirru was aware of a strange constraint emanating from her, and it took him a minute to realize that she was trying to hide what she was feeling from him. She was not doing very well—chords of anxiety, distrust, and weariness flowed from her, with an ambiguous note of tension—but she was trying nonetheless. He couldn't blame her. He wondered uneasily how difficult it would be to convey his needs in verbal speech, and to learn what her needs were.

The barge rocked as Jaya leaped down off the landing stage. She and Rakh hustled the passengers beneath the tar-paulin. It was sticky and hot, and smelled of rotting fruit. Sirru was preparing to remain on deck, disguised, but Jaya's head went up with a jerk and she motioned to the tarpaulins.

"And you."

He understood that. Deeming it best not to argue, and pleased with his sudden comprehension, Sirru did as he was told—he ducked into the cargo hold. Jaya followed him. She was talking to Rakh, quickly and low, but Sirru could not grasp the complex drift of their conversation. Instead he sur-veyed his companions, one by one. Jaya's troops were settling themselves as comfortably as they could in the cramped space, but the
apsara
Rajira was sitting bolt upright on a box and staring at him. Her mouth was set and the dark eyes were anxious.

Sirru was still surprised by her sudden arrival back at the temple. He did not understand why she should wish to see him, being under the impression that they had completed a commercial transaction. It occurred to him, not for the first time, that he had seriously underestimated the extent of his ig-norance about this branch of his caste. He thought with un-ease of IrEthiverris, and of Arakrahali.

24. l'thaikurriye

The dark red walls of the cell were glistening. Already, Anarres could smell the thick odor of digestive enzymes, seep-ing through the chamber. It was growing hotter.

"Nowhere One!" Anarres cried. "Wake up!"

The Natural stirred, and groaned.

"Anarres?" He blinked up at the pulsing ceiling. "Where

"We're going to be eaten!" She added hastily, "Don't strug-gle, it'll make your bonds tighter."

"It's an
erychniss
," the Natural said, twitching. "Like the house."

Finally, Anarres remembered. "Your house wouldn't eat you, you said, because you'd altered your pheromonal signa-tures. That means we're safe!" But then she recalled some-thing else. "And you said it might not work with other houses."

"It seems we're about to find out," Nowhere One re-marked. His voice sounded as matter-of-fact as ever, but she could sense his fear. She swallowed, trying to overcome alarm. The smell grew stronger in the fierce, green heat. Something was bubbling up from the surface of the cell, and Anarres could taste acid in her mouth.

"Lie still," the Natural whispered. "Moving around will encourage it."

Anarres forced herself not to move. A thick, slimy seep was creeping under her calf. It burned.

"Nowhere One," she cried, and the Natural said, "Lie
still
."

The side of her shin felt as though it was on fire. She tried to glance down, to see what was happening.

The sheen of en-zymes covered the floor, gleaming like molten metal. As Anarres watched, the cell floor split from end to end, reveal-ing a mass of sharp spines, and the enzymatic gloss began to carry her toward it.

£5.

Th

e river

Jaya crouched in the prow of the barge and stared back in the direction of Varanasi. The city had been long swallowed by the haze, for they had left the Ganges now and were some miles up the Gomati River, heading toward Lucknow. Beyond lay the upper reaches of the Gomati, and from there Jaya had organized transport north to the mountains. She'd always had the time-honored instinct of the revolutionary: when trouble comes, head for the hills. They would journey up into the high barren country and the ruined fort, up in the passes that led to the lake of Saptarishi Kund. Amir Anand knew some of this terrain, but not all, and not as well as Jaya. Even if Anand was reinstated and they were discovered, the military would find it difficult to send troops into such coun-try. She was hoping that Kharishma, that unlikely and invol-untary ally, had managed to divert attention for the moment. Shiv, hunched over his satellite-linked laptop, had man-aged to tap into die military communications. It seemed that the actress had been acting on her own initiative, without sup-port from elsewhere, and that the Bharati military had now swarmed in and taken over the temple complex. Jaya won-dered uneasily what had happened to Ir Yth.

The palaces and ghats of Varanasi receded into the dark distance, and Jaya sent a brief prayer to Durga, Goddess of Vengeance:
Lady, be with me now
. The barge drifted along so slowly that it made Jaya tired. Even on the river, the night heat beat down on her, drawing beads of sweat. She had plaited her new pale hair and bound it into a knot at the back of her neck, but she still couldn't quite get used to her healed skin. It looked too young, as diough she were no more than a child, but it also seemed curiously resilient. Earlier, she had caught her hand on the door and torn it, but now the skin merely showed a faint white line, like an old scar. This, more than anything else that had happened in the last week, frightened Jaya. If it hadn't been for her mother's ring, she might have wondered whether it was her own hand at all.

She leaned her arms on the prow of the barge and stared ahead, squinting into the darkness. At the edges of the river, buffalo were snorting and splashing. A flock of cranes wheeled across the water. It was good to get out of die city, and back to a place where she could hear herself think. She re-membered the ashram, not as it was on the terrible night of the attack, but in the early years: a green place filled with peace.

The prow of the barge struck a cross-stream current and light was flung dazzlingly into Jaya's eyes. She seemed to see from a multiplicity of perspectives: all directions at once, dizzying and meaningless. It was as though she were back in those early days—not that long ago now—when she had es-caped from the hospital and experienced her visions of the ship. But there was not the same hint of strangeness about this sensation; this was familiar. Something was happening, Jaya thought, and as she did so the connection was abruptly sev-ered, with a suddenness that made her gasp. The boatman, a man for whom Jaya had done many favors, turned in alarm.

"Jaya Devi? Are you all right?"

"I'm not sure." She felt as though she had raised her hand and drawn a bolt of lightning. It was strangely like the touch of Ir Yth. "I think so."

"It is the heat," the boatman said, as if Jaya were royalty. "Perhaps you should go beneath cover. Rest for a while."

"Maybe that's a good idea." Suddenly, she wanted nothing more than silence. Shaken, she crawled beneath the tarpaulin. Her men were asleep. Rajira Jahan's perfumed head lolled back against the tarpaulin wall, but she was still awake. Jaya could see the glitter of an eye as she stared at Sirru. The alien appeared to be meditating. He sat in the lotus position on the boards of the deck, his hands curled decorously around one another. The golden eyes were open, but he did not blink as Jaya came in.

Reassurance emanated from him like a glow; she wondered whether he was comforting the others or him-self. Jaya settled herself on a mat on the floor and curled up. She intended to stay awake, but heat, fatigue, and stress melted the barriers away and she allowed the alien emotions to move through her, as gentle as cool water. Soon, she was asleep, and did not dream.

When she woke, it was early in the morning, and they had reached Lucknow. The alien was nowhere to be seen. Jaya scrambled to her feet, dazed with sleep, and pushed the tarpaulin to one side. Lucknow stretched along the banks of the river: a mess of apartment blocks and machine shops and old-tech industry, its improbable Victorian clock tower rising like a finger to the -heavens. Pollution hung like a veil above the city. At first, Jaya did not see Sirru sitting in the prow of the boat, but then he moved and she recognized him. He was silhouetted against the growing light in a series of mono-chrome images: black quills, pale skin, dark robes. He turned his head to greet her, his long neck extending farther than the human norm. He reminded Jaya suddenly of an owl. She went to stand by his side and grimly pointed beneadi the tar-paulins.

"Why can't you stay where you're put?"

I too hot/

He peered up into the light. He seemed utterly uncon-cerned by all that had befallen him, Jaya noted—not without a degree of irritation.

"I'm trying to help you, for God's sake," she said aloud. Then, belatedly, she realized he had understood what she'd said.

"Sirru? Do you know what I'm saying to you?"

Sirru did not reply. Rajira Jahan's tousled head appeared around the edge of the door.

"What are you doing out there?"

Jaya extended a hand to the courtesan, helping her through the doorway. Rajira's face glistened with sweat and she looked plumper and older; Jaya figured she must have deactivated the nanomask.

"What are we going to do now?" Rajira asked, coming to sit heavily on the bench.

"We head on, upriver. I have to find someone. Someone with transport. They should be waiting for us.

Then we go north, to the mountains."

Rajira said disconsolately, "And what are we going to do after?"

"We'll let 'after' take care of itself," Jaya said, unwilling to tell Rajira more than she had to. She had not given up the no-tion that the woman might be a spy. She added, "Don't worry: I'm good at making plans."

Rather to her surprise, the courtesan smiled. "I know. I saw a bit of that movie they're bringing out. There was a clip on the TV the other night. Very thrilling."

"That isn't me, you know," Jaya said, annoyed all over again.

Rajira grimaced, then glanced at her curiously. "Was it re-ally like that? Did all those things really happen to you?"

"Yes, they did, and no, it wasn't. It wasn't glamorous or ex-citing. It was just—we did what we did, that's all. We did what we thought we had to do."

"You know, my people are outcasts too," Rajira said after a pause. "And I believe some things will never change." She spoke with calm assurance, as if the world were set in stone. "I had a lover who was of a higher caste—besides my clients, I mean. It didn't work out. I believe now that such things are karma. I believe in the laws of the world. But I admire you for trying."

"Thank you," Jaya said, with sudden embarrassment. There seemed little else to say. Spice and smoke drifted out across the water. The barge veered north, taking them past the city.

2d
Ixhokanara lalace/ Littar lradesh

Kharishma sat sulkily at the edge of the veranda, staring out across the gardens. Tokai watched her for a moment, smiling, then turned to Amir Anand.

"Prince, you have excelled yourself." He bowed. Anand tried, unsuccessfully, not to look smug. "Where is the alien now?

"Waiting to see you."

"Take me to her."

It had been a very long time since Naran Tokai had experi-enced excitement. Usually, his emotions ran a subtle gauntlet from satisfaction to displeasure, but now he found that he was actually intrigued at the thought of meeting this Ir Yth. Who would have thought that incompetent Anand and mad Kharishma would between them have managed to snare such a prize? He followed Anand up into die decaying, airy heights of the palace. The alien was standing by the windows, her stocky figure draped in a pale and intricate sequence of folds.