The Loranth (Star Sojourner Book 1) (13 page)

He watched Kris N'Morth, the Lawkeeper, entered the hall from a secluded chamber, surrounded by his Seven Counselors and the Speaker. The Monarch was an old male, already past the time of geth, but the kin were reluctant to lose their wise Keeper of Laws and sustained him with their own energies. They gathered around him now in a great swarm, careful not to raise sand as he settled his frail body upon a polished stone dais.

The water grew warm from body heat. Haloes of phosphorescence swirled. When mind chatter finally stilled, the Council Speaker announced: “Our Lawkeeper's decision on the issue of Terrans is to wait.” She turned to a large stone covered by two veils made of rare shells. It is time for the Uncovering and the Calling of our new lineage kwaiis.

Wait!

A shouted thought from somewhere in the throng. Sye Kor emerged, swam to the inner circle and addressed the Speaker. “Did the Venerable Chosen One hear nothing of my experience with Terrans?”

“He heard,” the Speaker sent, her tail stiff, “possibly more than he needed to, Kor. His decision is to wait. Now return to the outer circles.” She reached for the veil.

“I've touched their beings!” Kor sent. “The Venerable Lawkeeper has not.” Kor turned from the dais and addressed the kin. “The longer we wait, the more entrenched and dangerous these Terrans become!”

Morth realized he had missed a very important earlier Meeting of Grievances.

“They already outnumber us with their uncontrolled breeding,” Kor continued, “and still their ships pour more of them into Keepworld. They are a plague upon our world and I have found a way to rid ourselves of them.”

There was a show of consent as some Loranths struck hands against sides, Morth noted with disbelief. There was also a low hum of disapproval carried by many throats. He watched the Monarch shift uneasily.

“If you want to know what they are,” Kor sent, “study their ruined homeworld. They make Tril and his deeper hordes seem like peaceful bottom feeders!” He swam among the inner circle, addressing influential kin. “If Lawkeeper in his wisdom refuses to send them all into geth, then I propose we turn them all into hunters. At least their short miserable lives would have purpose, and their greedy, aggressive natures a productive cause.”

Again the striking of sides, and the opposing murmurs of disapproval.

Morth was sorry now he'd deeplinked illegally with Kor. It left him powerless to speak at this meeting, unless he was prepared to admit his illegal act.

He wasn't.

“Enough, Sye Kor,” the Speaker warned.

Kor turned to the Monarch, his good left arm curled defiantly against his chest. “Will it be enough, oh wise Keeper of our Laws, when they raise an army and drive us into black water on our own world?”

The Monarch's sagging skin mottled darkly. “You've heard my decision, Sye Kor. I did not arrive at it lightly. And I am still in the process of studying their ways.”

“You've been studying their ways for forty shellless year!”

There was a gasp from the gathering at this indiscretion.

Kor turned to them, his good arm extended, palm up, in a peaceful gesture. “Now I've been threatened, my kin, with just such a march against us by the Terran called Jules. Must we wait until they kill one of us?”

“If they kill,” the monarch sent, “it will be on your head, Sye Kor, since you've kept them as hunter-slaves. And do not speak to me of genocide as though it were a blessing to bestow on the misguided race of Terra. Must I remind you that I have been chosen to judge?”

Kor rose to tower over the monarch. “Then I choose, oh venerable one, to judge for myself and whoever will follow me.” Kor remained still as he tel-probed the gathering.

If I had a heart, Morth thought glumly, it would tear itself apart at this rift. He knew Kor was tel-probing the large audience.

The Monarch's tail lifted and slammed down on the dais. “You would disrupt the Oneness over this small issue? Your own hatred is the only threat here, Sye Kor. Beware your followers don't follow you to a new lifebind among lowly bottom dwellers.”

There was silence, though Morth picked up uncloaked fear from his kin.

Sye Kor stiffened. “I will take a bottom dweller bind before I see Terrans overrun Keepworld.”

The Monarch rose from his dais and was steadied in the stirred drift of water by a Counselor. “I say your hatred of the Terran race is an aberration. They are not as strong or aggressive as you postulate, nor are we as weak and vulnerable as you allege. I fear that what you need to conquer is yourself, Sye Kor. What twisted your kwaii in this bleak direction?”

Kor snapped his tail, sending a wave against the monarch. “Your followers can't hold you from geth, old one. Perhaps a wiser Lawkeeper will make the correct decision for preserving Loranth ways.” He turned and swam toward the portal.

“Kor!” the Monarch sent.

Kor paused.

“Don't think to destroy the Terrans you hold, as you did their first pioneer ship. In your supposed fear of Terran aggression you may work for its accomplishment.”

“I fear no Terran,” Kor sent. “Hunters belong to those who capture them. They don't fall under your Law!”

Morth watch Syl Bayeth, a stunted female with ragged gills, as she followed Kor to the portal.

“Send me your carrier,” Syl Bayeth told Kor. “I will carry your genes in a child, if you wish.”

Kor studied her with his mouth twisted in an expression of disdain. He nodded and turned to leave.

“Heed my words, Sye Kor,” the monarch sent after him. “Do not destroy the Terrans you hold on pain of geth in a lowly bottom form!”

“Heed my acts!” Sye Kor threw back, but Morth felt Kor's sting of fear on a bottom dweller's lifebind.

No kin followed Sye Kor as he left the Sacred Grotto.

Why was I angry? I couldn't remember. Dreams? Oh yeah. Nasty ones. And a bed like rocks. Air mattress must've deflated again. Never really liked camping out, but if I was going to find my mammal… I rolled to my back and blinked up.

Shit!

Waking up to nightmare. I laid an arm across my eyes, feeling bleak. If I slept again, would it all go away? I thought not, but sleep was such a balm, small pauses in our inexorable march to the cliff. Maybe the only sanity. If so, wasn't death the ideal?

“Stop playing the martyr,” I mumbled to myself. “Where there's life, you know.”

I felt my wrist and remembered that the watch was gone. How long had I slept? Days! My stomach retorted. Maybe one, though. There is no day or night, here in the cave of the damned. But I needed water, and soon. I stared at the scummy pond, laced with Loranth chemicals. It would've been nice to have a leaky roof.

Take it minute by minute, Rammis, second by second, if need be. You're a survivor, for all your attempts at achieving oblivion. Let the dead past do its thing. Let your sister's soul rest without you dragging her all over creation begging for the forgiveness she'd surely grant if…if something held after death, and if that something held memory. If only she hadn't been so young, so trusting, so…

“Goodbye, Ginny. Rest in peace, little sister.”

I sat up, felt dizzy and blinked it away to focus on a large white shellless snail with one stubby arm and one blackened stub for an arm. Is that what made him so nasty? He reclined on rocks while the family groomed him.

ChristLotus!

Kor was out of water. I'd never get another chance like this. My breathing quickened with the effort of canceling a rush of thoughts, a sense of urgency. Where was my harpoon? Goddamn. I'd left it broken in Yeth F'Aron's tail.

Kor lifted his head and turned his faceless face in my direction.

Big night on the town?
I thought at him casually, stretched and stood up. After a short trip to the “latrine,” one of many depressions away from the center of things, I strolled back, picked up a pebble and rolled it under my tongue. No substitute for water, but it helped. Learned it from an old Indian in Arizona. Besides, it made my movements seem natural as I searched for a weapon. Could I grab a large rock, get to him and smash his skull before he reacted with tel or a protruded tentacle? If I succeeded, how would the family respond?

Desperate plan? Yeah.

I eyed a flat heavy stone, walked over, sat on it and rocked back. Yes! It was loose. I stood up, my heart slamming out Morse code:
Are you fucking crazy?
I turned to grip the stone and froze.

A wet nose had nudged my right buttock. We had no dogs in the family. I turned slowly. Pike was crouched stiffly beside me, crocodile mouth wide. I glanced at Kor, cursed and sat down.

“Nice reptile, Pike. Easy, boy, girl.” I patted its head. “Whatever the hell you are.”

I draped my arms over my thighs, let out a long breath and watched, with futility burning holes in that shield we call hope, as the family worked on their Master.

It is a terrible thing to see one's own race reduced to slavery, but to see them take on that role with enthusiasm and dedication, though chemically induced, left me feeling hollow.

I rubbed my eyes and watched Kor.

Christine's ribs showed through rags as she knelt and carefully washed folds of skin around Kor's exposed drooping gills with a piece of rough animal hide. Her elbows, knees and bony hips were bruised raw. I shouldn't have felt sorry for her, I suppose. She was the enemy too. I glanced at Pike. They all were. But Christine looked so lost in her obsession with the Loranth. I'd never known her in her normal state of mind, and the way my plans kept taking left turns, I doubted I'd ever get the chance to.

I watched her scrape flaking skin from the edges of Kor's long rubbery lips. He parted them, showed hooked fangs, and I realized how deadly were those jaws.

She stopped to pour water from a bowl over his gills so he could breathe on land. Thad had taken off his slicker and he hummed while he worked in shorts and a loose shirt, rubbing Kor's body with a slab of pumice that peeled dead skin from the base of the slug's tail and around the sensitive lateral lines.

Carefully Thad combed down bristly guard hairs on his Master's back, looking for all the world like some bizarre hair dresser.

Stan had drawn the short straw, I guess, and was hunched over Kor's tail. Rolls of fat made Stan appear slug-like himself as he dug parasites from moist skin folds and fed them to Buj.

Buj's oil sacs must've been full again. He rubbed kittenishly against Kor's flank. Kor reared up, threw off Stan and Thad, and smacked Buj with his tail. The crotemunger rolled, landed on his feet and shook himself. Streaks of sand marked oil patterns across his back, so I guess he'd accomplished his purpose after all. He trotted to Pike, his hindquarters shaking, and tried to sit down. But his rear mock head had partially inflated and he finally gave up. I smelled rancid oil, drew in my legs and stared at their Master.

What are you, Kor?
I sent the thought,
without your underlings?
And was surprised at the answer:

We are the Lords of Keepworld, intruder. The regents of this world your kind has invaded and desecrated.

Christine walked by to refill her bowl from the pond and threw me a sullen look.

“Why the shave and manicure?” I asked.

“He's preparing to mate.” Her voice was hushed.

I looked around. “With what?”

She returned with a full bowl and paused. “Do you enjoy playing the renegade while the rest of us perform our duties? Is that it? Just a juvenile game with you, Mister Peter Pan?”

“The cut on your cheek is infected, Chris,” I told her. “It should be lanced and cleaned.”

“How do you justify your existence?” she asked.

I lifted my shoulders, let them drop. What was the use? She'd help kill me and feed me to the Loranth if that were his wish. I had a terrifying thought. Was he saving me for a Terran feast? A human on a spit? Was
that
why he tolerated my presence? I felt reduced myself to the reptilian brain core of survival reflexes. I put my face in my hands. God! Better a quick death than waiting to be eaten alive! I'd seen mice trembling in corners of snake cages. I heard Christine put down the bowl.

“Jules?”

I glanced up, was surprised to see her extend the bowl to me. “It's not too late.” She nodded toward Kor. “Join us, brother,” she whispered. “The Master is forgiving.”

I looked at him, sprawled there on his altar of rocks like some smug demigod whose hunger for sacrifice could never be appeased, and shook my head.

She spilled water as she strode back to him.

Pond water stirred. I stood as something pallid emerged.

It was about two meters long and looked like nothing so much as a loaf of unbaked bread left to rise too long, then thrown repeatedly against a waffle-patterned wall in an attempt to bring it down to malleable size. Was this the female of the species?

I almost felt sorry for Kor.

The family backed away and retired to their niches, all but Pike, as it…she, came onshore and lifted her front end to scan. Her sides were ringed with sharp talons. Her sensory pits were scattered across her body. There was a puckered slit in her underbelly. Except for that, she looked like Kor might have in a larval stage. Was this some incredible form of neoteny, a permanent juvenile state limited only to the females? She lowered her body, moved snail-like toward Kor, and climbed up his tail.

Then I felt it.

How to describe the sensation? A song unheard? Notes distilled from the silent music of yearning and having, seeking and knowing? It was a thing outside human ken. Time become a siren instrument, played by the experiences of all Loranths back to the awakening of race on a sunlit coral shoal. Singers become song become…an intertwining of beings, till for a moment they shared… Words are such poor symbols for the stuff of experience. I hung poised in an aura of Loranth Oneness. That's as close as I can come to it.

I dipped into their world as they spun those perfect harmonies, like a swimmer blindly plowing the surface of some fantastic underwater seascape, feeling silken threads of water, knowing that close by, so close, is a texture of joy glimpsed only occasionally through great music or art or nature or an inner stillness of mind. We had no center, we Loranths, no thought now. We were…were pure being. And joy flowed outward, played song against the walls of our mortal existence.

The female clung to Kor with her talons dug into flesh as he undulated against her. I waited, anticipating climax. What would that be like? And then they blocked me out.

My mind went reeling back to leaden reality. Walls. Walls!

I remembered who I was.

I watched them part. Kor's genitals slipped back into a bulging sheath in his upper tail. The skin around it was punctured and seeped blood. The female moved off toward the pond.

ChristLotus! What was I waiting for?

I think Kor knew my thought even as I formed it. But he was too spent to react fast. I, on the other hand, was scared glotless. I made it to the female before she made it to the pond or Kor reacted. I glanced back quickly. Pike, gone torpid, turned toward me like a toy with low batteries.

The female hunched herself when she saw me approach, then sprang toward the pond. I threw myself at her, grabbed her by the scruff of the neck or thereabouts, and clung to lashing muscle and cartilage as her tail and talons whipped air.

We rolled into water. She swam down, trying to pull me under, while I swam up and dragged her toward the surface.

My head was underwater more than it was above. Finally I wrapped my legs around her thrashing body and broke her swimming rhythm. I had one free arm, which was more than she had, so I paddled us back toward dry ground.

Kor moved toward me like a large walrus. I felt strangely calm as I pulled her out of the water. Too calm. The scene took on a dreamlike quality. I didn't really want to oppose Kor's wishes, or the female's. Did I? So much simpler just to…

The neurochemical. Goddamn it! The body absorbed it through the pores of the skin too.

Kor was getting close. I scrambled ashore, helped by a dose of adrenalin and my own will to fight the chemical, got to my feet and lifted the female high over my head.

God, she weighed.

I glanced down at the rock slab I stood upon with spread legs. Kor knew my intention. I nodded toward the sealed entrance. “Open it!” The chemical-induced brain fog was dissipating fast, but my muscles burned and I couldn't hold up her twisting body much longer.

Kor knew the murder I felt in my heart. There was only one way she was coming down. He believed my desperate determination and made no attempt at tel control.

I felt the female's thoughts, strangely vague, not really comprehending this turn of events, childlike in her confusion and fear. I set aside a paternal response as a thick white liquid seeped through my fingers.

“Open it now, Kor!”

It remained sealed. How important was this female to him? My arms trembled with fatigue. The family, I realized, was quietly surrounding me.

“Jules!” Stan called, “why don't you put her down and we'll talk.” He came closer, held out one of Silk's thigh bones as an offering. Or a weapon.

Christine prowled around to my back. Pike stood his ground, with Buj bristling behind him. I didn't see Faun, but there was movement in a dark alcove.

“Call off your zombies, Kor!” I kept to rocks as I backed toward the tunnel. “Open it or you'll be scraping her brains off a rock!” My shaking arms began to lower of their own volition. Still the tunnel remained closed.

I'd lost! I'd done all I could. But I'd lost. It was still better than waiting to be eaten alive. I lifted the female higher. This Loranth was dead meat! I chose my rock, but the ground shook and the entrance split open. Thad jumped aside.

Intruder!
Kor sent.
I am become the searcher. I will quest after you, tear your kwaii from your body and force it into the lowliest creature that crawls through bottom slime! And when that small life is done, I will devote lifebind to finding you another suitable live casket in which to imprison your kwaii.
“Kwaii?” I asked.

Your spirit essence, blindcraw.

“Yeah, you do that.” I tucked the squirming female under an arm, picked up a rock to bash her skull should Kor change his mind, and started through the tunnel. “And bring your friends! You're going to need the help, you fucking slug!”

I came like Orpheus out of Hades, dragging a reluctant Eurydice by the tail, and set her down to rest my arms for a while. How far could Kor's tel power extend? Fuck him. I drew in untainted air and felt the exhilaration of freedom. The sun welcomed me with ruddy gifts of warmth across my skin. Somewhere an animal trumpeted. A grunithe.

Gretch!

I squinted into the glaring afternoon light and saw her lumbering down from Christine's tent. Behind her was a human.

Jack!

Why was he always around when I didn't need him? Dammit! Whenever you don't want a spiker! Kor could mindgrab him this close to the lair.

Release Carrier now,
Kor sent.

“Not yet, snail, she makes too good a hostage.” Carrier? I was learning more and more about Loranths. Was she an intermediate sex? Sort of takes the fun out. Then I remembered my experience during their mating.

You're free for now, Terran,
Kor sent.
You have my word. Release her!

I smiled. “I have your Carrier, and I have this rock.”

She is a water being!

“I'll dip her gills.”

If she enters geth with my seed, so will your friends! Even before you.
Considering the emotion behind the thought, geth couldn't be some longed-for experience. Probably death. But he didn't sound convincing. Was it a bluff?

“I'll free her in time.” I smelled rotten almonds as Gretch trotted up. She tossed her head and snorted on me. I wiped my face. “I'm glad to see you too, girl.” She licked my arm with a tongue as abrasive as a cat's.