Beholder's Eye (10 page)

On the other hand, what further damage could I do?
A few more hours spent with a being I could talk to, who called me friend; compared to what I’d already done, it seemed worth the risk.

“What matters is getting you safely to your ship,” I said with resignation, turning back. “I’ll see you to within sight of it and that’s all, Human. And you’ll swear not to reveal me to your kind, or I won’t do that much.”

Ragem nodded, then smiled a bit wistfully. “A promise I can give you with a clear conscience, Es. Who’d believe me anyway?” He hesitated. “Yet I’d like to ask, for my own sake, so many questions—”

“I can’t answer them,” I replied as gently as I could. “We’re together for this little space, my—friend.” I tried the new word and was rewarded by a brightening in his eyes. “It should never have happened and must be forgotten. Let’s get you off this world before you complicate my life beyond repair.”

I should have realized then it wouldn’t be that simple.

“QUITE a crowd, Human,” I said, stretching one of my slender, clawed toes to indicate the twinkling ring of lights marking the Kraosian encampment about the flood-lit ship. Twilight was deeper within the vast semicircular valley below, emphasized by the concentric circles of artificial illumination lapping at its center.

Here on the hill’s upper slope, touched only by the last rays of sunlight, I could see Ragem’s grim expression quite plainly. “Clever. To use their own kind to hold the ship here,” he said. “But Kearn’s not as compassionate as Captain Simpson. If threatened, he’d lift the
Rigus
—even with half the Protark’s troops under her jets.”

“A less-than-happy thought,” I commented, repressing a shudder.
Hadn’t enough died already?
I considered the ship, and its surrounding glow of life. “Maybe you should take up farming—and Dame Ilpore’s offer.”

“I don’t count that one of my options, Huntress,” Ragem said absently, his attention below. He began to move down the slope. I followed, as I had followed him here in the first place, obliged to see the thing to its end.

To be honest, I knew I had another, less lofty motive. It had been years, after all, since I had talked with another sapient. It would be years before such a chance arose again, granted Ersh let me stay on Kraos. I simply didn’t want to be alone again any sooner than I had to be.

We lost sight of the scene below as we entered an area of rubble, deep in shadow and offering extremely treacherous footing. To make it worse, I had begun to smell blood in Ragem’s footprints. I winced as the Human slipped, catching himself with his hands. The sound of the pebbles he sent tumbling was almost as loud as his strained breathing.

Step, clamber over raw boulders set in loose soil, jump logs ripped from the ground to make the slope a nightmare obstacle course. It was as if an earthquake had torn down half of the mountain. Ahead of me, Ragem hesitated before a curiously smooth area, distrustful of its stability perhaps. I came up beside him.

With a muttered curse, the Human dropped to his knees, hands digging furiously in the talus. I stared at him—
had what he’d suffered driven him mad?
There’s been no warning of it. Then something definitely not rock or soil reflected the twilight. I added my paws to his labor. Almost instantly, I struck a hard slickness and sat back on my haunches, meeting Ragem’s eyes before looking up the slope. We were standing on a tomb.

“They buried the other ships.” Ragem sounded numb. “That’s why we were told to land here, in this narrow valley, rather than on the plain.” He looked up at the opposite side of the valley. I understood what he saw: the slightly overhanging cliff beyond the sleek, living beauty of the
Rigus
was no longer a protection from the weather or camouflage from an innocent populous. It was a weapon ready for use.

“This may be how they have hidden all traces of alien visits to their world,” I reasoned, pushing at the Human with my paw to gain his attention. “It can’t be how the Protark overpowered the crews of these ships in the first place—nor how he plans to take your own. He can’t have mined the entire valley. There must be something else—something more.”

“I must get to them—” Even as the words left his mouth, Ragem was moving, running down the slope at a pace sure to break his neck before the Kraosians could shoot him. I snarled and followed, choosing four legs over two for steadier footing.

Ragem’s rush took us to the bottom of the hill in a jumble of rock, soil, and noise. I froze, aghast at how close we had come to the area lit by the Kraosian encampment. I could hear voices, smell hundreds of soldiers. At any moment, I expected to be revealed by a searchlight; my flesh quivered at the thought of weapon fire following that betrayal.

Ragem, possessing more courage or less imagination, hadn’t stopped. Instead, he was creeping steadily around the edge of the camp, not once looking through it to his ship, so near and so impossible to reach. Shamed, I pulled farther into the shadows and trotted in his wake.

The Kraosian camp was massive, with a chaotic lack of organization that reminded me of Suddmusal’s marketplace—
was it only yesterday morning?
But then, why should this camp be more than a collection of tents, lights, casually parked transports, and the odd bonfire? The Kraosian soldiers were not the real threat. They were there to reassure the Humans, a native welcoming committee obviously incapable of harming a starship. As Ragem had perceived, they were also pawns.

Ragem. Where was he now?
I stopped, growling to myself which at least sounded better than whining. Then, to my horror, I spotted him among the tents of the camp, zigzagging through shadow and light, taking chances to reach his ship as quickly as possible. I winced as he stumbled over a line and hunched down beside a pile of boxes. In a blink, the Human was gone again.

I was neither as courageous, nor as desperate; I guessed at where he would come out and aimed my own course to meet him, running with the ground-swallowing speed this form could produce over short distances. The pace drove a cramp into my side. I panted, ears pricked to catch the sound I dreaded, twisting to avoid loose rubble. Then it came—just as I had begun to feel some hope—shouts from inside the camp.

The Human had been discovered.

I slid to a halt, trembling in shadows nowhere near as dark as my thoughts.
Now was definitely the time to cut my losses and leave.
But the
Rigus
sat in plain view, vulnerable, ports sealed as a person would hunch over a wound. She was full of unknown and unknowing beings, people worried about their missing companions, but complacent in their technology.

The sense of responsibility crushed me, squeezing out every thought but a kind of dull resentment. All of them, those on the starship as well as the expendable soldiers in the camp, were in my bloodstained and inadequate hands.

Of course, the Humans would listen only to Ragem—in that respect I needed him as much as the Protark. Yet the only shape that could get me inside the camp to find him was forbidden.

Silence, ominous after the uproar of Ragem’s discovery, drew me into the shadowed edge of the nearest tent before I thought.
What was I to do?
The rules I had broken so far were trivial compared to assuming a form before it had been assimilated by the Web. I hesitated, then sagged. I could not force myself to make the attempt. Becoming Kraosian, even to preserve intelligent life, was beyond me.

I accepted the dictates of my conscience with some relief. I had begun to wonder if I was still bound by any rules. Helpless and heartsick, I backed slowly into the shadows then continued to circle the camp. At least I could see what the Kraosians planned. Maybe I would find some way to alarm the ship’s crew.
And maybe I could fly home,
I thought with disgust.

The
Rigus
towered above the camp, her polished globes and sleek superstructure so complete a statement of technological superiority that I wavered as I gazed at her, doubting for a moment if any of my guesswork about the Protark’s intentions was correct. The Kraosians, for all their years of civilization, were barely past caves and firepits compared to the Commonwealth. Yet the evidence beneath the new-formed hillside was a chilling reminder not to underestimate them.

I crawled beneath a parked transport, seeking an unobstructed view back inside the camp.
Good.
By turning my head, I could also watch the cleared area at the base of the
Rigus’
still-deployed ramp. Night made a velvet canopy overhead. It was warm, quiet, and expectant.

I didn’t have long to wait. A column of officers, led by the Protark himself, marched from between a pair of larger than average tents, soldiers snapping to attention as the party passed. As they drew closer, I saw in their midst a stretcherlike sled, pulled along by a queu. There was no need for the beast; the camp stank with the fuel and oil consumed by their vehicles.

So the queu was a strategy—a deliberately disarming quaintness. I shook my head. The Humans weren’t to be fooled by anything so obvious.

I reluctantly turned my attention to the motionless figure on the stretcher. It was Ragem; I knew him, though he was naked and bound, unconscious or likely worse. My lips curled away from my teeth and I actually considered using them on a leg or two. The cavalcade paused right in front of me, booted feet kicking dust to tickle my nose, as the Protark and some of his officers continued on and shouted up to the ship.

I didn’t hear what was said, nor did I care. I could see their plan for myself. A tall Kraosian—head, face, and body wrapped in white—walked quickly up from the end of the column. His hands were gloved. The men around Ragem drew well away as he raised a small vial and sprinkled its contents over Ragem’s bare skin.

The queu-drawn cart was sent on its way immediately afterward, Ragem its innocent and deadly passenger. The Protark waved it past, getting no closer than he had to, and began retreating slowly toward his camp. I could see the main port of the starship beginning to open.

I tore past the surprised Kraosians, feeling more than hearing a burst of fire close to my heels as they tried to stop me. I lunged at the head of the queu, snapping my teeth, trying to drive it away from the ship and the people starting to emerge from within it. The stupid beast reared in panic and fell, tipping the sled and rolling Ragem’s limp body to the ground.

Sliding to a halt, I looked down at my new friend for a timeless instant, watching his chest rise and fall with light, peaceful, unconscious breaths. I knew beyond anything else Ragem would rather die than carry whatever death was planted on him to his crewmates. As a serlet, I could kill him, but it would be futile; how could I prevent his body and whatever Kraosian poison coated it from being taken on the
Rigus
?

Under the cover of the flipped stretcher and tangled, groaning queu, I gently laid myself on top of the Human’s warm limpness and cycled.

The form I chose was the same as that which had released us from the prison cell. In contact with Ragem’s skin, the cells of my new body automatically dispersed, coating, entering his every pore. He began to gag as I filled his mouth and nose. I continued, grimly ignoring his convulsions, completing the process of covering but refusing the natural inclination of this form to then begin to feed. Instead, I began absorbing everything my refined sense of taste determined was not Human from Ragem’s skin into my own substance. What I gathered, I automatically digested and destroyed.

I sensed movement, hands touching and repelled by what they felt. I knew panic myself then and fought it—I couldn’t cycle; the process of cleansing Ragem’s skin was not yet complete. Something punctured me, causing intense local pain as it damaged cells. Realizing it was only a breathing tube being thrust into Ragem’s mouth, I held on, refusing to defend myself. I would prefer it if he could live.

Then we were lifted and carried—a not unexpected outcome, had I had the time to think through the consequences of my actions. I didn’t need the feel of artificial lights, nor the different and metallic taste to the oxygen in the air, to tell me when we entered the bowels of the waiting
Rigus.
The ship was welcoming back her own—along with an unsuspected, and most unwilling, passenger.

QUIET, professional voices consulted, puzzled, reported—there was always a face peering into this enclosed, sealed place. They had put Ragem’s unconscious form in quarantine, locked in a clear box, with precautions taken to the extreme of ensuring that even those outside the seal wore the twinkling aura of personal shields. Given warning, the
Rigus’
crew seemed deflatingly capable of protecting themselves after all.

Of course, I was in quarantine, too—which I supposed was at least slightly amusing, since I was the reason they really didn’t need to bottle Ragem in the first place.

But hours had worn the irony thin. Long after I finished cleansing Ragem’s warm outer surface I was still waiting for an unobserved moment in which to detach myself.

Of course, observers were always too close, and too interested. The med staff were particularly concerned about me, or rather about the opalescent slime coating Ragem’s skin. Their concern had meant some rather uncomfortable attempts to remove me. These ceased with Ragem’s obvious distress as caustic fluids passed through my tissues to scour his bare skin.

At least no one suspected me of being more than a disease.
What I needed was a moment when Ragem and I were left alone; all I wanted was a dark corner somewhere by myself. I needed to do some productive brooding.

The ship had left Kraos. There’d been no mistaking the vibration and surge of acceleration minutes after the outer lock closed behind Ragem’s rescue party, let alone the klaxons and flashing lights Humans always felt necessary to mark such a moment. The moment I’d been kidnapped, shanghaied, stolen from my work; it wasn’t my fault I was leaving Kraos before I was finished.