Beholder's Eye (18 page)

Not that we were into the finer points of grammar at the moment,
I thought. Stamping one’s hooves was used to add an element of shouting and outrage. So far we’d avoided that. Barely.

*Not herd* the lead Ganthor below clicked again, an underscent of threat still present and, from its potency, probably hers. *Spy*!!* That was definitely a stamp.

*Not herd*!! *Not herd* echoed the rest.

*Need herd* I clicked back, distressed by their rejection and surely revealing it by my aroma. *Pursued*

*Danger to the herd*!!*!!*

Poor choice of words,
I decided, wincing at the racket from below. Alarm scent threatened to make me panic. Certainly the Humans on the other side of the barrier could hear all this. That they could, and weren’t reacting, meant they knew the Ganthor were here and they expected the Ganthor to deal with their own problems.
Interesting.

I came out of hiding, moving to the edge of the shelf to look down at the herd.
No wonder I’d set them off,
I said to myself.
Mercenaries tended to overreact at the best of times.

Sixteen adult Ganthor looked back up at me, snouts twitching, most with left hand on a weapon of some sort. Each right hand was curled upward just before their chests, frozen in midclick, the customary position for speech when a quick, more physical response might be needed. I was happy to be out of reach. I was less happy about their armament. Ganthor weren’t known for their thorough thinking; one blast from even the lightest of the arms they carried would put a significant hole in this ship. I hoped they kept that in mind as a particularly unpleasant side effect of any attempt to end whatever threat they felt I posed.

The largest being below, the Matriarch and so commander of this herd, put down her blaster rifle and beckoned me to come down. *Join us* she clicked. *Identify danger to the herd* Her snout, once handsome and now marred by numerous scars, flared and dripped mucus as she sought clues from my scent. *Now**!!* she clicked and stamped.

*Danger to me* I clicked back, not believing any quick change of heart from a group obviously used to protecting itself. *Not to the herd*

*Come*Safety in the herd*

The offer couldn’t be a lie, not with the scent shift to a more benign cluster of emotions: curiosity, vigilance, welcome. If it hadn’t been for the height of the shelf and the Ganthor’s definite lack of flight capability, I might have jumped down to be among them, to belong.

Instead, I concentrated on caution, hoping that would work its way through the whirl of fading scents to those madly twitching snouts. *Protect the herd* I clicked suggestively. *Hide me up here*

The concept of leaving one apart raised tension levels. A couple of lower-status males nudged each other emphatically enough to send a third careening away. The Matriarch ignored them. *Wise beyond your years* she clicked, the words intoned with approval. *Protect the herd*!!*

With that, the Ganthor lost interest in the debate, moving off to whatever business had occupied them before my intrusion, revealing the stress I’d caused in the way they deliberately sought to shove past certain key individuals, reaffirming the status within the herd I’d threatened to alter with my arrival. The unlucky trio who looked to be lowest in stature received the brunt of this behavior, but acquiesced without apparent concern. There was comfort in belonging, even to those beneath.

While the Ganthor part of my psyche understood and envied, I found nothing to admire in this herd. I sat down on my haunches to watch them. The Matriarch and two who must be her Seconds bent their heads over a series of diagrams on a crate-turned-table, clicking almost soundlessly among themselves on the tabletop. The rest returned to a variety of tasks, some dismantling what appeared to be artillery pieces and putting these in packs, others making an inventory of energy cubes and other supplies.

Mercenaries. The Web understood warfare as part of the culture—and in a few cases the biology—of a multitude of otherwise intelligent species. Understanding didn’t mean approval. Our purpose, the core of our existence, was to preserve the accomplishments of intelligence. War so often achieved the opposite.

Though Ganthor made excellent foot soldiers,
I acknowledged to myself. The herd instinct worked in their favor on the battlefield, inciting them to heroics most beings took drugs to emulate. Individual herds, like this one, operated under contract to other species—the Ganthor themselves resolved their conflicts on a more personal level. I wondered who held the contract for this group.

Uneasily, I recalled the scarring on the outside of the freighter.
Where was this ship going?

More to the point:
where was it taking me?

Sometime later, when the dimming of lights beyond those used by the Ganthor indicated the cleanup crew was finished in the hold at least for now, I collected my wits and clicked for the Matriarch’s attention. She pushed a shoulder into that of her nearest Second and that worthy looked up at me, a good indication the herd had assigned me some place above least, though I was now too far beneath their leader for her casual notice.

*Speak* he clicked.

It was an older male, scarred as were most of them, something in his eyes eloquent of conflicts held under distant suns for causes likely even more foreign. I felt both respect and revulsion, emotions he disregarded with a wrinkling of his snout.

*Where goes this ship* I clicked, adding a tactful “to a superior” flourish at the end.

*To battle* the aroma rising from all of them echoing satisfaction. I saw their preparations in a new light. The freighter’s departure from Rigel II must mark the final leg of this journey for them.
Worse news for me.

*Where* I repeated.

*Tly System*

The Fringe!
And a system near enough to the area of space I wanted to sound almost like home. I’d done better than I’d hoped getting on this ship, even if it had cost me dearly. I shivered at the memory, the broadcast of my emotion diffusing downward and causing a rise in anxiety in the Ganthor, distracting several from their tasks.

*Calm*!!* That emphatic stamp from the Matriarch, who glared up at me. *Hide here*Wait here*Herd will return*

I’d had no intention of participating in their battle anyway, but saw no value in trying to explain that to her. So I could stay hidden on the freighter while they disembarked? Odds were good that would be a quick process, done in the dark and somewhere much less legal than a spaceport. I clicked a gracious acceptance and went back to my spot on the shelf floor to rest, nibbling on a cotylmelon to sooth my nerves. Now all I had to do was think of a way to convince this ship to make a small detour.

 

An afternoon’s nap put me no nearer to a solution than before. I certainly didn’t plan to wait here until the Ganthor finished their “battle” and hopefully survived it. For one thing, I thought the Matriarch hopelessly naïve if she expected the captain of this scow would stay insystem, let alone on the ground, to wait with a potential conflict brewing to endanger his or her ship. Far more likely the ship would agree to return at a specified time. And might even do so, if the price was guaranteed.

Where would it go in the meantime?
I felt a wave of loneliness so intense I knew it would spread below. To calm myself, I licked the sticky cotylmelon juice from my skin, something a prehensile tongue was admirably suited to accomplish.

 

Translight travel still consumed subjective time. I spent the next few days exploring the hold, though it grew more and more disconcerting to leave the proximity of the Ganthor. They would click anxiously whenever I left, something I always announced in advance to prevent them taking alarm if my scent faded without explanation. Not compassion or caring as Ragem would have expressed it; I was warmed by their concern nonetheless.

Lars and Smithers had expended most of their cleaning efforts around the crew entrance to the hold, probably correct in assuming no one would bother coming farther in to check on their work. The smell of ripe cotymelon was something few but the Ganthor and several small insects could relish.

However, the captain of the freighter
—Serendipity’s Luck,
Omacron registry (if one were to trust any plas-work attached to this ship)—had braved the odor daily since our departure from the Rigellian System. Her name was Serean Croix, something I thought also subject to change, and she came for reassurance from her passengers: reassurance the Ganthor seemed uninterested in providing.

Croix’s last visit had been typical. One of the Matriarch’s Seconds had an implant and could produce comprehensible, if heavily accented, comspeak. He translated at a snail’s pace, something I could tell from her expression the Human took as an insult. I couldn’t very well explain the poor Ganthor vainly sought clues from her scent as to the emotional content of her words. What I could smell of her indicated a fixation with attar of roses and a poor diet. Her own accent was tricky to place; the more I heard it, the more it labeled Croix as someone who’d been well-educated and raised but deliberately let that part of her life go.

“Would thee ask thy Commander if there’s been any word from the contact ship?”

The Matriarch’s response, carrying an undertone of impatience, was negative. Her clicks translated roughly as: “Call them yourself.”

Croix glanced around the hold area, assessing the unloaded crates and well-loaded packs. “The
’Dip
doesn’t have a two-way translight com. Surely thee do.” The Ganthor translator waited, not taking the statement as a question to pass along. The captain realized her mistake and added: “Would thee ask thy Commander if thee can call the ship? Remind thy Commander that our contract is for transport to this meeting point, not any closer to the Tly blockade.”

The Ganthor started clicking, his scent conveying a distinct pride in his ability to so serve the herd. The Human broke in, saying urgently, “I won’t wait either. Tell thy Commander that.”

Captain Croix turned on her heel and left without waiting for a reply, a rudeness that ignited bouts of stamping and general mayhem in the herd, though precautions weren’t neglected. The force field was reinstated and the now-mortified Second completed the translation.
Not bad,
I thought to myself. He conveyed Croix’s ultimatum very clearly.

The Matriarch was also impressed. She quickly ordered the message sent, a decision that agreed with my own assessment of both Croix’s willingness to strand them somewhere unpleasant and the futility of using this scow to try and pass a military blockade. It also spoke volumes about the funding for the mercenary group. Translight equipment was not cheap.

I settled back into my corner, working on keeping my emotions under my own control; I’d no need to be drawn into the herd’s fervor for the battle ahead. Judging from their passion, and state of readiness, the contact ship would take them straight into action.
It would be without me,
I reminded myself firmly.

THE contact ship never arrived, and the
Serendipity’s Luck
ran out halfway through shipnight, announced by the ringing shudder of her hull plates, transmuted instantly into a shelf-quake that shook my shelter into chaos.
Had we been rammed?
I used my muscular shoulders to pry myself free of the mass of crates and snapped net, grateful for the Ganthor-instincts insisting I think of the herd’s safety before contemplating the vacuum so appallingly near.

*Gather*!!*Danger to the herd*!!*Gather*!!* came the order from below as the Matriarch and her Seconds reacted to the disaster. The command and need were so strong, I almost threw myself off the shelf. I grabbed the edge instead, looking down at the mass of packs, weapons, and crates now spilled across the deck like so many playthings. But it wasn’t play. Briefly, the Ganthor gathered around a split-open container of what looked to be cast metal globes, clicking mournfully as they gave up trying to free the two bodies pinned beneath.
Mines,
I realized, once again torn between the magnetism of the herd and my feelings about mercenaries.

*!!*Down*!!* stamped the Matriarch, her tiny eyes fixed on me. Her scent was overpowering, redolent of concern, determination, and her right to rule. Her Seconds clicked furiously, ordering four other troops to clasp hands, forming a living net. *!!*Down*!!* she repeated.

Jump?
I didn’t like this one bit. The ship shuddered again, and this time the hull breach klaxon began to shrill. If I didn’t jump, they wouldn’t leave. I knew it. Even if I cycled into some other form and left, they’d keep waiting for the return of their mysterious comrade. It was their strength and their weakness.

Moving as quickly as possible, I pulled the torn net from the toppled crates and tested its remaining hold on the wall with a hard tug.
Good enough
. I tossed the net over the shelf edge, gripped it tightly in both hands, and swung myself over. The net stretched alarmingly then held firm. I started breathing again and, finding it easier if I kept my hooves away from the net, climbed down as far as possible using only the strength in my arms.