Beholder's Eye (14 page)

“Did you catch the sunrise?” Ragem dropped down beside me with a sigh. He set his cube reader on the floor and shoved it under the couch with one foot, like someone thoroughly avoiding further thought of work.

“Hello.” My tail wriggled loose and thumped. “Yes. You were right—it was spectacular. I will remember it.”

“Sorry I missed it.” Ragem stretched, then rubbed his hand over his eyes. He looked tired.

I didn’t want to ask what he’d been doing. If I did, he’d either have to lie or evade the question. Besides, I could guess. This ship carried Survey records on a thousand worlds and hundreds of sapient life-forms. Kearn wouldn’t be wasting any time trying to learn about me.

“Want some sombay? There’s a fresh pot in the galley.”

He shook his head. “I’ve had my limit today, thanks. What about you? How’s the stomach?”

I bared my teeth in a grimace. “Empty and complaining. The med-tech assures me his pills satisfy all my nutritional needs—but believe me, I’m starving to death.”

The Human nodded sympathetically.

I wrinkled my nose; his scent wasn’t right. “You aren’t well, Paul,” I decided, concerned. “You should spend more time resting, or with your friends.”

“What am I doing now?”

“That’s not what I mean.”

He glanced around the lounge. The nearest group to us was the card game, still punctuated by howls as Tomas continued his winning ways. “I’ve been busy, Es,” Ragem said with a sudden quiet urgency. He tapped his finger to one ear.
Yes, I never forgot we were being overheard.

I lowered my ears, then deliberately pricked them up. “Looking for information about me in your records? You won’t find any. I’m a private and peaceful being, Ragem.”
Kearn could make what he wanted of that.

“And the only one of your kind. There’s just you.”

“Yes.” Ragem doubted me, but what I said was true, in a technical sense. I was one flesh with the others of my Web. And ours was the only one.

Ragem brought out a pad and stylus from his pocket, with a conspiratorial glance at the others in the room. We were unnoticed. I peered over his arm as he wrote quickly:
Don’t know how long we have. Why were you on Kraos?
He hit erase and passed me the implements.

So he wanted a reason to trust me.
They must keep at him when we were apart, trying to talk Ragem into a more species-oriented loyalty. I searched his gray and earnest eyes for a moment then wrote:
Studying culture. Civilization is my hobby.
As he read this, I hesitated, then erased and wrote:
Meant no harm. Disguised so I could observe without alarming the Kraosians.
I erased and handed back the pad and stylus. What would he respond to that?

Ragem pressed his lips into a thin, determined line, writing quickly for several seconds after a glance to make sure no one was paying attention to us. He passed the pad to me, saying out loud: “Sombay sounds good after all. Some for you?”

“Water is the only safe drink, thanks,” I said, already reading:
I envy you. Must have good stories!
I smiled, then read further and felt my stomach threaten to heave, despite its current empty state.

Then below, one word I looked at thoughtfully before erasing.
Friend.

“I heard from the com-tech that the Minister and her staff have arrived ahead of us,” Ragem announced as he returned. “Don’t worry. Probably the worst you’ll have to go through will be a dozen or so boring speeches and tedious dinners.”

“Don’t you dare mention dinners,” I growled, still holding the pad and thinking about our real conversation.

Ragem passed me my drink and sat down, stretching out his legs. “I’ll be there.”

Unfortunately, so would I. I couldn’t see any way to avoid going to Rigel II without playing into Kearn’s hands and making matters worse. Famous was bad enough. I couldn’t afford to become infamous at the same time. Humans took a depressingly narrow view of what they perceived as a threat.

The lounge was no longer a comfortable refuge. I wanted to go home.

Maybe wanting to go home wasn’t such a great idea.

SNOWFLAKES patted the window, tumbling past and catching the light from my room. I squinted, trying to ignore my own reflection and see something in the blackness beyond the fat white flakes. But Rigel II was keeping its scenery to itself tonight.

I sighed, then absently licked the resulting oval of fog from the window. The snow ignored me, too busy trying to fill in the corners of the windowsill. A futile task, since each little pile always reached a crisis and whirled away in a miniature avalanche. The image roused web-memory—Ansky had spent months under a drift of frozen oxygen on Kaleb IX.

Being buried alive was fine if you enjoyed composing poetry while you waited for a thaw. I shoved the unhelpful memory aside and turned away, pacing erratically around the stools, tables, and bed platform of my Rigellian home—wondering which of the ship’s crew I’d displaced from his or her planetside quarters.

It was better than worrying about tomorrow, when I would officially become the honored guest of the Commonwealth and start the round of formal dinners and talks.

Honored guest, ha!
My door was locked from the outside. Kearn’s message had been quite clear: Stay put.

Ordinarily I was good at that. I was even better at passing through locked doors, as Ragem knew all too well. “Promise me you’ll stay here at least until tomorrow. You have to meet the Deputy Minister,” I snarled out loud, not bothering to mimic Ragem’s pleading sincerity. “Kearn’s made me responsible for you. It’ll be my career if you leave, Esen.

“What about my career, Ragem-the-troublemaker?”

My elbow bumped the corner of the creteng tank, a bulky ornamental thing stuck in the middle of the floor. The contact stung and I snapped my teeth. It also set the tank’s water and inhabitants rocking. “Sorry,” I said, then felt as embarrassed as if Ersh had caught me talking to myself.
Pets.
I steadied the tank and found a couple of towels to cover the puddle on the floor. The creteng, finned specks of color too small at this age to be worth eating, refused to stop cowering behind their fake water plants.

The door whistled cheerfully.
As if it wasn’t enough to lock me in, they had to pester me in the middle of the night.
It wasn’t likely to be a meal, so I ignored it, curling up on the rug beside the bed platform, wrapping my tail over my nose.

A second whistle. I snarled: “All right. Come in.”

The door opened to reveal Ragem, dressed in a thick patterned coat with a furred collar. He was carrying a bright red bundle. I glared at him through the wisps of fur on my tail. Snowflakes winked to waterdrops on his hair. His face was rosy-cheeked and split in a wide grin.

“Quit sulking, Es!” Ragem ordered as he marched into the room, his boots tracking snow for the first couple of steps. He bumped the creteng tank and quickly sidestepped the slosh of water that followed. “Time to get out and enjoy life.” He shook out his bundle, dropping a pair of boots on the carpet and holding out an enormous red coat.

Trying to keep the tip of my tail from thumping wasn’t easy. I sat up and tucked it under my hind paw, swinging my ears back and down in disapproval. I pointed at the belt around my waist. “Kearn does know about this.” It wasn’t a question.

Ragem’s smile was angelic. “I don’t think that’s a problem. Kearn’s busy. Everyone is! Don’t you know what day it is?”

In other words,
I said to myself, smelling a rather potent whiff on Ragem’s breath,
there’s a party someplace to welcome the
Rigus
home and my buddy here has become potted enough to reconsider his career plans.
I flicked my ears up, decided not to remind him, and took the coat.

Ragem hadn’t quite abandoned all sense, I decided moments later as I followed him out of the building. He had made sure no keen-eyed watcher, mechanical or otherwise, would recognize his companion. The boots hid my paws; the coat was hooded and draped almost to the ground. He led the way down the slushy ruts of the main driveway. I licked a snowflake off the smooth skin of my muzzle and peered around with interest.

The driveway linked a series of square, two-story buildings, their upper corners hung with baskets of green-and-red lights. I thought it was rather charming and took time to remember. A few windows, mine included, cast beams of light onto the snow-covered trees bordering the roadway. Otherwise, the place seemed deserted. The only sounds were our breathing, the wet smack of our boots, and the sighing of snow down the fabric of our coats.

I was about to grab Ragem’s sleeve and find out where he was taking me when the twin headlights of a groundcar shone on us. It moved slowly through the snow, stopping at Ragem’s signal. The markings on the vehicle’s side reassured me on one point. I doubted I was being kidnapped in one of Big Al’s Rent-for-Less, Winter-Ready Specials.

We climbed in the back seat, shaking clumps of wet slush from our feet as best we could. The floor of the car had once been protected by sheets of plas; these now held brown puddles of melted snow that shivered as we seated ourselves.

The driver turned around to greet us. I was somehow not surprised to see Tomas’ cheerful face. “Are you fit to drive?” I asked, twitching my nose at his breath, too.

“Absolutely, my dear Fang Face,” Tomas replied, doffing his white-trimmed cap. I showed him a fang or two, but kept it friendly. A large silvery bell sewn on the tip of the cap tinkled as he replaced it on his head. “To the festivities!”

“I thought you said this was the dullest planet—”

Ragem chuckled. “All too true, Esen—”

“But not tonight. It’s time to howl, Old Hound!” Tomas sang out happily, sending the groundcar forward with reassuring care for the snow.

Fang Face? Old Hound!
The Humans were impossible, rude, and just what I’d needed. I found myself tingling with anticipation and suspense. After tucking the feeling into my private memory, I made one final attempt to salve my conscience. “This isn’t a good move for either of you. I was supposed to stay in my room.”

Ragem took off his mittens and shook them over Tomas’ head, spraying drops of melted snow over all three of us. “Do we look worried? You know you were miserable. Well, Tomas and I were miserable. How could we have fun without you?”
Hah,
I said to myself.

“Besides, we know what we’re doing. Far as I’m concerned, it should be against the law to miss Rigel’s only party,” Tomas added, leaning rather alarmingly right into the back seat to grin at me. The groundcar didn’t swerve, so its servo brain must have had a good nose too.

They wouldn’t tell me anything more, delighted to keep me puzzled. We drove along in Big Al’s Rental, blinded on all sides by snow, trusting the machine to find the road. Ragem and Tomas spent the time trying to match their voices around a wide assortment of songs, usually tripping each other on the first few lines.

After a while, I decided the pair of Humans weren’t so much drunk as they were unwinding like a pair of released springs. I, though far too professional for a similar display, found myself howling along to one of their more consistent musical efforts.

“Close as we’ll get now. Better park it here,” Ragem announced some time later. I opened the window on my side, licking up the snow that immediately danced in to land on my face, and looked at our surroundings. It was a parking lot—
well, maybe it was supposed to be a parking lot.
Right now, I was looking at a dense pack of snow-covered mounds each about the same size and shape as our vehicle. An overhead crisscross of lights struck sparks of red and green from the still-falling snow. Following Ragem’s advice, Tomas slid to a stop, managing in the process to completely block the exit of at least three other vehicles.

The heavy snowflakes seemed to take their time choosing a landing place. I watched them dance and slip, admiring their unpredictability. “Oh, hurry up, Es,” Ragem and Tomas said at once, hauling me out of the car.

I twitched a snowflake from one ear, then swiveled both to catch the faintest of sounds. Music. Hardly had I identified it before each of my crazed companions took one of my arms and hustled me in the direction of the sound. “Hurry! It’s almost midnight!” Tomas said breathlessly, his feet slipping and sliding until I thought I was the only thing holding him up as we half ran down an empty street.

Small tidy shops and homes lined the street, each appearing dark inside, but outside ablaze with lights—all red or green. I would have appreciated at least a second or two to search web-memory about them—something was teasing me about the colors and snow. The Humans didn’t give me time to concentrate. The music grew louder as we ran toward its source, swelling into recognizable voices and instruments.

We literally burst out into a broad square. Hundreds of people stood around its edges, each so well-bundled against the cold that species was impossible to determine. I hoped Kearn would take that into account tomorrow. Then I looked at the source of the music and finally understood.

“It’s Christmas.”

“ ’Course,” Tomas said, leading the way through the crowd around the towering tree ahead. The massed choir changed songs and answering hums throbbed from all sides. “And if you’ll move those paws of yours a bit quicker, Puppykins, we won’t miss New Year’s.”

Still linked between them, I could only smile toothily in apology as we nudged, bumped, and basically shoved other spectators out of our way. Fortunately, no one took offense, most calling out a “Merry Christmas, Happy New Year,” softly enough not to disturb the carol singing.