Contact Imminent (22 page)

“Your boyfriend left the hospital over an hour ago. ‘Shot
out of here like a bat out of hell' is the term the desk used.” He kept patting his shirt pockets, a sure sign that he needed a nicstick. “Three guesses where he went. First two don't count.”

“I messaged the fort from a public comport. Told them we might be a little late.” Niall steered the borrowed Trade Board skimmer with a light hand, as though he expected it to bolt from under him at any moment. “So? How did it go?”

“Same as usual.” Jani's knees banged against the dashboard as they shot down the steep cliff road that led to the Karistos shoreline. “More problems.”

“Oh, that's news.” Niall glared at the Sìah instrument array, tapping gauges and grumbling. “How the hell do you read these things?”

“I'll tell you if anything goes south.” Jani braced for the shudder as the skimmer left the road and took off over the water. “Can you raise Thalassa on the com-array?”

“I can't even tell where the damned com-array is.”

“It's here.” Jani touched the nearest of the flat-faced indicators, then followed with repeated hail codes in English and Sìah Haárin. “Nobody's responding.” She set the com-array to standby, then checked her timepiece. “Either they're all at mid-morning sacrament, or they've made it a practice to ignore contact attempts by Feyó's fleet.”

“And I thought Supreme Command infighting was bad.” Niall reached into the shirt pocket that held his nicstick case.
“Wait a minute.” He lowered his hand. “I can't smoke in here, can I?”

“It would be better if you didn't, no.” Jani lay her head against the seatback. “If we could, I'd probably ask you for one.”

“That good, huh?” Niall pointed the skimmer toward the distant white specks that marked Thalassa. “Did Shroud tell you that he planned to confront Eamon DeVries?”

“No.”
Jani bit back further commentary. Niall's anger had eased to background noise, and she had no desire to set him off again. “Why would he?”

Despite the fact that he couldn't ignite it, Niall had inserted a nicstick in his mouth anyway. “You're kidding, right?” He worked the cold cylinder from one corner of his mouth to the other. “I figured he told you everything.”

“Well, you figured wrong.” Jani looked out her window, concentrating on the roll of the water and the occasional swooping seabird, ignoring Niall's pointed looks and the heat that flooded her face.

“He loves you.” Niall fiddled with the bank of touchpads and switches until he found the one that controlled the windows. “Much as it pains me to say. I mean, you've apparently narrowed your choices to him and Pretty Boy Pascal, which to me defines rock and hard place. But I stopped trying to figure out women's criteria years ago.” He lowered both his and Jani's windows, and the salty green smell of the sea filled the cabin. “But at least Shroud has some feeling beyond his own immediate gratification. He's a man of substance, to say the least. You seem to enjoy one another's company. Judging from that sheep-eyed look you get on your face whenever he comes in a room, I'd guess that you're as over the side about him as he is about you. Then there's all that shared history.” He exhaled with a rumble. “I've seen people start out with a lot less and make a go of it.”

“I never thought I'd hear you defend him.” They were close enough to Thalassa now that Jani could pick out the
details of the main house. The windows and balconies. The shadowed overhang of the main entry.
John, what are you doing now?
Arguing his way past Gisa's suborns? Holding Eamon's head under a faucet? “I thought you didn't like him.”

“I don't.” Niall sensed the tension of the approach as well. His hand hovered for a moment over his holstered shooter. Then he pulled the nicstick from his mouth and shoved it in his pocket. “I just watched you two tiptoe around one another for the last five and a half weeks. It proved quite an education in how far two people will go to avoid the obvious.” He backed off the accelerator as they drew near the shore, increasing the vehicle's elevation to avoid the spray of the waves. “Are you worried about this?”

“A little.” Jani dug into her duffel, removing her shooter and tucking it into the waistband of her trousers. “Gisa has some overly enthusiastic followers.”

“How overly enthusiastic?”

“They had shooters trained on you and John at Elyas Station. Brondt warned me that they'd overreact if I put up a fight.”

“Brondt's playing both sides against the middle, and you're a damned fool if you trust a word he says.”

“He's all I have.”

“Then we're in trouble.” Niall reached for his holster again. This time he unfastened the top. “Damn Shroud. Why couldn't he have waited?” He coasted along the beach, weaving to avoid rocks and moorings, until he came to a steep grade. “Is there anyplace on this planet that isn't either straight up or straight down?” He turned up the road, which led to the first of the houses. “Goddamn roller-coastering everywhere you go—” He slowed as a group of hybrids stepped into the road fifty or so meters ahead. Males, humanish and Haárin both. They all wore holsters, though none had drawn their weapons. Yet.
“Oh, give me an excuse.”
His foot brushed the accelerator as his hands closed around the steering mech.

“Don't.”
Jani twisted in her seat so her back abutted the door. “That's all we need is you running hybrids over the edge of the cliff.” She grabbed the framing and boosted through the open window so she sat on the ledge.
“I've come to see John Shroud! Is he here?”

The hybrids looked at one another, their attitudes altering in a blink from threatening to confused. “Yes, he is here. He is with Doctor DeVries.” A heavyset male, the apparent ringleader, moved to the front of the group. His comrades helped him along by backing off a stride or three, leaving him standing on his own. He must have felt the sudden breeze at his back, for he held out his hands, palms facing out, to show that he wasn't armed. “Of course, ná Kièrshia, you are welcome, both you and Colonel Pierce.”

“Glad to hear it.” Jani pulled herself out of the skimmer, then reached through the window for her duffel. “Stay close,” she said to Niall.

“Harkens back to the days of me misspent youth, this does.” Niall unholstered his shooter and activated it, steering the skimmer with his inside hand. “Ah, the memories.”

Jani patted the side of the skimmer, then started up the road. “You expected someone from the enclave,” she said to the ringleader. “You typed the signal when I tried to call, and you staked out the road and waited.”

The male shifted from one foot to the other, but stood his ground. “Ná Feyó is no friend of ours. She would swallow us into her enclave and subject us to the old ways.”

What do you know of the old ways?
Jani took in the male's lined face—he had hybridized too late to lose the telltale humanish softness completely. Then she made note of his fighter's build.
Fighter, not athlete—this one has the look of the docks about him
. What had driven him to hybridize, to turn his back on all he had known and give himself over to Eamon's medical ministrations? “What's your name?”

The male started. Then he stood at attention, as though making a report. “Adam Down, ná Kièrshia.”

“Well, ní Down, I am not of the old ways either. I spoke
with ná Feyó this morning, met with her at the Trade Board, and I am still not of the old ways. They're not contagious. Besides, you're hybridized humanish, as I am—we couldn't follow the old ways with tracking sensors and holospheres—we're the wrong race. Neither of us would ever be allowed to live in the Elyan enclave, not even if we had a note from ní Tsecha himself. That being the case, listen to me now and spread the word, because I'm only going to say it once. No violence against any of Feyó's, or against Feyó herself. No intimidation. To do so against her or one of hers is to do so against me, and I do not take kindly.” When he opened his mouth to protest, Jani raised her hand to silence him. “Do you understand?” She waited for his grudging nod. Then she pointed to his followers and gestured for all of them to start walking.

“Old ways.”
Jani spoke to Down's back as he trudged ahead of her up the road, as she felt her heart beat, slow and strong. “It's all new ways here—we're making it up as we go. And we had better make damned sure that we think very carefully before we start waving our little tin dickies in the air because we're a spit away from an enclave in which there resides very tall folk with genetically short tempers, and we're a spit and a shout away from a fort filled with shorter folk who have more weaponry than either of us have ever dreamed of. Therefore, we are going to try something new here at Thalassa. We're going to try thinking for a change, or so help me Caith I'm going to start kicking butts into the bay, is
that
clear!” She sensed movement out of the corner of her eye, and turned to find Torin pacing her as he entered notes into a handheld.

“I recorded your speech.” His eyes shone clear green in the bright sun. “I've entered all your speeches so far into the secret archives. Many of us have already listened to them multiple times.”

“I don't give speeches.” Jani ignored the laughter that emanated from the shadowing skimmer. “What's it like here?”

“Tense.” Torin shrugged. “Gisa announced at mid-morning
sacrament that you had left to go to ná Feyó and that you wouldn't be coming back. Now, here you are.” He drew in closer, his step still relaxed, a smile on his face. A born actor. “Doctor Shroud arrived about an hour ago. Doctor DeVries was in his room—he lives in the basement clinic, says it's cooler. Bon escorted Doctor Shroud there, then left them. We heard shouting at first, but it died down after a while.”

“What's Gisa doing now?”

“Deciding upon the fall planting. But when Doctor Shroud arrived, she said something of preparing for you.”

A few of the hybrids waited for them at the top of the road. One female broke away and hurried to Down's side, casting anxious glances at Jani as she did.

“It's the look on your face that's got them jumpy, in case you're wondering,” Niall called from behind.

“Thank you.”

“I had a Drill like you once.”

“Shut up.”

“I have just filed your speech,” Torin said as he fingered his handheld's touchpad. “I wish I could do so with conversation, but when I asked Doctor Shroud if I could do so as he spoke with Doctor DeVries, his face grew most red.” He eyed Jani sheepishly. “I left quietly.”

“A nice change of pace on your part.” Jani circled to the main house entry, and wasn't overly surprised to find Bon already standing in the open entry.

Niall had parked the skimmer in the pavered circle, and broke into a trot to catch Jani up. “Good God.” He stopped when he caught sight of Bon's ravaged face. “Did DeVries do that?”

“Yes and no.” Jani grabbed him by the sleeve and maneuvered him ahead of her. “How are you doing on your observing?”

Niall looked back at Down and the other hybrids, who still watched Jani with a blend of trepidation and awe. “They're all like you.”

“Down and the male behind him—they were humanish
once. The others began as Haárin.” Jani looked to Down's…Girlfriend? Female? She tilted her head to her left in acknowledgment of Jani's examination.
I wonder what Cèel would have to say about you?
Or even Tsecha, come to that. Jani often wondered if he had ever considered all the ramifications of his blending prophecy.

“Good God.” Niall turned back to the house and the myriad faces that watched from the doorway.

“Welcome to Thalassa, Colonel Pierce.” Bon bared her mahogany teeth. “Please, enter.”

 

“Doctor Shroud and Doctor DeVries are downstairs in the clinic, which you have not yet seen, ná Kièrshia.” Bon gestured like a tour guide toward the lift that led down to the lower level. “We shall take the stairs, one flight only, to the library, wherein ná Gisa awaits.”

Niall glanced back at Jani. “Place is a bloody palace.” He paused on the landing that overlooked the skylit courtyard, and leaned over the stone railing to take in the whole of the gardens. “Incredible.”

“All hybrids come here to study,” Bon said, a shine of pride softening her features. “They come to take sacrament, to discuss points of our history and our future.”

“Really.” Jani waited for Bon to mount the stairs. “I have some things to discuss with Gisa,” she said to Niall. “We may slip into Sìah Haárin.”

“I daresay I'll understand the gist.” Niall couldn't take his eyes from the garden view. “Something to do with how the hybrids fit into the Haárin scheme of things, I'll be bound.”

“You might say that, yes.” Jani followed Bon to an entry that she saw, was located two floors beneath her own room.
Not my room—I don't live here.
The door moved aside, revealing floor-to-ceiling shelving filled with wafer folders, display cases, a polystone floor with a glasslike finish, and a windowed wall overlooking the bay.

“Oh.” Niall stopped and stared. The scholar in him eyed the reading and viewing materials like a starving man poring
over a banquet. Then he moved to the view, his rapt gaze marking it as the work of art that it was. He took one slow step inside, then another, as though he entered a church.

“Ná Kièrshia.” Gisa sat at a desk at the far end of the room, near the window. “I am most surprised, and truly, that you have returned.” She wore the same sort of humanish outfit as the first time Jani met her, this one in shades of yellow and green. “I have been preparing farm plans. We have greenhouses and processed tracts that you have not seen. I hope to show them to you today.” She seemed as relaxed and confident as always, so sure of every move she made. “I walked the land and found myself wondering, and truly, what ní Tsecha will say of this place when he finally comes. So many times he fought in the circle to defend the idea of the blending. So many times he bled. The blood of the priest, binding humanish and Haárin. I am filled with awe when I think of it. The blood of the priest that binds.”