Authors: Phyllis Gotlieb

Mindworlds (13 page)

BOOK: Mindworlds

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â¦ darkness and stealth are my territory â¦

Rrengha, dreaming in the limbic brainform of her ancient ancestors.

AND WHERE IS THE DAMNED SHIP THAT WILL TAKE ME TO KHAGODIS?

Ned wrapped his arms around his head and wondered why in all the pits of hell he had come on this useless journey with this only too alien being who despised him so deeply. Then he slid into the Lyhhrt's dream of hideous Ix, soulless Zamos, endless slavery, and eventually somehow he slept.

The next morning three men and a woman stepped out of a buzzer and began to curse the insects.

The Gardeners

They were thick-bodied and wrapped in dark clothes, and with massive aerial-sprouting comms buckled to their shoulders. The Lyhhrt knew them:

:
Look now! So much for Brezant not telling us to keep our backs straight! Those four were the ones with Brezant in Montador City, before my Other was killed. Then they tried to destroy us where we were hiding. Now they have murdered their employer and hope to get more wealth. Eventually someone else who wants more wealth will kill them too. All fleshly beings act so.:

Ned wiped down his night's sweat with his kerchief. “All I want is to get my flesh out of here in one lump,” he muttered. “You can keep the wealth.” The sky was the same as yesterday's, with sunlight slowly clearing the mist.

“This the new batch?” The three men went walkabout, staring at the recruits, most of whom had been lining up for breakfast. Ned kept his head down. The Lyhhrt helped their eyes slide over him and Spartakos but they paused in front
of Rrengha, who was fitting on the prosthetic âfingers' that made her able to open her food packet.

“Lookit this one, I never saw one of them before. Hey you, you go talk-talk?”

Rrengha looked up at themâ

:
Go someplace else,:
the Lyhhrt said quickly, and they went, without noticing.

Ned cracked his knuckles.
Dunno how long we're gonna last here.

But the Lyhhrt was thinking of something else: that Other who he was sure had killed his mate and his contact, the one who could only be an even more corrupted Lyhhrt than those who had planned to attack Khagodis. He saw the image of that wrought-iron shape in the minds of these men.

“These three Earthers also know of your past,” the Lyhhrt said. “You struck one of them on some other world.”

“I don't start fights.”

“You must have finished one.”
:That one called Oxman, with the lenses on his eyes, has caught sight of you. He has forgotten about it now, butâwhat does âHe'll die as good as the rest of them,' mean to you? That is what he is thinking
.:

Ned swallowed. “I don't like to think.”

“What does it mean, Earther?”

“I don't know. Maybe you'd better tell me what you think.”

:
They are going to send everyone here to be killed on Khagodis
.:

Ned whispered, “What? That soundsâ” He stopped himself from saying âcrazy'. “How could they? What's the point? Who'd kill us, Khagodi? Everybody thinks Khagodi are as straight asâasâeh â¦”

:Lyhhrt
.:

“Right. I guess not.” Of course not.
What everybody thinks, isn't
. Ned had known Khagodi arena fighters, men who hadn't settled into any kind of society: they docked their
tails to make them fork, and fitted the tips with spikes. Usually they fought each other, because no one else could match their size, and their heavy-helmeted bouts were clumsy and listless.

But except for those fights they had almost never been physically violent â¦ and Lyhhrt had become so. Zamos had smeared whole worlds with new forms of corruption.

:Suppose it means that the brave Khagodi are going to defend themselves against attack by slaughtering invaders hired by Lyhhr â¦ . :

“If you really believe this, tell me how long, Lyhhrt?”

“I believe. No more than two tendays.”

Shit, if that's right I've just led us into a trap
.

In the morning there were the usual jaw-jaws and drills and during the afternoon Ned found himself hooking loose brush into the robot loaders that compacted and hauled the garbage, and used the helmet as his guard against thorns; he took care to retract the sensor antenna and leave himself alone in the universe. Trying to pull himself together.

Rrengha came to work alongside him, or go through the motions; though she was a powerful and intelligent weapon, even with prostheses she had no more than half-hands. Aside from the Lyhhrt, she was the only other ESP he knew of here, and she took care to shield hard and wear the copper mesh.

Ned found her silent company good during the long afternoon. He said, to take his mind off everything else, “I guess you must be missing good food and a better place to sleep, Rrengha.”

Rrengha canted her head to one side, a massive negative. “Not everybody likes me the way you do, Ned, and working in that place there is too much flesh around me, all those women and men eating and drinking, eating and drinking â¦” She paused to swallow a mouthful of saliva, “too
many big bites of meat.” She grinned. “Not lean like you, Ned.”

Ned laughed. “You're takin' away my appetite.” Her appetite was one of the few things he wasn't scared of.

In the evening after dinner he asked the Lyhhrt: “If we had to get out, how would we do it?”

But the Lyhhrt had pulled away and closed his mind.

To get the chill off his spine Ned said, “I think I'll go walkabout and check the fences.”

“Take care,” the Lyhhrt said.

Ned rubbed himself slick with insecticides and began his walk in a slow spiral around the fires and murmuring groups, talking casually to anyone he knew, gradually working his way through the tents area, taking the offer of a dopestick and squatting to smoke it, moving further out among the scrubby trees that had been left standing, past several couples among the bushes grunting their way into whatever temporary paradise was available, until he heard the deep vibration and came up against the bulk of the cycler.

The windowless gray block went deep into the ground, once-and-a-half Ned's height above it, and eight armspans to a side. All waste went into its bay doors, but the stinging smell of it came from its solvents and vaporizers. All the money that was not spent on uniforms, barracks and ground-clearing machines was fed into it; its roof was covered with branches and was almost invisible from above. The loaders that collected brush carried it here, and Ned realized that some had come from other camps, the ones whose noises he had heard. Ned wondered if this Company was a business that ran other kinds of illegal militias and did not see why not â¦ but sending them to death? How much money had been spent and would be spent for this, and so many lives â¦ where was the payoff coming from?

He pulled himself away from these thoughts and wound his spiral past the watchtower, that did not rise far above the
trees, and along a narrow path through them. The sun had dropped and the mists were rising; the stars were fuzzy and twinkled wildly in the still-hot air.

Insects were sticking to his face and that air was hard breathing; every once in a while some unsuspected flower would burst from a thorny bed with a waft of fragrance that was almost too sweet. Ned paused to listen for footsteps through the endless insect buzzings that were drowning out the cycler's rumble, and was turning his head to look back when something hit him hard between the shoulders and he was face down in dirt.

He stayed there, with a foot holding him down. The voice snarled, “What d'you think you're doing here?” Woman's voice.

His teeth were gritting with the dirt and he snorted it from his bruised nose. The foot lifted and flipped him like a stone. “Whatsis, Chrissake, I come for a walk!”

Another of the heavy ones, she had arms as thick as the Beer Goddess's, a zapstick in one hand instead of a lightning bolt, and a heavy stunner slung over her shoulder. Her hair was blond, chopped short.

Ned, cringing in a pose he had learned the hard way as a cheap pimp, recognized her with an extra twist of the gut: the one called Hummer, who had landed earlier with the three men, and even earlier had come in a fireproof fighting suit to kill him and the Lyhhrt back near the cave in Miramar, he had seen her hard face and yellow chopped hair through the suit's headpiece. She would have slaughtered him gladly, but now she did not recognize his face through the dirt and the blood running from his nose.

“G't up!”

Everything hurt but nothing was broken. He scrambled up, rubbing the dirt deeper into his face. “I wasn't doin' nothin' miss, what's wrong with walkin'?”

“Lessee your tag.” She was raising the zapstick.

“It's in my kit, I got a rash on my neck anâPlease don'tâI'm Tommy Longjeans, Tent Alpha-Seventeen!” Tommy had been the biggest bully in Ned's school, and Ned would have been glad to trade places.

She grabbed his arm with her free hand and shoved her face close. “You looked like you were trying to go AWOL, Mister Longjeans, we don't like that, next time we'll push your face into the fence for a real good shave, and just to remindâ” The stick was sparking the stubble of his jawâ

“Halloo, Hummer! You got trouble?” The voice was not far away in the bush, too close for Ned.

She turned her head to yell back, “Nothing, just aâ”

Ned gave a hard edge-hand chop to her wrist that loosed her grip, wrenched his arm free and ran. He heard yells and cracking branches, but he was a lot lighter on his feet than Hummer and he ran as if demons were after him until he reached the cycler, then kept up a fast walk through the trees, past the lovers and when he was surrounded by tents, slowed to a limp, panting.

Suddenly he had a hideous mental image of her and all of the other brutes standing at the ship's bays driving out all their load like cattle, to be slaughtered before they hit Khagodi ground. But he did not know whether it came from his own paranoia or the Lyhhrt's.

The Lyhhrt was inside the tent doing his awkward best to refresh his liquids without being seen. He did not care to be near fires where he might boil in his own juice. After he had finished he lay down beside Spartakos, both of them in straight lines.

Ned thumped down beside him, groaning. “Found the fence, got scratched â¦ Lyrhht, how many people and camps would you say there are here?”

The Lyhhrt stirred himself reluctantly and said, “In your enumeration, fourteen hundred and seventy-one persons in five groups.”

“Any more coming?”

“There are no more signs of recruiting.”

Fifteen hundred. A distance away from the Duke of York's ten thousand. Ned had been almost certain that Brezant was spritzing. “You're certain they mean to kill us.” Fact, not question.

“Almost certain.”

Ned swallowed on panic. “Lyhhrt, we gotta find a way out of here.” He waited out the silence.

“I can leave,” the Lyhhrt said. “I might be able to bring out all of those that I led in, but I would be lying to myself and everyone else if I promised.” There was a dark withdrawing depth in his mind.

“I don't want to make any move without being sure they mean to do that,” Ned said. “Make sure really soon and move fast. But, Lyhhrt â¦ can we run out of here and leave everybody else to be murdered?”

He crawled off to the showers. The good news was, if what the Lyhhrt believed was true, as long as they needn't go to Khagodis, he needn't get that damned oxycap socket reamed out again, if only he got out of here.

FIVE

Khagodis, New Interworld Court:
Choices

Tharma was squatting at her desk eating a trencher of bread and a slab of cold myth-ox as usual for the late morning meal, but no matter what else she thought about, her eyes could not move away from that air-freight package on the desk just beyond the food. She found herself holding the spice-cellar over her tea-bowl without being able to remember whether she had shaken it, took a sip of tea and found it was already over-flavored, drank it anyway, in two gulps, and followed by gulping her food, and having it sit in her belly in a congealed lump. All ceremonies ended today and everyone would be leaving in two days at the most, but there was endless unfinished business.

The murder of that fellow Sketh, whatever his worth, needed a solution; the insistence of minor officials who had meant well, on imprisoning both Sketh and Hasso without formal charge, did not encourage confidence in public institutions of the public who lived and worked here. The problem
of calming Gorodek and protecting Ekket. And that truly peculiar occurrence on the Mesa â¦

She set her teeth, swept the crumbs aside, drew the package toward herself, and pulled the sealer's tab. Stared at the
symbolingua
text:
Report concerning the evidence of force.
The title stopped there, because no one had dared fill it in further.

If this had been one of her old cases in Burning Mountain reported in cuneiform on clay tablets, she could simply have maintained privacy by stamping them out of existence. Not so now, when every thought could be engraved as solidly on electronic record as it might be on stone.

She nerved herself to pull the file from its wrappings, break the seals and pluck out the sheaf of thin and crinkly papers. They whispered in her hands.

The good news was
victim not penetrated
embedded in a lot of elegant language: so then Ekket was safer than she might have beenâbut what followed no elegance could alleviate:
seed of perpetrator immature, suggest testing for Kartenat's Syndrome.
The genetic defect that caused male sterility in Khagodi.

“By Saint Gresskow's Seven Bastards, why do I need to know this!” She wrapped the package up again, sealed it with her personal signet and handed it to the most trusted aide to lock up. This was one she would push upstairs to her Prime. Let him gnaw on the problem of keeping Gorodek from exploding in even more furious embarrassment.

Then a message burst in her ear with such force that it nearly blew the comm button out of her gill-slit: “Have I heard you correctly, Prime Director?”

Ravat, a good sensible fellow from Tharma's own West Oceania, said, “I am afraid you have. Governor Gorodek has demandedâek! replace that with ârequested'!âthe privilege of making an announcement”âpause for a gulp of airâ“of great importance to the whole assembly in the Hall of Communication
and Telegraphy, at the beginning of the fourth quarter, just between Refreshment Hour and Farewell Dinner.” Another gulp. “I'm sure you know what this means.”

She did: a carefully crafted information leak to the media and an unobtrusive increase in security at the Hall. Heavier duty for herself and an increased expense in keeping on extra forces when there was nothing left to the gathering but a dinner. “What else do you believe it might mean, Director?”

“So much has been happening that I don't dare think.”

Tharma said slowly, “One of my brothers has a charming wife-house standing empty in Burning Mountain. I had thought of retiring there, but I hate the summer heat.”

“I don't mind it. Perhaps I'll buy it from him.”

Of course the news spread hissing among all the whisperers munching and sipping at the end of third quarter. It simply added to the gossip about everything that had happened the day before. Hasso did not attend Refreshment Hour, too afraid of being a public spectacle like the one he had already taken part in. When the time came to convene in the Hall of Communication he remained in his room and watched on the TriV.

Tharma watched from her office on several displays that commanded views of all guardposts.

Everything in the New Interworld Court was grand, its marble walls and floors, its stained-glass skylights, its Khagodi-sized staircases with broad deep steps; even the narrow glass-walled escalator for diminutive outworlders managed a touch of grandeur.

The Hall of Communication had all of this and more; even in the media gallery, and barely enough room for its avid listeners. Gorodek mounted the great steps to the huge dais and elaborately carved lectern. He did not bother with the lectern but came around in front of it so that it framed
him. And after the techs had set up the speakers he said without preamble:

“I have learned from sources I trust that factions from the world Lyhhr are planning to launch an attack, a senseless attack on territories in the Isthmuses district abutting my state, Western Sealand. They claim that this is necessary to redress our inaction during our crisis with the Ix. I do not care what they claim: I will do everything in my power to defend my state and its borders, and I deliver this warning as a service to the world.”

This said, he stepped down from the dais, and with his guards around him, left the Hall.

Tharma did not wait to see the melee or hear the buzz. She switched off the TriV, but before she had time to act, her comm sounded its chime and an aide said, “Osset, an official of Governor Gorodek, demands to speak with you.”

She did not like that “demands” but on the principle of getting it over with said, “Let him in.”

Osset, a man of rather reserved appearance, was rather more civil than Gorodek.

“Firstly, the Governor wishes to know what is being done to find the murderer of his aide Sketh, which was obviously committed by a Lyhhrt, and why, when there is a Lyhhrt present here, he has not been sequestered.”

“The Lyrrht in question was twenty-seven thousand siguu from the crime scene at the time it took place, asking me for help,” Tharma said. “We are not certain there is no other Lyhhrt here. We are well occupied with examining the case.

Osset took a step back, and time to draw air. “I know that you are occupied, Supervisor. Principally I am here to tell you that the Governor wishes to leave and demands the presence of his bride-elect Ekket, to accompany him to Western Sealand.”

Tharma smiled at the boldness of this demand. “At this
moment thatâeh, request, is impossible to fulfill. I believe that we can prove that Ekket was wronged, by the statutes of her own country as well as local ones, and since she has claimed that a felony was executed on her and asked for justice, the Court will give her status as an adult, no longer under the authority of any parent or guardian but the Law.”

“You smile now but you will not smile later,” Osset said.

“I don't know whose words those are. But watch yourself,” Tharma said, “and tell your master the same.”

Osset left and Tharma did not take time to consider his threat, but turned her mind back to her visit with Hasso in the Hospital, so few days ago, particularly during those moments after he had pulled off his helmet and flung it aside â¦ .

“Bring me Hasso, if you can find him,” she told the aide.

While she waited Tharma looked around her office, which was not grand but a small cubicle lined temporarily in fiberboard and furnished with no more than a desk and shelves. Perhaps one day its walls and floor would be gracious and marbled.
By then I will be retired or dead
.

For now it and the other offices were the backside of grandeur.

Hasso was weary of everything in this place, even of his yearning for Ekket, and leaned heavily on his staff.

“Hasso, excuse me for having to say this, but when I was with you in the Hospital a few days agoâ”
Only a few days
! “âyou pulled off your helmet, and I caught traces of some thoughts that I at first believed were part of the feverish dreams I am sure you were having. Now, with Gorodek's astonishing declaration, I have come to believe you know something of its background. I am making a request. You must choose whether to answer.”

Hasso crouched, laying his staff aside.

“I have long wanted to unburden myself, but could not
find a way to bring it to anyone's attention. It began three tendays ago in Burning Mountain â¦”

He relaxed, and began to brighten before her eyes: he told her his story, beginning with the dinner on his rooftop, through the journey on which he had met Ekket, and ending, given Reddow's permission, with mind-tampering and his certainty of the presence of one more Lyhhrt.

“I meant to bring up this matter with the Interworld Council, but then Reddow was so distressed, and the situation has become so chaotic I was afraid to ask them to convene for my affairs.”

“You had reason,” Tharma said sadly. “What message did the Lyhhrt bring you?”

“He said, exactly: âI have been advised by the world Lyrrh to inform you that you will be called as a witness in an action being brought against your government for negligence in refusing to support and defend Lyhhrt action against the attack of the world Iyax in local year 7514.' And then he told me, they have begun this action and will arrive on Khagodis within three thirtydays to bring it to Interworld Court, and if Lyhhr is not satisfied there will be an actual attack.”

“Did he tell you how he knew all this?”

“He seemed to be afraid to say more.”

“I understand. That will explain something at least. But we have had no official warning and I don't know of any ships in orbit except those of media from the moons and from Fthel worlds. Why did this Lyhhrt choose to contact you, Hasso?”

“Partly because I have official connections, and the rest because he is the only Lyhhrt citizen onland and I am the only one he knows of with one heart and a wasted leg, so he believed I might be equally lonely.” Hasso smiled. “That is not quite the case.”

She looked at him for a long moment, and said, “Thank you, Hasso. I will take these matters to my Prime.”

She did not want to bring up the case of Ekket then, though it was a burning question, but left Hasso, and his Lyhhrt as well, to take a little comfort in having her strength added to theirs.

She stayed alone in her office for an hour before going to dinner, with communications shut down, building her resolve to prevent Gorodek from becoming a master at setting worlds against each other, and remembering also those Lyhhrt, who had given their lives to the destruction of Ix power as simply as if they had snuffed a candle.

Fthel IV, Bonzador:
A Little Learning
â¦

“Next time let me search for fences,” Rrengha said.

“You were asleep.”

Dreaming terrible dreams of starvation and disease on Ungruarkh, the ancient curses of strangers in a savage world. Ned, aching in every muscle and half the bones, dragged himself out of his own nightmares, sloshed toothcleaner and wiped his face unevenly with depilatory, eyes half closed, mind stiff as his body, and staggered out of his tent.

“Hullo!”

Ned looked up and saw Lek. “Haven't seen you around.”

Lek, wearing the same fatigues as everybody else, came up to Azzah, who was rolling up her bedding, with a “Hello, sweetheart!” and a chuck under the chin and then “Hey!” and a good wrap around the neck in the coil of Spartakos's arm.

Ned cried, “Let go, Spartakos!”

Spartakos let go, Lek rubbed his neck and coughed. “I like her! I didn't mean any harm.”

“Something wrong with your approach, Lek. Spartakos couldn't tell that.”

“Ouch. Believe me, I really do like this one. That other one you got with you is something else.”

BOOK: Mindworlds

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