17 The Seventh Sharboo-Cria
“Associate Vice-President Roussel,” said a crisp, male voice in Dante’s ear. “This is CNS Vance calling. Please respond.”
Dante dared say nothing, not even into his mumbler. From overhead came the sound of footsteps scrunching on rocks—heavy, lizard-like footsteps. Dante flattened himself against the rocks, hoping he was hidden under the shallow overhang. The desiccated grey roots of a plant dangled from the bottom of the shelf of dirt, tickling his forehead.
He realized he was holding his breath. Stupid. If he gasped out pent-up air, he’d be worse off than if he breathed lightly, very lightly.
“Come in, Roussel.”
Dante ignored his mumbler and concentrated on breathing lightly.
He’d managed to outrun the horde of rock-throwing Shons, but the Klicks had descended the canyon walls and chased him into a side canyon. He’d kept just enough of a lead to reach a rugged badlands area at the head of the side canyon. The place was such a maze of mesas, ledges, and hoodoos that he had a decent chance—if, that is, the Klick standing three feet overhead didn’t see or hear him.
Did Klicks have a strong sense of smell? If they did, he was dead.
A new voice spoke in his ear. “Dante, speak to me. This is Carolyn.”
As though in response to Carolyn’s words, the Klick roared something in its native language that sounded like an elephant’s tap dance. Had the Klick somehow heard the mumbler? Impossible, of course, but . . . Dante closed his eyes, wishing his translator was programmed for the Klicks’ language.
“Dante, are you all right?”
From a distance, another Klick responded, higher and lighter but just as full of taps and stops. Dante thought it might be Krizink.
“Say something, Dante!”
He’d been holding his breath again. As quietly as possible, he let out some air. He breathed in, then out.
“Dante,” Carolyn said in a tightly controlled voice, “the technician says that your mumbler is active and receiving, so you must be in range and conscious. I’m going to update you on what’s happening up here, on the chance that you can hear me.”
Not now! he wanted to scream. Another set of footsteps joined the creature overhead.
He squeezed his eyes shut, as though that might help him remain motionless and silent. The roots dangling from the rocks overhead tickled his temple. That, at least, he could do something about; he moved his head a fraction of an inch.
Carolyn spoke some muffled, barely understandable sentences. Something about ‘Leave the room.’ Even though he gave her little of his attention, he could picture her turning away from a microphone—they must have set up a microphone relay for her, since she didn’t have a mumbler—to order the technician out of the room.
“I told you the inspector from the council has arrived in the system,” Carolyn said. “She’s on the Vance now, and five Klicks came with her.”
The pair of Klicks overhead started talking softly. One of them was definitely Krizink. The roots tickled Dante’s forehead again.
“The Klicks already showed the inspector highlights of the trial so far, and the Ship’s Ward hasn’t made it look good for us. We have a bank of twelve televisions playing various camera shots. It’s disorienting to follow so many different viewpoints at once, but after a while you almost get used to it.”
Dante heard the whir of a camera’s propellers. He opened his eyes and saw the shadow of a camera glide across the opposite wall of this tiny ravine. It would be great if the balloon came so close he could hop on and fly away.
Nah. It wouldn’t fit in the narrow gorge between this mesa and the next.
“The Inspector was horrified at the way Tompa Lee beat so many helpless Shon-Wod-Zees. Anyone would be, Dante. In just a few hours, she incapacitated nearly twenty percent of the witnesses against her.”
Yeah, yeah, Tompa had done better than he had. Rub it in, Carolyn. God, what a lousy excuse for a Navy hero he was. Useless.
“I can talk my way out of almost anything, but watching Lee club Shon after Shon has sabotaged my best chances of bringing the Inspector to our side. I can feel it in the way she looks at me with those three eyes of hers.”
The Klicks overhead stopped talking. Dante swallowed. He was tempted to give up and let Krizink take him. He felt a pinch where the roots grazed his forehead.
“I’m not giving up, of course, but . . . well, I don’t feel I can tell anyone else this, but I’m afraid that once the trial is over, the Inspector might give us the ultimate punishment. She might ban humanity from space.”
No more Space Navy? Dear God. Growing up watching shows about humanity’s heroes, he’d never thought he might see the day when the Navy was disbanded. And to think that he was playing a supporting role in the Navy’s downfall.
A Klick tail appeared overhead, patting the dirt with gentle thuds. Searching for hiding places, probably. Then another tail, appeared, longer and more flexible—Krizink, undoubtedly, whose tail was almost long enough to find his niche. Well, if he were discovered, Dante would grab the tail and jump from this ledge, trying to pull the Klick to his death.
“Dante, I hate to say this, but it hurts our side immeasurably that you’ve apparently killed two of the Kalikiniki observers. Please, above all, you mustn’t do anything more to the Kalikiniki.” Carolyn paused, then added self-consciously, “That’s an order.”
Dante paused in the act of reaching toward the probing tail. He lowered his arm. Krizink’s tail got tangled in the roots, and when it was free, it disappeared. Krizink growled something to the other Klick. From the tone of voice, it was something about disemboweling Dante with a tunnel-drilling laser.
“And above all, Dante, keep Tompa Lee from doing any more damage to our cause. No more damage, please.”
He felt several more twinges on his forehead. He tried to pull his head back but couldn’t. What the hell kind of roots were these, anyway? His forehead was going numb. He had to get away from them without alerting the Klicks. He tried to turn his head, but stopped when the dangling roots moved with him. They were attached to his head.
“Dante,” Carolyn said, “the sooner Tompa Lee is dead, the better.”
Chattering a staccato tune, the two Klicks walked away.
“Even if you have to kill her yourself, Dante.”
Kill her?
The mumbler went dead.
Stunned, Dante stood motionless on the ledge for a long time, staring straight ahead. He didn’t know what to think, and so he didn’t think. He just waited for the Klicks to get far enough away that it was safe to move.
Blood ran into his eyes, and he suddenly couldn’t make himself wait any longer. He turned to walk down the ledge, only to be jerked back painful by roots that had embedded themselves in his skin. Pulling himself away was like tearing himself away from an intravenous feed. Sweat joined the blood running down his brow as, one by one, the roots popped out with needle-like jabs of pain. The roots writhed in front of his eyes, searching for him.
The last root came free with a sucking slurp. A short burst of pain seared his brain and he collapsed to the ground like a puppet whose strings had been cut. Free.
Free to catch up to Tompa Lee. Even if he had to kill her himself.
Tompa groaned like an arthritic old woman. She lowered her left shoulder so the rucksack slid down her arm to the dirt, raising a small cloud of dust. She did the same with the rucksack on her right shoulder. Then, steadying herself with one hand on the sun-baked rocks of the low retaining wall, she lowered herself to the ground. Closing her eyes, she leaned back against the ancient wall—but not too heavily, in case the stacked rocks gave way and sent her tumbling down the mountain she’d been working so hard to climb.
As long as she kept walking, she’d managed to fend off the depressant aftereffects of the stim pad, but stopping to rest made her feel as though the mountainside had crashed down on her. They hadn’t stopped for four or five hours, and she’d b
een carrying both of the rucksacks for the last hour. Awmit needed this break even more than she did.
Tompa opened her eyes and felt around in the nearest sack for the water jug. She swallowed a big mouthful. The water was so warm she scarcely felt it in her mouth, and it did little to wash away the parched saltiness. Yet there was so little water left that she didn’t take a second swallow. Awmit would need a drink, too.
He was still twenty yards away, trudging with head down and a hint of a limp. It was a miracle he’d been able to walk so long on an injured leg. An even greater miracle was that they’d walked for the whole day without seeing a single pursuer—except, of course, for Dante Roussel.
“Bastard.”
As much as Tompa wanted to rest, thinking of Roussel reminded her too vividly of the hell on her heels. Were any Shons in sight? She tried to struggle to her feet but managed only a hobbled crouch. With a grunt, she straightened.
The retaining wall rose only to her knees, and the drop beyond it was dizzying. She instinctively stepped back a couple paces. The ancient Shon road builders had cut a notch here into the mountainside, leaving a widening in the road surrounded by a wall of piled stones. Earlier in the day, when they had more strength for conversation, Awmit had called the first such widening they came to a sharboo-cria. The first one had three cairns and a bunch of doghouse-sized stone huts arranged in a circle that had been truncated by a rockslide. None of the structures made any sense to Tompa.
There were eleven sharboo-crias on the road to Bez-Tattin’s temple, Awmit had said. They apparently had religious significance—something about eleven stages of spiritual life and eleven crucial days when Tattin fought to turn his warlike herd to harmony and justice. Each sharboo-cria was different; this one, for example, had four cairns, the ruins of a single hut, and the retaining wall around its edge. Awed to be in these famous places, Awmit’s agitated explanations made no more sense to Tompa than did the cairns and huts and walls.
Tompa shaded her eyes against the sun, which now rode low in the sky. She could see for miles, to a series of distant islands across blood-red straits. Closer at hand, a few stretches of the road were visible. She strained, trying to decide whether she could really see a dark line of Shons streaming up the trail. Probably.
Awmit finally reached her. He rubbed his forehead against each of the four cairns before lowering himself to the ground with more grace than she’d managed.
She carried the flask over to him, then waited until he finished the water. “Is this the sixth sharboo-cria,” she asked, “or the seventh?”
“This one ran out of toes since two sharboo-crias.”
Tompa sighed. “Which means what?”
“Sixth.”
She grunted in reply.
Awmit weakly tossed the flask aside. She picked it up, trying despite her pain to live up to the nickname ‘graceful human.’ “We might run into a stream to refill it.”
She put the flask in the rucksack and sat down. Rocks burned her thighs. She rolled to one side and tucked the dingy white skirt, torn now in several places, underneath her. They wouldn’t make it to Bez Tattin’s temple tonight. Until this very moment she’d had that as her goal, but as slow as they were climbing they’d be lucky to make the next sharboo-cria. It felt like defeat.
“These ones,” Awmit said, “remained determinedly in front of the holy avengers for this entire day.”
“Uh huh.”
“That exists as a miracle.”
A miracle? That seemed like a mighty fancy word for hard work, determination, and a will to survive. Nothing more and nothing less.
Awmit was quiet for a long enough time that Tompa wondered if he’d fallen asleep. “Following our miracle,” he said, “some avengers must feel uncertainly the erosion of their prook-nah. Graceful human speculates similarly?”
Tompa started to ask him what he was talking about, but her eyes kept fluttering closed. “Ten minutes,” she mumbled. “Then we start climbing again.”
“This one wakes promptly graceful human. Rest.”
She started to thank him, but it was too much effort.
Once the bleeding stopped, Dante couldn’t detect any ill effects from the bloodsucking roots. Nevertheless, as he crept to the northern edge of the badlands, he couldn’t shake the fear that if he’d waited five more minutes, the roots would have popped his skull open.
By the time he reached open ground, he felt as though his forehead had been splattered by a shotgun. He stopped by a tiny rivulet and plastered a pain pad to his arms, and a stray stim pad that he hadn’t known was there. Antibiotics would be wise, too. However, he had five different types of antibees. Which one would be best? In his previous life he’d known a lot about alien biochemistry, so the right choice would have been simple. Now the choice was agonizing and he’d still probably get it wrong. Cursing his stupidity, he put on all five of the antibiotics.
By cutting across the rolling foothills and using the stim pad’s burst of energy to run, he left the Klicks behind and got ahead of the Shons again. As he looked down into the ravine near the collapsed bridge, it occurred to him that Tompa might not have taken the route he suggested, in which case he would have no idea where to look. However, even a quick glance at the bank of the ravine by the ancient bridge told him that she and her Shon friend had climbed up there.
If it was obvious to him, it would be obvious to her pursuers, too. He tried to brush away the telltale prints in the dirt, but after five minutes he gave up. His efforts merely made the bank crumble more, and only time would return the collapsed clay to a weathered look.
He headed up the uneven stone pavement of the ancient Shon road. Soon it angled upward, climbing the mountain’s lower flanks. Before it reached the ruins at the top, he knew, the road would spiral completely around the volcano. He wouldn’t make it to the ruins today, of course, but if he didn’t have to do much rearguard fighting, he might get halfway.
He tried not to think about Carolyn’s mumbler conversation. At first this was easy, but as his stim pad wore off, he found it harder and harder.
Humans banned from space?
Kill Tompa Lee?
Few things would make him even consider such perfidy—but for the very survival of the Space Navy?
After two miles of steep climbing, Dante paused to catch his breath at a widening in the road. He smiled when the camera that had followed him for the last hour backed up so it was well out of reach. Sitting on one of several strange, flat-topped huts, he studied the countryside.
The Klicks were nowhere to be seen, but the army of Shons was heading up the road, less than two miles behind him. A half-dozen or so were at the head of the army, not as scouts but seemingly as leaders. Strange. Peffer would have the gall to do something like that, but he wouldn’t think most Shons would, and Dante didn’t see how Peffer could have gotten to the front of the army. Even if Peffer had already discovered his mistake in following the main channel, he’d have too much ground to make up to be in the lead.
Well, he couldn’t worry about it. There were many things he didn’t understand about Shons, just as he didn’t know the dangers lurking in this alien landscape. He rubbed gingerly at his forehead, where welts were rising.
Kill Tompa Lee?
He thought Carolyn had said something about keeping Tompa from doing more damage. Whatever she’d said, it was ambiguous—and he hated that. Clear, straightforward orders he could follow, but ambiguity was a trap that meant whatever he decided might be wrong. Had Carolyn said anything else that would help him decide what to do? He didn’t think so, but his mind had been on the Klicks and the roots, not her. Damn his brain for not remembering important things.
Maybe if he traveled with Tompa, rather than doing rearguard duty, he might be able to keep her from doing damage without having to kill her.
Yeah. He sprang to his feet. Yes, he’d do that. Without further thought, he headed doggedly uphill, ignoring the Shons behind him, determined to catch Tompa Le
e and keep her from doing more damage.
Whatever that meant.
Tompa and Awmit reached the seventh sharboo-cria as darkness was smothering the dusk. Aside from a large, table-like rock slab and a couple of the flat-roofed doghouse things, this clearing was a mere jumble of rocks. Tompa stretched out on one of the moss-covered roofs and nibbled some food, but her mouth was so dry that it was hard to swallow. It felt so good to rest . . .
She’d dozed for a few minutes when footsteps roused her. It was Awmit, pacing around the doghouse where she lay. Despite being small and old, the Shon had incredible endurance.
“Lie down,” Tompa said. “Go to sleep.”
“Graceful human intends recklessly to spend the three sleeps here?”
“Yes.” Then she sighed and looked at his dim form in the darkness. “Is there some reason we shouldn’t?”
“This sharboo-cria represents powerfully danger in Bez-Tattin’s life. As a sleeping place, it equals horrible symbolism.”
“Oh.” She yawned. “Not a real reason, then.”
“Graceful human considers negatively religion real?”
“Good night, Awmit.” When he kept pacing, she yawned again and added, “There’s a truce at dark, right? So nothing disastrous can happen. And even if it did, I’m too tired to care.”
Awmit still paced. Tompa closed her eyes and tried to ignore the sound of his footsteps.
“Hello.”
Tompa’s eyes opened a crack but immediately drifted closed again.
“Am I ever glad to catch up with you two,” a weary male voice said.
Roussel? Or a nightmare?
With a groan, she rolled onto her side and then pushed herself to her feet, just in case it wasn’t a dream. She wobbled and bumped into Awmit, who was still pacing. His wide, low hips caught her at the side of the knee and knocked her off balance. She staggered forward and started to fall to her knees.
An out-thrust arm caught her across the chest and belly just before she hit the rocks.
“Careful there.” The arm hauled her to her feet, keeping a tight grip on her.
“Roussel?” She recognized his voice, the insignia of rank on his shoulder, and his looming bulk. And who else could it possibly be?
“At your service, ma’am.”
She’d never been called ma’am in her life. Must be a dream.
No. His arm felt far too solid for a dream. She tried to step back, but he held on. “Let go of me!”
He did.
After a moment’s silence he spoke in a high voice. “Thank you very much for saving me, Mr. Roussel. I might have injured my knees and been torn to itty bitty pieces tomorrow because I couldn’t keep up the pace.” He responded to himself in his normal baritone, “Think nothing of it, Miss Lee, although I certainly appreciate your gracious good manners.”
“Go to hell, gordo.”
He gave an exasperated sigh. “You should be nicer to me, Tompa. You really should.”
His threat sent a chill down her spine. She edged back, bending slightly and feeling behind her for the doghouse where she’d been sleeping.
“Have you done any more damage since this morning?” he asked.
“What?”
“Damage. Did you do any while I was gone?”
Tompa felt around frantically but couldn’t find the doghouse. “What are you talking about?”
“Well,” he said slowly, “I don’t exactly know. It’s ambiguous.”
Her hand found the doghouse. A body was stretched on top of it. “Awmit? Is that you?”
“First sleep comes, graceful human.”
“You can’t go to sleep now.” Tompa felt her way around the slab of rock so the doghouse was between her and the indistinct shadow that was Roussel. “I need you.”
Awmit didn’t answer.
“Get up.” She shook his arm and shoulder. His body was so loose that it was like trying to wake up a bag of potatoes. Realizing that her efforts were futile, Tompa folded her arms and shivered despite the warmth radiating from the stones of the sharboo-cria. “Oh, God.”
“Look, all I want to do is sleep,” Roussel said.
She dimly saw him moving around in the dark and heard him curse as he banged his shin.
“This planet needs a good moon,” he muttered. “No wonder the Shons have such big eyes.” Nonetheless, he seemed to find a slab of rock to lie on because after a moment he gave the achy yet contented sighs of an exhausted man stretching out. “We’ll fight in the morning. No damage until then, you hear?”
Tompa stood trembling in the dark for several minutes. She heard the rhythmic hum of Awmit’s breathing, and in the distance the subdued moans of an alien creature. To her surprise, Roussel’s gentle snores joined the nighttime chorus after a short time.
She began to feel ridiculous standing there, braced against an assault that wasn’t going to happen. Her fatigue returned. The ground was too uneven for sleeping, so she couldn’t just stretch out where she was. For a moment longer she stood there, trying to remember the layout of the sharboo-cria. The big table-like thing should be to her left, and in front of it would be another moss-covered doghouse where she could sleep. Or was it to her right? She should have paid more attention.
Feeling her way in the dark, Tompa eventually banged her knee against a flat shelf of rock. She lay down on it, painfully aware of how warm and rough the stone was under the moss. After last night, though, she knew she would manage to sleep. As she stared up at the stars, she searched for the moving light that would be the Vance.
Nothing. Only stationary, indifferent stars. Alien stars in alien constellations.
All of a sudden she knew that she was going to die down here. Oh, it looked as though she might survive the trial. But then what? Her dream of the Navy was dead. She couldn’t imagine being a Ship’s Ward again, even if the Navy would by some chance let her. The Vance was the only ride home, though. Not that she had a home, really, but compared to this backward hellhole of bombs, death, hypocritical justice, and skulls crunching, earth fell kind of homey.
So she would die here, even if it were of old age. The stars blurred as a tear slipped down her cheek.
Bad idea, borrowing grief from the future. It would be tough enough to get through the night with Roussel nearby. Somehow, hundreds of Shons weren’t as overwhelming as one very male policeman sleeping twenty feet away. What was it about him, anyway?
Then it hit her. That nonsense of his about ambiguous damage . . .
Roussel was a flap-hap. She’d dealt with lots of people whose minds weren’t all there, and she smelled that familiar stink of oddness about him. Flashes of weirdness and incongruity hinted that no matter how earnest and ordinary he appeared, normality was a thin icing over a worm-riddled brain. Flap-haps were dangerous because just when you relaxed, a worm would shoot through the icing like a bullet aimed at your gut. Flap-haps were capable of anything. They could never be trusted.
And now, even though a flap-hap was sleeping twenty feet from her, she was too exhausted to think what to do about it.
Tompa turned on her side, trying to stifle her sniffles. She comforted herself with the fact that Awmit would wake up twice during the night. Maybe that would be enough to keep her safe from Roussel. And she’d deal with tomorrow if it ever dawned.