Artemis Invaded (28 page)

Once or twice the inspection paused, as something of potential interest had been located. Then it moved on, digging deeper, layer by layer, eventually cell by cell. Griffin raised his hands, trying to rip the seals open, but the gloves, capable of such precise manipulation when worn by Ring, were stiff and unyielding, as if each finger had been dipped in plastic and was now hardening in futile clawlike curves.

Had the examination continued, Griffin might have gone insane, but Ring came to his rescue. The big man touched the center of Griffin's chest, pressing his hand hard against one of the spavek's panels. The questing force that had been delving into Griffin rushed to meet Ring, meshing its energies with his, welcoming him. Griffin had the faint, embarrassing feeling that he was being complained about.

Ring's reply was inaudible but somehow comprehensible.
“He did better than I dared hope. Let him go. He has been stronger than you can know.”

Griffin felt grateful, even more so when Ring shoved the spavek into the waiting squire and triggered the releases. The suit let him go, withdrawing its connectors with apologetic grace. Ring, too, was apologetic.

“I had not realized that you were so almost alive. I thought that, but for a tiny vine, you were dead, that the roots would not find soil in which to bury. Forgive me. I would not have had you so used.”

Terrell caught Griffin, whose knees were buckling, and helped him over to one of the built-in benches that encircled the testing chamber.

“What happened, Griff? I thought you were doing all right. You were moving the thing, though stiffly.”

Griffin felt his friend's emotions with an intensity that he never had before, at least when both were awake. Terrell's fear mingled with a trace of anger, delight was ebbing before apprehension. This must be the “vine” Ring had spoken of. Whatever the suit had done to Griffin had—almost certainly temporarily—intensified his psychic link to the factotum.

“If I understood Ring, he let me put the spavek on because he didn't think I had the necessary adaptations to let my nervous system mesh with whatever the suit uses to link with its wearer. The problem was, I had just enough that the suit kept looking to make a connection. It couldn't find it, though, and my system was getting overloaded.”

“That's horribly dangerous!” Terrell protested, looking at the suit as if it might come after him next, his earlier enthusiasm swallowed by a sea of distrust and apprehension.

“It was—but only because I hadn't been trained how to operate the cancellation sequence,” Griffin said, knowing he was right, now recognizing what one of the pulses in his core had been. “If I had been, I simply would have told the suit to let me go and it would have.”

“So it kept trying,” Terrell said, “because you didn't tell it to stop and it found just enough to convince it the effort was worthwhile? That still seems insane—like holding someone underwater and hoping he gets himself free before he drowns.”

“It felt rather like that,” Griffin said, forcing a shaky laugh. “Again, my lack of training was the problem. My guess is that the test pilots or whatever you want to call them were trained to recognize that they were not synchronizing correctly with the suit.”

“Why didn't the suit know?” Terrell protested. “You talk as if it's somehow intelligent.”

“Perhaps the completed models would have had safeguards,” Griffin said. “Remember, this was a test lab. These were all experimental models. Probably every one of them has some flaw or incomplete element.”

“And Ring didn't have a problem because he has the right sort of adaptations?” Terrell asked, now sounding less angry, more interested, although his fear was still present.

Ring nodded. “I have dreamed of blue since the coming of the first star. I did not know what it was until after the second star fell. Then my heart sang that if I were not here to know the blue, all would be lost.”

Griffin tried to remember the weird prophesy Ring had recited soon after he had arrived with Bruin and Kipper. Something about there being no hope unless Ring was present, about the return of slavery, then that odd stuff about cats. “If the cats do not breathe in the dusty orb, if the thread does not learn that it binds tightest when it is knotted firmly into itself, if the dreamer does not wake from the visions, then even with Ring, with Bruin, with Kipper, still there will be disaster.”

He felt uneasy. The coming of the first star could refer to his own arrival. The shuttle burning through the atmosphere had been seen as a falling star, even in daylight. Could the second star refer to what had been reported in Spirit Bay? Had he been right to dismiss it so lightly? But they weren't dismissing it lightly. Adara was off to make sure there was nothing to the rumors.

Space trash,
he thought, comforting himself, letting his mind slide back to the fascinating problem of the secrets of Leto's complex.
That's all it is. Just space trash.

Interlude: Parasitism

arms

legs

voice

to

needy

childish

                 vengeful

                        omnipresent

rusts

smuts

root rots

devouring to live

parasitism

 

12

Beneath the Surface

Sleeping on a bed was nice, even if Adara did have to share the creaking frame with Sand Shadow. Nonetheless, the huntress woke with the dawn. Ambling into the kitchen, she found the widowed cousin who served as the family's cook and housekeeper slicing slabs from a ham and dropping them into a skillet. They exchanged greeting while Adara cut herself bread and smeared it with thick strawberry jam.

The family that was not quite hers kept farmer's hours. Bread and jam or bread and cheese would hold them until the milking was done, eggs gathered, cows turned out to pasture, horses fed, and routine tasks attended to. Then they would meet for a larger meal that would sustain them until noon.

From bitter experience, Adara had learned that the scent of Sand Shadow that clung to her made domestic livestock nervous, so she didn't offer to help. Instead, she settled herself on a three-legged stool on the porch and amused herself between bites of bread and jam with carding wool.

Neenay found her there. Sliding behind her spinning wheel, she started pumping the peddle. When the process of transforming fluff into yarn was under way she said, “Hektor left with first light. Even if he does stop at the cobbler's, I suspect you'll have news of Spirit Bay before lunch. Will you be staying on after?”

Adara licked a bit of jam off one finger so it wouldn't soil the wool and considered. “It depends on the news. If there's nothing, I might stay a day or so. Bruin is with Griffin and Terrell, so they won't starve.”

“Not pining to get back to one or the other?” Neenay asked.

Adara shook her head. “More pining to be away, if you want to know. Mother, I never said I didn't want a…” She almost said “mate” as the hunters did, then corrected herself to politer use. “A husband, but I want one who will be a partner, too. I'm not sure either of those two would put up with me for long once the shine had worn off. I'm not the easiest person to deal with.”

Neenay chuckled. “Tell me about it.” She grew more sober. “But you like them?”

“Both. Very much. I'd give my life for either of them.” Adara paused. “But I'm not sure I could give my life
to
either of them … Does that sound as strange to you as it does to me?”

Neenay surprised Adara by shaking her head. “It's a mistake many a young woman—especially one with interests beyond the usual—makes. Some women are perfectly content with the roles our bodies built us for—bearing children, then raising them—just as some men have no desires beyond following in their fathers' trades, farming the same land, living in the same house. There's nothing wrong with feeling that way either. But for those whose gifts lead them outside those expected paths, there's always the question of what to choose.”

“And?”

“I say if you choose a man, make sure it's one who makes you feel as if you're choosing for the larger life, not the smaller. If you choose to settle and have children, then you should feel the joy of it, not that you're imprisoning yourself. Equally, if you choose to follow—say—a hunter's path, you shouldn't feel as if you've shut yourself out of a life you would have loved but feared as too ‘ordinary.'”

Adara nodded. “Then, by those terms, I'm not ready yet for any decision. Since I think that both Terrell and Griffin honestly care for me—though each after his own fashion—then, much as the idea is inviting, I need to stay out of their blankets. I don't want to give any false hopes.”

But,
she thought,
I wish it wasn't so complicated. I am as itchy as a cat in heat and knowing there are two good-looking men who would be glad to scratch the itch makes it …

Momentarily, she considered finding some anonymous stranger, maybe up in Crystalaire, and giving him a surprise. She put the idea from her as imprudent for many reasons. She had just realized that she had shredded the bit of wool she'd been carding when the patter of feet coming around the side of the house, accompanied by an image from Sand Shadow, saved her from her thoughts.

Elektra came running up. “When I brought the eggs in, Cousin Thelma said that breakfast was about ready. Dad's washing out at the pump. Nikole said she'll be by to say ‘hi' once the little ones are settled.”

Adara stood and brushed wool off her trouser legs. “And Sand Shadow says a wagon is turning in from the town road. Orion, Willowee, and Hektor should be with us before we finish eating.”

Her prediction proved correct. Willowee came in as Cousin Thelma was rising from the table to turn the ham steaks she had put in the pan when the wagon had rumbled into the farmyard. She gave Adara a quick hug, then slid onto the bench next to Elektra.

“The boys are putting up the horses,” she said, accepting the mug of tea Akilles had shoved toward her. “Hektor told us that Adara was here, looking for news of Spirit Bay.”

“And you have some,” Adara said, smiling encouragement at her sister-in-law. “I can't wait to hear.”

Willowee didn't hesitate. “Dad had already told us some but, after Hektor let on you were interested, we got Dad to tell us all over again, saying Hektor would like the tale. We got a few more details then.”

“And?”

Willowee suddenly looked uncertain. “It isn't much, really. I don't know if you realize how much of an upset there has been. Although the Sanctum was flooded, it seems that no one is willing to believe the Old One is dead. Loremasters from all over the region are gathering to discuss what to do with the Sanctum, and how to handle the Old One should he show up and try to move back in now that the water is gone.”

Terrell had brought news of the first part of this, but Adara could almost feel her ears prick forward at Willowee's final statement.

“The water's gone? I saw the place myself before we left Spirit Bay. It was flooded right up to the ground floor and there was several feet of standing water above ground, too. Do you mean that the ground floor is clear?”

Willowee shook her head emphatically. “No. From what Dad said—and he went to look before the loremasters cordoned off the area—even the lower levels were free of standing water. Dad didn't get to go down, but he did get as far as a big staircase. He said there was plenty of mud and slime, but all the standing water had drained away.”

Hektor and Orion came in then, and Hektor said, “Has she gotten to the bit about the lights?”

Willowee glowered at him. “Not yet. Stuff your mouth with ham and let me tell the tale properly.”

Adara couldn't help herself. “Lights?”

Willowee nodded. “After the Sanctum was flooded, lots of people went there searching for the Old One's body. His two servants were fine—they'd been sleeping in a summerhouse, to get out of the heat. Later, when the Old One's body was nowhere to be found, the loremasters and town government agreed that no one was to poke around. That didn't mean they left the place unsupervised. After all, it is a seegnur artifact. You know how the Sanctum's on a small peninsula?”

Adara nodded.

“Guards were set at the base of the peninsula to discourage people tromping out there from the landside. Boats were set to patrol on the water side. Nothing much happened for a few days.”

Adara knew some of this, having been among those who had helped with the initial search, but she nodded encouragement, sensing Willowee was getting near the exciting part of her tale.

“First came the sounds,” Willowee said, dropping her voice as if telling a ghost story, her eyes shining. “None of the folk Dad talked to could agree exactly what the sounds were like. Some said they heard a sucking sound like the water draining off through some hidden channels. Others swore the sounds were more rhythmic and had to come from some machine—pumps or siphons. Thing is, no one wanted to look too closely … Not only was there fear that the place was now haunted, but the loremasters were flat-out against anyone going in there. When the lights were seen…”

Willowee paused for dramatic effect and Adara prompted her.

“Lights?”

Willowee nodded. “Lights and not just any lights. These were faint and dim. Those who glimpsed them swore that these lights did not flicker as would a torch or lantern, but shone steady and with a blue-green cast.”

Elektra asked, “Did everyone run away then? I would have. I would have screamed.”

“No one wanted to get close, that's sure,” Willowee agreed. “My dad was out on one of the patrol boats. Eventually, he convinced the rest of the crew that it was their duty to take a closer look. They landed near the point and went ashore. That's when Dad saw that the building wasn't flooded anymore. They didn't go any farther that day, just went and told the loremasters.”