Shadowkill sq-3, page 5
part #3 of Shadith's quest Series
Half a dozen bewildered Pandai four square brown men, two women, one young and pretty enough in a chunky way, one an old hag with snag teeth and coarse white hair and everything drooping. At first they seem confused and uncertain, then terrified, then they huddle together, pressing against each other.
“The locals were dead in less than an hour. They just sat down, closed their eyes, and died. The filtors cremated them, burned out the Cell. More Pandai showed up. Didn’t do anything, just squatted in a circle staring at the dome.”
Men with heads shaved and blue markings on their faces. The POV sweeps around the, circle, hesitating a little at each so each impassive face is clearly visible.
Someone from the dome begins shooting. Five Pandai fall over. The rifle explodes in the hands of the shooter. Five new Pandai take the places of the dead.
“The filtors started dying. The shields went down. Instruments and weapons had their charges drained without warning. Or the weapons exploded, killing anyone who happened to be about. The dome was rotting about the filtors. They were rotting, too. Team leader gathered his men and got offworld; just barely got off. He wanted to drop a hell-burner on the place, but the ship’s captain shoved him and the remnant of his force into isolation. Later the captain had to put them all in restraints, then drop them into stasis pods when they continued to deteriorate physically and mentally. They were all dead when time came to remove them. Again with nothing to show why.”
POV moves from pod to pod, showing bloated, rot-blackened corpses.
“Whoever can control that force… mp! I leave to your imagination the possibilities. Unfortunately there seems to be no way to exploit the Pandai without losing men and materiel. We want you to devise a way we can handle them and their weapon. Turn them around so we can live down there and take control of that world.
2
They put Ginbiryol Seyirshi in an austere cell that was a combination office and apartment and gave him a novice to run errands.
“Just let me know what you need. Send him,” a wave of his hand at the young Omphalite, “for me if there’s any difficulty,” the Chom told him. “I’m sure you understand the limits on what you’ll get. You can have as much freedom as is prudent. Outside of that, name it and most likely you can have it.”
##
“We collected the researcher from University as soon as we became interested in Bol Mutiar,” the Chom said. “And all his records. You’ll find them here.” He tapped the bezel of a thumb ring against the canister of flakes he’d placed on the workstation desk. “No, you can’t talk to him. There was a regrettable accident with the probe and we had to dispose of him. I put a treat in there for your spare time. The distorter did little to hide the smirk in his voice.
Ginny ignored it. A pinprick. A nothing. His eye was fixed elsewhere.
“While the girl was in the hold,” the Chom said, “we kept her under observation, a mosaic from those flakes is in the can, labeled as such, along with the record of her interrogation and the mindwiping session. Enjoy, my little friend.”
Ginbiryol Seyirshi settled to a brood over the flake player and the canister.
He had no intention of going anywhere near Bol Mutiar, all he wanted was access to a ship, but he went carefully through the data the Omphalites provided, made copious notes. They were watching him, they knew they’d broken him, bought him. He could feel the watchers preening themselves and despising him; he wanted to keep that complacency pristine.
Bol Mutiar. A dull planet. If he had been looking for a target world for one of his productions, he would have dismissed this place. It was monochrome, no individuals, only nodules on an invisible root system, no drama, no passion. Just rot. And there was nothing aesthetically satisfying about rot.
##
Ten days later, when he finished the notes, he had found nothing to change his mind.
He leaned back, contented with what he had done. Not enough data in their files. They would have to send him out, send him with his tools. Yes. Nineteen days through the insplit. It was not much, but if he could not get control of the ship in that time with that much materiel at hand, he deserved whatever this lot threw at him.
His contentment soured as he watched Mutiar hanging against the spray of stars. What Omphalos was forcing on him was a wretched perversion of his art. When he destroyed worlds or societies, he was simply taking them to their ends in an act of creation that made those ends more profoundly important, more coherent and meaningful. What he did had nothing to do with control or oppression. No. He set free. He sanctified. There was a purity in death, there was none in tyranny.
Yes. Omphalos had given him the subject of his next production, but it was not the one they thought.
It was a delightful irony. Savior of the Universe. The Deathmaster Dancing to the Rescue of Life. He smiled, pleased with the wordplay.
He thought about Shadith. He wanted her in this. He needed her. She was a focus of destructive forces, a vortex that tore apart whatever she knocked against. Yes. He knew her now, he could pull her strings and twist her dance of destruction to his profit. The Dance of Rot and Nihilation.
He looked through the flakes, ignored the mindwiping session, he wasn’t interested in that, found the one that recorded her interrogation and slipped it into the player.
##
He stared, astounded.
It was a lie from start to finish.
He played it again, matching her statements with his memory of things she had said and done, things he had seen in the EYEs he had focused on her.
A logical, coherent, convincing LIE. Even her body language lied. She played the terrified child better than she had with him. He looked closer. Yes. Because she was not playing. She BELIEVED and that belief was so strong it colored everything that happened. She fooled the Interrogators and she fooled the probe because she had fooled herself. Formidable.
He played the flake a third time, trying to see how she did it, stopping it again and again to examine face and body. He saw nothing. Somehow, without the help of psych-machines or drugs, she had constructed another personality with another history and sealed off everything of the old. Formidable indeed.
He replaced that flake with the first of the mosaic flakes and watched the snippets recorded there from her time in the ship’s hold.
The fools had left her conscious for at least a month. They had made her sick and filthy and they had ground her helplessness into her-as they had done with him-meaning to make her an easier victim. And as they had done with him, they had completely misread her.
He watched Shadith come awake, watched her struggle to clean herself and fight off cold, fear, sickness.
She lay blank-faced after that, staring at nothing.
He knew what she was doing, by bitter experience he knew. She was mind-riding, using ship’s vermin to hunt out everything she could discover about her captors. She was listening to crewmen and Captain, sucking in data and storing it against future use.
And she was planning.
What the Omphalites saw as near catatonia, he recognized as the intense activity of a brain he had learned to respect.
He tapped his tongue against his teeth when he saw her face change suddenly. Her mouth dropped open, her eyes rolled back in her head. She was concentrating so intently, she looked idiotic. She is doing it, he thought, she is doing it right in front of me.
Her face changed again, slackening as if the energy had drained out of her.
She stopped caring for herself.
Two days later she went deeply unconscious.
Alarm bells rang.
The Omphalites scooped her up, ran her though the ottodoc and dropped her in stasis for the rest of the trip.
He sighed and removed the flake. She must have included a trigger to resurface the hidden memories when the danger was past. He spent a few moments wondering what the trigger was, then let it go. It was not important.
He went through the interrogation sequences one last time, spectator to a superlative performance. Such a deadly dangerous child. And Omphalos has no notion of it. None at all.
Find her. Yes. Trigger that memory. Yes. Set her at Omphalos. Yessss. And kill her when it’s over, before she kills me. Yes.
They are dropping her into contract labor. Where?
They already think I am warped about her. Let them think it; keep picking at them, make them so tired of my agitations they tell me what I need to know.
He ejected that flake and began sketching possible avenues of attack on the Pandai of Bol Mutiar. He was smiling as he worked.
Miralys/Digby 1
1
Miralys prowled about while Digby floated languorously in his bubble pretending to be exhausted by her energy. He was in a puckish mood and the room reflected this. Every time she turned around, the place had changed on her so she was threading her way through prickly columns of colored light or tripping over a newly materialized piece of furniture or a plant in a pot, or something so esoteric it was only marginally recognizable.
The third time that she bruised her shin, she hissed, laid her ears back, and stood glaring around until she found what she thought was a chair. She kicked at it, scuffing the toe of her boot. Solid. But when she lowered herself to the seat, the chair melted under her, dropping her into a sprawl on the floor. She growled, straightened herself up, folded her legs, and sat where she was; it was safer that way, he wasn’t likely to melt the floor under her. “Why don’t you grow up, fool!”
He chuckled, the pickups taking the breathy sound and playing it around the room. “You’re beautiful when you’re angry, Toerfeles.”
She snorted, then smiled reluctantly. “All right, so I feel a bit better now. What’s this about, Digby? You didn’t ask me here to pat my shoulder and listen to my sorrows.”
“Two pieces of information. Not much in themselves, either of them, but suggestive.” With exaggerated grace he swung round in his bubble until he was sitting cross-legged like Miralys. “One of my Ops…” his black eyes sparked with laughter, “a character named Woensdag, one of Frittagga’s more successful offspring, if you accent the OFF,” his lids drooped again and he sighed, “by some odd coincidences which I won’t bother describing, happened across one of Seyirshi’s customers,” he looked blank a moment, listening to voices inside his head, “a type called Olom Myndigget. We’re reasonably sure he was at Koulsnakko’s for the auction. He’s home now. Curiously unsinged for someone who’s been through a Nova burn. Woensdag couldn’t hang about, but I’ve sent another Op in, see what she can find out. Considering the ships that left before the burn and the reappearance of Myndigget, I’d say there was a possibility at least that Rohant and the others are still alive.”
Miralys closed her eyes, rocked on her buttocks, her breathing harsh as she fought for control. She wanted her Ciocan back, she wanted that passionately, compulsively, she’d spend every cent Voallts Korlach had to get him back, but she wasn’t a fool or reckless, there had to be a real chance; this wasn’t it. Not enough. “What’s the second thing?” she said.
“Someone’s been sniffing around me. I know the sniffers, but I don’t know who hired them or why. I’m working on that. Any unusual interest in Korlach?”
“I don’t know.” She rubbed at her eyes, drew her hand hard over her headfur. Her petal ears were pricked high, her spine was straight and taut. “I don’t know. I’ve been… distracted.” She extruded her claws, stared down at her fingers. “The attacks on us have stopped. Last one was two months ago. Seyirshi wouldn’t have called off his dogs, not unless he was made to or dead.”
“Right. I’ll send an Op across to look around. Rizga, I think, yes, she’s been out of therapy for a month and getting itchy.”
“Rizga. She was the one with Hannys and her team? On Louat 4, right?”
“Right.”
“Good.” Miralys got to her feet. “Hannys will be pleased. We’ll see what there’s to see, hmm, I’ll give it a week, right?”
“Right.”
Digby closed his eyes and watched her stride out, vigor back and purpose in the forward set of her ears; he followed her until she’d left the building, then let his visualization drift. He liked Miralys and had grieved to see her so poorly. That was changed now. Much better. His mouth twitched, his eyelids fluttered as he shifted his attention and plunged deep into his ties, doing his own devious investigations through the city networks and the planetaries.
Shadith In Shadows:
1
No memory and a new name
Stench.
Unclean bodies packed in a small, bare, room with icy breezes wandering everywhere.
Where?
What am I doing here?
Who am I?
Who AM I?
WHO am I?
She curled up, knees against chest, thumb in mouth, eyes squeezed shut.
Her head hurt.
Who am I who who am I who am I who…
Women were talking beside her, around her, women and girls.
She was afraid of hearing what she didn’t want to hear and tried not to listen, but she heard them anyway. Their voices were like the odors of their bodies, inescapable.
Where is this place…
What…
Girna or something like.
Aghirnamirr..
So you so smart so what you doin here…
So what’s it like, this Aghawatsis…
Cold as Hoobi’s Hell, that’s what…
Diggin in the dirt, that’s what…
Field work…
What’d ye think, frega, you’d be sitting round sucking tit? Didn’t they tell you unskilled, what you think unskilled mean? Grubbin, that’s what.
No choice…
Yeh…
No choice at all?
You sign up? You did? (Laughter, harsh and bitter.)
A hand on her shoulder. “You all right, child? If you can, you should be getting up, the vendage it’ll be starting any minute now.
She took the thumb from her mouth, opened her eyes.
A big, solid woman with warm brown eyes and a friendly smile was bending over her.
“Vendage?” she said and was startled by her own voice-she’d forgotten what she sounded like. A singer’s voice, she thought. Who am I? She closed her eyes again, but didn’t resist as the woman took her hands and hauled her up.
“Hey, you want honesty, I should’ve said meat market. Us, child. The locals they look us over and choose who gets which.”
Head throbbing, stomach queasy, she clung to the warm strong hand. She heard what the woman was saying, but it was hard to understand how the words applied to her. She shivered.
“Hai hai, not used to frigger travel? Get you in the gut, don’t it. Scramble what brains you got. Yes, luv, yes, just you hang on to Tinoopa a minute or two, the fuzz will clear out y’ head now you on you feet. You want to be looking perky and full of it at the vendage. Yes. You want to be first pick. First pick gen’rally get the best jobs. Being so young, I expect this you virgin contract.”
She thought that over. “I don’t know…”
“A weel a weel, that don’t matter. You just listen to Tinoopa, she been round and back and round again. Think you can walk now? Let’s go wash your face. Move you foot. That’s it. Now the other foot. One and two and one and two and here we are.”
The water was cool on her face, the dizziness retreated. The sink was clean, white, the towels and washcloths hanging there were clean with a faint sweet smell. They were old and threadbare, but clean. This surprised her, though she couldn’t think why. Why should she expect filth? Then she remembered the smell she woke up to. The smell that was coming off her as well as wafting past her. How long since we had water for bathing? Why? One more why to add to the list forming up in her mind.
She held her arms out and submitted passively to the scrubcloth and the cold water.
Somewhere there were answers. I must have know them once. What happened?
The panic was still there, but distanter somehow. Maybe it was having someone take care of her. Like a mother. Do I have a mother? Do I have friends? She shook her head, impatient with herself. She wanted to DO something, but there was nothing in her head or outside it to get a hold on. Except Tinoopa. Irritating. Letting other people do for her irritated her. Must be something from before, something that survived whatever or whoever it was took her memories from her.
The room they were in was as clean as the sink, scrubbed until the walls and the floor were silky white with the stoning they’d gotten. It was a crude structure, thrown together from rough-hewn planks cut green so there were cracks where they’d split or warped apart. Harsh sunlight and a cold dry wind was coming through those cracks, the wind eddying about the prisoners.
Why did she think of them and herself as prisoners? She shivered.
“I s’pose they figure anyone who gets sick in here isn’t worth putting to work.” Tinoopa wrung the scrubcloth out, draped it over a bar, pulled loose a towel, and began rubbing her dry. “You be careful round the local men,” she said, “some of these types go for anything with a hole in it. One good thing, you’re not pretty.” She chuckled, pushed the hair off the face she was drying. “Don’t worry ’bout that, luv. Pretty fades fast. Cool head does you better. Hmm. My name, the whole thing, Tinoopa juhFeyn of FuyoGeeyur on Shimmaroh.” She hung up the towel and inspected her handiwork. “You starting to look like you maybe gonna live. Convict,” she added cheerfully, “me, I mean. Thief. Good at it, too, though you couldn’t tell it from what you seeing now. Luck took a walk on me, cop stuck his fat nose where he had no business being and caught me wrong place wrong time. They give me the choosing between life in a Shimmaroh jail or ten years contract labor and don’t show my face again. A weel a weel, seeing what those jails are like, wasn’t much of a choice. Done five years already, five to go. Miss my kids.” She wiped her hands along her sides, looked round the crowded room. “Haven’t had a word from them. A weel a weel, no way they could find me. Six girls and a boy. Talk about spoiled, that lad. Still, My Jao’s fond of his ol’ mum and…” Her comfortable flow of chat cut off and her brown eyes twinkled shrewdly. “Well, he wouldn’t thank me for running on about him. What’s your name, child?”
