Stardogs (37 page)

He dropped it. “My God, Locktickler, I nearly killed you!” he said thickly, taking her gently, tenderly into his arms without knowing why he did so, except that it was the right thing to do. Some part of his instinct knew this. Yet another instinct said it could get him killed. But the older instinct, that which has preserved genes over the eons, knew this was more important.

And she in turn clung to him fiercely, like a drowning person.

In the darkness the Dagger of the Goddess heard them, as he heard the other tell-tale sounds of humans in the night. He felt a detached kind of jealousy, but that was not what was troubling him. Why, when he was offworld, sent out on the most far reaching mission that the High-Priest had ever sent him out on, was he faced with the ancient evil instead? And why did the one with the crown have a human face. Was it a hallucination? Was it merely a device of Imperials, a human in a Denaari crown, to force him to reveal himself prematurely? Was it a trick of the evil ones, with demons assuming human form? But why then leave the betraying crown unhidden? Sleep was a long time in coming and it was unnaturally heavy when it came. He was still asleep in the morning when Shari took herself to interview the boy.

“My name is,” a sequence of clicks and squeaky noises, “Shut-up. Sorry, that’s my other half. I’m Juan Biacasta.” Juan still felt pitifully weak, but he’d struggled to his feet to bow respectfully when she came to him. She’d sat him down, firmly. It was difficult to be coherent when you’d just turned sixteen… somewhere in the last few days, and were faced with a living legend. It was more difficult when you were sharing your brain with a set of alien memories. “I’m from Amritsar Station. I… er, stowed away on your ship.”

So: that was no way back. It was a disappointment, but she didn’t allow it to show. He explained how he’d got onto the barge, where he’d been going, and with his ears burning, why. Then the ejector capsule, and attempting to find them.

“And that?” She touched the crown. It was warm. Much warmer than the early morning air.

“It was in the ejector-seat. !whistle paa!tch, my Denaari half, died there. It’s… it’s his memories. I’ve got take it back to the vaults. For his hatchlings.”

You could hear both the determination and sadness. The responsibility which had been thrust on him had been hard. But he had accepted it and emerged a man. It gave Shari a moment’s pause. “You realize,” she said gently, “that it was three thousand years ago? His hatchlings are dead. There isn’t a place to take the crown to.”

He shook his head. “The vaults are alive. They won’t die even if the Denaari themselves are gone. They were grown to survive forever. They’ve been there for thousands and thousands of years, growing all the time. I must take !whistle paa!tch there, even if I can’t bring his body for his children and loved ones to eat.” He suddenly realised what he’d said. “It sounds horrid, I know, but !whistle paa!tch believed that was how you,” he paused, “went on in the body as well as,” he touched the crown, “in the mind.”

Tanzo stared at him. She’d arrived possessively holding the bemused looking Sam’s hand. “You mean that’s a machine for storing Denaari memories?”

“No. It is an animal, not a machine. !whistle paa!tch’s people didn’t really have any machines. Everything was alive… grown. But yes, it does store memories.”

“So…” she said pensively, “You wear that crown and you get all of his memories?”

“Well no. If you were Denaari it would, but it can’t give it all to me. I just have seen the visual bits… smelt the smells too. It’s… very confusing. Um… part of me seems to have become !whistle paa!tch. He understands… I don’t.”

“Still, it is a window on an alien life! It’s wonderful, isn’t it, Sam?”

He nodded, but Shari thought he looked doubtful and… jealous?

“Hmm. I hope you can tell us more about their planet anyway. Do you think you can walk today? We like to travel while it is still cool.”

“I think so, Your Highness. My legs still felt a bit wobbly when I stood up, I’m afraid,” said Juan.

“Well, if you can’t walk, we’ll take turns in carrying you again.”

“I will try my best,” he said, standing up, determined that he would manage somehow rather than make the Princess carry him. He wasn’t going to let the slim girl with the short red curls who had talked to him in the pale predawn carry him either. The crown fed him memories, at his recall of her face. She’d cared for him, soothed him, when he was not Juan-human, but !whistle paa!tch trapped in a confused and weak alien body. Then, the crown beast who, after all, had no understanding of the material it recorded, replayed the first time Juan had seen her, and what had transpired. Whoever ‘Prince Jarian’ was, he Juan, was going to smash his face in. If he was still alive. He’d run off, hadn’t he?

Shari smiled at him. “Well, I must see why my other walking-wounded is not up,” she said, looking worried. “Eat, not that we’ve got much, and drink. Then it is up-valley again. It is getting steeper, I’m afraid.”

“Er, Your Highness, why up-valley? That’s away from the memory-vaults. They’re,” he pointed at the sheer red wall of the canyon, “over there.”

“Water and bits of wood come down this canyon. We hope we’ll find the source of them. Perhaps there’ll be sources of food there. We don’t have very much left, you see. Your memory vaults may prove to be as far off and unreachable as going home is, I’m afraid.”

His reply was a strange expression and a series of clicks and whistles. Then “Sorry, I… !whistle paa!tch that is, says there are no plants on this world. Or carbon-animals. Not outside the Biozoos.”

“Oh. Well, we found a perfectly,” she paused slightly, “edible snake.”

Juan though of his own encounter. Blenched. Station-food was always aseptically portioned, packaged and anonymous. “You
ate
it!”

“Better than eating your father,” said Lila dryly. “Like your Denaari-half did.”

“The Denaari weren’t cannibals, really. I mean, not like we feel about it. It was love, and, and respect. Um… There was a big Bio-zoo somewhere here. Near the way down.”

“Good. Maybe the snake was an escapee.”

“But we can go home. That’s why I have to the get to memory vaults. They’re on the edge of the pupping grounds.”

“What!” He had all their attention now. Everybody gathered around him. Even Deo who had woken to sound of Alien speech.

“We can ride a Stardog home. They wait to be… I don’t really understand. But the young Stardogs wait there, before they can go to space.”

There was a long silence. At last Shari spoke. “That was a long time ago. I doubt if anything would be waiting now… Mind you, Stardogs are very long-lived. But anyway we have no ship to get offworld. And no Stardog barge, even if we could get offworld.” It hurt to rob them of their sudden hopes.

“But we could go and look?” a pleading, whining voice. Juan looked. Recognized the face. Stepped over to Jarian, took him by the shirt, and hit him. The highly civilized Stationers frowned on physical combat. Juan had never had a real fight before, and anyway he was as weak as a cat. The Dagger of the Goddess, Martin Brettan and Mark Albeer would have rated the blow about 1.03 on a 1-10 scale.

Jarian had been hit once before in his life. That had been hard enough to frighten and stun him. This was just enough to stir the resentment that bubbled beneath his sullen exterior. This was the idiot who had cost him his power! He hit back, fortunately just as ineffectually. Mark Albeer, who happened to be closest, pulled them apart with negligent ease. “Break it up! Now, what’s all this about?”

“You leave me! I’m going to pulverize him for what he wanted to do to Una!” Juan swung furiously and ineffectually.

The stocky bodyguard grinned. “First get your strength back, youth. And then see you come to me for some lessons, at least in how to make a fist. You’ll break your thumb like that. Unless you want me to pulp him for you? I’d be glad to oblige.”

Juan caught sight of Una. She was cowering away. He felt embarrassed and ashamed. “No. You can let go of me. I won’t do anything. But I’m warning him, if he goes near her again I’ll… I’ll… “

“I’ll give you some lessons, son,” said Albeer, approvingly. “Now eat and drink. We want to move out in a few minutes.”

Five minutes later they began walking, Jarian in the lead, with Shari telling Sam and Lila to swat him if he didn’t move fast enough. “I’m using him as a probe, Teovan,” she said quietly. “I don’t like doing it, but if someone has to get hurt or killed let it be him. Quite honestly, we’d be better off without him, but we may get into a situation where we need every human. Besides, I can’t just kill him, or turn him out to starve or die of thirst.”

So Jarian moved ahead, thinking dark and murderous thoughts. He had a little list on which the names of Juan, Mark, Shari, Sam and Lila featured prominently, with Una and Martin Brettan as also-rans.

They walked. And climbed. Took too short a siesta for their tired bodies, and then walked and climbed and scrambled some more.

By late afternoon it was obvious they were getting closer to the source of the wood fragments. Now flood-shredded fragments were relatively frequently jammed into head-high cracks in the wall… or even higher. Just before dusk they came on three prizes. A whole dead tree, filigree roots and all, bleached white as snow, and jammed high between the narrow vertical walls, a sand-bar yellow with dry and twisted cirrith stems, stripped of seeds by something, and a bone. A long femur-bone, half-buried in the sand, stippled by little gnawing teeth.

They stopped right there for the night. It was an effort to reach the jammed tree, but the brittle-dry wood burned brightly. They’d climbed steadily from the crash-site. The night here was bitter. The fire was a delight.

The infrared flare of it was clearly visible from above. From the eternally circling satellite-traveler it was noted. It was just another data point added into the weather information that was transmitted down to Ground-Control, while the castaways slept knowing they must be near to a place where there was enough water to grow trees, where there was cirrith which was at least edible, and where big game roamed. Only Tanzo was a little uneasy about that bone, and what sort of animal it might have come from.

They were up bright and early the next morning, eager to walk on.

“Antidote time.” Shari spilled the precious tablets out of their vial and onto her palm. Squinted at them. The Dagger of the Goddess was standing near at hand. She held out her hand to him. “Look. They’re two different colours.”

“Different batches probably,” said Kadar, who was standing ready.

The Dagger looked at the tablets. Carefully he picked up the violet one. Smelt it very cautiously. He put it back in her hand. Then he took one of the other tablets. They were more mauve and far fewer in number. He sniffed these too. “Garlic. These are Ectipain antidote. The others are probably Dormantin, by the colour and complete lack of smell.”

Shari’s face fell. There were only a comparative few antidote tablets, presumably the ones she’d got from Deo’s stock. It put the horror of decision closer. “What’s Dormantin?”

“The original Mickey Finn, Princess. Knock-out pills.” Martin Brettan’s eyes were slit narrow, angrily staring at the ex-prince.

But Jarian too appeared shocked. “I paid nearly a quarter of a million Imperials for it…. Dormantin’s cheap! They cheated me! They dared!”

“If we’d had Ectipain… and no antidote, we’d all be dead.” Brettan grabbed Jarian by the remains of his fine silk shirt. “I suppose,” he said slowly, “that you bought your Ectipain from the same supplier. The bulging eyed Jarian could only nod. The viscount threw him down. “Ectipain starts with the fingers and toes… not the damn stomach. You were had, and so, dammit, were we!”

Shari felt as if a huge weight had been lifted from her shoulders. She also wondered about the roughly labelled ectipain in Deo’s bandolier. There had been several empty jars. It was a typical Arunachali trick. She was willing to bet there’d been nothing wrong with Jarian’s supplier, just with Jarian’s care of that case they’d confiscated from him. It had to have been that first night while Deo’s wits had still been with him. But she said nothing of this. Just “Time to move out.” Inside, however, her heart was bubbling with light and laughter. How could she have doubted him?