She removed a battle stick from her waist, flicked it open into a nonlethal fighting pole. Her companion did the same. Muree’n was one of Nira’s halfbreed children, and Anton saw echoes of the green priest in her face. The girl’s muscles were tense like tightly wound springs. They waited for a long moment, facing off in silence.
Yazra’h did not flinch. “These records are vital to Rememberer Anton’s work. You will obey the command.”
Anton swallowed hard. “Maybe there’s no need to—”
“They will not change their minds,” Muree’n blurted out. “Let us have some practice.”
She leaped forward without warning, twirling her battle stick and smashing it toward the nearest guard’s face. He brought up a gauntleted hand, so that her blow broke his wrist instead of his nose. He yelped.
Yazra’h sprang into action, trying to keep up with her protégée. The two women fought like dust devils. The battle sticks were a blur, and the expression on Yazra’h’s face was intense but also joyous. She loved the fight.
Years ago, Yazra’h had taken Anton under her wing. She flirted with him, toyed with him, made it plain that she wanted to take him as a lover, though he did nothing whatsoever to encourage her. He simply wasn’t interested. Yazra’h respected him, and also protected him when he got into difficult situations.
She had no lack of energetic lovers—mostly soldier kithmen, but other Ildirans as well. Yazra’h had finally admitted to Anton that she understood he was a delicate sort and must be concerned, with good reason, that she might break him if she got carried away.
Now, as they fought down the guard kithmen, Muree’n seemed even wilder and more reckless than Yazra’h. The hapless guards fought back, but were reluctant to harm a daughter of the Mage-Imperator—or maybe that was what they told themselves as they lay broken, bruised, and groaning on the floor.
Yazra’h retracted her battle stick, while Muree’n remained alert, as if hoping one of her opponents would climb to his feet and fight another round.
Dyvo’sh stared at the mayhem, wide-eyed. Yazra’h tossed her wild hair, and Anton made a point of thanking her. “Research isn’t normally so combative,” he said. “Let’s just hope there’s something important enough in there to make all this trouble worthwhile. I’d rather it wasn’t a pile of old agricultural inventory lists.”
Yazra’h made an impatient gesture to the worker kithmen, who stood holding their heavy tools. “Go on, there is no need for further delay. Rememberer Anton wishes the crypt opened—so open it.”
More afraid of Yazra’h than of some ancient warning, the workers lifted their clubs and pickaxes and smashed open the seal.
SIX
GARRISON REEVES
In uncharted, empty space, the ship floated among the mysterious globules. Two days of unthreatening quiet gave Garrison and Seth freedom to just relax. They played games, and Garrison told him about Roamer history and other planets they would someday see. It was the sort of family life he’d hoped to have with Elisa.
They had plenty of fuel and supplies, but he knew he and Seth couldn’t stay here forever. He had to decide where to go next and what new life they would make. Although the knot in his stomach didn’t go away, it loosened a little.
The strange bloaters drifted around them, occasionally sparkling, moving onward in a big cluster like slumbering space jellyfish.
With no communication from the outside, Garrison had no way of knowing what might be happening at Sheol. He would prefer to be wrong about his fears for the lava-processing operations. And if nothing happened, Elisa would use that to prove his paranoid irresponsibility and claim that he had willfully stolen her son. Garrison knew his wife could be vindictive if she wanted to be. And after what he had done, she would definitely want to be.
During their downtime, Seth studied different types of compies in the ship’s databases, following his fascination with the different models. He could rattle off the capabilities of Friendly compies, Listener compies, Teacher compies, Domestic compies, Worker compies, and numerous subcategories. He even knew the specs of the outlawed Soldier compies, which had caused such disastrous mayhem during the Elemental War. Thanks to those fears, many people had stopped using compies.
Seth, however, could talk on and on about the specialized programming and how new fail-safes had been implemented so there was no longer anything to worry about. Despite these facts, Seth had little interaction with compies. His mother refused to let him have one, and Lee Iswander used only a few of them at his Sheol operations.
As they drifted along, Seth called up the research from well-known compy scientists Orli Covitz and her husband Matthew Freling. Over the years, the couple had championed the cause of compies, helping to rehabilitate them, trying to prove that fears and hesitations were no longer valid. They took in and rehabilitated compies abandoned by their owners.
Seth nudged his father to sit next to him when he played video reports Orli Covitz had recorded. He particularly liked an entertaining set of educational loops that Orli and her compy DD produced. Although DD was a Friendly rather than a Teacher model, he served as a proper and unintentionally amusing foil when Orli explained ways that compies were helpful and loyal. Seth found DD charming, and had mentioned several times that he wanted a compy of his own just like DD.
On the educational loop, Garrison watched the attractive woman in her midthirties, surrounded by compies like a naturalist surrounded by her favorite animals, clearly loving them. Orli had an easy smile and conveyed a childlike sense of wonder as she showed off her compies. She seemed so earnest, both delighted and dedicated. Her sweetness captured Garrison’s attention because she was such a striking contrast to Elisa…
Seth went to the cockpit to do a regular systems check, as Garrison had shown him. Garrison, meanwhile, remained alert, observing the odd nodules as they shifted around. The things were beautiful and exotic, possibly organic, possibly some bizarre natural phenomenon.
His father would have given them a cursory glance and then gone back to work. Olaf Reeves had very little patience for distractions or any opinions other than his own.
Garrison feared that his most viable alternative would be to return with Seth to the bustling safety of clan Reeves. His family would take the two of them in, but it would involve an apology from Garrison and lengthy rebukes from the stern clan leader. He would have to slide himself back under Olaf’s thumb and let Seth be raised in that oppressive, close-minded environment. The members of clan Reeves were mockingly referred to as “Retroamers” by the modern and open clans at the new government center of Newstation. Garrison didn’t accept his family’s scorn for “clans tainted by civilization.”
No, he would find something else. He had enough skills and interests that he could apply for any number of useful jobs; his resourceful Roamer background guaranteed that at least. A good job was all he wanted, and the best environment for his son.
Seth called from the cockpit. “There’s static on the screens, Dad—a sort of pulse every thirty seconds. You think it’s a signal from the bloaters? Maybe they’re trying to communicate with us.”
Garrison came forward to look. On the screen, he saw a tiny blip, a flicker of static. Seth counted, and when he reached thirty, the blip appeared again. “See!”
Garrison used a ship diagnostic sensor to pinpoint the origin. “It’s not coming from the bloaters. They’re all around us, but this signal is coming from our hull.” A chill ran down his spine—some kind of a tracer? “I’d better go outside and check it out.”