By the time this was done, Shadith was shaking with fatigue, sodden with sweat rolling down inside the exo, soaking the spongy cushions supposed to protect her body from the abrasion of the metal supports. She took a step toward the creepler, then turned again. She thought a moment, shaped a question, sang/whistled it to the Taalav: When I find your others, shall I bring them home to you?
She expected another cascading consultation, but the large one answered immediately.
Maker of Songs if they thrive, let them
be
Shadow plant the spirit/essence in
another place
Two-bump friend let them shape another
home
After she rode the platform up and settled herself in the reed chair, Shadith watched the Taalav arrays go spreading out beneath the trees, taking up the lives they’d put down to talk to her. She heard the Kliu guard’s breathing start to change and knew he was about to come awake.
She touched the sensor and set the creepier going on the trek back to the lake. A little tact and some patience and I’m off this stinking world. She smiled at the burp from the Kliu’s eating mouth. Sounds like, crocface there OD’d on (noise); may his gut rebel and his head feel worse than mine.
7
A drone from Digby was waiting for her when she reached the ship, but she didn’t access the data inside until she was well away from Pillory and ’splitting for Spotchalls.
Digby was sitting behind the desk again, wearing the face she’d seen when he set her to work. “A bit of information has come into my hands, Shadow, which you might find interesting and perhaps even useful. Word has come from Marrat’s Market that the Broker Jingko iKan has on offer a Taalav crystal. Guaranteed genuine and not stolen. Seems clear to me this is the smuggler’s payoff and he’s getting his money out of it as fast as possible. I want to remind you of the strictures of this search. You’re to be invisible to the Kliu. I leave it to you to figure out how.”
Shadith watched the image dissolve as the message erased itself from the ship’s memory. “Complications. So I’m supposed to get past OverSec without letting anyone know I’m looking for that smuggler. Cover? Spla! Can’t sneak in and disguise won’t do it. OverSec took that template of me when I went into Sunflower Labs. Said it would be erased. Not likely.
Cover… cover… a job that’ll be plausible and get me in without airing the Kliu connection. Lee? No. If she were hunting something, she’d do it herself. Swarda would do, but he and his crew are on a run out to the Hevardee. Aslan’s Mama. Yes. She owes me. Doesn’t like me all that much, but she likes feeling obligated even less. I need to talk to her first, though. Droom. That’s another month of traveling while the trail freezes on me, but with Digby’s strictures… Shayss!”
Sighing, she called up the destination code of the Hegger Combine and fed them into the router, then dealt with the disorientation as the ship phased into the new course and ’splitted for Droom.
5. I Forgot What Home Was Like
Lylunda crawled from the sludge of the ocean called the Haundi Zetin, wriggled through the tangle of baifruit vines and into the clump of tall, thin rynzues with their woody braided stems and the dusky black heat-collector nodules on the spray of branches at the top. Half an hour ago she’d brought her ship down through a foaming red light, Ekilore’s sullen fire filtered through an abundance of cloud fleece as the sun rose above the horizon; they were dry clouds because the rainy season was still two months off. She’d settled it in the tangled mass of vines and trees on the largest island in a spray of islands that ran parallel to the coast, covered it with camou cloth and left it with a low-level shield in place, a smuggler’s special.
On her feet again, she looked back at Nameless Island, only one end of it visible past the tangle of vines and the droop of the rynzu branches.
They were all nameless islands. Behilarr notion-why bother identifying something so useless? The Zeal was a soup of poisons infested with eels that were mostly mouth and vast schools of small, black swimmers that could strip flesh from bone in seconds.
All of these died when they ate Behilarr flesh, but the Behilarr died as well, ending as vomited chunks on the ocean floor. She was only half Behilarr. She grinned at the thought; maybe she’d only half-poison the fish.
No one went boating for pleasure in the waters round here and swimming was a skill only the very rich with their pools of filtered water could afford to learn. Her ship would be safe out there until she came back for it, though she didn’t look forward to the long dangerous swim to reach it.
In the strengthening light of the steamy dawn, she slipped off the impeller harness and laid it on the ground, unclipped her dita sac, took out the can of cleanser and the packet of blancafilm, and began the long process of cleaning and stowing her aegis suit and all the appurtenances that let her come safely through the hazards of the ZeOn.
By the time she reached the coast road, most of the morning was gone and she wasn’t quite so pleased with herself for finding a perfect place to stow her ship. The burlap sack she’d used to conceal her offworld gear was a hot wet spot on her back, the rough weave rubbing a rash through her blouse and T-shirt. Smuggler on the brain, she thought. I probably could have parked the ship in the tie-down at the transfer station and come in legit. And saved myself a lot of trouble…
She started walking along the edge of the unpaved road, a line of dirt beaten hard by the hooves of cattle driven from the nearby arranxes, the estates of the Highborn Behilarr, to the feed lots and slaughtering houses outside Haundi Zurgile. Zurg. Where she was born. Hutsarte had only been colonized a little more than a hundred years ago, and. Behilarr were slow to spend money on things like roads even though floats did need fairly level ground to operate efficiently.
Dream on, Luna, if you came in legit, your name would be on the list. How long would it take a hired snoop to find you then?
Her ankle turned as her foot slipped into a rut. Arms waving, she found her balance again but winced as she took the next step. “Jaink! I think I sprained the thing.”
She settled herself on a clump of irratzy, the curly leaves and rubbery stems of the fern grass poking at her through the cloth of the long skirt she’d pulled over the underpants she’d worn beneath the aegis suit. The road curved here and a stand of prickle pipes with their twining side growths and spongy foliage blocked the wind and the fine white dust that wind blew like heat clouds along the ruts.
For several moments she just sat, pulling her knees up, folding her arms on them, resting her head on her arms while she wondered if this homecoming business was worth the pain it was going to bring her. Then she sighed, turned back the hem of her skirt, and prodded at the ankle. She was wearing low-heeled boots she didn’t want to take off because she’d never get them back on again. With stingworms, pincer mites, and the other small biters that Hutsarte grew in the millions, walking barefoot wasn’t a good idea.
Barefoot. Every summer when she was a subteen she’d spent a lot of time in a local clinic, waiting for a purge to expel one parasite or another from her system. Jaink only knew what passengers she was picking up right now, just by sitting on this patch of fern grass.
She pulled the skirt down and tucked her feet under her when she heard the hum of a float, the first in several hours. It was a hiccuping hum, as if the lifters were ready to scatter their parts to the, four winds. When it came round the stand of prickle pipes, she saw a small battered vehicle that looked old enough to be one of the firstdowns. The driver matched it, his face a mask of wrinkles, his, clan sign so faded she couldn’t read it. He was one of those rambling peddlers who moved from arranx to arranx, selling items and occasionally buying handwork to resell in Zurg.