Skeen's Search (7 page)
Authors: Jo; Clayton
Tibo started walking again. “No. Can't trust her now. She got it in her head you're bad for me. She'd blow the whole to Cidder if she could arrange to keep me loose and she's getting soft enough to believe his promises. Sorry, Skeen.”
“You didn't know. Besides, according to the Buzzard it's clear to Riddler's Pit by now that Skeen's prowling after Rostico Burn and Rallen.”
He reached round her waist, pulled her close. “Ah, the drawbacks of fame.”
“You ought to know, you pirate, seeing what happened when Tibo's Streak ran out.”
Both laughing, they pulled apart and moved to the slideway in the center of the Way, riding it from the Suburbs to the Bubble where Angy Darling ran her multiverse.
SCENE: | garden room on the ABODE OF WHISPERS. Hopeless lies on her back on pseudo-moss beside a narrow stream |
Dwarf trees, piles of artfully weathered stone, a stepping stone path that wound between patches of lawn, bamboo, ornamental shrubs, flower beds. Overhead, a patch of daylight glow crawling across the ceiling like a miniature sun. | |
The Ship has three sections. Garden Room for living and sleeping; Cargo Bay, which is about twice the size of this garden room; Bridge, which shifts about, tiny bubble inside this large bubble. Except in emergencies, the Abode flies herself. | |
Skeen sits beside Hopeless. | |
Timka cat-weasel is prowling restlessly under the trees, the subtle shifting of her coloration making her difficult to see. She fits with the half-wild look of this garden tucked into the belly of a star ship |
Skeen rubbed at her knee. “It'd be handy if the Eye would tell us where Rallen lies.”
Hopeless stretched and yawned, scratched at her stomach. “Eye tells what Eye wants.” She smiled vaguely in Skeen's direction, went back to watching Timka prowl. “Give her to us,” she said.
“Ask her. She's no slave of mine. She'll do what she pleases.”
Ti-cat came gliding into the small glade, crossed to Hopeless. She made a sound like a cross between a purr and a hiss, set a foot just above Hopeless' navel, extruded her claws enough to prick, then went stalking away, tail switching in whip snaps back and forth.
Skeen chuckled. “You've just been turned down.”
“Hylattis! she understood me.” Hopeless sat up, wrapped her arms about her legs. “I keep forgetting she's more than beast.”
“The body might change, the mind doesn't.” Skeen looked after Ti-cat, frowned. “I'm not sure that's right; degree of intelligence doesn't change, but I think the nature of the beast influences her outlook. Hmm.”
“Where is your other strange one?”
“Petro?” In the workshop making more modifications on Picarefy. The two of them, you can't pry them apart.” She sighed. “I'm divorced, Hopeless, that's what it is.”
“To be saving a species.” Hopeless sighed with pleasure. “If we manage this, Skeen, if we really can do it, maybe I'll think about another name.” She looked ecstatic and just for an instant madder than the Virgin. The look faded, she couldn't sustain the effort. “You're going to pull Rostico Burn out of Pillory.”
“Looks like I have to.” Skeen sighed. “Otherwise I could hunt the Veil for a century and come up empty.”
“Virgin has found a transport. Needs some fiddling, we'll take it round to Chanix and have Maskin run his tentacles over it; he works fast. Where should we meet?” She thought a moment. “And when?”
“Rallen's somewhere in the Cluster, not much question of that, and there's Abel Cidder to think about. Picarefy ran a plot for me when I managed to get her attention,” Skeen chuckled, “and came up with three Pits that won't mean too big a swerve from the Pillory/Cluster line. Nymph's Navel, The Orphanage, Revelation. I know the Navel, I never got to Revelation and made The Orphanage just once. I've got no preference. Pick one.”
Hopeless thought a moment. “No,” she said, “no reason I can think of to choose one over the others. VIRGIN!”
A Disembodied Voice whispered beside them: “Revelation.”
“Skeen?”
“Fine. Anything I should know about the place?”
“It's more a pimple than a Pit. Not much there. A small multiverse, some trading posts, a fuel dump. And the Hermit. Virgin and him have had some long loud arguments, you'd swear they're ready to chew each other into hamburger, but they enjoy it. Fun to watch.”
Better you than me, Skeen thought. “How long will the fiddling take?”
“Maybe a month standard. What about you?”
“I can't see how I could do the dip under three months standard, travel times included.”
“No chance you can ransom him and save this?”
“Tibo says not. Mamarana thinks we can, she's offered to put up part of the price. Trouble is, she's hostile to anything I do, better we let her go on thinking that's the way we're handling it.”
A Disembodied Voice spoke beside Skeen's ear. “Good. Cidder is sniffing close to Mamarana's webs.”
Skeen tried not to twitch. She'd been here enough to become accustomed to the oddities, but the Abode more often than not was too weird for her comfort.
“That's settled then. Three months after Picarefy unties here, we'll be in Revelation with the transport, waiting. We'll wait another two months before we give it up and go on to something else. Agreed?”
“Agreed. Um ⦠watch out for Cidder.”
“The Eye will take care of that.” Hopeless laughed. It wasn't a happy sound. She stretched out again on the pseudo-moss and closed her eyes.
Having nothing more to say, Skeen got to her feet. “Ti-cat, let's go home.”
“Well, Pic?”
“The Ykx were a sneaky lot, Skeen. If the Ralleners are like them, you better watch out. When Petro saw the schematics Hopeless brought over, she laughed. Said Kliu screens are so coarse she doesn't see how they keep anyone out. The Lander is finished except for the engines, they have to be reset, and Petro says she can use some extra hands. Which means you, Skeen, or Tibo. Timka won't do. Nor my remotes. Takes a feel we just haven't got.”
“Can we get started while we're working on the engines? It's seventeen days to Pillory. Makes me nervous hanging around like this, Djabo's twitches, I hate, I loathe, I abominate deadlines.”
“I'm fueled and reamed out, that's all right, but I made a package deal with Patipsa for supplies and half of it's still to come. Tipsy promised on his father's nose I'd have the rest by tomorrow.” Picarefy's lights danced and there was laughter in her voice. “I said I'd turn Ti-cat loose on him if he let us down.”
“Tomorrow,” Skeen said. She ran her hands through her hair, fluffing it out from her head in spikes. “Tomorrow.” She looked at her hands. “I think I'll take a bath.”
PART II: THE RESCUE
PILLORY
The Pillory System controlled by the Kliu Berej, Pillory operated as a prison planet, the asteroid belt worked by Miners under contract to the Kliu.
gravity: 2.75 g standard
diameter: 17,384 km
three moons: (unnamed) 1,200 km, 1578 km, 939 km.
hollowed out and converted into guardian fortresses, part of a net of spyeyes woven about the world. |
Sun: a red giant alone in the Sword Rift two other planets (unnamed) one inside, one outside the orbit of Pillory.
Asteroid Belt between Pillory and the outer planet, a heavily populated Belt, rich with heavy metals. Because the Kliu are uncomfortable in freefall or minimal gravity, they have contracted out the mining rights to the Belt and there's a lot of coming and going.
Kliu Berej: | Lacertine centauroids; six short stubby legs supporting a broad, heavily muscled body; squat torso; short arms; wide eight-fingered hands, three of the fingers capable of opposing the others; boxy head, small eating mouth, much larger, breathing and speaking mouth; huge ears, mostly rolled into minimal size, leaving only the ear hole open, when unfurled, they are mobile scanners each larger than the head and capable of hearing into the electronic spectrum; eye, round and tender as with most nocturnals and those who live with dim suns. |
Prison planet: | A large diamond-shaped island in the center of Pillory's major ocean with a wall across the waist. To the north is the recreation area where the Kliu on duty in the fortress moons go to recover from the stretches of low gravity. To the south of the wall is the administrative center. |
Many small island chains as if some catastrophe had drowned whole continents leaving only the tips of the highest mountains above water. One major land mass like a misshapen dumbbell straddling the equator. Most mines and farms in the Northern section. Most of the prisoners are kept here, though a very special few are squirreled away on one of the islands. | |
The prisoners capable of working in the mines are sent there without regard to training or skills. Those of lesser strength work on the farms or in the smelters. The weakest work as clerks and cleaners and in other service jobs. | |
Bribery and other corruptions are close to nonexistent; There is nothing a prisoner can offer any Kliu that would make it worth the danger of dismissal and being sent back to the overcrowded homeworld with its miserable underclasses or to the few colonies the Kliu Berej have managed to acquire where life tends to be short and harsh. In addition to the dangers in dealing with the prisoners, the Kliu regarded what they were doing as herding animals; one did not enter into negotiations with beasts unless one was a pervert of some kind. | |
Life for the prisoners was dull slogging work that wore the body out; even the strongest seldom lasted more than a dozen years in the mines; those who did lighter work had to cope with the gravity and lasted little longer. | |
While no prisoner had ever managed to get off-world without being ransomed, a slow trickle of men escaped from the mines and the farms into the wildlands where they managed to scrape a precarious existence ignored by the Kliu. They were a problem time resolved; there were no females of any species on Pillory; the Kliu refused to take them. The native beasts (no intelligent lifeforms there) were budders and splitters and completely asexual. The escapees went where they chose however they could, made some minor raids on Kliu installations and shipments, never sufficient nuisance to justify hunting them down. |
Rostico Burn had been nearly two years on Pillory when Picarefy slid undetected into a quiet section of the Asteroid Belt.
Picarefy's lights seemed to blush as she showed off the warroom she and Lipitero had put together somehow in the intervals between other activities. “A surprise for your birthday,” she told Skeen with patent insincerity, “nothing important.” With a sigh in her voice, she added, “We haven't had time to finish incorporating some of Petro's innovations, so there are blind spots, but she's promised to work on that while we're splitting to Rallen.” Her lights danced with pleasure, an exuberance that leaked out into the room and tickled Skeen into grinning. “I can see farther and faster than any ship living,” she exulted, “I can wiggle through any screen I ever heard of and maybe some not invented yet. Petro has, listen to this, worked out a way to slice loose from set buoys if there aren't too many of them and ⦔ dramatic pause ⦠“even a way of maybe snapping back at a snagship.” Remotes came rolling in with tea and sandwiches, laid out a light meal on the handsome conference table that took up part of the space in the smallish room. “Sit and let Petro tell you about it.”
Being particularly fond of rare roast beef sandwiches, Lipitero piled them on her plate and spooned honey into her tea before she said anything. Tibo was amused by the situation, preferring to sit back and watch it unfold without getting involved. Timka too had nothing to say; the sleep teacher had inserted enough information into her head to give her some grasp of what was being offered, but none of it was felt-knowledge. Skeen was exasperated and amused, but far from detached; she had too much riding on the utility of Lipitero's offerings. After several minutes of silence filled with the soft sounds of eating and drinking, she said, “Well?”
Lipitero put down the remains of a sandwich, patted at her mouth with her napkin. “I'm not sure how much you know about the old Ykx?”
Skeen made an impatient gesture. “Assume I know anything you told Picarefy.”
“I thought as much, but I wanted to be sure. Two things you should keep in mind. My ancestors turned elusiveness into a high art, and they lived in a region that had at least one minor war going at any given moment and sometimes several.” She took a sip from her tea bowl. “There was always the chance one side or another was out tracing ships, and they weren't particular whose, and snatching them into realspace which was hard on the ships and crews and often deadly since the hooks were clumsy things and one time in three exploded the fish rather than reeling it in. They kept refining the snatchers, first one species then another, and the old Ykx fought to keep up with them. So. The Remmyo dug out and duplicated for me the flakes we had from the time before the Gate; that's his joychoice, he's a student of ancient things. On Mistommerk we didn't have much use for a lot of that technology.” Again she stopped talking, sipped at the cooling tea. “No starships, for one thing. Lifefire's blessing on his playtime, otherwise no one would have remembered those cobwebby remnants and the information on them. Picarefy helping me, I've been reading them and transferring them into her files. So. We came across some of those old devices the then-Ykx used to defend against being snagged. Picarefy ran them against what data she had on this day snagships and out of this, that and the other, we think we've cobbled together something that just might work, it should induce waves of instability in the gravity sink which we hope would eventually blow the generator. Some hope. Better we don't have to test it.”