Maeve (10 page)

“Aleytys!”

She sighed mentally and let the comforting water sublimate. “What is it?”

“I think you'd be interested in the engineer's conversation.”

“Engineer …” She turned her other sight on the life source at the other end of the room.

The man was long and narrow, dressed with a mannered elegance that emphasized his really beautiful hands and his hollow-cheeked scholar's face. His eyes were very dark, slanting upward over high cheekbones. His hair was straight and black, worn long, clipped at the nape of his neck into an elaborate bronze clasp. His skin was a pale ocher with olive-green shadows.

With an effort Aleytys pulled her mind from his appearance and struggled to hear what he was saying. After the usual stabbing pain, the translator functioned efficiently.

“Yes, yes. The stunner worked. We managed to collect four individuals. A very interesting assortment.”

“Yes?”

“One of them is a cerdd. The computer identified him as a member of a dissident group that tries to stir up trouble in the city and on the plain.”

“And?”

“He has a flute looped around his neck. Computer says that hideous noise accompanying each of the attacks was flute music.”

“Interesting. Then you presume a connection between the forest savages and the dissidents.”

“It would seem so. Two of the others were savages from the forest, a full grown male and a cub. The cub has a crudely made instrument imitating the flute. I suppose it's some kind of fetish.”

“You said four.”

“The last is the most curious. A redheaded woman. Not a native. The computer has no I.D. on her but she looks a little like a McNeis. Scota Company has been trying to tie into this sector for years. The McNeis himself has hair I'd call a close match to hers. If the McNeis has a new development in technology that lets them punch through a defense screen …” He shrugged.

“Unsupported speculation.” The dry repressive voice cut through the engineer's too rapid flow of speech. He wiped beading moisture from his face and waited.

“Get your captives patched up if necessary. I will dispatch a technician with a psychprobe. Do you have the native settlements plotted?”

“Yes, Illustrious.”

“Level them. You shouldn't need help for that. Do you?”

“No, Illustrious.” The engineer scowled at the console, his fingers curling into claws.

“Good. Pick up what you can about the dissidents from the cerdd. If the redheaded woman's a spy, she'll be filled to her eyebrows with anababble. If she's not, she's even less of a problem.”

“Yes, Illustrious.”

“Get what you can from the woman.”

“Yes, Illustrious.”

Without further words the speaker's voice was replaced by a carrier hum. The engineer swung around in the swivel chair, cursing softly, long fingers shaking. He stepped across the room with short, nervous steps and thrust a toe into Tipylexne's side, noting his flaccid lack of response. “Hah.” He took a step to the side and stood looking down at Aleytys. With his foot he pushed her broken leg aside, staring thoughtfully at the bloody mess with its jagged end of protruding bone. Then he left the room.

While she waited to see what would happen, Aleytys explored the bodies of her friends and found them hurt-free. Prodding her reluctant brain into lumbering activity she finally decided that this was logical since they were on the ground when the stunner hit. She still felt no connection with her body; her mind was a free-floating point with eyeless vision.

The engineer walked in again with another man. He touched Tipylexne with his foot. “This one first Check him out.”

The doctor dropped to his knees beside the cludair and ran a gently buzzing machine over his body, moving it in wide sweeping arcs. He grunted and moved to stoop over Gwynnor, then Ghastay. “Nothing wrong with them.”

“Good. What about the woman?”

The doctor moved to hover over Aleytys. As he moved the buzzing instrument over her body, he frowned. “Funny,” he muttered.

“What?”

“Two compound fractures in the right leg. Simple fracture of the right arm. And no other injuries. None!”

“So? What does it matter? Patch her up so she's fit to be questioned.”

The doctor's round, meaty face grew a sudden sheen of sweat. He swallowed, his prominent eyes bulging even further as he shifted his gaze nervously from the woman to the engineer. “Questioned?” His voice was hoarse with an odd tremolo that plucked at Aleytys' already taut nerves. There was a subtle wrongness about the man, like a false image laid over the true, an evil shadow on a basically decent man. She looked further and saw a metal socket set into the bone behind his ear and felt sick. Phorx addict. The part-vegetable, part-animal thing that indulged its hosts with bouts of exquisite happiness. And ate away at his brain.

“The Director is sending a psychprobe, if that's any of your business. Have her ready.” He turned to go.

The doctor's jowls shook. His hand groped helplessly in the unresponsive air, then he staggered to his feet and plucked at the engineer's sleeve. “Isn't that illegal? The Singh-Catal-Manachay Convention …”

The director jerked his arm free. His nostrils flared with anger and contempt. “You should know the Wei-Chu-Hsien triad were not signatories to that bit of nonsense, or you'd be in Rehab long since. Instead, we support that little pet of yours.”

The doctor winced, his brows drawn down in a painful grimace. “A psychprobe destroys the mind as it works. They'll be vegetables.” Oily sweat flooded his face; he was trembling so badly he could barely stand.

“You think the Director plans to let them live? You'd better go on with your work, doctor, while you're still capable. Isn't the phorx due for feeding soon? Would you like it to go hungry?”

The doctor shuddered. Without another word he knelt beside Aleytys and opened his case.

Chapter XIII

Chu Manhanu smoothed his thumb over the ratrail moustaches that marked careful parentheses around the narrow line of his mouth. Lips pursed in fastidious distaste, he examined the cludair briefly, glanced at Gwynnor, then moved to stand over Aleytys. His flat black eyes slid over the casts that weighed her leg and arm flat to the floor. “You're the only one injured.”

Unable to lift her hands because of the tangleweb's clinging resistance, Aleytys shrugged. “I fell out of a tree.”

“You know who I am?”

“No.” She let the cool tone of her voice tell him how little she cared.

“I am Company Director, woman. What happens to you depends on me.”

“My, how terrified I am.”

“That's the point, isn't it? Why aren't you afraid?”

“Of you?” She laughed and he winced.

“Your hair is very red.”

“A birth gift from my mother.”

“McNeis or Mctany?”

“I haven't the vaguest notion what you're talking about?”

He dusted the palms of his hands together lightly. “No matter, the probe will answer for you.” He moved on and settled into the revolving chair by the console. “Doctor.”

The bulky man stepped through the door uncertainly, sweat still gushing from his pores. There was a blank, glazed look to his eyes. “Yes, Illustrious?” His voice was thick and halting.

“I expected to see the engineer in this room.”

“I … I don't believe he was expecting you, Illustrious.”

“No doubt. Where is he?”

Lips moving shapelessly, the doctor worried over the question, then mumbled, “He went out to burn the villages as you told him, Illustrious.”

“Hmm. Is the woman in shape for questioning?”

“She fell twenty meters on knotted roots.”

“I think you exaggerate.”

“At least five times her height,” the doctor amended hastily.

“You still haven't answered my question, doctor.” Chu Manhanu's voice was gentle, almost apologetic, but sweat again gushed from the doctor's coarse pores and ran in lazy runnels down his jerking cheeks.

“The only injuries she has are breaks in her arm and leg.”

“How delightful. Very good. A terse, exact answer, doctor. Perhaps you will continue to answer as succinctly. Which is the leader of that group?”

The doctor hesitated briefly, then pointed at Tipylexne.

“I wonder why you changed your mind.” The Director ran his thumbnail over the soft oiled hairs of his moustache.

“Changed my mind?” The doctor sputtered under the chill impact of the Director's gaze. “What man would take orders from a woman?”

“Who are you trying to convince?”

The doctor shrank in on himself. “It has to be the forest male,” he muttered. “The others are cubs, though the woman might be dangerous. I don't know.”

“Your sexual preference blinds you to the obvious. Who was in the tree?”

“The woman.”

“Who, then, was the prime mover?”

“You want me to say the woman. But wouldn't the leader be on the ground directing the efforts of the others?”

“You'd be on the ground, I'm sure. Power, doctor. Information, doctor. Direct and immediate.” He rested a hand precisely on his knee, then positioned the other over it. “Have the natives given trouble before?”

“Why ask me?” the doctor burst out, forgetting caution. “You know the answer.”

“Petulance, doctor?” With calm precision he moved his hands, placing the bottom hand on top this time. For a moment he contemplated the new arrangement, moving his fingers fractionally to achieve the most graceful pose. “Was the tree searched?”

The doctor stared blankly.

“Was the tree the woman fell out of searched for the instrumentation she used to cause the damage?” Manhanu said with terrible patience.

“I … I think so. Engineer Han …”

“Is not here. Does the woman have any internal injuries?”

“None.”

“And you don't find that odd?”

Stubby fingers caressing his throat, the doctor muttered, “Odd things happen.”

Chu Manhanu held up his hands and examined the backs with satisfaction. “Remove the casts.”

“What?”

“Remove her casts.” Manhanu said patiently. His voice sank to a whisper but the doctor quivered while the muscles in his face twitched out of control.

Sinking heavily beside Aleytys, he rummaged in the case he had left against the wall and pulled out his vibrosnips. Setting the blade at one centimeter, he dug runnels in the stiff plastic. Then he took a small hammer and beat it sharply against the casts along the lines of cleavage. The casts fell off neatly.

“Remove those.” A finger moved gracefully at the bandages underneath the cast.

The doctor stared with disbelief as the bindings fell away, revealing pinkish skin with swiftly fading marks where the torn skin had been. He probed the flesh with shaking hands, not caring if he hurt her. Then he dug his thumb into her arm. “Gone!” he shrilled. He jumped to his feet, shaking all over. “She was injured, I swear it.”

The Director's nostrils twitched with distaste. “Calm down, doctor. Of course she was injured. Here.” He flipped a small black box to the goggling man. “Put this on her.”

“Psi freak,” the doctor mumbled as he fumbled the box open. “A damn psi freak.” Inside the box he found a chain-mail collar with a massive, clumsy locklatch and a flat black disc with the Company sigil incised on the front. “What's this?”

“Put it on her. Around her neck.”

The doctor stared at the Director's smiling mask and crawled hastily toward Aleytys' head. Ignoring her angry glare, he shoved her chin up, swearing as the metal collar slid through clumsy fingers. Finally he fumbled the end through the lock slot and pulled it taut.

Aleytys gasped and began to choke.

“Not so tight, fool. She has to talk.”

Breath shrilling through his teeth, the doctor adjusted the collar. He started to clamber to his feet.

“Not yet. Stay there. Here.” The director tossed a small hexagonal rod to the kneeling man. “Touch the red end to the lock. Good. Now touch it to the character on the disc. Ah! Now, bring the rod to me.” The doctor staggered to his feet and shuffled to Manhanu, holding the small rod in a shaking hand. Manhanu shoved it up one of his wide sleeves. “Now. Stand over by the door and keep your mouth shut.” He lifted one of his long slim hands in a graceful gesture, pointing at the wall beside the door.

The doctor glanced longingly at the door. Then his shoulders slumped and he shambled across the room to stand, leaning heavily against the metal wall.

Chu Manhanu replaced his hand and smiled with quiet mockery at Aleytys. “The good doctor called you a psi freak, madam. While I deplore his choice of words, I fear he is right about you. I'm quite certain there were no esoteric in-instruments in or around that tree. We had the harvester shielded, as I'm sure you know, yet you had no trouble breaching the shield. Remarkable.”

Aleytys frowned. She felt too much at a disadvantage lying on her back so far below his eye level. Ignoring him, she flexed her body and contorted herself into a sitting position. Then she inched back until she was sitting with her back braced against the wall. “You knew before you came.”

“Intelligent, also. Madam, the collar you wear contains an inhibitor that will prevent your making use of your talents.”

Having felt the too familiar disorientation from the inhibitor, Aleytys didn't bother answering him. She lowered her chin and felt along the smooth line of the mail and realized there was no way she could break it.

Chu Manhanu watched with infuriating superiority, the corners of his mouth curving into a chill smile. He took the rod from his sleeve and began smoothing his thumb over its hexagonal surface. “A small thing.” He fitted it between dumb and forefinger, holding it up so she could see it. “The only hope you have left. You may have noticed that the clasp is clumsy and out of proportion. Aesthetically revolting but necessary, madam. If anyone tampers with the lock, your lovely head will be blown off your shoulders.” His mouth curled farther as he savored the consternation he read in her face. Then he turned away. “Enough chatting. Doctor.”