Skeen's Leap (15 page)

Though we were Player Family and not required to work on the ways, my love Qessara and I often volunteered to join clean-gangs. It was scut work but it got us out of scutwork for the Family that was a lot more boring; besides, more often than not, we could sneak off and explore that marvelously complex jungle. It was deadly dangerous out there; children and adults both had got lost before in that maze and were never seen again. Qessara knew it and looked on the danger as spice to the pleasure of exploring, but she wasn't stupid. We both carried mark-sprays to leave a trail that would take us out again and well-sharpened knives to discourage attack. She needed those brushes with danger more than any drug, every brush with horror a reaffirmation of her worth; she never talked about her life before the Family, but I'd learned enough about her to make guesses that got me hot and sick and furious at my helplessness before her pain. She was a dancer who could madden a crowd, men and women alike. I watched her dancing once and I hurt so much for her I never went again. That dance was a cry for help so desperate, so hopeless … ah well, she used to say she didn't know what all the fuss was about and she certainly came back into the Family space so cool and unconcerned I never got it straight in my head whether she was just performing or she'd learned like most of us to deny the thing that hurts.

We went running through the jungle like large gray rats. The Law Mother knew well enough what we were up to when we volunteered and scolded us apart and together for playing the fool with our lives, lives that belonged to the Family and weren't ours to squander, but we earned pay-points for the Family and favored status among the Contractors and much good will, so she never forbid us our games. There was something else. More than once we brought back rare and beautiful orchids. The Worao claimed half the price for them, since it was their fields we raided, but even with that the Family had gelt to buy luxuries undreamed of before our games, so no one cried foul and forbid us. But certainly no one encouraged us—quite the opposite. My bodyfather reddened my butt each time I got home late and glared unhappily at Qesarra who led me astray and my uncle-father who taught me juggling and games of chance scolded me for endangering myself and my auntmother who taught me my letters tried to reason with me and with Qesarra. But reason and pain and shame have little effect on the crazy and I had that infection from Qesarra. And nothing serious had ever happened and like all children who are tenderly raised, I had a bone-deep conviction that nothing bad would happen.

This went on until I was fifteen and Qesarra past twenty. During that year the disappearances began to increase in tempo until it was a loud staccato thrum, staccato from the empty spaces where Crew, hire-crew, and Contract Crew used to stand. The edict came down, bristling with dire punishments for those who ignored it. No more children on the service ways, not for any reason. Something prowled the jungle out there, a demon with an everdemanding gut. Only the passengers knew nothing of the fear that tightened around the rest of us. I heard the whispered stories and was afraid, not so much for myself as for Qesarra.

There was a Sound. It was a sigh like wind through grass, seeping into crew quarters and ours. It first it seemed such a harmless even rather pleasant sound. It teased at us, seemed to whisper secrets just beyond our ability to hear. The Worao Captains sent SP crew into the ways, armed with laser snappers and flamethrowers, but the Sound was everywhere; the ways wound for stads and stads. Those that came back saw nothing but plants too soggy to burn. Those that didn't come back—who knows what they saw. The High Captain withdrew with the Worao Elders to see if they could worry out a way of clearing the Insul without crippling the ship. There things stayed while the Worao argued.

Skeen interrupted the story. “To appreciate the problem the Gancha Family Worao faced, you should know that were the ship Chiar Frawa set down on top of us, it would not fit between the mountains, not half of it, not a tenth of it. Were you to ride across it at twenty stads a day, trading horses every ten stads to keep up the pace, it would take a thousand days to ride across the widest part of it. Just to clear a small segment of the Insul, that area between the meddashell and the serviceways, would be like trying to sweep all the dirt off the plain. You see? Right. So back to Tibo and his story.”

On the fifth day of the Sound, Qesarra was so jittery she couldn't sleep or eat. I watched her closely because I was afraid she'd do something even I knew was stupid. I followed her to the dance space. I hated all the folk who came to see her, hated them for sucking at her terror and desperation; it was like they were one huge beast feeding on her. When her dance was done, they called her back and back to dance some more until she was exhausted. Abla and Jerron, two of our cousins, had to carry her back to the Family space. I went to do my part of the Family Act and forgot about her for a short while because the brother and sisters who worked with me would make my life unlivable if I messed up. Besides, I was the best tumbler of them all outside my bodyfather. I had my pride.

When our part was done, I hurried to Qesarra's cubby. She wasn't there. I stood by her mussed bed and wondered what to do. The Sound went on and on. We were all used to it by now, we tuned it out, but I started listening to it because it was somehow different. Focused. I began to feel it working inside me, looking for a hold on me. And then I knew where Qesarra was. All the grishes to the serviceways were warded now, those anyone knew about, with alarms to bring Worao SP running if anyone tripped them. I let the Sound catch me and lead me. There had to be a grish no one knew about or why did folk keep disappearing. I tried to close off everything but the will to follow. I didn't want the Sound to dump me or take me somewhere Qesarra wasn't. I was frantic not knowing how long Qesarra had been gone, but I tried to look casual as I moved through the family cubbies and the Green Space, where the Families grew vegetables, where children played among the waterbins. There were some younguns there with an Amamother keeping an eye on them; she frowned and looked worried when she saw me. I grinned at her, waved, and hurried on. Old Amamothers were apt to have intuits at the most inconvenient times and I cursed chance for letting one get a look at me now. As anger flared in me, the Sound seemed to retreat like I burned it. I forced the anger back and tried to calm myself. I succeeded enough that the Sound grew complacent and teased me along faster. It was a grish close to the Green Space, hidden when a new waterbin was moved in. There was just enough room to squeeze around the bin and slide the panel back.

There was a dukkurbox by the grish, dusty and old but it had to have what I needed. I closed my eyes and let my hands work the latch; there was an alarm here too, it'd sound on the bridge, but I didn't care now. Inside there were emergency stores and other supplies. And a flame thrower. I worked as fast as I could, though it seemed like years before I got the flamer and the aid kit tucked into my shirt. I suppose it only took a second or two; I know the Sound didn't seem to notice. I let it take me faster and faster along the ways. Every time I passed a dukkurbox I jerked it open, laying a trail as long as I could. I collected two more aid kits just in case. The Sound got louder and louder. I took out one of the kits and opened it without looking at it or thinking what I was doing. Closed my hand about the anahastic spray. I fumbled the kit closed, shoved it back in my shirt and ran along the way clutching the small can.

When the Sound finally pulled me off the walk into the jungle maze, I shot a gout of anahastic at the wall and marked my trail with it every tenth swing of my arms, getting this into muscle knowledge so if the Sound got so strong it canceled brain-think, body-think would keep laying down the splotches of spray. Anahastic flouresced under torchlight; anyone following me—and I hoped (down deep, not letting myself think about it) that half the SP's on the ship were after me by now—would see it.

The Sound pulled me deep into the jungle until I finally came to one of the larger spaces and saw IT. A monster fungus that had hundreds of small holes all over its orange and green body. It moved all the time, like a cloud of smoke in a gentle breeze. I saw later it had grown up over one of the fan holes that kept the air moving in the Insul. At the moment all I knew was that the thing was singing to me from a hundred mouths while long ropy tendrils that grew in explosion patterns about several such sphincters were wrapped loosely about Qesarra, that fibers along these arms were punched into Qesarra—into her eyes, her mouth, into her skin. That thousands of tiny red spiders swarmed over her, liquifying her so the fungus could suck her dry. There were other husks of skin and bone scattered about the space, rustling dryly like fly bodies about a spiderweb.

The sound called me closer and closer. More swarms of red spiders were pouring out of the singing holes. I couldn't have broken free if I tried. I didn't try. I saw Qesarra being drained by that thing and I went berserk, running at it. The tendrils brushed at me, trying to get a hold of me, but I was doing a dance more desperate than any of Qesarra's and they only brushed at me. I didn't feel the jolts that were supposed to paralyze me. I got the flamer out and turned it on Qesarra. Her arms went black, her sleep robe caught fire, her hair burned. The tendrils smoldered, then burned. The torch that was Qesarra fell against the thing and it screamed. The sound blew me back, addled my head worse than it already was, but my body knew its work. I held the flamer on the thing, held it there flaring full out, held it even after I'd exhausted its fuel.

I would have died like Qesarra because the wetness in it kept quenching the worst of the fires. The tendrils charred and flaked and fell away, but the nubs were still there. Parts of the surface boiled and dripped down, but one flamer would never have killed the thing. It was huge—filled up that space and flowed into other spaces—half a kilometer around. I did minor damage, made it hurt, but ten men with flamers wouldn't have dented the thing.

I didn't die. The Worao acted fast when the dukkur alarms started sounding. An SP team went into the ways, followed the line of alarms, then found and followed the anahastic trail I'd laid down. They came charging to the rescue with more flamers and a pair of sonic disrupters. They blew that horror into fragments and fried the fragments, then spent the next several cycles flushing the most powerful fungicides they had through the Insul. I didn't know anything about that until a lot later. When I came out of what it'd done to me, turned out I couldn't stay in a world ship any longer. The hurt had gone too deep and there was the thing about Qesarra. The Worao were grateful enough to put me in therapy on Feyurnsha and leave enough credit for my treatment and re-education, though that didn't work out quite the way they planned, I didn't turn into a docile productive Feyurnit. But from the day they landed me to this, I've never gone back on a world ship and I never will.

AFTER A BUSY NIGHT, SKEEN COLLECTS A FOLLOWING.

Skeen woke the next morning in a warm and sweaty tangle of flesh with Hal suckling at one nipple and Hart playing with the other. Hart laughed when he saw her awake, yelped when her fingers found his not-hair and tugged. He swung over her and began raking his fingers along her ribs. She bucked vigorously, slithered away, slippery with sweat though weak from giggling. She was ticklish all over and the four Aggitj youths had discovered that with much glee, which she repaid in kind when she found that fooling with their not-hair sense organs drove them even wilder.

Much later they swam in the river, ducking and diving, splashing each other. The Aggitj were seals in the water—agile ivory, rose, and gold seals—narrow limber bodies beautiful in their watery arabesques.

She came out of the water sputtering and laughing, half drowned, feeling lazy and scrubbed clean inside and out and full of energy and languid as a worm three days dead. She rubbed herself dry with one of the blankets, pulled on her wet underwear, shook out the eddersil, and got dressed.

Breakfast. Bread, cheese, a handful of plums, the last of the ale. Clean-up. Bury the coals, shovel dirt in the craphole, scatter leaves where their night-wrestling had messed the ground and grass. The Aggitj did the work. Their movements had the flavor of ritual and they sang a droning song while they worked.

Skeen sat in the saddle watching all this activity with interest and some impatient. She couldn't see they'd made any great mess, but the Aggitj were very serious about what they were doing. Timka had been much the same way about their camps, eyeing Skeen with disfavor when she started to leave before the place was put back close to what it'd been before they came. Skeen wanted to leave now, but she owed them more courtesy. Good kids, limber and loving and sexy as hell. She felt like their mother, well, maybe not their mother, considering the games they'd got up to last night. She had enjoyed herself to the max last night, but she didn't want to repeat it. When she dived into a Pit Stop, she seldom spent two nights in the same place with the same person. It felt better to say it's been great, guys, see you.

The Aggitj finished their fussing, huddled together a moment to sing a short wordless song, a kind of celebration, maybe of a happy night and a joyful morning. They moved apart, chattering cheerfully in their own tongue, swung into the saddle, chattering on in Trade-Min, so persistently they canceled each other out until Hal who was the oldest put two fingers in his mouth and blasted the other three with an ear-shattering whistle.

He waved Hart, Ders, and Domi back, then maneuvered his mount beside Skeen.

Skeen started on at an easy walk, Timka's horse ambling patiently behind. They rode in silence for half a stad, then Hal said, “We want to come with you, Skeen ka Pass-Through.”