Beholder's Eye

Table of Contents

 

“Does this mean you are planning to excise me from the Web?”

“Pointless,” Ersh responded. “Close the door and lock it.”

I didn’t see how she did it, but a small rectangular space opened in the rock wall. A puff of mist slipped out and sank. Ersh reached one hand inside the opening, and carefully brought out a well-wrapped object, then resealed the hidden compartment before turning to me.

“Take this.”

It was cold, cold and heavy.

“Some might call what you’re holding a gift, Esen,” Ersh said quite sadly. “You are at least wise enough to know better. Lock the door behind me. We will talk again when you are ready.”

I did as she asked. After what Ersh said, I wanted nothing to do with it. But would it do any harm to see what I was refusing?

A smooth, blue drop winked at me, its flawless surface like some fabulous gem. An irresistible hunger surged through me and I snapped up the morsel before I had time to think.

Ersh-taste exploded in my mouth, scalding like acid. I cycled desperately. Web-form. Blind, deaf, and dumb, I huddled as Ersh-memory burned through me. She had been right.
This was no gift.

I now knew what I had done. It wasn’t the Humans Ersh feared.

The Web had mortal enemies. Enemies Ersh had fled by traveling across a galaxy. Enemies she had hidden from for thousands of years. We’d been safe.

Until I’d introduced myself to a Human. . . .

The Finest in DAW Science Fiction from Julie E. Czerneda:
BEHOLDER’S EYE A THOUSAND WORDS FOR STRANGER

Copyright © 1998 by Julie E. Czerneda.

 

All Rights Reserved.

 

 

DAW Book Collectors No. 1100.

 

DAW Books are distributed by Penguin Putnam Inc.

eISBN : 978-1-101-16567-6

 

 

All characters and events in this book are fictitious.
Any resemblance to persons living or dead is strictly
coincidental.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

First Printing, October, 1998

DAW TRADEMARK REGISTERED
U.S. PAT. OFF. AND FOREIGN COUNTRIES
—MARCA REGISTRADA
HECHO EN U.S.A.

 

 

S.A.

To Aleksander Antoni Maciej Czerneda

There are many people who have faced challenge and change throughout their lives, but I can’t imagine anyone who has faced adversity with such grace, adventure with more gallantry, or indeed has experienced all life offers with so much wonder and joy. My love and this book are for you.

 

Aleksandrowi Antoniemu Maciejowi Czernedzie

 

Jest wielu ludzi, którzy stawiali czola wyzwaniom i zmianom przez cale swoje życle, ale nle znam nlkogo, kto przeolwnośol losu przyjmowalby bez gnlewu, szarmanoko pokonywal przeszkody, ozy też z entuzjazmem I radością zakosztowal wszystkiego, co życie mu zaoferowalo. Moja milość I ta kslążka jest dla Cleble.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My second book! Thank you, Sheila Gilbert, for your belief in me. (And thanks, Debra and Amy, for answering those neophyte questions.) Thank you, Luis Royo, for your wonderful book covers. We have indeed “connected across the kilometers.” Thank you, Scott Sellers of Penguin Canada, for putting so much effort into an unknown. The entire Czerneda family would like to thank Marìa Strarz-Kañska for kindly providing the Polish translation of the dedication. And, most importantly, my thanks to all those readers who took a chance on a new author’s first book. I hope you had fun with it, too.

I’ve been overwhelmed by the support I’ve received this past year from professionals and fans alike. Thank you, Josepha Sherman, for the “Js’ Tour,” where I learned to spot a bookstore in any language. Thank you, Lois McMaster Bujold, for showing your fans my book during my first pro panel. Thank you, Larry Stewart, artist and friend, for being even more excited than I was. Thanks Allysen Palmer, for my first fan letter, Merilyn Vyse, for offering to be my first fan club president, and to all at Orillia Smith-books. Thank you, Anne Bishop, Alison Baird, Robert J. Sawyer, Ken Day, Barbara Saxberg, and Marion Hughes for your support. And to Guy Gavriel Kay, for explaining how to graciously handle comments from readers, even related ones.

Thank you, Scott Czerneda, for your help in planning the strategy and weaponry used in the battle scenes. You’re hired! And thank you to the rest of my family: Roger, Jennifer, my Dad, Tony, Maureen, Colin, Bryan, Philip, Veronika, and Mum. If it seems a long list, it’s because I’m one of those fortunate folk who could never give back as much love as she receives.

YOU could die here. Repair shops and the law were a week away, translight. And the hazards of the Fringe arrived in the blink of an eye: a blocked air hose, a cracked panel, a visitor tempted by opportunity.

Of course—flip side of risk—you could strike it rich. You could even live long enough to enjoy it. So you cared for your equipment—and tried for crew that valued their own hides.

The crew of the starship that nestled against the mid-sized asteroid, sharing its skewed orbit around sister stars, knew all this. They lay awake in their bunks, counting on their future, listening to the ship’s mauler as it chewed into the metal-rich rock like the teeth of a lamprey into the body of a hapless fish. Few more weeks—the ship’s stomach would be full, and they’d all be rich.

Counting on a future in the Fringe was dangerous. That asteroid night, Death came in along the ecliptic, undetected until it cracked the starship’s hull and began to hunt.

“Mayday . . . May—” The screams for nonexistent help ceased almost at once.

The mauler didn’t pause. It ground its way deeper, the rich ore tumbling into the holds, that growl the only sound echoing in the empty corridors.

The corridors where Death searched, still hungry.

“ESEN-ALIT-QUAR.” Those with mouths chanted my name for the third and last time, echoes rattling down the cliff like loose stones.

I tried to savor the moment, then gave up. There were too many new memories intruding on the familiar. Maybe it was the aftermath of all that had happened, not the least being the return trip from Rigel II. I’d gone from barely escaping with my life to almost being enlisted in a war. About the only good thing had been the relief of being anonymous again.

So now I was home, which to some species meant a birthplace. To me, and those with me, home was wherever the Web gathered. Today’s home was Picco’s Moon, early morning, and bitterly cold.

Everyone present, except Ersh. I suspected glumly she’d sent the meeting call from her rocky moon the day I’d left on my disastrous mission to Kraos.

“Esen-alit-Quar,” intoned the voices again, as if impatient.

“I’m ready,” I mumbled, which was technically true.

I stood, tongue loose and panting, and watched the members of my Web take their places around me. Ansky was over to my left. She was agitated enough to be midcycle, more rainbow than flesh, likely radiating heat as she fought to control the energy waiting to be released by her every molecule.
No support there.
Still, I found it reassuring one of my Elders could be in such a state. Whenever we cycled into other forms, it required a sacrifice of our mass into energy to distort and bend our essential structure, energy that in part remained within that structure, a potential like the compression of a spring. Releasing form, like releasing that spring, had its inevitable results. Learning to return to web-form without damaging the neighborhood with pyrotechnics was the first, basic lesson of our kind.
If Ansky was struggling with this,
I decided uncharitably,
maybe my own recent performance wasn’t so bad.

As usual, Mixs had been late, scampering to her place on the six legs of her preferred form. Personally, I found her about as compassionate as the Hive species she lived with most often.
There’s one who wouldn’t forgive a loss of control.