Hidden in Sight (13 page)

Eventually, they quieted, though I could still count eight sets of respiratory organs at work over the flapping of my feet and rather pronounced complaints of my fourth stomach; I surmised walking in the cold, damp air had its sobering effect on these species. Or perhaps they, too, felt the darkness as a living force, a threat to survival kept at bay only by the pathetic sword of light I wielded in one hand. One very tightly gripping hand, with a strap attached to the lamp fastened around the wrist.
Ersh
, I told myself firmly,
hadn't raised a fool
.

I thought she'd be proud of me, successfully fighting every inclination of this form in order to keep and use it, to hide my true nature.
Or maybe not
. Ersh had expected such things. Paul would understand, though. He'd appreciate the effort I'd made, if not how.

I could always
, I told myself in much the way Humans whistled when afraid,
count on Paul
.

He would be waiting for me at the office. We would find out who had drugged the poor young Ganthor in order to start a fight in a bar. A bar where we both happened to be, exactly when we were both there.

As Skalet-memory insisted:
there were no coincidences
.

 

“We're being followed.”

I started at this reminder I wasn't alone in the dark, a reflex that sent the beam careening alarmingly along the walls and ceiling, sparking uselessly dim patches of fluorescence where fungi had taken hold. Then I aimed it at the face of the being who'd spoken, dipping it to the floor again as the Human threw up an arm to protect his eyes. “I only hear you,” I said reasonably, though my stomachs abruptly remembered they existed to cause me grief. “I have excellent hearing.”

Apparently the Human wasn't relying on senses, mine or his own. His hand appeared in the beam, showing all of us the small device in its palm. “Sniffer,” he explained, sounding much more sober than I'd expected. “I dropped the other half behind us, in case those were Port Jellies. Not that I'm a runner, you see, but I'm not lookin' for trouble either. Several someones just tripped it.”

I was filled with admiration—and a healthy dose of dread. “Did anyone see Port Authority badges?” I asked.

A chorus of negatives followed, along with one completely irrelevant comment about sugar. Ervickians stayed drunk longer than most species.

It wasn't Paul. My Human was too careful to trip any spy device this crude. More significantly, I'd seen Meony-ro lead him into the tubes ahead of us, not behind. I would never have left Dribble's if I'd imagined he might still be in there. Hom Wolla, yes. My first and best friend—no.

I considered what I'd seen of the black battle gear. Too nondescript to identify with certainty. Kraal perhaps, but they sold their military tech to many systems and species.

Another image floated up: faded tattoos. We'd been at Dribble's because of Meony-ro.

I refused to become paranoid. “I'm sure we aren't the only ones using these tubes,” I said firmly, swinging the light forward again.

Keeping one ear aimed behind.

I learned the reward for remaining my Lishcyn-self when willing hands and rumps shoved aside the storm grate that served as a doorway from the lava tube to the real world. Light flooded my eyes, painful, wonderful, safe light that vanquished dangerous shadows once and for all. I felt a joy so visceral I had to shunt what remained in my third stomach to my fourth to contain it.

I rushed into the open. I wasn't alone, my compatriots from the tube hurried with me, but none of them had my combination of inertia and motivation. As a result, I was in the middle of the roadway dodging a groundcar before I could stop myself.

I grinned, shining both tusks at the flustered driver, who may not have taken my expression exactly as intended, given his speed leaving my vicinity.
No matter! We were out of the dark.
For a change, Minas XII wasn't raining, hailing, or otherwise trying to obliterate us from its surface.

But it seemed memorizing a map wasn't quite the same as following one. I lost my smile as I looked up. In fact, I lost my jaw as it unhinged in shock and dropped to my chest. The Sweet Sisters, a set of seven ominous volcanoes marking the northern end of the shipcity itself, should have been far to my left. They loomed out of storm clouds straight ahead.

Not to mention they were towering over the now-smoldering roof of what remained of Dribble's.

I'd led us out of the Dump, all right, and back in again.

Oh, dear.
I took a moment to snick my jaw back into place.

Surprisingly unconcerned, my former tunnel mates scattered in all directions, save one. “Are you all right, Fem Ki?” His voice sounded more impatient than concerned—the Human with the 'sniffer. He was by himself now, standing safely out of the flow of traffic. The others were flagging down for-hires, arguing loudly where two tried for the same conveyance. The Ervickian was singing to a lamppost.

There was no sign of black-garbed Humans, though a few Ganthor milled around in the wreckage, exchanging rather incredible boasts from what I could hear of their cheerful clinking as they hunted for unexploded, and hence still useful, globes. “Can you help me arrange transport?” I asked the Human, feeling somewhat overwhelmed by this evidence of normalcy returning. “I want to go home.”

An ephemeral saying, I told myself, that suited the moment perfectly. I wanted my rooms, my bright, safe lighting, my own walls around me.

Otherwhere

 

 

DRIP. Drip. Drip.
The valley wall gleamed with wetness; the ramplike road braiding its slope was etched with channels of steaming liquid. Even the air lipping at the road's sheer edge was heavy with mist. Water was the bringer of life, carrier of all things mineral. Water was the agent of death, returning living matter to the rock from whence it came.

The Tumbler scraped its trowellike fingers along the wall, collecting what drops it could. There was no time to linger within the seeping of the Edianti's famed springs, to recrystallize the gifts of the earth along every facet of its body. Despite its ordeal, this rash, hurried feeding had to be enough.

This road was old and unfamiliar; its crumbling steepness a hazard best avoided. The Tumbler had been forced to it by those terrifying sounds in the dark, an unnaturally regular repetition of something falling to the ground, as if it were being pursued by an avalanche able to move along the surface.

They were behind it still, as they had been night and day, through the revealing truth of Eclipse, to true day again. The Tumbler had led its pursuers away from the innocent, done its utmost to lose them in the tears and wounds of the Moon herself. Nothing had stopped the sounds from behind.

It wasn't self-preservation. There was danger to more than itself here. Flesh-burdened who would chase one Tumbler across Picco's Moon? Who dared trespass here? The Elders must know.

The Tumbler chimed a troubled minor as it rolled down the road. The lawlessness of the flesh-burdened ignored the treaties that welcomed them only to the shipcity and the heights. Elders of the Assansi had granted permission for a group of their scientists to enter a living valley, but that had been long before this Tumbler had been accumulated.

The flesh-burdened had never been invited to the Edianti. They never would be.

The mist thickened with every roll and slide downward, growing sweet with acid and filling with the tastes of home.

Home. And they followed still.

The Tumbler slowed to a stop and straightened. If words such as desperation and courage applied to a being made of stone, it knew both as it turned to face upslope. Condensation trickled along its every edge, as if water already knew what must happen and was greedy for the result.

The Tumbler put its back to the wall, leaned forward, and gracefully rolled off the road's edge.

Let them follow now, it thought as it plunged through the mist.

9: Cliffside Afternoon; Greenhouse Night

HOME, for a web-being, was wherever her Web gathered. For me, it was Minas XII, a world on the Fringe.
Well, some part of it, anyway.
The part with Paul in it. But I'd learned other habits over the past decades. Since my Human persisted in calling the stone-walled structure where we lived “home,” I'd begun thinking of it that way myself.

And now? It was gone. I pressed my snout against the aircar's windshield, the plas creaking a protest. The rumblings of all my stomachs was louder, and just as unimportant.

I stared into the deeply shadowed crater that was supposed to be home, Skalet-memory automatically hunting and deciphering clues, Esen-memory helplessly recording and remembering. The amount of explosive used: excessive, even against a semi-fortress built to be snug and cozy through winter's hellish storms. Likely method of delivery: by remote, a piece of aircar undercarriage was embedded into what had been the landing pad out front, where Paul had first arrived, ending my loneliness. The reason?

No clues to that lay seared into the rock.

“Fem Ki.”

Words that made no sense.
Esolesy Ki did not exist.
I kept form by instinct, not will.

“Fem Ki.”

“Please. Fem Ki, we should get back to Fishertown. The wind's picking up.” The note of anxiety in the driver's voice reached me if not the meaning of his words.

I could go down there, cycle into web-form, taste the debris—and find out.

The view disappeared behind what was left of my lunch, breakfast, and last night's indulgence of fudge. I tapped the driver's shoulder in mute apology. He took it as a signal to send the aircar careening down the cliff face, back to the Port City and its lights; by his speed, I presumed he hoped to arrive before further interior decorating.

I didn't bother telling him that all of my stomachs were quite empty. Nor did I argue with his decision. To go into the burning hole that had been our home, hunting for Paul, was to admit the unthinkable.

 

We couldn't land at the office itself. The driver might be a licensed for-hire and so presumably somewhat law-abiding, but this was Minas XII. He didn't need me to tell him to slow and turn away when we saw what waited for us. The landing pad on the roof of Cameron & Ki Exports was crammed with aircars—highly official-looking aircars, with all the potential for delays and questions those implied. I had a sudden happy image of Paul, looking his usual imperturbable and vastly respectable self, answering those questions with the truth, or suitable facsimile, removing suspicion and concern as deftly as he would offer a sample of the latest Inhaven wine. Not as a bribe, but as a signal of how he valued the time of his visitors. My Human could work magic with bureaucrats.

He might be demanding answers himself—answers about the wanton destruction of the wine cellar and home of decent, tax-paying beings such as ourselves.

In either case, Paul did not need a starving Lishcyn coated in multicolored bile to waltz in the door. I'd done that before and Humans really didn't react well.
Weak-stomached creatures in their own way.

“Over there, please,” I shouted to the driver, pointing over his shoulder at the long building next to the office. I had to shout. He'd lowered the roof and opened all the side-ports for some reason, despite the hail starting to pepper us both. I couldn't hear what he said in return, having replaced my hands over my suffering ears, but the aircar obediently swerved left toward the warehouse.

I was trembling by the time we landed, and hurried to key in payment plus tip. Despite my somewhat soggy and distinctly odorous state, the driver helped me climb out. I took a good look at his face for the first time, seeing the lineage he probably didn't know. Human. Garson's World. Refugee. A typical Minas XII import on the surface, but one with eye-folds and cheekbones linking this individual incarnation of humanity to one group of ancestors, to one part of that world where his species had evolved. Warmed by Ersh-memories of fireworks and five-fingered dragons, I grasped tightly at that sense of past retained, as much a comfort to me as the anchor of his strong arm.

He wouldn't leave until I stood in the lift and waved good-bye.
Extraordinary courtesy
, I decided, sagging against the wall the moment the door closed. My lip struggled to lift over a tusk in a smile as I imagined his expression when he saw his tip.
It seemed only fair to replace the aircar I'd so abundantly christened.
One bright spot in a day that I sincerely hoped couldn't get worse.

Of course
, I reminded myself,
that kind of hope usually gained me nothing but a chuckle from the Cosmic Gods
. Once I knew Paul was safe, they could laugh all they wanted.

The lift could take me to the warehouse floor, but I'd pressed a sequence of buttons known only to myself, Paul, and a handful of our closest associates. This stopped the lift much sooner than would seem reasonable from the outside. The door opened, and I drew the reason in through my every pore, feeling the scales of my hide finally shrinking to normal.