Skeen's Search (8 page)

“Amen to that.” Skeen laughed and did a sitting bow, touched head and heart with the fingers of both hands. “And congratulations.” She straightened. “If I put my mind to it, I could wish we'd done some more testing on the Lander. I never got near her top speed.”

“You were the one in a hurry to get here.”

“So I was.”

“Skeen …” Timka was frowning at the world analog turning slowly in one of the screens. “That might be mostly water, still there's a lot of land to search. And a lot of prisoners to search through. I don't see how we're going to find one man. I came along this far figuring you knew what you were doing, you always have before, but if you don't mind, I'd feel easier if I wasn't jumping in the dark.”

Skeen grimaced. “Sorry, Ti, I keep forgetting it's not just me and Tib doing this and other people can't read my mind like he does.” She edged the floatchair closer to the table, leaned on her crossed arms. “This is how it goes. There's a hard way and an easy way; we'll try the easy first. Everyone who knew anything about Burn says he's a lot like me, in looks and in the way he acts. Buzzard was emphatic about it and he reads people better than most. Burn comes from the Cluster, I come from the Cluster, he acquired an Empire cruiser and escaped in that, I came out in a destroyer. Me, I never got snagged, but there were a couple times those early years when I missed it by the thickness of the sweat on my skin. He's thin but wiry and he's young; chances are better than good he was sent to the mines. Me, I wouldn't stay where the Kliu put me one minute longer than I had to, especially not in the mines. Mines or farms, he's gone. He'll be living somewhere in the wild making life hard for the Kliu when he gets a chance. We'll do a grid-scan of that north bulb …” she waved her hand at the screen, “see what's there, then I'll think where I'd go if I was him, go there and look.”

“And if he's not there?”

“I exercise my talents on the Kliu files. Escapee or not, Kliu should know more or less where to find their prisoners. In case there's someone who wants to ransom one of them. There won't be all that much security in the headquarters building, who'd they need to keep out? But that Island's R and R for the guards so it's always thick with Kliu and there's not a lot of cover for nosy bipeds. And Burn could be dead already. I hear he has a flash temper. He might have goaded one of the Kliu into stomping him. Or one of the fugitives—they won't be a gentle lot, that bunch. If that's what happened, then we're in for some more inspired guessing on my part, backed up by whatever traces we can find as to where he left the Veil. So. More questions? Right. Pic, clear the table and spread the printouts, we'll be looking at ins and outs, those are the critical times and I want to be sure I'm not missing something that could come up behind me and bite.”

Lipitero and Tibo stayed with Picarefy. Tibo was annoyed, but there wasn't room for him and Timka both and Ti's shape shifting was more valuable than his talents here. Even on the way back it'd be useful; Burn was another body to fit into a space that was cramped for two. Ti could shift to her serpent form and tuck herself into any available crannies. With so little space and nothing to do (the Lander flying herself) but sleep, eat and excrete, it was a very long three days from the Belt to Pillory.

When they reached the orbit of the outer moon, they crept past so close to that moon Skeen felt her skin crawl; she sat barely breathing, her thumb poised over the abort sensor that would slew the Lander about and send it into flight mode. In the screen before her she watched the gun nodes, ports and zipships slide by, so close and detailed it seemed she could reach out and touch them. The near brush was deliberate; if Lipitero's shield developed a leak, there was still time to back off and get away.

The dark little moon went bumbling on; the silver mayflies scattered about its surface caught the sun and glittered, but they stayed put. The gun nodes stayed shut. The shield was tight.

The Lander poked its nose into the atmosphere and slowed yet more until it was creeping along like a fragment of cloud, reading air currents, sliding along them with almost no disturbance, easing down and down toward the dark side of the twilight line, gulping power like a glutton. Skeen knew what to expect, she'd done some testing on the way here, so she watched with knowing gloom as the gauge line shortened.

They moved into the grid search, sucking up data through the array of sensors across the belly of the Lander until night over the continent ended. The little ship landed with the dawn, set Petro's spiders to weaving camouflage over her and sighed with pleasure as she took off the shield. There was more than a touch of Picarefy in her voice as she told Skeen and Timka, “Take a walk or something and let me sort out what I got; you make me nervous fidgeting in here.”

They were down in the crater of a dormant volcano, tucked up close to some squat trees covered with a fine red dust. Red dirt spread around them, dropping in a gentle slope to a turgid smelly lake in the center of the crater. Several stands of reeds taller than the trees grew out of the water, a cross between tule and bamboo with short stubby leaves like knife blades, tough enough to stab with. Each reed was subtly different from its neighbors in color and configuration, a red like dried blood, a green so dark it was almost black, fire orange, a deep sapphire blue, shades and blends of all those colors, mottlings and stripes, a few with feathery sprays of seed-pods bursting from their tops. The largest of them were bigger round than Skeen's arm. She worked on a blue reed with her knife for some minutes and barely scratched the surface. Panting with the effort she struggled back up the slope. “Virgin and Hopeless would adore those things,” she said, pausing between words to catch her breath. She eased herself carefully onto a knotty root. “If they want them, they can come get them.” She tried laughing, started coughing as the dust caught her in the throat. She spat, started, her heart thudding painfully as a hand-sized creature covered with stiff fur striped red, brown and gray, exploded from the dirt by her feet and went skittering away on a dozen short stubby legs. Timka-cat pounced on it, flipped it over, poked with long sharp claws at its plated underbelly, patted the frantically waving legs. Skeen rubbed her back against the rough bark, but nothing seemed to help the ache in her muscles.

When she stepped from the argrav environment contained within the Lander onto the surface of Pillory, the sudden increase in pull was a jolt to her system. She'd expected to breeze through acclimatization because she was born on a moderately heavy world (1.3 g) and because she was fit, strong and had gone hard on weight training while Picarefy was on the way here, but that one step taught her the difference between 1.3 and 2.75. Looking at the numbers, the difference didn't seem that great, but the drag didn't quit; there was a constant painful tiredness and even breathing was work.

Timka had less trouble. She looked frail and had been reared on a light world, but she was Min with that extraordinary Min body. All she did was shrink a little until her muscles and the Min equivalent of bones were denser, then moved about easily. Her cat-weasel form was chunkier, squatter, more big cat than weasel and it flowed across that powdery dirt as if she'd been reared there the whole of her life.

They slept most of the seventeen hours of daylight. As soon as the sun set, the Lander retracted the camouflage and reset the shields. She rose cautiously, spiraled up to search height and continued with the grid.

Five days later the Lander settled back beside the lake and began chewing over and sorting out the data she'd collected.

Skeen sighed and stepped from the cradle of the argrav onto that clinging red dirt she remembered with distaste from her first experience of it. The fist of gravity closed more loosely on her this time.

Timka bounded past her and ran through a flock of reddish leather-wings, scattering them like leaves on the wind, kite-shaped fliers with thick hydrogen-filled veins webbing the whole undersurface of their flat bodies. Head canted, ears flicking as she listened to their scratchy shrieks, Ti-cat sat on her haunches, her mouth open in a hot red grin, her club tail sweeping back and forth, stirring up a fine cloud of dust that settled swiftly back only to puff up again with another sweep of that tail. “Ti,” Skeen yelled, “stop playing with those birds and come help me set up the shelter.” She rubbed at her back, took hold of the pull strap on the dolly and started for the small clearing in the trees Timka had nosed out the last time they'd been here.

Timka shifted back to Pallah but kept a neat coat of fur; there was a chill bite to the air in spite of the great red round of the huge sun just clearing the horizon. She capered over to Skeen, face stretched into a hieratic grin like some sylvan godling playing the mythic Fool; something about this world, maybe the heavier gravity, was intoxicating her. Singing cheerfully, if what she was doing could be called singing, bird warbles and animal calls and songs she'd picked up partying with Briony in Sundari Pit, she helped Skeen inflate the shelter, knock in stakes and chain it down. Beginning to grumble at the labor, casting eyes of desire at the shadows under the trees, swiveling her ears to catch the whispers, grunts, rustles that came out of them, she helped Skeen haul food and other supplies from the Lander to the shelter, setting her burdens down where there was open space not bothering to stow anything. When Skeen wanted her to help set up the guard ring with its shield dome plus generator, spyeyes, alarms and rotating cutter beams, she called a halt. She told Skeen, “I don't know anything about this stuff. Better I should do something I know, let me go on the prowl and see what's out there so we'll know better what to expect here and afterward.”

Skeen watched her fidget, sighed. “All right. When you get back, stand off and yell so I know it's you and I can open a gate for you to come in. Um, be a little careful, Ti. Worlds like this can turn up nasty surprises.”

Timka warbled a bit of wordless contempt for possible dangers, shifted back to the stocky cat and went bounding off.

Skeen sighed again and went to work setting up the guard ring. Ti was drunk with hubris and that could get her killed. She punched a spike into the hardpan and moved on. Wet kiss Bona Fortuna for me, old Djabo, and let the worst predators be nocturnal so Ti won't run into anything she can't handle. Tap in another spike and move on. She'd better sober up a little or she's going to be worth damn all in this business. Shit, I need her flying around scouting for me, that's the point of bringing her. Working quickly despite her growing fatigue, she finished setting the spikes and began slipping the caps on them, dogging them down with practiced ease, doing a swift check of power packs and circuits. When she was finished, she flipped on the system and moved around the ring, checking the web with a reader, making sure she'd left no holes and that every sector was functioning as it ought. Rubbing at the back of her neck, working her shoulders to ease the ache in the muscles, she moved to the shelter and looked around. The water comber next, so I can fill the tank. Then the miniskip. I should get that ready while it's still light, don't want to go fiddling around, dropping things in the dark. She stretched, yawned, groaned. Damn cat, Djabo bite her tail, she should be here helping me, not off playing somewhere. She grinned ruefully. And don't you wish you were out there with her. She started to turn off the web so she could get the water comber set up out by the lake but arrested the motion when one of the cutter heads swung around and a beam pulsed once, stabbing into the shadow under the trees. Wild shrieks, hasty rustles, then whatever it was went rapidly away. Skeen frowned. She shut off the general field but left several of the cutter heads on independent sweep, then she went to check with the Lander to see how the survey was getting on.

Crimson twilight. The sun a series of rubies laced between black peaks.

“Skeeennn.” It was a whispered wail outside the perimeter.

“About time you got back.” Skeen opened a gate between two spikes, pointed them out to the blackness under the trees. “Between here and here,” she said. “Come straight to me.”

It was the pale body of the Pallah that strolled into the ring. Timka looked exhausted and more than a little hung over. “Did you bring my clothes?”

“In the shelter. You hungry?”

Timka winced, shook her head.

“Bellyache?”

“I overdid the hunting. A lot.” Timka rested a hand on her stomach; its shallow curve had acquired more definition and there was a drumtaut look to the skin that underlined what she'd said.

“Could be some of the life here is toxic. You want to watch what you eat.”

“That's no problem. If something starts making me sick, I just shift and leave it behind.”

“Min.” Skeen started for the tent, “You're shivering. There's plenty of water, some of it hot, you can wash off that damn dust and get comfortable. Lander has finished sorting the survey and done the printouts. I've skimmed over them and I think I know where to look, I want to see what you think.”

They sat cross-legged on the shelter floor leaning over a low extruded table examining a relief map of the northern continent.

“Mines are black,” Skeen said, “farms, green. Administrative centers, flitter fields, that kind of thing, gray. What's interesting to us are these red blotches. Those are life-readings the Lander got not connected to any of these other centers.”

There was a flurry of loud noises outside the shelter, the flare of cutter beams visible through the round windows of the shelter's largest living space. Timka shivered. “Aren't we being, well, rather noisy?”

“The satellites? Dormant volcano, that takes care of the heat. Heavy deposits of iron ore, that masks our metals, enough anyway for the crude sensors the Kliu have up there. Wouldn't make it with Petro's stuff, but we don't have to worry about that, she's on our side. The light show out there? Most of it's round the edges of the clearing where the canopy is thickest. Not a lot of light is going to leak out. Even if it does, we've still got our best defense, the Kliu mindset. Whatever they happen to see, they'll explain away because it's not possible to have intruders on the ground.” Skeen frowned. “You didn't come across anything that big and mean?”