Flesh and Gold (17 page)

“The Forest Line train boards at fifteen ticks of twenty. Here are the ring and seal. Give them to the Officer of Court and she will invest you. And thank you, Skerow.” He presented his tongue.

“May your one son beget thousands,” she said, and bowed her head to touch his tongue with hers.

Burning Mountain was an extinct volcano, but the town built at its base was hotter than Port Manganese and very damp. The Khagodi Division of Interworld Court had been established here through political deals with several worlds,
at a time when Khagodis was more innocently impressed with its membership in Galactic Federation than it is now. The courthouse's construction had been financed and its site chosen by Kylkladi, mainly for their own comfort—Khagodi do not like extreme heat—and one of the building's most ridiculed features was the clustering, in the streets around it, of a great many vending machines dispensing antihistamines and remedies for scale-rot and psoriatic fungus—local hot-weather plagues of reptile primates.

Yet Skerow had always found the building graceful, and even pleasant in the temperate winter months. The Kylkladi had built a model of their most common house style, the bower, on a tremendous scale: a circle of reinforced saplings of
ebbeb
, an equatorial tree that was the tallest in the world, with the branches curved to join at the top and the thin trunks interwoven with boughs and rainproofed preserved leaves, layered so that light was let in and rain kept out. Several banks of fans hung beneath the top of the dome, and their whickering leaf-shaped blades dispersed some of the intense heat. Skerow thought it was too graceful a place for men and women to be condemned in.

She had only a half day to listen to recorded accounts of charges and pretrial reports, and spent them resting in the basin of the Court's guest suite. The trial she was to sit on,
Interworld Trade Consortium against Goldyne Incorporated
was only one small part of a huge series of legal actions that involved fraud, market manipulation on several worlds, and insider trading, with theft, extortion, bribery, and sexual scandal on the side. . . .

Skerow's mind lingered on Evarny, a man restless in mind and body. She wondered how he liked the languid South, whether he still lived alongside his none-too-fertile wife, chided herself for making useless conjectures, and made them anyway.

She wished she had not met him, had missed him, gone home; wrenched her mind away, opened the books, and switched on the reports.

Goldyne, a Solthree firm that imported and used gold for manufacturing its instruments, had expanded to lend gold at cheap rates to mines on Sol III and other worlds wherever production might be delayed because of local strikes or other uninsurable conditions. . . .

The subject of gold made Skerow uneasy.

. . . Goldyne was only the newest of a series of names used by a firm eager to shift off a sleazy reputation gathered from earlier shady dealings. In its latest incarnation as a lender of gold it rivaled the Interworld Trade Consortium. Goldyne's services were so popular that they made the price of gold fluctuate and drag that of other ores with it.

Now Goldyne was charged with stealing from the Consortium the gold that it was lending to Federation worlds; because several Khagodi merchants working for the ITC were accused of supplying some of the ore, they were being tried on Khagodis. There would be many other charges and other trials.

Zamos Corporation was an important member of the Consortium, and was listed among the accusers. Skerow did not like the chain of associations that the name set off in her mind:
Zamos, Kobai, Khagodi, Nohl, gold, Isthmuses, Nohl, Consortium, Zamos
. They knotted themselves uneasily into her dreams, twisting and winding under the tropic storms through a night of unsatisfying sleep.

Skerow took her place without formality under the ceiling fans and looked out over the courtroom. The air was still cool, but smelled of the heat to come. The principals were filing in, outworlders settling themselves in chairs, slings, or
harnesses, scratching the itching skin around their oxygen capsules; her landsmen easing themselves into whatever tail-resting positions they would find most comfortable during the long morning's work. The dawn was green and mysterious; it muted the men's colors, and darkened the shapes of the women. Light sparked to life in arched tubes of coldlight that ran up the room's walls and met in the center to repeat its lines. Under these arches figures became flat and either garish or dun-colored, the helmets of telepaths glinted dully. Someone behind the scenes hauled a squeaky lever that turned on the electricity, observers and journalists switched on recorders, display screens, and translation machines.

The Bailiff's Clerk came forward and began to read the long list of indictments concerning Khagodis. While this was going on one of the lawyers for the ITC, a Solthree named Blaylock, noticed that a clerk had been beckoning to him from the side entry. He slipped away, and after a moment of conferring signaled to his team that he was leaving. When he returned the reader had reached an item concerning the three Goldyne representatives based on the world: Walton Chong, Joseph Ferrier, and Jennifer Halet, all of whom were included in a charge of paying Khagodi to obtain gold.

After a whispering consultation with his colleagues, Blaylock raised a hand and said, “I beg your pardon, Madame Skerow, but an important matter has come up and I must discuss it with you.”

“Will you come forward and tell what it is, sir?”

The man had turned quite red in the face, and his upper lip glistened with sweat. He said in a near whisper that Skerow had to turn her head to hear: “An essential witness, who is in danger of dying, has refused to testify and says—Madame, it concerns you, and I can't say any more here, would you come with me and speak to the Court Officer?”

“Counselor, have you given any thought to what you have said already?”

“Madame, you wouldn't believe how much thought I have been forced to give these few words.”

“One moment,” Skerow said. “Members of the audience, there will be a recess of one stad.” The members grumbled, because even that short a fall of the clockweights would take them much further into the heat of the day. The young woman representing Goldyne tapped the floor with her tail, but before she could speak Skerow said, “If it is warranted, you will learn everything.”

From behind the judge's rostrum a ramp led underground to the administration offices; it was cooler here, but damper. Following Blaylock and followed in turn by two more of his lawyers and the clerk, Skerow, used to leading the way in these situations, felt disoriented and almost like a prisoner.

The Court Officer, Ossta, a sharp old Northern woman with mauve glints to her scales, called from her archway, “Hullo, Skerow! What are you doing here now?”

Blaylock said quickly, “Madame Ossta, I have an urgent matter to discuss with the judge in your presence.”

“Indeed, Counselor? Do we need all these other fellows?”

“Yes, Madame. The clerk may stand off, but my law-brothers should know what I know.” He stood clasping his hands, flanked by two slightly shorter associates and facing two very tall Khagodi.

“Then tell us, sir!” Skerow cried.

“One of our witnesses, a man named Sta Farre Samfa, is in hospital in this city after a murder attempt against him. He was to have been brought here today, but now claims that you were one of those who hired him, Your Honor.”

Skerow's mind closed down in shock and for one instant she could not swallow air. “To obtain gold? That is a damned lie.”

Blaylock did not quail. “It was not I who spoke it, and it will become a rumor that cannot be put down.”

Ossta said, “When did your witness say this, and to whom?”

“After waking he told it to the peace officer who was to bring him. His statement was recorded.”

“What do you have in mind, Counselor, a declaration of mistrial over this sick man's rumor?” Ossta asked.

“He seems likely to die before a new trial date is set,” Skerow said before he could answer. “Counselor, this statement is worthless. Your witness may have been threatened further—I cannot think with what, further than the death already upon him—but most likely he is in pain, or has been having nightmares. If he wishes to bring these baseless charges against me formally, I must see about getting myself a lawyer. In any case, I am standing aside. I will tell the audience that the trial has been voided.”

“Just wait a moment, Skerow my dear,” Ossta said.

“Yes, please.” Blaylock had become calmer, and took a deep breath. “I beg your pardon, Madame. I was taken aback and misjudged in haste; it has cost so much effort and expense to bring this case to court. Of course I must ask for an adjournment until tomorrow so I can question the witness.”

Skerow said, “Do so. You disturbed me very deeply when you said that your witness's false statement will become a rumor impossible to put down. Make sure you have not made a prophecy that will fulfill itself.”

The feeling of dread that weighted her as she left the Court Offices and climbed the ramp was deepened when she removed her helmet at the doorway of her guest chamber: she had not felt such an intensity of silence for half her life. As she stepped through the archway she could see the wicker cage floating on the water. It had been flattened, and Eskat's
body was splayed inside it. As if someone had flung down the cage, tramped on it, and tossed it in the bath.

She waded down the ramp and fetched out the cage. The water had been warm, and so was the body. When she freed it she thought there were flickers of life in his heart and eye, enough to ask,
Eskat's One, here?
before they folded into emptiness.

She unfastened the chain and bead from his neck and clasped him against her belly. So stupid to kill this frail chained beast; her eyes were blind with the tears she would not shed. She climbed the ramp and wrapped him in a towel, sent the bundle down the disposal and followed it with the broken cage; she stayed there crouching by the pool.

A black river of thought rose up against her. She could not think of anyone on this world who wanted her harmed or dead; most of the men and women she had judged on other worlds had been involved in civil suits that had nothing to do with violence. What happened on Starry Nova had seemed to her a dreadful aberration.

Her thoughts blackened more deeply.
That detestable little beast
, Evarny called him. Evarny had urged this case on her:
You rode circuit with Thordh for over twenty years without being stained by the rumors
. . . had he involved her to repel stain from himself?

No. She had been married to Evarny for as many years as she had ridden circuit with Thordh; she had never known the Thordh beneath the impervious helmet, but she had lived in Evarny's mind. She knew that the blackness was in herself.

There was half a day to waste and all of a dreadful night to get through.

Brains Storm

Skerow had not visited the Hall of Ancestors since her divorce. Stripped of daughter and husband then, she could not bear the presence of the Saints. They had never been a comfort.

The day was full of mist, and the shrine seemed to have an aura it would not claim for itself. It stood in the center of the Courts and Administrations Complex, but was so unpretentious and modestly recessed under the low-branched
beq
-trees that it was often mistaken by tourists for a public lavatory. It had been set half-underground for coolness, and flowing airstreams running down from ventilators on its low dome roof shielded it from the damp. The dehumidifiers hummed intermittently, and the coldlight strips in its ceiling were dusky yellow.

The walkways between the pillars seemed black with darkness from where Skerow stood looking at them on the thick green sward of moss at the edge of the downward ramp. She stepped down and inward.

:Skerow? Is it truly you?:
The thoughts eddied around her like the currents of wind that gathered in the early afternoon.

Another step and another until she was immersed in the sickly aura of the yellow-flickering lights and the swarm of ancient minds.

:Yes, Blessed Ones, Skerow it is:

:Wake up, you damned souls of the Unblessed! Skerow is bringing us eyes!:

One more step and the light strips brightened. Another noise reached Skerow. The almost silent throbbing of scores of pumps.

:And ears!:

The Hall of Ancestors on Khagodis was the last of its kind; sometimes it was referred to as a Memorial Garden, Hall of Elders, or Knowledge Park. Never a Cemetery.

But it was a hall of the dead whose brains had outlived them in the years when a misguided technology had kept them “alive” in globes of nutrient liquid. The practice had long been stopped, but because the Khagodi were the longest-lived of known sentients, there were still these few in existence.

The spheres of dark green glastex stood on veined green-marble pedestals among their skeins of tubing, in no particular order, as if they were galls on the underground root systems of the surrounding trees. There were more than a hundred and twenty of them, and the youngest was nearly two hundred years old. No Governor dared stop the pumps of These Last Ones no matter how the Ancestors or their families pleaded, and no one loved them either.

There was a musty smell here; Skerow felt the membranes of her gill-slits thickening in reaction to the molds that flourished no matter how well the place was cleaned and ventilated.
:Hello, Aunt Hrufa!:

:Skerow, dear!:

:Uncle Lokh, are you there?:

Lokh was Hrufa's uncle, but he answered sharply,
:Yes, yes I am! What have you got for us, Skerow?:

The minds clamored:
:Give us! Give us!:
They were more than half mad.

There was a vending machine in a pillar to the left of the entrance; Skerow dropped a
two-pista
coin into its slot, and the machine gave her a bubble filled with colored pellets. She half turned toward the green moss and the red stone buildings outside.
:I can give you eyes and fresh memories . . . I want something in return.:
She turned back. “Who killed the tethumekh?”