Hellspark (47 page)

she said in warning, “remind her that I called in the byworld judges myself.”

That had the effect Tocohl expected. Alfvaen frowned but her limbs loosened, her shoulders sagged.

“She didn’t have to do it, Bayd. Why did she?”

“But she did have to do it!” Darragh said in surprise. “I thought you understood that.”

“I don’t,” snapped Alfvaen, and swift-Kalat said, “To speak reliably in Hellspark, you mean.”

Darragh looked from one to the other in astonishment. Bayd said, “I think you’d better explain it to them, Nevelen. They apparently haven’t thought it through.”

“She had to do it for the sprookjes’ sakes,” Darragh said. “The moment she decided they were worth the risk, she doubled their chances of safety. Your accusation of murder would have held up

Kejesli’s report for a time, swift-Kalat, but for how long? Suppose Tocohl hadn’t found the language.

What then?”

He snapped his wrist, startling even Tocohl with the sound. “Then,” he said, “I’d have made an official request for a panel of byworld judges—” In mid-sentence, he stopped and stared at Nevelen

Darragh.

“Which would have taken months to clear through channels,” she said. “That’s what happens when you make an official request through a bureaucracy. And meanwhile, the chances are good that MGE

would have sold the planet, the Inheritors of God would have taken possession, and the sprookjes would have been in very great danger, if what happened to Alfvaen more than once is any indication.”

She shifted to take in Alfvaen and went on, “It takes precisely the same number of byworld judges to try someone for posing as an official of the Comity—or as a byworld judge. And it gets an instant response if it goes to the right recipient.”

“Which it did,” said Alfvaen.

“Which it did.”

Maggy’s soundproofing went briefly into operation. Tocohl saw the others flinch but Alfvaen, thoughtful now, kept her eyes on Darragh. When the sound returned, it was only the sound of rain.

Without a word, Alfvaen turned her left hand palm-up, curling the fingers as if to enclose something very fragile. It was fragile, indeed, for it was the beginning of renewed trust she offered to Nevelen Darragh.

Beyond her, LightningStruck curled her hand in imitation of the gesture. Bayd said,

“Veschke’s sparks, Alfvaen. That’s going to take me a month to explain!” and started in.

Tocohl and Bayd worked through the night. When the sky cleared briefly as the sun
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rose, LightningStruck escorted Bayd and the others back to base camp. After a few clear signs that they all needed sleep, the sprookje disappeared once more into the flashwood. No others came.

“Do you suppose they have some way of communicating with each other by long distance?”

Tocohl said, stifling a yawn. „

“On this world,” said Om im, “it’s probably by grapevine.”

With so little sleep, this reduced Tocohl to a fit of giggles. “Definitely a botanical artifact,” she agreed, explaining the joke for Maggy’s benefit. “Go away,” she added to both of them, “let me sleep.” But as she dozed off, she was well aware that neither Maggy nor Om im obeyed, and she slept more soundly for that.

When she awoke, it was to Om im’s light hand on her face. “Ish shan, we’ve a full day of sun ahead of us—and the sprookjes have brought you a royal visitor.” She blinked at him. “You slept through the night,” he explained, “and there’s a crested sprookje in camp.”

That brought her fully awake and to her feet. She bounded down the cabin steps, Maggy at her heels, and followed Om im to the little garden Dyxte had planted in front of layli-layli calulan

’s cabin.

Dyxte’s plants luxuriated in the pale sunlight and, in the midst of them, stood a brilliantly crested sprookje.

A sharp smell assaulted her nostrils. Under her breath, she said, “Veschke’s sparks—is it injured?”

She could see nothing apparent wrong with it but the smell was that of infected flesh.

“No, no, Ish shan!” Om im was laughing but trying as well not to breathe in; it gave his laugh a curious quality. “The mystery of the torn-up thousand-day-blue is solved. That’s what you’re smelling.”

He pointed to a small plant that swelled purplish-blue through the compound’s red mud.

The crested sprookje ruffled at the small group of brown sprookjes. No, thought Tocohl, watching more carefully—the crested sprookje bristled. The brown sprookjes picked through Dyxte’s garden, pulling out the thousand-day-blues and tossing them aside into a pile.

A knot of surveyors watched this all, cameras taping furiously. Tocohl stopped beside Dyxte, who gave her a full-body smile and said, “Graffiti. One of the camp sprookjes planted thousand-day-blues in my landscape.”

“Watch,” said Bayd, “the brown ones think it’s funny.”

Bayd was right, to judge from the feather rufflings. Despite the smell, the brown sprookjes cheerfully went about ripping out the thousand-day-blues. When they had found them all, one of the brown

sprookjes gathered them into a bundle and walked toward the flashwood, holding them at arm’s length all the while.

This sent the rest of the brown sprookjes into ripplings of delight.

“Children!” said Tocohl. “The brown sprookjes are youngsters!”

“I think so,” said Bayd.

As the smell dissipated, the crested sprookje stood off to examine Dyxte’s work with what seemed to Tocohl a practiced eye. Then it stepped in for a closer look at layli-layli calulan’s pennants and the tattered festoons of Tocohl’s moss cloak. Judging from its stance, it was very pleased with the effect.

Tocohl stepped forward, Maggy rippling the stripes in her 2nd skin in the most formal greeting they knew in sprookje. The crested sprookje ruffled its feathers in the same pattern; simultaneously, its crest rose. (Veschke’s sparks, Maggy. How are we going to answer that one?) (We’re not,) said Maggy.

(All right, but let’s tell His Nibs we’re not physically capable.)
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This they managed with some effort. The crested sprookje came closer, examining Tocohl as carefully as it had the moss cloak, even to running a gentle finger along her arm—and puffing in surprise to learn she was not feathered. It drew her hand upward to scrutinize. Tocohl winced in anticipation of a nip but it did no such thing: instead it drew her hand gently along its own feathers, spreading them to display the skin underneath.

“Did you get that, Maggy? Bayd? I think we just got words for ‘skin’ and ‘feathers.’”

The crested sprookje let her hand drop. From its own vibrantly colored yoke, it tugged a feather and gave it to her. Feathers are good, it told her silently, try them.

Tocohl bit her lip to keep from laughing and translated this, adding, “Get swift-Kalat.”

Swift-Kalat pushed through the crowd to join her.

“Feathers are good for sprookjes,” she told it, translating aloud in GalLing’ as she went along.

“Skin is good for strange-sprookjes. I give feather to the Jenji to examine.” She was forced to lapse into her created pidgin—as yet they hadn’t the sprookje word for “examine.” In pidgin, it was the nipping motion with which everyone in camp had been examined.

“Keep your eyes open, Bayd. He—”

“She,” corrected swift-Kalat.

“—She wants LightningStruck to translate that.”

“Got it.”

(Got it,) agreed Maggy, and together they repeated Tocohl’s phrase, this time ending it with the sprookje’s own term.

The crested sprookje turned his attention on swift-Kalat. “You examine?” Tocohl translated for him.

Swift-Kalat turned his thumbs up. The crested sprookje looked first at LightningStruck and then at

Tocohl for confirmation. “Yes,” they both told her.

“Give feather,” the crested sprookje agreed. “Feathers are good.” Then she stepped back to indicate the garden.

“She wants to know if you made that,” Tocohl said.

Swift-Kalat flicked his fingers no

. At the same time, Tocohl expressed the sprookje negative.

Reaching into the crowd, she brought Dyxte forward. “The ti-Tobian made that.” And she translated the crested sprookje’s response for Dyxte: “Her Nibs says it’s very good. Different and strange, but very good. It’s what she came to see, if I got that right.”

“Thank her for me, Tocohl. Ask if she does landscaping, if you can.” That wasn’t easy, but Tocohl managed it.

“Yes,” came the answer, “I will show you—” Tocohl broke off her translation. “Did you get that last, Bayd?”

“I think it’s a time referent. See if she’ll explain it. We need time referents desperately—I can’t even sort out their tenses, if they’ve got them.”

There was a flurry of activity and a flutter of feathers involving all five sprookjes, three Hellsparks, and van Zoveel. At the end of it, they were forced to agree that both sides would wait for understanding.

And that Dyxte would wait to see the crested sprookje’s work.

By then, most of the surveyors had trickled away to let the glossis get on with their work.

Swift-Kalat had gone to examine the feather. Only van Zoveel and Alfvaen remained. It was Alfvaen who next attracted the crested sprookje’s attention. “I examine One-Who-Was-Poisoned,” Tocohl translated, adding, “She means to nip you again, I think. So be forewarned, Alfvaen.”

“Yes,” said Alfvaen, and she held out her hand, flinching only slightly when the expected nip
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came.

Having taken her sample, the crested sprookje turned to Leaper, the brown sprookje that had been swift-Kalat’s shadow, the first Tocohl and Alfvaen had seen. The crested sprookje ruffled its feathers and raised its crest. “Good work,” translated Tocohl for Alfvaen’s benefit, “with a raised-crest fillip.”

“Perhaps it’s a superlative,” Nevelen Darragh suggested. Tocohl raised a brow. Darragh smiled and went on, “Perhaps youngsters don’t rate a use of the superlative.”

“Anything’s possible.”

“Let’s find out if they are youngsters,” Bayd said. “Good timing,” she said as Om im brought tarps and spread them on the muddy ground. Bayd sat, inviting the crested sprookje to join her.

Tocohl watched the two, but she found herself increasingly distracted by some elusive thought she could not quite touch a blade to. Her glance kept returning to Alfvaen: the Siveyn shared a tarp with

LightningStruck.

“Yes,” Bayd confirmed, “the brown sprookjes are youngsters. It was a matter of the larynxes. I can’t quite make it out. And the fact that youngsters are more flexible in a new situation.

FineGarden—that’s the best I can do on Her Nibs’s name—FineGarden wants to know if we are too. I told her no. We think a strange land is too dangerous for youngsters.”

Tocohl waited for the rippled reply. FineGarden seemed to say that strange sprookjes could be dangerous too. Tocohl’s eyes widened. There it was: the strange sprookje that could be dangerous was

Maldeneantine—Timosie Megeve!

She looked again at LightningStruck, completely at ease beside Alfvaen even though she had seen

Alfvaen at her most violent. And she remembered seeing the sprookjes back away from Megeve.

“They’re afraid of Megeve but not of Alfvaen!” she said aloud—and it was to Byworld Judge

Nevelen Darragh that she spoke. “Perhaps one of them saw something!”

For answer, Darragh stood to tap the chimes at the entrance to layli-layli calulan

’s cabin. When layli-layli appeared at the entrance, Nevelen Darragh turned again to Tocohl.

“Ask them,” she said, “ask them about Oloitokitok.”

“I’ll try,” said Tocohl. To layli-layli

, she added carefully, “I can’t promise anything.” Frowning in thought, she rose to her feet and shifted her body as if she were about to speak in the Yn male dialect.

LightningStruck looked startled, then rose. Shifting to match her kinesics to Tocohl’s, she riffled her feathers in alarm and opened her mouth to display a tongue warning. The feathers settled as quickly as they had risen, to indicate to Tocohl that she must wait. All this Tocohl translated for layli-layli calulan

, while LightningStruck held a hurried consultation with FineGarden.

Tocohl was unable to follow this, except for LightningStruck’s quick shift into Yn-male (again signifying Oloitokitok?) and back to sprookje. FineGarden replied just as rapidly and just as incomprehensibly—then addressed herself to Tocohl.

“We wait,” Tocohl interpreted, “LightningStruck will ask—or possibly will get—Vikry.

Vikry?”

FineGarden shifted to Yn-male. “Oh, yes. I understand,” Tocohl said. “Vikry is Oloitokitok’s sprookje.”

“Do you think Vikry can tell us what happened to Oloitokitok?” Alfvaen said as LightningStruck hurried off into the flashwood. Tocohl gave her Kejesli’s one-hand shrug.

FineGarden, who seemed enchanted by the gesture, drew her into a lengthy discussion that passed the time until LightningStruck returned.

With her was a sprookje Tocohl had not seen before.

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(This could be tricky, Maggy,) Tocohl said privately. (We’ve got to get this just right. Tell me if the arachne spots anything I miss.)

(Right,) said Maggy, moving the arachne to one side for a clearer view of the new arrival. (Vikry is carrying what appears to be a short length of cable.) That was curious. Tocohl craned for a look, but the object was obscured by the sprookje’s feathers.

(What kind of cable?)

(I can’t tell from this angle. I’ll let you know in a moment.) The arachne moved slowly, angling closer to the sprookje.

Knowing how capable Maggy was of splitting her attention, Tocohl went on to greet Vikry and to introduce herself. Her 2nd skin rippled stripes in several different areas.

“I’m asking what they know of Oloitokitok,” she added, “I’m telling Vikry that you were very close to Oloitokitok, layli-layli

, and we want Vikry to tell you about him.” Brown and gold stripes rippled at Tocohl’s wrists. “And I will speak for you to understand.”