Shadow World (14 page)

"Cara has enriched hin's time."

Tears stung Cara's eyes. It was a beautiful farewell phrase, belonging, as it did, to a race that placed such a high value on the use of time.

"You have enriched my time, too, Eerin. I'll always remember you." Gently she disengaged and stepped back, suddenly feeling let-down and even wearier than before. It really was over now, her great adventure.

Mark touched the Elpind gently on one shoulder, and Cara realized they must have already said their good-byes in the cabin.
At least theirs are only
temporary,
Cara thought. In a month Mark would be awakened, and they would share their pair project assignment. The journalist tried not to feel envious.

The hibernation chamber was cold--not as cold as the unit itself would be, but still, cold. Cara shivered and looked around curiously. It was much like the one on the ship she'd come out on, the S.V.
Marion.

A double row of units, sixty in all, lined the circular room, with wedge-shaped master control panels filling in the corners created by the rectangular units themselves. Another twenty units were grouped in the center of the room, set in deep grooves in the flooring and strongly form-welded to center stanchions.

Small windows were set into the side and top of each unit. Face after sleeping face could be dimly seen, each one composed, oblivious, and somehow very vulnerable to Cara's stare. She shivered again, feeling like an intruder into their privacy.

"Let's not say good-bye," Mark said. "I'll be back on Earth within the year. Is it all right if I call you then? Maybe we

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could get together ... catch each other up on the news."

Cara smiled at him warmly. "I'd like that. I don't think I could handle another good-bye. When I see you, you can tell me all about the pair project on Berytin."

He nodded. "I didn't have time yet to have that talk with Eerin, but I will as soon as I get out of hibernation. Thanks again for the advice last night."

"You're welcome," she said softly.

The technicians were getting restless.

Cara smiled awkwardly. "Well ... see you on Earth, okay?"

He nodded once more, with a quick smile, and then turned to follow the technician to the other end of the chamber. Cara turned to the one waiting for her.

"Have you done this before?" asked the technician, leading her to an empty unit on the first row. "Do you want me to explain how it works?"

"I've done it before," she reassured the woman.
And I'm going to do it again
someday. I'm going to see the Fourteen Known Worlds--every one of them.

I'm coming back out here, I swear it.

Cara remembered Rob's admonition to look forward, not back. "I'll remember, Rob," she muttered.

"What did you say, honey?" the technician's voice broke into her musings.

"Nothing." She smiled at the white-coated woman. "I'm ready."

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Chapter 7
CHAPTER 7

Rude Awakening

Mark dreamed he was being shaken like a bug in a jar. Shouts and thumps reached him; there must be trouble somewhere in his dream, but ... who cared? Awareness stumbled woozily through his brain like a drunk looking for a place to lie down.

Something jabbed him, hissed, then a sudden wash of molten fire scalded his insides. Mark tried feebly to push away the rough hands jerking at him.

His head smacked something solid, and the double message of pain, from his head and from his gut, jolted him awake.

Peering painfully through slitted eyelids, he saw that he was half in, half out of the open hiber unit.

My head hit the top,
he thought groggily.

Hands yanked at him again, dragging him over the side of the unit. He dropped limply to the deck, and the fire rushing through his veins abruptly reversed course, exploding in his stomach. Mark threw up violently, ridding himself of the scanty contents of his stomach in gasping heaves. He gagged on bile as tears streamed down his face.

"Here," said a woman's voice. "Put this under your tongue."

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He felt her hand, warm on the chill skin at the back of his neck. Obediently Mark lifted his bowed head, fighting renewed nausea from the slight motion, and, with an unsteady hand, helped guide the pill to his mouth.

The little pill dissolved almost immediately. It left a burning sensation on the underside of his tongue, but somehow it took away the vile taste. Seconds later the awful nausea eased away, too. Mark sighed shakily, wiped his mouth, then rubbed his swollen eyes.

"You okay? They could kill someone, yanking people out of hibernation like this," commented the woman.

"What ... what's wrong?" Mark asked. He blinked furiously, trying to focus.

"What's happening?" Despite his grogginess, he sensed the charged atmosphere around him, a confused miasma of fear, anger, and urgency.

"Who are 'they'?"

"We've been hijacked," she answered flatly, and he recognized her white jacket as belonging to a hiber tech. "Terrorists. Listen, there are other people who need help. You okay now?" She was gone before he could answer.

Hijacked? Terrorists!
The words shocked clarity into Mark's brain. He opened his eyes wide.

He was kneeling on the hibernation chamber's deck. Most of the units were still closed, but several gaped open and empty. Scattered around him, like so much debris, were their former occupants. Some were sitting, some were lying curled up or sprawled out, others leaned on each other. The tech who'd just helped him knelt by one of the prone figures several meters away.

Only two people were on their feet. One of them was busy dumping a Chhhh-kk-tu out of a lower-tier hibernation unit. The other stood by the door with a gun trained on the room.

Shit!
Mark's heart contracted, then began to race as he stared incredulously at the two upright figures. The hijackers were Elpind!

Elspind, dammit! Use the plural.
It was a ridiculous time to be concerned with alien grammar, and part of his brain realized that dimly. Mark took slow, deep breaths, trying to calm his thudding heart, steady his trembling.

The hin near the door rapped out a command to the other. Mark recognized only a few words. He'd never heard

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Elspindlor spoken so rapidly and colloquially before.

Where's Eerin?
he wondered. Surely ... surely
Eerin
couldn't be part of this!

He tried to reject the thought out of hand, but it lurked in the back of his mind like an uninvited guest.

"Get up!" shouted the Elpind with the gun in Elspindlor. "Everyone ...
up!"

Hin waved the gun for emphasis. Mark got to his feet with a grunt, fighting dizziness. His head pounded, nausea threatened again, and he was stiff and sore all over. Shaking off hibernation was never pleasant, but this was worse than anything he'd ever experienced.

He gestured to the other passengers, some of whom were looking at him, and slowly, they began following his example. They understood the gun and the gesture, if not the language.

They staggered, several holding on to each other for support. Mark counted five who still sat or lay on the floor. The second Elpind prodded one of the sitters at the other end of the hibernation chamber. "Get up!"

Oh, God!
Mark sucked in his breath as he recognized one of the still-prone figures.
Cara!
Until now, he'd assumed that she was still in one of the units.

He had to get her up. Slowly, careful to make no sudden moves
(the first rule
when taken hostage,
his memory supplied automatically,
make no sudden
moves),
Mark shuffled across the chamber until he was beside her.

It flashed through his mind to wonder why he and these other people had been singled out to be awakened, but he didn't have time to ponder that question, or any other. Cara came first. He could feel the gun like a physical touch on his body as the Elpind holding it swung it around, training it on him as he clumsily knelt.

The journalist lay on her stomach at the base of one of the control panels, turned away from Mark. Her legs, with bare, dark feet poking out of the blue hibernation coverall, sprawled limply.

Mark swallowed hard as he knelt by her. "Cara?"
Oh, God, be all right!

Please!
Even though he could see the slight movement of her back as she breathed, his hand shook as he slid his fingers beneath her shoulder-length bush of hair.

Then he sighed with relief. Her skin was warm, her pulse,

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strong and steady.
Fell back asleep, that's all.

"Cara!" Mark shook her shoulder, glancing back at the chamber door. Their fellow hostages were being herded out the door; only three or four still remained in the room. He shook the girl hard, wishing he could just scoop her up and carry her, but at the moment it was touch and go as to whether he could haul himself up and out of the room. "Come on, Cara! Wake up!"

She muttered drowsily and stirred.

"It's Mark, Cara. Come on." Grunting with effort, afraid that they'd both topple over, Mark somehow dragged her to her feet. Slinging her arm around his neck, he slipped his own tightly around her waist, in a grim parody of their time as dancing partners. Cara sagged against him, mumbling.

"Walk, Cara. That's it. C'mon, walk." Alternately dragging her and guiding her irregular, stumbling steps, Mark got them across the chamber and out the door. The group followed one of their captors, while the other Elpind brought up the rear.

The
Asimov's
large common lounge wasn't really crowded, but the couches and chairs were all taken. Some of them were occupied by people he recognized, people he'd met at the Captain's Night party, but Mark didn't see anyone wearing a blue-and-white crew uniform.

Steering Cara to a space on the floor against the outside wall of the hibernation chamber, he let her slip to the carpeted deck, then dropped down beside her. His body was immensely grateful to be sitting down again.

We need food and water,
he realized, though his stomach spun rebelliously at the thought. The fast before entering hibernation, as well as the sleep drugs themselves, left people weak and dehydrated.
Got to try to think
clearly,
he reminded himself, trying to remember all his StarBridge courses on dealing with crisis situations. All prospective diplomats learned hostage protocol. It seldom happened; interstellar distances made terrorist raids rare, but they weren't unknown in the CLS.

"Mark?" Cara was finally coming around. She sat up woozily. "What's going on?"

"Trouble." Mark took his first good look around the room and caught his breath. Eerin stood quietly with four other Elspind at the front of the room, watching him and Cara. Hin's golden eyes were huge and sad.

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Mark closed his own eyes, biting his lip.
Eerin is not part of this. I refuse to
believe it!

Cara was looking, too. Even groggy, the journalist in her recognized the significance of people with guns on a passenger ship.

"We've been hijacked!" she gasped ... then had enough sense to shut up.

Heads were turning their way. Seconds later her dark eyes widened again as she realized who their captors were.

"Elspind?" she whispered. "Why? What about Eerin?"

Mark shrugged, but a cold lump of suspicion was congealing in his stomach as he remembered the two scientists they'd met at the party--and why they'd been traveling to Elseemar.

What if these guys are Wospind?
He hoped he was wrong, hoped these terrorists had no idea and couldn't care less that Sarozz and R'Fzarth were on this ship. Still dizzy, he forced himself to scan the room again. The Mizari and his Apis colleague weren't present. Narrowing his eyes, Mark turned his attention back to the terrorists.

The one to Eerin's right seemed heavier built, but that was largely due to a much denser coat of soft-looking honey-brown hair ... as if the down on Eerin had thickened into fur on this Elpind. The skin, like Eerin's, was orange and leathery. This Elpind had green eyes instead of gold, but they were as large and round as Eerin's and had that same luminous quality.

The most noticeable difference between this Elpind and Eerin had nothing to do with physical form. Two of the terrorists wore a scarlet, loose-fitting tunic that fell nearly to their knobby knees. The left side of the garment was decorated with the emblem of a bird, a bird with outspread wings of bright, varicolored feathers. Its head pointed down toward the hem of the tunic.

As if it were diving ...
Mark thought foggily, then memory suddenly surged back.
Oh, my God! That's an Elseewas, that bird that does a suicide dive into
water at the end of its life. Eerin wears Shadowbird feathers when hin
dances the Mortenwol.
Eerin had said the bird was an important symbol to hin's people, but seeing its death plunge worn as a badge sickened him.

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He focused on the other tunic-clad hijacker. Virtually hairless, the natural angularity of these painfully thin people was very evident here. The peach-colored skin had a healthy glow and was tight and smooth, not leathery-looking, over the bony outlines. This one wore a tunic like the other except it fell open down the middle.

Mark recalled what he knew of the three Elpind genders.

The males have fur, but the females are smooth, almost hairless. So that
furry one is a heen, or male, and the orange- skinned one is han, or female.

That's why they're wearing clothes when the neuters don't. They're sexual
beings.

Cara poked him in the ribs. "Who's the leader?" she whispered. Just as she spoke, another figure entered the lounge from the narrow passageway leading forward to officer quarters and the bridge.

"Never mind," amended Cara grimly. "I know."

Watching this newest addition to the group stride over to the side of the room where Eerin and the others stood, Mark agreed with Cara. "Stride" seemed a strange verb to apply to a light- boned, fragile-looking Elpind, but it fit this one. It had nothing to do with size or solidity or weight; the word applied because every move the newcomer made claimed confident space.