The Greatship (43 page)

The Faith of the Many Joinings.

Where it arose first was a subject of some contention.  Several widely scattered solar systems were viable candidates, but no expert held the definitive evidence.  Nor could one prophet or pervert take credit for this quasi-religious belief.  But what some J’Jal believed was that every sentient soul had the same value.  Bodies were facades, and metabolisms were mere details, and social systems varied in the same way that individual lives varied, according to choice and whim and a deniable sense of right.  What mattered were the souls within all of these odd packages.  What a wise soul wished to do was to befriend entities from different histories, and when possible, fall in love with them, linking their spirits together through the ancient pleasures of the flesh.

There was no single prophet and the Faith had no birthplace, which were problems for the true believers.  How could such an intricate, odd faith arise simultaneously in such widely scattered places?  But what was a flaw might be a blessing, too.  Plainly, divine gears were turning the universe, and this unity was just further evidence of how right and perfect their beliefs had to be.  Unless of course the Faith was the natural outgrowth of the J’Jal’s own nature:  A social species is thrown across the sky, and every home belongs to more powerful species, and the entire game of becoming lovers to the greater ones is as inevitable and unremarkable as standing on their own two bare feet.

Pamir held to that ordinary opinion.

Glancing at his own bare feet, he sighed and then examined his arm and shoulder and chest.  The wounds had healed to where nothing was visible.  Unscarred flesh had spread over the holes, while the organs inside him were quickly pulling themselves back into perfect condition.  He was fit enough to sit up, but he didn’t.  Instead, he lay on the soft chaise set on the open-air patio, listening to the llano-vibra.  At the moment he was alone, the diamond wall to the bedroom turned black.  He spent his time thinking about what was obvious, and then he played with the subtle possibilities that sprang up from what was possible.

The thief—a registered felon with a long history of this exact work—had fallen for several kilometers before a routine security patrol noticed him, plucking him out of the sky before he could spoil anybody else’s day.

The unlucky man was under arrest and would probably serve a century or two for his latest crime.

“This stinks,” Pamir muttered.

“Sir?” said the apartment.  “Is there a problem?  Might I help?”

Pamir considered, and said, “No.”

He sat up and said, “Clothes,” and his technician’s uniform pulled itself around him.  Its fabric had healed, if not quite so thoroughly as his body.  He examined what could be a fleck of dried blood, and after a moment, he said, “Boots.”

“Under your seat, sir.”

Pamir was giving his feet to his boots when she walked out through the bedroom door.

“I have to thank you.”  Sorrel was tall and elegant in a shopworn way, wearing a long gray robe and no shoes.  In the face, she looked pretty but sorrowful, and up close, that sadness was a deep thing reaching well past today.  “For everything you did for me, thank you.”

A marathon of tears had left her eyes red and puffy.

He stared, and she stared back.  For a moment, it was as if she saw nothing.  Then Sorrel seemed to grow aware of his interest, and with a shiver, she told him, “Stay as long as you wish.  My home will feed you, and if you want, you can take anything that interests you.  As a memento…”

“Where’s the crystal?” he interrupted.

She touched herself between the breasts.  The Darmion was back home, resting beside her enduring heart.  According to half a dozen species, the crystal gave its possessor a keen love of life and endless joy—a bit of mystic noise refuted by the depressed woman who was wearing it.

“I don’t want your little rock,” he muttered.

She didn’t seem relieved or amused.  “Thank you,” she said one last time, planning to end this here.

“You need a better security net,” Pamir remarked.

“Perhaps so,” she said, without interest.

“What’s your name?”

She said, “Sorrel,” and then the rest of it.  Human names were long and complex to the point of unwielding.  But she said it all, and then she looked at him in a new fashion.  “What do I call you?”

He used his most recent identity.

“Are you any good with security systems?” Sorrel inquired.

“Better than most.”

She nodded.

“You want me to upgrade yours?”

That amused her somehow.  A little smile broke across the milky face, and for a moment, the bright pink tip of her tongue pointed at him.  Then she shook her head, saying, “No, not for me,” as if he should have realized as much.  “I have a good friend…a dear old friend…who has some rather heavy fears…”

“Can he pay?”

“I will pay.  Tell him it’s my gift.”

“So who’s this worried fellow?”

In an alien language, she said, “Gallium.”

Genuinely surprised, Pamir asked, “What the hell is a harum-scarum doing, admitting he’s scared?”

Sorrel nodded appreciatively.

“He admits nothing,” she said.  Then she smiled again…a warmer expression, this time.  She looked fetching and sweet, even wonderful, and for Pamir, that expression seemed to last long after he walked out of the apartment and on to his next job.

The harum-scarum was nearly three meters tall, massive and thickly armored, loud and yet oddly serene at the same time, passionate about his endless bravery and completely transparent when he told lies.  His home was close to Fall Away, tucked high inside one of the minor avenues.  He was standing behind his final door—a slab of hyperfiber-braced diamond—and with a distinctly human gesture, he waved off the uninvited visitor.  “I do not need any favors,” he claimed, speaking through his breathing mouth.  “I am as secure as anyone and twelve times more competent than you when it comes to my defense.”  Then with a blatant rudeness, he allowed his eating mouth to deliver a long wet belch.

“Funny,” said Pamir.  “A woman wishes to buy my services, and you are Gallium, her dear old friend.  Is that correct?”

“What is the woman’s name?”

“Why?  Didn’t you hear me the first time?”

“Sorrel, you claimed.”  He pretended to concentrate, and with a little too much certainty said, “I do not know this ape-woman.”

“Is that so?  She knows you.”

“She is mistaken.”

“So then how did you know she was human?  I hadn’t quite mentioned that detail yet.”

The question won a blustery look from the big black eyes.  “What are you implying to me, little ape-man?”

Pamir laughed at him.  “Why?  Can’t you figure it out for yourself?”

“Are you insulting me?”

“Sure.”

That earned deep silence.

With a fist only a little larger than one of the alien’s knuckles, Pamir wrapped on the diamond door.  “I’m insulting you and your ancestors.  There.  By the ship’s codes and your own painful customs, you are now free to step out here, in the open, and beat me until I am dead for a full week.”

The giant shook with fury, and nothing happened.  One mouth expanded, gulping down deep long breaths, while the other mouth puckered into a tiny dimple—a harum-scarum on the brink of a pure vengeful rage.  But Gallium forced himself to do nothing, and when the anger finally began to diminish, he gave an inaudible signal, causing the outer two doors to drop and seal tight.

Pamir looked left and then right.  The narrow avenue was well-lit and empty, and by every appearance, it was safe.

Yet the creature had been terrified.

One more time, he paged his way through Sorrel’s journal.  Among those husbands were two harum-scarums.  No useful name had been mentioned in the journal, but it was obvious who Gallium was.  Lying about his fear was in character for the species.  But how could a confirmed practitioner of this singular faith deny that he had even met the woman?

Pamir needed to find other husbands.

A hundred different routes lay before him.  But as harum-scarums liked to say, “The shortest line stretches between points that touch.”

  * * *

Gallium’s security system was ordinary, and it was porous, and with thousands of years of experience in these matters, it took Pamir less than a day to subvert codes and walk through the front doors.

“Who is with me?” a voice cried out from the farthest room.

In J’Jal, curiously.

Then in the human tongue, he asked, “Who’s there?”

Pamir said nothing.

And finally, as an afterthought, the alien shouted, “You are in my realm, and unwelcome.”  In his own tongue, he promised, “I will forgive you, if you run away at this moment.”

“Sorrel won’t let me run,” Pamir replied.

The last room was a minor fortress buttressed with slabs of high-grade hyperfiber and bristling with weapons, legal and otherwise.  A pair of rail-guns were tracking Pamir’s head, ready to batter his mind if not quite kill it.  Tightness built in his throat, but he managed to keep the fear out of his voice.  “Is this where you live now, in a little room at the bottom of an ugly home?”

“You like to insult,” the harum-scarum observed.

“It passes my time,” he said.

From behind the hyperfiber, Gallium said, “I see an illegal weapon.”

“Good.  Since I’m carrying one.”

“If you try to harm me, I will kill you.  And I will destroy your mind, and you will be no more.”

“Understood,” Pamir said.

Then the human sat—a gesture of submission on almost every world.  He sat on the quasi-crystal tiling on the floor of the bright hallway, glancing at the portraits on the nearby walls.  Harum-scarums from past ages stood in defiant poses.  Ancestors, presumably.  Honorable men and woman who could look at their cowering descendant with nothing but fierce contempt.

After a few moments, Pamir said, “I’m pulling my weapon into plain view.”

“Throw it beside my door.”

The plasma gun earned a respectful silence.  It slid across the floor and clattered to a stop, and then a mechanical arm unfolded, slapping a hyperfiber bowl over it and then covering the bowl with an explosive charge set to obliterate the first hand that tried to free the gun within.

The hyperfiber door lifted.

Gallium halfway filled the room beyond.  He was standing in the middle of a closet jammed with supplies, the armored plates of his body flexing, exposing their sharp edges.

“You must need this work,” he observed.

“Except I’m not doing my job,” Pamir replied.  “Frankly, I’ve sort of lost interest in the project.”

Confused, the harum-scarum stood taller.  “Then why have you gone to such enormous trouble?”

“What you need is a small, well-charged plasma gun.  That makes a superior weapon.”

“They are illegal and hard to come by,” argued Gallium.

“Your rail-guns are criminal, too.”  Just like with the front doors, there was a final door made of diamond reinforced with a visible meshwork of hyperfiber.  “But I bet you appreciate what shaped plasma can do to a living mind.”

Silence.

“Funny,” Pamir continued.  “Not that long ago, I found a corpse that ran into that exact kind of tool.”

The alien’s back couldn’t straighten anymore, and the armor plates were flexing to their limits.  With a quiet voice—an almost begging voice—Gallium asked the human, “Who was the corpse?”

“Sele’ium.”

Again, silence.

“Who else has died that way?” Pamir asked.  It was a guess, but not much of one.  And when no answer was offered, he said, “You have never been this frightened.  In your long, ample life, you have never imagined that fear could eat at you this way.  Am I right?”

Now the back began to collapse.

A miserable little voice said, “It just worsens.”

“Why?”

The harum-scarum dipped his head.

“Why does the fear get worse and worse?”

“Seven of us now.”

“Seven?”

“Lost.”  A human despair rode with that single word.  “Eight, if you are telling the truth about the J’Jal.”

“What eight?”

Gallium refused to say.

“I know who you are,” Pamir said.  “Eight of Sorrel’s husbands, and you.  Is that right?”

“Her past husbands,” the alien corrected.

“What about current lovers–?”

“There are none.”

“No?”

“She is celibate,” the giant said with deep longing.  Then he dropped his gaze, adding, “When we started to die, she gave us up, physically as well as legally.”

Gallium missed his human wife.  It showed in his stance and voice and how the great hand trembled, reaching up to touch the cool pane of diamond while he added, “She is trying to save us.  But she doesn’t know how.”

He paused, and a ball of coherent plasma struck the pane.  No larger than a human heart, the ball dissolved the diamond and the hand, and the grieving face, and everything that lay beyond those dark lonely eyes.

Pamir saw nothing but the flash, and then came a concussive blast that threw him off his feet.  For an instant, he lay motionless.  A cloud of atomized carbon and flesh filled the cramped hallway.  He listened and heard nothing.  He was completely deaf.  Keeping low, he rolled until a wall blocked his way.  Then he started to breathe, scalding his lungs, and he held his breath, remaining absolutely still, waiting for a second blast to shove past.

Nothing happened.

With his mouth to the floor, Pamir managed a hot but breathable sip of air.  The cloud was thinning.  His hearing was returning, accompanied by a tireless high-pitched hum.  A figure swam into view, tall and menacing—a harum-scarum, presumably one of the Gallium’s honored ancestors.  The hallway was littered with portraits of the dead.  Pamir saw a second figure, a third.  He was trying to recall how many images there had been…because he could see a fourth outline now, and that seemed like one too many…

The plasma gun fired again.  But it hadn’t had time enough to build a killing charge, and the fantastic energies were wasted in a light show and a gust of blistering wind.

Again the air filled with dirt and gore.

On elbows and feet, Pamir crawled away.

Gallium was a nearly headless corpse, enormous even when mangled and stretched out on his back.  The little room was made tinier with him on the floor.  With their owner dead, the rail guns had dropped into their diagnostic mode, and waking them would take minutes, or days.  The diamond door was shredded and useless.  When the cloud fell away again, in another few moments, Pamir would be exposed and probably killed.

Like Gallium, he first used the J’Jal language.

“Hello,” he called out.

The outer door was open and still intact, but the simple trigger would react only to pressure from a familiar hand.  Staring out into the hallway, he once again shouted, “Hello.”

In the distance, a shape began to resolve itself.

“I am dead,” he continued.  “You have me trapped here, my friend.”

Nothing.

“Do what you wish, but before you cook me, I’d love to know what this is about.”

The shape drifted one way, then back again.

Pamir lifted one of the dead arms, trying to lay the broad palm against the wall, close to the door’s trigger.  But that was the easy part of this, of course.

“You’re a clever soul,” he said.  “Allow the human to open the way for you.  I outsmart the harum-scarum’s defenses, and then you claim both of us.”

How much time before another recharge?

A few seconds, he guessed.

Suddenly the corpse flinched and the arm dropped with a massive thunk.

“Shit,” Pamir muttered.

On a low shelf was an ornate little dinner plate, pressed from nickel and covered with cooked blood.  He took hold of it, made a few practice flings with his wrist, and once again called out, “I wish you would tell me what this is about, because I haven’t got a guess.”

Nothing.

In human, Pamir asked, “Who the hell are you?”

The cloud was clearing, revealing the outlines of a biped standing in the hallway, maybe ten meters from him.

Kneeling, Pamir again grabbed the dead arm.  Emergency genes and muscle memory began to fight against him, the strength of a giant forcing him to grunt as he pushed the hand beside the trigger.  Then he threw all of his weight on the hand, forcing it to stay in place.  He panted.  He grabbed the heavy plate with his left hand.  With a gasping voice, he said, “One last chance to explain.”

The biped was lifting both arms, aiming.

“Bye-bye, then.”

Pamir let the dead hand drop as he flipped the plate, aiming at a target three meters away.  A slab of hyperfiber slid from the ceiling, and the final door was shut.  It could withstand two or three blasts from a determined plasma gun, but eventually it would be gnawed away.  Which was why he threw the plate onto the floor where it skipped and rolled, clipping the edge of the shaped charge of explosives that capped his own gun.

A sudden sharp thunder struck.

The door was jammed shut by the blast, and Pamir spent the next twenty minutes using a dead hand and every override to lift the door far enough to crawl underneath.  But a perfectly symmetrical blast had left his own weapon where it lay, untouched beneath a bowl of mirror-bright hyperfiber.

His enemy would have been blown back up the hallway.

Killed briefly, or at least scared away.

Pamir lingered for a few minutes, searching the dead man’s home for clues that refused to be found, and then he slipped back out into the public avenue—still vacant and safe to the eye, but possessing a palpable menace that he could feel for himself.