Hidden in Sight (5 page)

“It's the best so far,” I heard her companion protest. “C'mon, S'kal-ru. What's a minute or two more? We'll be rich!”

“Only a minute?” my web-kin repeated, her voice calming deceptively even as it came closer. I shivered, knowing that tone. “Do you know how many moves can be made in a game of chess, in one minute?”

The sun was setting, sending a final wash of clean, white light over the mountainside, signaling the end of Eclipse. And more. There was a strangled sound, followed by a sequence of gradually quieter thuds, soft, as though the source moved away.

Or fell.

 

The seedling's tender white roots had been exposed. I took a handful of moist earth and sprinkled tiny flakes of it into the pot until satisfied. Most of the plants were unharmed. All were back where they belonged. It hadn't been me. I'd stayed hidden, afraid of the Tumblers, afraid of the darkness, afraid of letting Skalet know I'd been there.

I hadn't made it back to the shuttle before Skalet, but Ersh had. Apparently, she hadn't left—sending away Skalet's shuttle in some game of her own. Had Ersh set a trap? It paid to remember who had taught Skalet tactics and treachery.

What went on between the two of them, I didn't know or want to know. It was enough that there were lights in the windows and an open door when I'd finally dared return. The Kraal shuttle and Skalet were gone.

The plants, needing my care, were not.

Ersh, as usual, was in Tumbler form, magnificent and terrifying. I shivered when she rolled herself into the greenhouse. It was probably shock. I hadn't cleaned my cuts or fed. Those things didn't seem important.

“You went out in the Eclipse.”

A transgression so mild-seeming now, I nodded and kept working.

“And learned what it means to the Tumblers.”

I hadn't thought. To her Tumbler perceptions, I was covered in the glittering remains of children. My paws began to shake.

“Look up, Esen-alit-Quar, and learn what it means to be Web.”

I didn't understand, but obeyed. Above me was the rock slab forming the ceiling, embedded with the lights that permitted the duras plants to grow. It needed frequent dusting, a job my Lanivarian-self found a struggle—then I
saw
.

Between the standard lighting fixtures were others. I'd never paid attention to them before, but now I saw those lights weren't lights at all. Well, they were, but only in the sense that, like a prism, their crystalline structure was being used to gather and funnel light from outside.

They were crystals. Tumbler crystals.
Children
.

“Like us, Tumblers are one from many,” Ersh chimed beside me. “To grow into an adult, a Tumbler must accumulate others, each to fulfill a different part of the whole. The very youngest need help to begin formation and are collected for that reason. But Tumblers are wise beings and have learned to use the sun's light to find any young who are—incompatible. It is a fact of Tumbler life that some are born without a stable internal matrix. If they were left, they could be mistakenly accumulated into a new Tumbler only to eventually shatter—crippling or destroying that individual. It is a matter of survival, Youngest.”

“You could have told me,” I grumbled.

Ersh made a wind-over-sand sound. A sigh. “I was waiting for some sign you were mature enough not to take this personally. You think too much. Was I right?”

There must have been thousands of the small crystals dotting the ceiling. There was room for more. “You were right, Ersh,” I admitted. “But . . . this?” I waved a dirty paw upward.

She hesitated. “Let's leave it that it seemed a waste to turn them into dust. Speaking of dust, go and clean yourself. That form takes time to heal.”

I nodded and took a step away, when suddenly, I
felt
her cycle behind me and froze.

Ersh knew whatever Skalet knew.

She didn't know—yet—what I knew.

Suddenly, I wanted it to stay that way. I didn't want Ersh to taste that memory of hearing a murder and not lifting a paw to stop it. I didn't want Skalet, through Ersh, to ever learn I'd been there. I wanted it never to have happened. Which was impossible. So I wanted it
private
.

I didn't know if I could, but as I loosened my hold on my Lanivarian-self, cycling into the relief of web-form, I shunted what must stay mine deep within, trying to guard it as I always tried to hold what was Esen alone safe during assimilation.

I formed a pseudopod of what I was willing to share, and offered it to Ersh's teeth.

 

I'd succeeded in the unimaginable, or Ersh deliberately refused to act on the event. Either satisfied me, considering I couldn't very well ask her. Her sharing was just as incomplete. There was nothing in her taste of Skalet's attempted theft or her plans for the Kraal. Or Uriel's existence. I supposed, from Ersh's point of view, one Human life didn't matter on a scale of millennia. I wondered if I'd ever grow that old.

Our lives returned to normal under Picco's orange glare, normal, that is, until the next Eclipse. Ersh went out in Tumbler form, with me by her side. There weren't many failed offspring this time, but those she found, we brought home to add to the ceiling. More prisms to light the greenhouse. I found a pleasing symmetry in the knowledge, a restoration of balance badly shaken.

Later that night, Ersh surprised me again. “I've had enough of you underfoot,” she announced without warning. “Go visit Lesy.”

Go
? I blinked, waiting for the other side of this too-promising coin to show itself.

“Well, what are you waiting for? The shuttle's on its way. Don't bother to pack—no doubt Lesy went on a shopping spree the moment she knew you were coming. You'll be in a shipping crate, of course, since you can't hold anything but this birth-shape of yours long enough to get outsystem, let alone mingle with a crowd. And don't come out on your own. Lesy is expecting you.”

Don'ts, Dos, and Details went flying past, none of them important. “But I can come back ...” I ventured, holding in a whine.

A low reverberation. Not quite a laugh. Not quite a growl. “Do you think you've learned everything you need to know, Youngest?”

My jaw dropped down with relief. “Of course not,” I said happily.

Ersh came closer, lifting my jaw almost gently into place with her rock-hard fingers. “You aren't ready, Esen-alit-Quar,” she told me in her blunt, no-nonsense voice, the one she used before inspecting anything I'd done. “But you have become—interesting. It's time you broadened your horizons.”

I trembled in her hold. Did she know? Could she? Had I been wrong to believe I could, like Ersh, hide my memories? I drew a breath—to ask or blurt out a confession, I wasn't sure which—when she released me and turned away, saying only: “Don't worry about your plants, Youngest. Skalet's coming to tend the greenhouse. I think I'll have her dig out an extension while she's here—put some of that military training to use.”

This time, I let my tail wag all it wanted.

I wasn't that old yet.

2: Cliffside Afternoon

OVER the years, I'd learned to edit my stories. Paul's eyes tended to glaze if I included such things as the composition of pavement where I'd walked, or the original source of various ornamental bulbs in a garden I'd passed. His passion was for language and culture—those details I could describe in any amount of depth and keep him fascinated.

When, as today, we exchanged stories about our separate pasts, I considered it a sharing and assimilation of a sort, so truth was important. Important to me, anyway, which was apparently why Paul found it so entertaining to exaggerate his exploits until I had to refuse to believe him. It was quite frustrating. But, over the years, I'd become used to it. This was the sharing I had, within our Web of two. It was, in its own way, gratifying.

However, some things, I'd decided long ago, should stay within me. It was my right and responsibility as Senior Assimilator—not to mention that it prevented embarrassment, something I managed sufficiently for any being without digging more from my past. So I'd edited some of the truths from this story, as well.

“Skalet,” Paul murmured. “An interesting individual.” He was a master of understatement. “Did she ever get her treasure from Ersh's mountain?”

I considered the question. “She didn't establish a House of her own among the Kraal.”
That I knew
, I corrected to myself. Ersh hadn't shared such information with me, nor had I tasted it the one time Skalet and I had exchanged web-mass directly, without Ersh presorting her memories to those suitable for the Youngest of her Web.

I'd learned to be grateful for what I'd once considered Ersh's hoarding of secrets. Most of the things in my memory I preferred not to keep near the surface of my thoughts were Skalet's “gifts.” Warfare: within a family or between worlds. Assassination and sabotage. Intrigue and lies. The cold assessment of everything in terms of expendability, risk, and gain. Curiosity without conscience. Passion without morals.

I might not care for these things, but they tried to surface even as I resisted. I wrapped my arms tightly around a body that Skalet-memory deemed too fragile and conspicuous. It was both, but it was a body I used only when I was with Paul, and this shaping of Esen was as much me as any other form I chose.

Well, to be honest, one other being knew this me. “Have you heard from Rudy lately?” I asked.

Paul accepted my blatant change of subject with good grace, doubtless aware Skalet's memories made me uneasy. He'd know more if I hadn't edited her murder of the Kraal, Uriel, from my storytelling.

There were
, I thought comfortingly,
useful disadvantages to listening to a story rather than eating it.

Otherwhere

 

 

A TUMBLER rolled its way along a mountaintop. This was perfectly normal behavior for a lifeform made from an aggregation of compatible crystals, if not a perfectly normal mountain.

This mountain was Forbidden.

Not that Tumblers paid attention to any prohibitions to their movement over Picco's Moon, especially during the bliss of procreation. They had no terms for property or trespass anyway. Up and down, yes. They had a plethora of words to describe slope, terrain, composition, the likelihood of finding scintillating conversation, and, most importantly, the predicted angle of the sun's rays during Eclipse at any one place.

Especially this mountain, of all places on Picco's Moon. In the past, many had sought it during bliss, believing offspring shed here were more likely to be perfect. Then, this mountain had been home to the strangest Tumbler of all, the Immutable One, a being older than memory, unchanged by time, and seemingly unaffected by mere biology, save for a compulsive curiosity about everything from Picco's orbit to the habits of those burdened by flesh. Over the millennia, it had become a pilgrimage of sorts to seek out the Immutable One, a memorable event to converse with a legend, especially one with such refined taste in rare mineral salts.

Especially one whose existence hinted at permanence.

A false promise. On a day that seemed like any other, Tumblers came to this mountain and found it empty. They mourned the passing of the one they'd thought indestructible, shedding diamond tears.

They declared this mountain Forbidden, in memory.

However, in every healthy species there exists variation. The Tumbler rolling over this mountain was, if one borrowed characteristics better applied to the flesh-burdened, more daring than most of its kind. Or more careless. The distinction depended on consequence.

This Tumbler was repeating a journey, in the way its kind had retraced their rolling paths since the dawn of time. One experienced bliss when and where it arrived.

It was, of course, necessary to retrieve the results.

The Tumbler slowed and stopped tumbling, having crossed the flat, worn peak of the mountain before finding what it sought. A litter of crystal was caught along the very edge. Some had surely dropped over the side. The Tumbler chimed distress at the accident, then forgot the lost ones, too intent on its task.

Over and over again, the being reached down, tenderly, and picked up one of the crystals lying before it. Each was held to the pure light of the sun; each accessed. Those worthy of further growth were accreted to the Tumbler's own body. Those unworthy were consigned to sparkling dust by the swift compression of a hand adapted to that purpose; a tone of grief struck each time, so they would know they were loved, if briefly.

The Tumbler was preoccupied with its labor, chased by the constraints of astronomy. Worlds turned, orbited, danced. The Tumbler needed the light of the sun to judge its offspring; needed the light reflected from Picco herself to safely navigate the trip down the mountain.

The Tumbler had no attention to spare for concealed machines, busy at mysterious tasks. It had no time to waste on other trespassers.

As its body disintegrated into sparkling dust to join that of its flawed children, all it knew was that its killer wore flesh.

3: Office Morning; Kitchen Afternoon

AMONG the thousands of living intelligent species, and the millions no longer with us, and probably, I told myself with disgust, the untold billions yet to come, Humans had to be the most obstinate.

And Paul Cameron was the worst of his kind. His fascination with the Ycl—obligate predators without any redeeming qualities, except their fortunate lack of the technology required to sample the multispecies' smorgasbord so temptingly beyond their world's orbit—boded well to give me ulcers in all five stomachs.