Ties of Power (Trade Pact Universe) (25 page)

The Captain answered: “Gripstsa has no schedule or predictability, O Mystic One. It may follow a stirring event—such as your arrival as Contestant for the Makii—or a period of long inactivity. Both of these tend to make individuals less content with their place and wishing for change. Gripstsa preserves harmony within the Tribe.”

I had a too-vivid image of being on a ship full of Drapsk who suddenly and simultaneously abandoned their duties to grapple with one another in a frenzy of gripstsa. One hoped there were adequate automatics.

I also felt guilty. The Drapsk had been generous and kind, if overwhelming, hosts. “My coming set this change happening on the Makmora? I’m sorry if I disrupted—”

A soft touch on my hand from the plumes of the newest Captain. “It is an honor to gripstsa from the knowledge of great things to come for all, O Mystic One,” he said warmly. “It is our duty to thank you for this.”

Skeptic Copelup harrumphed. “I think that is all the Mystic One should hear about the matter, don’t you, Captain?” He spread his short arms as wide as they would go. “Now will you please get up?”

“Please?” added Maka. “It is so important, O Mystic One.”

The three of them stood motionless, waiting for my answer. I sighed, more annoyed with my own inability to resist them than with their persistence.

“For breakfast,” I offered. “Then—then we’ll see.”

It never paid to ignore the details, Barac thought to himself with disgust, half-minded to turn around and confront his pursuers. But that confrontation, though appealing emotionally, made no sense at all when one was outnumbered.

Outnumbered and uneasy. Barac touched the M’hir more firmly this time, sensing nothing but the currents of energy typical in a place visited by Clan, left behind by the passage of thought or matter. He was tempted to push himself elsewhere as well.

But then he wouldn’t know why they chased him.

There were five at least. He’d stopped in front of an art dealer, the polished metal surface of a frame’s edge giving him an inconspicuous mirror. Human males and scruffy-looking ones at that.

One was the Human who’d collided with him at the base of the ramp, supposedly by accident. Details.

Barac kept walking, staying carefully in the midst of the crowd but now heading opposite to his original direction. No point leading them, whoever they were, to Morgan. Unless it became necessary, he thought, amused.

The thought of Morgan triggered another, and Barac slipped his hands into the pockets of his coat, searching as unobtrusively as possible for anything that shouldn’t be there. Morgan had planted a tracking device on him once before. Typical Human trickery. The Clansman didn’t know whether to be relieved or otherwise to find nothing unusual.

He crossed into one of the night-zones, portlights dimmed to imitate stars, the floor and passing customers streaked with lights of various colors and intensities from the establishments on either side of the concourse. It was immediately noisier, with the bass sounds of percussion vibrating through the flooring and his brain. Barac sighed. He was fond of dancing.

Right now, however, his dancing was around those moving too slowly in front of him. Somehow he doubted those behind were after his credit chip. He needed to lure them into a place of his choosing. One hand had stayed in his pocket, caressing the stock of the one piece of technology Barac kept with him at all times, his force blade.

“Excuse, Hom? I believe you dropped this?” A soft voice from behind, female. Barac stopped and turned, knowing it for a trick, but willing to face them here if that’s what they wanted. What could they do to him in a crowd of hundreds? Besides make a scene sure to rouse the ever present security guards?

It was the Human female from the tag point, smiling as she held out a small bag, like those carried by almost every other shopper passing them. They might have been enclosed in some force shield, the way the crowd split mindlessly around and past them.

Barac tasted foreboding and ignored the sensation. He’d already noticed the other figures coming closer, stopping to make a semicircle to either side of the female, the one who’d bumped him earlier farthest to Barac’s right. Six to his one. Not bad odds, he thought.

“You know that’s not my bag. What do you want?” the Clansman asked mildly.

“You’re Barac sud Sarc, aren’t you,” a dark-skinned Human stated rather than asked. “One of the Clan.”

Barac scowled but didn’t bother denying it. He hadn’t hidden his identity to board Plexis—lazy perhaps, but he’d been in too great a hurry to take the time to arrange an alternate credit account. There was usually almost no bureaucracy tainting his travels, but Plexis asked proof of solvency for its gold patches.

“I repeat, what do you want?”

The Human from the ramp was wringing his hands together, visibly agitated, though by what Barac wasn’t sure. “We want you to come, come, come,” the Human said suddenly, drawing startled glares from his comrades. “We do. Yes. Now, come with us.”

“I don’t think so—” Just as Barac began to concentrate, feeling the time to leave these crazy beings was long overdue, two of the males lunged forward and grabbed his arms. Horrified by the contact, and definitely not willing to take them along into the M’hir, Barac started to struggle. Where was security?

There was another way. He gathered his Talent, aiming a mental blow at the Human holding his right arm. It was turned aside.

Barac stopped fighting to free himself. Those holding him nodded approval and loosened, but didn’t release, their grips on his arms. He stared at them, reaching out with his deeper sense for any part of their thoughts.

Not the blankness, the unsettling emptiness of a mind-shield. He’d encountered that with the Enforcers and knew the sensation too well. No, what protected these minds from his power was innate and well-trained.

“All telepaths,” he gasped, watching the six nod one by one. He hadn’t known there were so many Human telepaths in this quadrant, let alone expected to see them in one place. Weaker than the weakest Clan, unable to touch the M’hir—or at least ignorant of its existence and potential, they had enough strength to resist him for a while. Not invulnerable and they know it, he decided, tasting a leak of anxiety from someone. He could likely overcome any one, given time. But, perhaps, not all six. Humans had a regrettable tendency to band together. “What do you want with me?”

“Come with us, quietly,” the one holding his left arm replied. Barac didn’t need to pull to judge the broad, bearded Human’s physical strength was greater than his own. It didn’t matter. No matter what these Humans thought they wanted with him, he wasn’t about to waste time with it. There were other, simpler ways.

He opened his mouth to call out, just as a needle pricked the side of his neck. “Never underestimate the value of a good gadget,” he could almost hear Morgan’s scolding.

The hands on his arms became the only things keeping Barac upright as the world around him dimmed. A face appeared, directly before his, harsh featured, with puckered scars framing cold and curious eyes. It moved closer, so close he took in warmed air with his next breath, so close Barac knew he’d never forget this Human.

Could no one in the crowd see what was happening? Perhaps they saw nothing alarming in friends supporting a being who’d had one too many at the nearby tavern. Barac felt his head spinning and desperately tried to push himself elsewhere. He couldn’t concentrate . . . couldn’t hold a locate . . . they were pulling him away.

“Barac! Glad I caught up with you!” The hearty voice penetrated through the fog dimming Barac’s perception of himself and his surroundings. His supporters seemed to vanish into the mist, his body falling almost to the floor before a new set of strong arms took his weight. “You have been misbehaving, haven’t you? Let’s go tell the Chief all about it, shall we?”

Barac rolled his head on his shoulder and desperately tried to concentrate. That careless grin and flint-hard eyes could belong to only one being.

A shame the trank was going to knock him out completely before he could say hello to Constable Russell Terk, Trade Pact Enforcer and personal assistant to the Sector Chief herself, Lydis Bowman.

A shame indeed.

Chapter 23

IT was, I had to admit, fun.

The urgency to find Morgan, to stop him before he foolishly risked himself, beat constantly in the back of my mind.

But at a moment like this, even that need could be tucked to one side. After all, how many beings could say they’d been given their own parade?

I rode with the Skeptic and an escort of four Makii in a bowlcar almost filled with flower petals. If we hadn’t stood the entire way, we’d have been invisible beneath them, despite the regrettable gaudiness of my Festival dress. I’d hoped, in vain, they’d forgotten about that. Our bowlcar drifted behind a stately procession of well over a hundred others, each bearing some dignitary or other. I’d lost track very soon after Copelup had proudly begun announcing each name and affiliation. Not all were Drapsk. Some were ambassadors or other offworlders invited to the Festival.

Behind us stretched a seemingly endless series of longer, lower bowlcars, these bearing what I was told was the entire living population of Makii—Copelup adding in a discreet whisper that in reality about fifteen percent had had to stay at various essential tasks, but I wasn’t to mention it. No flag or standard was necessary. It was like drifting along a river of purple and pink feathers.

We paraded along the broadest walkway I’d seen yet in Drapskii’s Port City, passing platform after platform lined with Drapsk of other Tribes. I’d been told there were only three Tribes competing this Festival; the evidence overwhelming as we reached the area where walkways from other quarters of the city crossed. There was another parade, predominantly white-plumed, passing overhead while underneath I could just make out a third, this followed by a stream of bowlcars carrying blue-green Drapsk.

I found myself humbled by a system that could assemble and move this many individuals so smoothly, and it wasn’t only the technology that impressed me. The Drapsk were like some tidal force moving through their buildings; a gentle, immense migration. How did I ever think I could avoid being part of this, I asked myself soberly.

I hadn’t met the other Contestants, seeing them only as distant specks amid their own flower-filled bowlcars. My delaying tactics had shuffled breakfast and courtesy schedules completely offtrack, something I suspected pleased Copelup; meeting the other Contestants might have answered more of my questions.

The watching Drapsk waved their arms and plumes as I passed, prompting me to wave back even though I felt totally foolish waving to a crowd without eyes. I’d braced for more windy cheers, but the air stayed unusually calm. I presumed there was no need for the Drapsk to share their emapkii or amapka, since the only being who would benefit from such encouragement or discouragement couldn’t detect the scent.

The mood of my escort was jubilant to say the least. “Is this not marvelous?” Copelup asked for at least the tenth time since we’d started, plumes twitching almost fiercely in unison with the others in the bowlcar. The resulting draft kept the top layer of flower petals constantly stirring about my waist.

I nodded in agreement again. Then I asked, “I assume the parade from the last Festival was larger?”

“No, no, O Mystic One,” Maka answered hastily. “This is the most hope-filled Festival of all our lifetimes. Everyone wishes to touch the Scented Way as you pass—”

“Hush!” this admonishment from Copelup. Still, I was satisfied to glean even a bit more.

I was even more satisfied by what I’d left behind me in the hotel, and waved with genuine enthusiasm at the next platform of Drapsk.

Somewhere behind me, a Drapsk was placing my order for the feast day to follow the competition, a meal in which I was assured I could have anything I desired, at any expense, including my favorite dish: rare merle truffles, found only in the wild jungles of Pocular, prepared as the new specialty of a certain restaurant.

If that order in my name made its way to the right ears, I thought cheerfully, catching a fleeting glimpse of the other two parades ahead winding their way around the buildings, I might even bring myself to eat the truly disgusting fungus.

 

Parade’s end. The anticlimax as we milled about at our final stopping point brought a return of all the tension I thought I’d controlled rather well up until now. But there was no escaping what was ahead—whatever that might be—not by any means remotely at my disposal anyway.

I think the Drapsk anticipated this moment of panic, a couple of them moving close beside me as we stepped down from the bowlcar, shedding flower petals like flakes of dead skin. They stroked the backs of my hands lightly, wisely not offering to hold them. In my current state, I doubted I could have endured any further sense of restriction.

The bowlcar had deposited us alongside a vast slope, made of the same material as the walkways, its surface covered with the Drapsk it already carried like a sand dune whose grains tumbled upward instead of down. It rose from my feet to the top of a monolithic building, a structure that must be the tallest in the entire city. Like all Drapsk architecture I’d seen, it was windowless. Unlike those other structures, this one bore elaborate markings up its rounded sides. The markings were like overlapping plumes, I realized, millions upon millions of them in a pattern spiraling well over our heads.

Here, for the first time since the parade started, I felt one of the manufactured winds. It sloughed down the slope to explore our faces, spilling more flower petals from the bowlcar behind us, creating undulating waves among the plumes of the Drapsk ahead. “What does it say to you?” I asked Copelup, holding my hands in its way for a moment, my hair resisting the efforts of the breeze to lift it.