The City Who Fought (42 page)

"Lying through his teeth, babe."

"You sent messages desiring audience, Channahap," Belazir went on. He rose, like a black fountain tipped with white gold, the loose sleeves floating back from his arms like wings. He looked down from his near two meters of height. "Continue."

"Master and God," she said, in a tone as empty of any but the formal semantic content as she could make it, "your troops fornicate like—" she paused to search for a word "—rottweilers."

"Big chuckle at that one, Channie." Simeon was furious.

Belazir crossed his arms. "Why does this not seem complimentary?"

Channa looked up at him. "They bite," she said emotionlessly, covering her disgust, "all the time."

"Then the sc—the chosen ones should not resist their fate," Belazir said. "It is our custom when we meet resistance."

"They don't resist!" Channa said sharply, then managed a taut smile. "Should we bite back?"

A rustle went through the line of armored troops behind Belazir and the cluster of officers with feathers and jewels in their hair. The noble silenced them with a toss of his head.

"I would not recommend it," he said sardonically. "The custom to which I refer is that of enjoying the fruits of victory. A most ancient custom, surely, even you must know of it? Make another of your speeches. Outline their duties. A hard, sincere effort to please. Then they shall be caressed as they labor, not savaged."

"Master and God, when you bruise the fruit too much, it goes bad! The problem is that I have a hundred people in sickbay being sewn back together and under medication due to human bites and various other wounds. Initially, there were three hundred sick to begin with, not counting the ones who've been flogged."

"Are they injured?"

No, apart from shaking and crying and waking up with nightmares,
she thought. The Kolnari had a whip that did something to the nervous system. "Master and God—" however she tried, she couldn't quite keep the sarcasm out of
that. "
—the problem involves vital work positions which are left empty.

This isn't a planet. It doesn't run itself. Everything has to be done without error. Fatigue leads to error, error leads to failure, and failure can lead to death. I cannot do the impossible, order me however you want."

"Now that," he said, "is the wrong tone." Suddenly he was much closer, and took her chin between thumb and forefinger. "Entirely. Do you understand, Channahap?"

"Yes," she murmured, "yes, I understand." Time seemed to slow.

He smiled. "Excellent. However, your remarks, if not the manner in which they were delivered, are reasonable. I shall give orders that my troops be . . . gentler with their slaves. After you have emphasized the proper attitude toward their duties."

Channa's eyes widened.

He actually laughed this time. "Yes," he assured her, "that, too, is our custom. Those of you that please us or are useful will leave this place on our ships." He watched her absorb this privilege.

"Walk with me," he said, putting a hand under her arm. She jerked slightly at the contact, like the touch of a live conductor.

Amos started to follow. A servo-powered gauntlet closed down on his skull, so gently that it would not have cracked an egg. A duplicate of the one that had crushed his sister's skull. Wind blew through the trees above them, making the leaves move in a dance that contrasted to the stillness of the humans below.

"A strange way to spend so much effort," Belazir said, as he nodded to the landscape around them. A chuckle passed his lips. "Preferable to expend effort and strength on this than on weapons."

"Who does he think built his ships and the weapons they're carrying?" Simeon whispered in her ear.

Channa shrugged in answer to both.

"Still, it is beautiful," he said. His hand traced the back of her neck, lightly enough that the pads of his fingers just touched the hairs. She shivered involuntarily.

"I am not Serig," he added, stroking the fingers down her spine and away. "This is like Earth, is it not?"

"Mostly," Channa said. Unconsciously she tilted her head to one side away from Belazir as Simeon gave her the relevant information. "A few of the plants and organisms are from Rigel 4, but they're compatible."

"Like looking back into the past," he said. They stopped, out of sight of the tables. He looked up into the sky. "Computer," he said. "Night."

The constellations of Earth's northern hemisphere blazed out, as they had not in reality since men learned to bend electricity to light.

"Yes," t'Marid said, looking upward at the false sky. "Very beautiful, but it seems too much openness.

As if a body might fall upward and be sucked out into limitless space."

Well, a weakness,
she thought. Many spaceborn were slightly agoraphobic. That could be useful, if Belazir had been spaceborn.

She thought a smile appropriate. "The sensation is called vertigo. I've occasionally experienced it myself when planet-side. I was born and raised on a space station, so I feel more comfortable under a ceiling."

"Something of that," he admitted. "But also . . . Computer. Night on Kolnar. From Maridapore."

Channa gasped in shock at the change. The dark sky overhead vanished. In its place was a glowing moon-colored cloud full of colored lights from horizon to horizon. She blinked, then realized the light was not that much more brilliant than the Terran sky. Yet this phenomenon was not a sky: it was a
ceiling
across heaven.

"A dozen times full Luna brightness," Simeon supplied.

Off to the north, auroras circled and moved, scrolls vaster than worlds, electric blue and white and pearl.

Beneath them, on the horizon, a volcano was a glowing firestorm spout, powered by its own natural fission reactor. Something gigantic and winged slid across the alien constellations. Smaller things pursued it, diving and tearing as it fluted an intricate song of grief.

"I have never seen this sky," he said thoughtfully. "Not really. Not even a simulation as good as this." He issued a second command and the Earth night returned. "This is more restful."

"Ah . . . The birds won't like it if you change day to night like this," Channa said. "You'd better set it back when you leave. Master and God," she added absently.

He looked at her in astonished amusement. "The birds won't like it?" he said. "Channahap, you are a wonder. The birds won't like it, the insects will be disturbed . . . does this matter?"

"We brought them here, to a totally unnatural environment. If we expect them to thrive, then it's our responsibility to provide them with whatever they need. They're a part of all this," she said gesturing widely. "Without the birds and the insects, this would be sterile, a lifeless tableau. So we have to be mindful of their needs."

He nodded. "I shall leave it on night setting and dawn shall be in twelve hours. Things have changed here. Even the birds must realize it."

Channa had no reply for that bit of arrogance.

"That is the supreme law, of course," he went on, "for Earth, for Kolnar, for the universe."

She made an interrogative sound.

"Adapt! Master changing circumstance, or die unbred. The Seed—the genes, you would say—are the reality that underlies all this. Taking energy from the Dead World, growing in complexity and adaptation.

All this," and, with a swift movement of his hand, he caught a dragonfly by its legs for a second, then released it, "is waves on the surface. Beneath is the Seed, seeking to replicate itself. All beings, all mind, all war and trade and art and science, mere waves on the changeless sea." He smiled kindly. "And fittest of all, of course, is the Divine Seed of Kolnar. Of that Seed, fittest is the High Clan. Which is why you long for union with it, for such immortality."

"I disagree. Lord and God."

"No, you do not. Your mind may, but that is merely the vehicle of the . . . gene. Watch, when we return.

Your Simeon-Amos will be enraged. Naturally enough, for he suspects the immortality you offer is to be taken from his seed." He sighed and turned back towards the tables, hidden behind a line of trees. She trotted to keep pace, although he did not seem to hurry. "Enough of pleasant idleness and philosophizing.

To work!"

* * *

"
Simeon, why do all my Prince Charmings turn out to be toads?
" Channa subvocalized. Amos stood stiff and withdrawn beside her on the people mover as it slid down the corridor. "
Is he really
jealous
?

Under these circumstances, that's ridiculous!
"

"It's also maybe involuntary. Your girl goes walking in the woods with Lucifer, chatting it up . . ."

"Absurd!"

"Beats me, Channa. But I'll never, ribbit, turn on ya. Ribbit!"

"Or turn me on, either. It's nice to know someone is still safe to be with."

Whoa! Kick me again, Channa, I think some of my ego is still unbruised.

"That is the scariest son of a bitch I've ever had the misfortune to meet," she said. Amos nodded silently.

"Simeon-Amos?"

"Yes, Channa?"

"Hold me, would you?" His arm went around her, and she melted into the firm supportive warmth of his side. "Thank you," she said.

"For what?" His tone was light.

"For not really being green and warty or eating flies."

"Ah, guys?" This time Simeon's voice came to both of them. "I just figured something out."

"What?" Amos said.

"Bad news about Bethel."

The Bethelite stiffened again, his face drawing in lines that showed what he might look like on his deathbed, in the currently unlikely event that he would live to die of old age.

"What?" Amos repeated, this time as a command.

"These scumbags—I'm not going to use
scumvermin,
even in reverse—they're planning to loot me bare and then blow me up."

Simeon was understandably upset if he was referring to the SSS-900-C as "me."

"That is bad news for you," Amos said, steeling himself for how that would also be bad news for Bethel.

"But if they do that, the Central Worlds Navy will find out—would find out, even if the Kolnari had pulled this hijack off the way we fooled them into thinking they had. Central Worlds'd send flotillas all through this sector and look behind every space rock. For sure, they'd inspect any inhabited system.

While the Saffron system may be fardlin' remote, it's still on the maps.
And the Kolnari know that, hey?

So they're sacrificing their chance of stripping Bethel in exchange for the station. Means they gotta leave
both, fast.
So what odds they plan on doing Bethel the same way they do me, when they go? Blow it, too, and cover any traces they hadn't time to sweep under the carpet. These guys are pigs, but they're not stupid."

"Yes, I see," Amos said, barely moving his lips. "Sound strategic analysis. Thank you, Simeon."

Thanks for nothing,
the brain thought dismally. Amos had had the comfort of knowing the Navy would at least rescue the survivors on his homeworld, win or lose here on SSS-900-C.

"Anything we can do about
that
?" Channa asked as they entered the lounge.

"Not much more than what we're doing now," Simeon said. "But it's going to be a very close run at the end. We've got to be
ready,
at all costs. Minutes may make the difference."

* * *

Keri Holen tried to read, but she'd been on the same page for some time now and still had no idea of its content.
Trivia,
she thought. Before her life was put in danger, all her friends and family's lives, she hadn't known what triviality was. It was anything that didn't have to do with keeping you alive; anything that didn't have to do with
winning.

"On the other hand, fretting doesn't do me any good, either," she said.
Why did I volunteer?
she asked herself.
Well, the risk was there anyway, and we need to get the second virus working,
she thought.

Not everyone was a gymnast and martial artist, either.

Frustrated, she threw the reader onto the cushion beside her and rose to pace the room. There was a soft chime and Simeon's public face bloomed on the wall screen.

"The Kolnari are in your area," he said, warning all those in the threatened sector. "Get your virus capsules in position. Don't panic. Don't argue or they
will
harm you. Remember, place the capsule in your mouth, bite down, try not to swallow. Good luck," he added fervently.

Keri rushed to the cabinet where she had stored her supply among other pharmaceuticals. Her hands were shaking so much the capsules flew out of the bottle like confetti when she at last got it open.

Moaning, she rushed to gather them up and put them away before the Kolnari arrived. She put one in her mouth, holding it between cheek and gum.

She returned to the living area and stood watching the door, fingers twining with the tabs of her robe.

She could feel her pulse beat in her lips and fingertips, she felt as though she'd been running.

The door opened.

God,
she thought as she bit down on the capsule.
There are four of them!
The capsule dissolved with a rush of coolness. Keri smiled broadly and let the robe drop.

"Welcome to my parlor." Said the spider to the fly.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Mazkira entered the elevator and selected her destination. The mining components fabricator was a treasure of immense value to the Clan. With it, they could scavenge several crucial materials from uninhabited asteroids at need. Besides that, the scumvermin operator was a pleasure to torment, in several different ways. She grinned. Then the expression faded. She could
smell
him, the scent was heavy in the cage—far more than it should have been when he merely passed through several times daily.

She looked up . . . into the barrel of a rock-cutter and above it the grinning face of Kevin Duane.

"Eat this, bitch!" he snarled and powered up the cutter. He cut the Kolnari woman in half lengthwise and smiled as he watched the two sibling halves crumple to the floor.