Scwa: I remember dim blackness and killing cold … anguish in all my mobiles, as they bore my sessile container over the pathless world crust. We have suffered too much already, from the failure of the ship; we few barely reached here alive. I for one am not ready for more trials. Mind the mobiles! Enter a new phase of the pattern … (All circle together) (Weave nets of life - shine) (The patterns multiply)
Rhm, Tfod, Zhek, Kle: Agreed, agreed.
Isthp, Mng: We must contact the shining creature!
Jary lay back on the examining table while Orr checked his body for broken bones and scanned him with a radiation counter. Out of the corner of his eye he could see the empty specimen box, still lying on the floor where Orr had dumped it when he entered the tent. Orr had kept him waiting while he talked with Corouda outside - but so far he hadn’t said anything more about the loss of the trogs. Jary wondered how much Corouda had really seen - or whether he had seen anything. No one had ever looked at him the way Corouda had, at the bottom of the cleft … and so he couldn’t be sure what it really meant.
“There’s nothing wrong with you that’s worth treating.” Orr gestured him up. “Hairline fractures on a couple of your ribs.”
Jary sat up on the table’s edge, mildly relieved, pressing his bruised hand down against the cold metal surface. Orr was angry; he knew the way every line settled on that unexpressive face. But Orr might only be angry because he’d lost the specimens.
“Something else bothering you?”
“Yes - ” he answered the graying back of Orr’s head, because Orr had already turned away to the storage chests. “You l - let me fall. Didn’t you?” He had found the muddy safety line intact, and the unfastened latch at the end.
Orr turned around, surprised, and looked at him. “Yes, I did. I had to release the rope or you might have dragged me into the crevice with you.”
Jary laughed sharply.
Orr nodded, as though he had found an answer, “Is that why you did it?”
“What?”
“Turned the specimens loose. Because I let you fall - is that it?”
“No.” He shook his head, enduring Orr’s pale scrutiny.
“Don’t lie to me.” Orr’s expression changed slightly, as Jary’s face stayed stubborn. “Warden Corouda told me he saw you do it.”
No - The word died this time before it reached his mouth. His gaze broke. He looked down at his feet, traced a scar with his eyes.
“So.” The satisfied nod, again. Orr reached out and caught his wrist. “You know how important those animals are. And you know how much trouble and risk is involved in bringing them back.” Orr forced Jary’s hand down onto the shining tabletop, with the strength that was always a surprise to him. Orr picked up a scalpel.
Jary’s fingers tightened convulsively. “They’ll g - g - grow back!”
Orr didn’t look at him. “I need some fresh tissue samples; you’ll supply them. Open your fist.”
“Please. Please don’t hurt my h - hands.”
Orr used the scalpel. And Jary screamed.
“What are you doing in here, Orr?”
A sharp and angry woman’s voice filled the tent space. Jary blinked his vision clear, and saw Warden Soong-Hyacin standing inside the entrance, her eyes hard with indignation. She looked at the scalpel Orr still held, at the blood pooling in Jary’s hand. She called to someone outside the tent; Corouda appeared beside her in the opening. “Witness this for me.”
Corouda followed her gaze, and he grimaced. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing that concerns you, Wardens.” Orr frowned, more in annoyance than embarrassment.
“Anything that happens on our world concerns us,” Soong-Hyacin said. “And that includes your torture - “
“Xena.” Corouda nudged her. “What’s he doing to you, Jary?”
Jary gulped, speechless, and shrugged; not looking at Corouda, not wanting to see his face.
“I was taking some tissue samples. As you can see.” Orr picked up a specimen plate, set it down. “My job, and his function. Nothing to do with ‘your world,’ as you put it.”
“Why from his hands?”
“He understands the reason, Warden…. Go outside and wait, Piper. I’ll call you when I want you.”
Jary moved around the table, pressing his mouth shut against nausea as he looked down at the instrument tray; he slipped past the wardens and escaped, gratefully, into the fresh air.
Corouda watched Jary shuffle away in the evening sunlight, pulled his attention back into the tent.
“If you don’t stop interfering with my work, Warden Soong-Hyacin, I’m going to complain to Doctor Etchamendy.”
Xena lifted her head. “Fine. That’s your privilege. But don’t be surprised when she supports us. You know the laws of domain. Thank you, Juah-u….” She turned to go, looked back at him questioningly.
Corouda nodded. “In a minute.” He watched Orr treat the specimen plates and begin to clear away the equipment. “What did you mean when you said ‘he understands the reason’?”
Orr pushed the empty carrying case with his foot. “I questioned him about the troglodytes, and he told me that he let them loose, out of spite.”
“Spite?” Corouda remembered the expression behind Jary’s mud-splattered faceplate, at the bottom of the crevice. And Jary had told Orr that the lock had broken, after they had pulled him up…. “Is that how you got him to admit it?” He pointed at the table.
“Of course not” - irritation. Orr wiped the table clean, and wiped off his hands. “I told him that you’d seen him do it.”
“I told you I didn’t see anything!”
Orr smiled sourly. “Whether you told me the truth or not is of no concern. I simply wanted the truth from him. And I got it.”
“You let him think - “
“Does that matter to you?” Orr leaned on the table and studied him with clinical curiosity. “Frankly, I don’t see why any of this should matter to you, Warden. After all, you, and Soong-Hyacin, and the other fifteen billion citizens of the Union were the ones who passed judgment on Piper Alvarian Jary. You’re the ones who believe his crimes are so heinous that he deserves to be punished without mercy. You sanctioned his becoming my Catspaw - my property, to use as I see fit. Are you telling me now that you think you were wrong?”
Corouda turned and left the tent, and left the question unanswered.
Piper Alvarian Jary sat alone on his rock, as he always did. The evening light threw his shadow at Corouda like an accusing finger; but he did not look up, even when Corouda stood in front of him. Corouda saw that his eyes were shut.
“Jary?”
Jary opened his eyes, looked up, and then down at his hands. Corouda kept his own gaze on Jary’s pinched face. “I told Orr that I didn’t see what happened. That’s all I said. He lied to you.”
Jary jerked slightly, and then sighed.
“Do you believe me?”
“Why would you b - bother to lie about it?” Jary raised his head finally. “But why should you b - bother to tell me the truth….” He shrugged. “It doesn’t matter.”
“It matters to me.”
Something that was almost envy crossed Jary’s face. He leaned forward absently to pick up a stone from the pile between his feet. Corouda saw it was a piece of obsidian: night-black volcanic glass with the smoothness of silk or water, spotted with ashy, snowflake impurities. Jary cupped it for a moment in his lacerated palms, then dropped it like a hot coal, wincing. It fell back into the pile, into a chain reaction, cascading a rainbow of colors and textures. Two quick drops of red from Jary’s hand fell into the colors; he shut his eyes again with his hands palm-up on his knees, meditating. This time Corouda watched, forcing himself, and saw the bleeding stop. He wondered with a kind of morbid fascination how many other strange abilities Jary had.