Reclamation (61 page)

“No.”

She watched Jay raise the gun. “I won’t kill you, but by the blood of my ancestors, I will hurt you until you beg me to stop, Aunorante Sangh!”

Instantly, the memory of Basq making the same threat flashed through her to the Mind. It seemed to be all they knew how to do in the end. She couldn’t be bought, or rearranged, or done without. She could be hurt. Whoever had made her, the Nameless Powers, or Jay’s Ancestors, whoever or whatever they had been, had left themselves that final option.

Arla’s body gripped the stone. “You see?” she said. “You see what service brings us?” Eric must have heard her voice. He dropped to the floor and ran toward the lighted well, leaving Heart dangling from the rope ladder. “In the end the masters will decide to dispose of us, of me, of Eric, of Teacher Heart. They already took away a whole city.” She focused her sight on the crater that had been Narroways.

NO!

The room began to bleed. Blue-grey viscous liquid seeped out of the floor and down the walls. Jay started and looked down. The thick stuff welled up over the tips of his boots and, defying gravity, ran in rivulets up his legs. He screamed and tried to run, but he toppled over, landing heavily against her surface. She felt her skin, the room’s floor, her skin, sizzle. A wave of gel rose up and enveloped him, pressing him into the floor. She felt him writhe, and then fall still. She felt him melt slowly away like ice against her skin.

Eric sprinted down the hallway. Heart followed more slowly, with his hands held flat at his sides, a Teacher’s first defensive posture.

“Eric!” shouted Arla. “Stop!”

Eric froze. With her distant eyes, Arla watched the gel pull itself back down into the floor, into herself.

There was nothing left behind.

“What did you do?” Arla asked the Mind softly.

I have maintenance functions that I can operate without a Hand. I used one of those.
The voice was miserable, tiny and lost.
What will we do now?

“Arla?” called Eric down the corridor.

“In here!” Slowly, she drew back, bringing her whole self back to her body.

No!
cried the Mind.
Don’t go!

“I’ll be back, I swear. Tell me how I can bring a Hand with me.”

And she knew, had always known, would always know.

She lifted her hand away from the stone and staggered from the weight of the sudden, appalling loneliness.

“What is this place?”

Eric’s voice startled her, because she couldn’t see him. She turned carefully around, holding herself up by sheer force of will. Her knees seemed to have turned to rubber, and her eyes did not want to focus.

“I think,” she said, with difficulty, “it’s where the Servant brought my ancestress.”

Heart pushed his way into the room beside Eric, only to stop and stare at what he saw. His gaze moved around the chamber in short, sharp jerks until it finally rested on Arla. “Where is Jay?”

“I don’t know,” she said.
I don’t really want to know.

“Are you all right?” Eric moved to her side and laid a cool hand on her cheek.

“Mostly.” She lifted his hand away. “I’ve found out what the Vitae’s Ancestors left behind, though, and I think we can use it to fight them back again.” She raised her eyes to his. “It’ll take both of us, though. It needs a Hand and an Eye.”

Eric’s breath caught in his throat. “What is it?”

“I don’t think I can explain.” She gestured toward the control banks. “It’s a kind of computer, or an AI. It calls itself the Mind, and it needs us to move, and to see. It’s … I don’t know what it is.”

Eric licked his lips and eyed the stones. “What do I have to do?”

Arla fished one of her remaining namestones from her pouch and set it into the empty socket next to the first one. She took the third stone in her left hand. “Lay your hand on this stone and that one.” She held it out. “I’m not sure what’s going to happen.”

Eric gave a soft chuckle. “You say this like it’s a new thing, Arla.”

“Hand on the Seablade!” Heart waved his hand at the room and all its strangeness. “Have you lost your mind? What is this? You wanted to get the Notouch, you’ve got her, let’s leave here!”

Eric shook his head. “And you claim to know the apocrypha. Didn’t the Servant and the Notouch walk into the earth? And didn’t they speak to the Realm?”

Heart folded his arms. “This is no time to debate philosophy …”

“I agree,” said Eric wearily. “So be quiet and watch our backs.”

He laid his hand on the stone she held and Arla felt its warmth flow straight into her. Together, they pressed their palms against the namestones in the bank.

The Mind opened for them. No shock. No reaching. No readjustment. Easy as breathing. Pure. Whole. Alive. Free.

No fear. No consequence. No limit. No barrier. No binding. No stopping. No time, distance, exhaustion, or end.

Freedom.

The Vitae called themselves the Nameless Powers!
Arla crowed and she knew Eric heard her. He was with her, of her, around her, like thought and breath and light.
That title belongs to us!

Shall we teach them that?
His thought came back to her. All the delight he felt, she savored and returned. It doubled and came back, and came back again. Delight Fury. Power. Freedom.

Revenge.

Oh, yes!

No,
said the Mind, but there was no force to the plea, just a minor tug of the conscience.
Don’t make me do this. Not again.

But the heat of the task and the joy of their freedom ran through them. It spread out into the Mind.

The blood of the World began to quicken.

“This is what the Aunorante Sangh cannot understand. Life cannot be controlled. Trying to keep your grip on it will break your own hand.”

Fragment from The Apocrypha, Anonymous

“C
ONTRACTOR!”

Kelat tore his gaze away from the monitors on the artifact’s holding tank. Behind him, the Bio-tech Beholden had moved back from the bulge in the wall they had designated tank 4B. Although it had no seams or joints, a space had opened in the bulge and a shadow crawled out into the light.

It was a crablike thing, all legs and shell and no visible eyes. It made Kelat think of cleaning drones. Its body glistened with some gelatin-like substance, giving it a steely sheen. It skittered over the edge of the tank and the Beholden crowded away from it. Kelat took a step forward. It smelled like fresh soil and blood. It scuttled between the equipment racks and the holding tank without pausing. Kelat counted ten double-jointed legs protruding from the ocher shell as it passed him.

“Any change in the artifact’s condition?” Kelat turned one eye to the Bio-tech Holrosh. The crab had reached the communications terminal. It extended its front four legs and touched the casing below the boards.

“No, Contractor,” murmured the Bio-tech. His eyes had gone wide watching the crab cross the chamber.

Kelat felt a burst of hope and fear simultaneously.
Has Jahidh won? Has he found the key to this place?

The crab drew its legs away, leaving tiny blobs of gel on the terminal. Kelat mentally shook himself. Until he knew for sure that this was Jahidh’s doing, he had to observe the proprieties. As the crab steadied itself upon its four back legs, Kelat touched his torque. “I require a Witness in Station thirty-seven, immediately,” he said, not taking his eyes off the crab.

“Contractor?” said one of the Engineers.

Kelat glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. Another crab emerged from 4B.

“Seal that,” he ordered, not caring who obeyed.
Observe the proprieties, go through the motions,
he told himself.
This has got to be Jahidh. Why didn’t that fool boy get a message to me first?

Maybe because it’s not Jahidh,
whispered a treacherous thought in the back of his mind.

The new crab jumped to the floor and scampered for the chamber’s entranceway, which was sealed by an airtight membrane.

“Blood of my ancestors!” cried someone.

The first crab was scraping the casing off the comm terminal. It scrabbled six of its legs against the metallic panels. A shower of silver dust fell to the floor and, in a few seconds, it created a five-centimeter-wide hole that bared the first layer of fiber optics.

“No Witnesses are available,” said a voice through Kelat’s disk. “The settlement is experiencing a security emergency.”
So are we,
thought Kelat ridiculously. “Orders will be rel …” A Beholden thrust his hands into a pair of sterile gloves and reached for the crab at the comm terminal.

“No!” shouted Kelat, but the Beholden had already lifted the thing up. Its legs flailed helplessly in the air as he carried it toward 4B. The Engineers had a layer of polymer film almost stretched across it.

“Blood!” Bio-tech Holrosh pointed toward the entrance, and Kelat looked almost involuntarily. The second crab had pressed itself against the threshold and hooked its legs into the membrane.

“Suits!” Kelat snatched his helmet off the rack by the wall. A crab scuttled by his feet, heading straight for the comm terminal.
Jahidh, you are overreaching yourself …

Someone screamed. Kelat slammed his helmet over his head and closed the seal, just soon enough to see the Beholden who’d picked up the crab engulfed by a blur of blue-grey gel.

“Val!” cried another Beholden, reaching toward him. The gel writhed for a moment and then, slowly, relentlessly, began sinking back into the floor.

Kelat grabbed the Beholden’s hands and forced them down.

“Suits!” he bawled straight at the Beholden’s face. Kelat grabbed a helmet off the rack and shoved it against the Beholden’s chest, backing him away from his lost colleague. He kept picking up helmets and tossing them to whoever was closest, regardless of rank. The membrane over the entrance was supposed to be self-repairing, but the crab had made a hole in it that was already big enough for Kelat to hear the hiss of escaping air.

A lifetime of training was getting the Beholden into their helmets and gloves. A third crab climbed straight through the polymer seal over the 4B tank. The ragged edges of the film fluttered into the tank. The polymer disappeared into the gel like the Beholden had disappeared into the floor.

The first crab was back at the comm terminal, scraping away at the casing again. No dust piled up on the floor.

Kelat locked the seals on his suit and pressed the emergency call button on his wrist terminal. Even if this was Jahidh’s doing, it was still Kelat’s job to get his team out of harm’s way. It was not part of the Imperialists’ plans to take more Vitae lives than necessary. “This is Station thirty-seven, we have an …”

“Station thirty-seven, report your personnel complement and make your way to Shuttle Pad eighteen,” came the response. “Do not, under any circumstances, touch the bio-artifacts.”

“Understood.” A rush of relief filled him. The team could get out of here. Not one of them was an Imperialist known to him. He couldn’t relay orders to Jahidh and the others in front of them. “We are a complement of eight Beholden, one Bio-tech, two Engineers, and myself.” He rattled off their names as fast as he could. As soon as he received the acknowledgment, he opened the general lines to his team. “We’re under orders to evacuate. Shuttle Pad eighteen. Walk quickly. Don’t touch the bio-artifacts.”

The Beholden grabbed hands, partnering up like they’d all been taught as children. In a quick march they stepped through the doorway. The crab ignored them. It kept tearing at the membrane. A third and fourth crab had found the air processor and had their claws into the hoses. The holes grew as if eaten by acid. A fifth crab hopped out of the tank and hurried to help chew away at the comm terminal.

The Engineers snatched up their personal terminals and dived out through the tattered membrane.

The Bio-tech hadn’t moved.

“Evacuate, Holrosh,” said Kelat. “Let’s go!”

“The artifact,” he replied doggedly. “We can’t leave it.” His hands danced across the tank’s control boards. “Help me get it into the support capsule.”

“We will get another.” A sixth crab had emerged from the tank. It scrambled straight toward the analysis pads that the Engineers had laid against the chamber’s far wall.

“I’m sure that’s what the Ancestors said.” Holrosh watched his monitors intently. “Now help me, Contractor!”

Kelat palmed the control on the gurney that held the support capsule. It hummed as it came to life and he shoved it toward Holrosh.

“They’re taking Broken Trail!”

“We have to let them. We cannot leave her there.”

She is an Eye. I will keep her safe. If the Hand will reach
a
nd the Eye will see, there are still ways to fetch her back to you. I will keep this Eye safe as I kept you safe.

“Stop!” ordered a voice in the Proper tongue.

Kelat and Holrosh froze. The voice came from the walls, it came from the ceiling and the floor.

“You will not remove her,” it said. It was neither a man’s voice, nor a woman’s. “She is not yours.”

The crabs had paused in their work like single-phase statues, or like drones suddenly switched off.

Kelat touched his suit’s wrist controls and opened the helmet’s speaker. “Who are you?”

“We are the Nameless Powers. This is our Realm. You will leave it now and leave the People alone.”

“No,” said Holrosh stolidly. “This is the Home Ground. This is our world stolen from our Ancestors.”

Kelat glanced down. “Holrosh.” He gestured to the floor. The entire surface gleamed with gel, the same blue-grey stuff that had swallowed the Beholden whole. “Holrosh, leave it. We need to get out of here, now. I hold your name,” he reminded the Bio-tech, committing a gross impropriety in doing so. “Walk out of here.”

Holrosh saw the layer of gel covering the floor. His hands fell away from the tank controls. He walked toward the entranceway, picking his steps carefully so he wouldn’t fall on the slick surface. The crabs returned to their work, scraping away the products of Vitae technology as if all the metal and polymer and silicate was as insubstantial as sand.