Skeen's Search (39 page)

The beacon from the surface was getting louder and firmer every moment. Hopeless glanced nervously at the swollen unhealthy sun with its continual small flares. “Look at that mess, sheeeyah, Virgin, I wouldn't put down dayside on a bet.” She listened. “Yeah, I know. It's going to be a little hell even at night.” She began concentrating fiercely on the readouts, nodding an occasional acknowledgment as the Virgin trilled, mouthed, muttered and otherwise conveyed data and instruction to her.

Skeen left Picarefy in orbit with Tibo and a rebellious Rostico Burn aboard to watch for swarming Junks, and came down, battered by winds and lightning, to a landing more precarious than she liked, hitting ground harder than was good for the Lander. She started the beacon, sat rubbing at her ribs where the safety straps had caught her. “My hide is going to be a crazy quilt when these bruises have a chance to develop.” The Gate was open, sending out its Call, reminding her of the dance it put her through the first time she jumped it running from a Junk hunting pack. “This will be over in a few more hours. Hoosh, I need some playtime.”

“I suppose,” Timka said absently. She'd done her shifts, got rid of her own small hurts and was Pallah again in pants, tunic, sandals. Her skin was rippling, the ripples matching the Gate Call's throb. That Call was painful, but no more so than the indecision that tugged her two ways at once. She stared blankly at the screen. A powerful wind blew outside, driving the silky dust before it, pale dust lit by the aurora's erratic dance and the lightning that punctuated the minutes as she and Skeen waited for the transport to arrive. She couldn't see the Gate and the nearest ruins were shrouded by the dust; more than dust shrouded the way she'd take from here, two tracks for her, dividing at the Gate. If she stayed this side, she'd have Skeen as sponsor, expediting her way through the universe of the Pits. Or the universe beyond the Pits, if she chose that route. She knew enough now to realize the value of the promise of help Skeen made her back when all this started. And she'd picked up several offers of employment from people she'd met in Sundari Pit. The possibilities were enormous and exciting. She wanted that life and she was going to have it. Sometime. Now? That was the question. If she jumped to Mistommerk, Lifefire solo knew when she could jump back and what she'd find on Aalda when she did. She had no doubt that the Ykx would open the Gate for her, she'd earned anything they chose to give her in the succeeding years and being Ykx they were good at paying debts. I've done it, she thought. I've made up my mind. When did it happen? How did I do it without realizing it? Going home. Going. Home. She'd come away before without really making a break from her roots, drifting, yes, that was it, letting events pull her along because she saw no viable alternative. Oh, yes, Min, wasn't that what you'd been doing all your life? Drift? You never cared enough about anything to fight for it, not even yourself. Habit and circumstances. Yes. No more. It was time she took possession of her past, her world, the place she ought to have in both. Then she could turn her back on all that and take possession of the promise here. Crossing to Mistommerk might mean decades over there, however long it took for Kildun Aalda to cool and the Junks to retake and remake it, but she had time; some Min lived for centuries and she meant to be one of those. Going home. After all this time, after all that had happened, after a hundred decisions made one way or another that unmade themselves after a sleep or two, it was done, it was finally done. She was mildly surprised to find herself convinced she knew, irrevocably unquestionably, where she was going, now that she was up against the edge and had to play or back off. Going home. Facing Telka and kicking her where it hurt, teaching her not to be stupid any more. Well, no. Stupidity is an incurable disease, isn't it? Djabo's feeble brain, as Skeen would say, this agonizing over come or go wasn't worth the sweat it wrung out of me. She sighed and put aside those fidgeting memories. All they'd give her was a pain in the gut and wind in the head.

Repellers flaring, whipping the powdery white dust into ever greater frenzies the transport drifted overhead then sank with ponderous dignity to the valley floor, its weight driving it down and down into the earth until the lower third was buried. Free electricity danced dangerously around the metal flanks of the transport until Hopeless scraped them clear and spun the charge away, drawing after it the pall of dust, temporarily clearing the air about the ship.

On the bridge Lipitero was shivering. Even through all that metal she could feel the Gate's Call throbbing in her bones. Her jaws trembled. She couldn't speak.

Zelzony watched the screen (dark ghostly lines of wind-driven dust intermittently lit by jags of lightning and changing tints leached from the auroras whipping hugely across the hidden sky), feeling awe and a touch of fear. In a moment or two she would be setting foot on alien soil, one of the first Rallykx to do so since the Landing on Rallen; despite the scouring gale she wanted urgently to be out there. Part of her restlessness was the Calling of the Gate, yet only a part. Zelzony rubbed thumb against fingers. Alien soil. No, don't think of it, think of the Gate. Lipitero had warned her about the Call, had warned all of them and Skeen had underlined what she said. It will net you like a fisher nets a school and pull you in and there's nothing you can do to fight it—don't waste your energy, go with the flow. It's all true, Zelzony thought, all these places and people I never quite believed in. In a few breaths, she'd see this Stranger's Gate, she'd step through it and look around so she could report to Zuistro on actualities rather than emotional certainties. She gazed at the screen and began dreaming again, dreaming of the time when Rallen would have other Gates, when Rallykx would go soaring in and out of them, free as the winds outside; she shivered, that simile wasn't exactly comforting when she looked at the scourbath of dust waiting for them, an Ykx caught in that would be driven by the wind's will, not her own. Ah, well, there was a green and pleasant world beyond that dust, and cousins waiting there for them. Improbable fantastic story, improbably fantastically true.

A courtesy beep sounded and Hopeless cleared a cell in the center of the dust storm, greeted Skeen and said, “I wouldn't like to repeat this landing when the weather's bad.”

“Try it in a lander, you'll learn the real meaning of insecurity. Your passengers ready to move?”

“Soon's they get the signal. I'm going to break out some spare cable, otherwise who knows how many we'll lose to the wind. My gauges here say fifty km gusting to seventy. How close is that thing?”

“Any closer and you'd be sitting on it. Your forward lock is about twenty meters away. I've got the exact point plotted, when you give me the go, I'll shoot it over to you. Um, you're probably feeling the Call.”

“Some. Virgin?” She listened. “Virgin says it makes her skin itch and the Eye has got the twitches. She wants to be one of those who crosses. You mind?”

“None of my business to say who goes and who don't. Listen, that cable of yours, have a couple remotes stretch it to the post and lintel arrangement that marks the Gate this side and anchor it, fix it so you can shoot pulses of current through it, something that will jolt but not crisp whoever catches hold of it. I was caught in that call and I couldn't break it even when it was scaring the shit out of me, and it wasn't a tenth that powerful then. Um. Let me know when the cable's up, I'm not moving till it's ready.”

“I hear. Consider it done.”

Breather mask on, muffled to the eyebrows to keep out as much dust as she could, Skeen let the Gate take her and lead her through the ruins; she stumbled into the cable, felt the mild shock and smiled when it temporarily muted the compulsion. After following the cable to the Gate, she plunged through and jerked off the mask. The glade hadn't changed in the past two years, though it was night now, not morning as it was when she and Timka left, a cool quiet spring night with a crescent moon just above the treetops. She wiped a hand across her face, stood slapping the mask against her sides, driving out spurts of powdery dust as Timka came lunging through, arms outstretched, eyes jammed shut behind the lenses of her mask. The little Min stripped, snapped into bird form and jumped clear of the cloud of dust she left behind. When she was Pallah again, she looked at her clothing, wrinkled her nose and grew a neat coat of silver-gray fur instead of getting dressed. She glanced at Skeen, but said nothing; she started prowling about the glade, her green eyes turning and turning, taking in the stiff silent trees, the white wall glistening off toward the west. Skeen saw her shiver as the Ever-Hunger reached for them both, she could feel it tugging at her and she knew Timka was more sensitive to it than she was, but the seductive compulsion had a tentative, rather lackadaisical feel, the Hunger had gorged royally two years ago when Lipitero loosed it on Telka and her followers, growing immense and sated, then the Sydo Ykx spanked it and slapped it back behind that prison wall. As a result, the greed and need weren't quite what they were when Skeen jumped the Gate the first time. Timka reached up, touched a spray of leaves, rubbed a foot across the grass, an odd bemused look on her face. Finding out there's no going home, I suppose; I couldn't wear this world for six months, given my choice. “Any of your cousins hanging about?”

Timka started, twisted her head around, moonglow glistening on wide eyes. “None close enough to bother us.”

“What about the Ykx? I thought they'd be swarming around here when the Gate opened.”

“They are. They're watching us now. Waiting. Hoping. Afraid to hope too much.”

Skeen fished in a pocket, pulled out a beeper. “Then I'd better signal Hopeless to send Lipitero and the Zemtrallen through. The sooner we get this organized the sooner we can get the fuck out of here.”

Timka watched Skeen pull the mask on again, then lean through the Gate, her head and torso vanishing into the swirls of dust. The Ever-Hunger started whining at her again, flesh in the Gate seemed to stimulate it; she ignored its tug and began shaking out her clothing.

Skeen drew back into the glade. “Five minutes.”

Timka nodded. She got rid of the fur and pulled on her trousers, ran her thumb along the closure, then pulled the tunic over her head. She dropped to the grass and sat cross-legged, gazing into the shifting darkness under the trees. All her certainties were gone, evaporated, that irrevocable decision made in the Lander proved as evanescent as all the other ones. Here she was, home. In her own Mountains. It didn't feel like home. Everything was familiar, yes, the smells, textures, the look of things, even the one thing she'd never thought to include in her list of sense impressions, the pull of Mistommerk on her body. (Do fish ever wonder about water? She didn't think so. She never thought about gravity. A silent tickling giggle. Not-something for after dinner conversation. Gravity. It was just there, like water was there for a fish). Yet … she had a puzzled sense that everything about her had acquired a patina of strangeness. She seemed to have imported it with her. Yes. I'm what has changed; I don't see with the same eyes. She closed her eyes, tried to regain that unthinking acceptance of home that was hers not so long ago. Maybe I just need a little time, maybe in a senn't or so I'll relax into inattention again and the strangeness will be gone. She sighed. She'd been so busy celebrating the way she'd grown, she hadn't stopped to think what that might mean when she came home.

Lipitero was the first through; Zelzony came after, then Bohalendas dragging a trolley with his cases on it, then Virgin and Giulin. Spitting and coughing, the Ykx unwound improvised wrappings and slapped dust out of their fur. The Hunger stirred, reached for them. Zelzony looked up, startled, Lipitero ignored it, Bohalendas didn't seem to notice it. Tongue clicking, eyes wide, her tiny bitterbrown body naked and sleek, apparently the dust had flowed around her without settling, Virgin ambled about the glade, head tilted to inspect the silent unmoving trees, then the clear night sky with its spray of stars and ascending crescent moon. Her the Hunger ignored; like the dust, it flowed around her without touching her. She moved to the edge of the deeper night under the trees, stood staring into the darkness and chattering in tone ripples with her accompanying Invisibilities.

Eyes still watering, Giulin threw off his wrappings and worked excitedly to clear his imager of the film sealed about it. If he felt the touch of the Hunger, he brushed it aside like a pesky gnat, too concentrated on his work to have time for anything else. He rubbed at his eyes, peered through the viewfinder, began entering images onto the matrix, Skeen squatting stolidly beside the Gate, stone patient, face unreadable, Timka beside her, leaning against one of the Gateposts, Virgin from the back, like a small strange idol carved from a brown tight-grained stone, silhouetted against a pale gray tree trunk, Bohalendas unpacking his cases close to the Gate, working with meticulous care, his face intent, Zelzony with head lifted looking wary and expectant, Lipitero waiting.…

Virgin laughed and ran across the glade to squat beside Skeen.

Two Ykx stepped from the thick blackness under the trees. A tall bronze and a shorter smoke. Lipitero moved away from Zelzony, stopped. For a long moment she and the newcomers stared at each other then the stiffness broke in a whirl of flightskins, laughter, tears, shouted questions that never got answered.

“One thousand,” Lipitero said. “Adults and children. Poets and farmers, med-techs and soardancers, more, so much more. Chosen by lot out of a throng ten times a thousand.” She turned, beckoned to Zelzony and when the Zem-trallen reached them said, “Affery and Charda of Sydo Gather, know Zelzony Zem-trallen of Rallen, representative of the Kinravaly Rallen, here to be sure we're not slavers selling Rallykx on the block.”

Affery extended his hand, fingertips curled up, claws retracted. “Be welcome and doubly welcome to Mistommerk, Zem-trallen. We hoped our sister would succeed, but O such a wild, long chance.”