Ties of Power (Trade Pact Universe) (19 page)

“Since they can explain nothing, Contestant Morgan—” the Drapsk on the ramp said in perfect Comspeak, his tone amused, “—and I can explain everything, I suggest you come aboard and allow this vessel to keep to her timetable.”

“Skeptic Copelup, I assume?” I said, ignoring the last little urging pats from Maka, but finding myself climbing up the ramp anyway. “Frankly,” I told him when I’d reached the top and entered his circle of light, “an explanation of anything at all would be a welcome change at this point.”

“I am at your disposal.”

 

To be more exact, Skeptic Copelup wasn’t so much at my disposal as my time was supposedly at his.

As far as I could tell, we were the only passengers on the transport, which left almost immediately after the ramp had withdrawn and the side wall had closed. As in the bowlcar, there were no seats, but Copelup induced the floor to produce two of the stools I’d first seen on the Makmora.

“Your first question,” he then said confidently, “is where are we going. I answer it. We are going to the remote border town which is home to this daring, this flamboyantly courageous Tribe of Makii. You must be isolated during your Judgment in order to prevent interference from other Tribes.”

I opened my mouth, then closed it as the Drapsk waggled all eight fingers at me playfully. “Your second question, I also know. You want to know what purpose is served by going to this place. Yes?”

I nodded, mute with surprise at finally meeting an informative Drapsk.

“Ahh,” intoned the Skeptic happily. “But I can’t tell you that until you have passed Judgment.”

I found myself grinding my teeth.

The Makii border town turned out to be a series of low, characteristically curved buildings set down along the edge of an expanse of grain fields for no particular reason I could see, other than it might be the right distance from every other border town we’d passed on the way. The transport hadn’t waited for us, spitting us out on the sidewalk and rapidly folding itself back up before whooshing away. It wasn’t quite an aircar, I could finally determine, but didn’t travel on the surface either. The black interface between its base and the roadway looked remarkably like a crease in the M’hir. With the cheerful, talkative Skeptic at my side, and Drapsk—all visibly Makii—moving about on their business nearby, I kept my curiosity in check again.

While I’d renounced my own kind long ago, I spared a moment to acknowledge I was probably the only Clan who would—or could—function without constantly resorting to power. It had been a harsh lesson I’d arranged for myself, but that now had an unexpected value. No other Clan could have stepped on this odd world without exposing their connection to the M’hir at every turn. A pity I didn’t plan to share whatever I learned with any of them.

Copelup had told me we would catch our final transport here. As we waited, we were caught in a little wayward storm—the kind that sends down heavy drops of rain almost as an afterthought, and never really wets anything. I held out my hand to intercept one of the single-minded drops before it disappeared on the hot pavement.

There, I had one. It was larger than a drop should be. And it had two eyes that regarded me without blinking.

“It’s a fish!”

My companion bent over my palm, plumes waving, then straightened. “It’s a fish,” he agreed placidly. “What were you expecting? A sagecow?”

“I was expecting plain water,” I said, tilting my hand so as to better examine my odd catch. Its eyes only appeared large because of the magnification of the drop that held it. The tiny body was curled around a whitish yellow yolk sac.

The water drop was shrinking as I watched, squeezing the hatchling into a tighter and tighter curl. It resisted with the occasional writhing motion. But there was nowhere to swim on my hand. “What do I do with it?” I asked.

My Drapsk chuckled. “What do you normally do with fish? Eat it!”

“Normal fish don’t fall out of rain clouds,” I said, avoiding this culinary suggestion.

“Then drop it on the street, Contestant Morgan.”

I closed my fingers protectively about the cold speck of life. The Drapsk pointed to a crew of other Drapsk working at one end of the street. They were hosing down the barely wet pavement, sending rivulets of water into the channels along the street, and in the process quite tidily collecting all the fish before they could dry.

I turned over my hand and nothing happened. The fish was now firmly stuck to my skin. The Drapsk was making a rather dismal effort at controlling its amusement. I gently submerged my hand into the water now passing by my feet and shook it gently. The fish twitched once, then again, then was off and swimming to freedom.

“And you hunt for magic to bring to your world?” I said to my Drapsk guide, wiping my hand on my tunic. “Raining fish seems a fairly magical event.”

Skeptic Copelup, rocked back on his heels in the way of someone insufferably pleased with himself. “No magic. No such thing, Contestant Morgan,” he opined generously. “I’m here to prove that.”

The sky was still spitting baby fish, so I backed under the roofed yet open framework I presumed functioned as a shelter for those waiting for transport. There would be terrible carnage—and a smell to match—on the town’s rooftops unless the rain picked up enough to wash those unfortunate fishlings trapped there down to safety. “This happens a lot?” I asked doubtfully.

The Skeptic pursed his tiny mouth then answered me by reciting what had to be an encyclopedia entry. “The desert minnow lays drought-resistant eggs. When the streams and ponds dry, as they always do, the eggs are safe. They wait, in the sand, for the next rains, whether next season or the next decade. They wait, and wait, and wait.”

I opened my mouth, thinking he was done. The Skeptic quelled me with an arrogant twitch of his plumes. “If a windstorm should happen to strike the desert, both sand and eggs will be whirled aloft. It does not take magic,” this with scorn, “to explain what occurs when those eggs arrive in a moisture-laden storm cloud. And such storms track from the desert up to this area, and rain on the town.”

“Here comes our transport,” my Drapsk announced, quite cheerfully. I followed it, stepping carefully so as not to crush such well-traveled fish, and held my hands over my head to keep them out of my hair.

Even warmed and well-lit, as now, the cargo hold of the Silver Fox was not a comfortable part of the ship. Neither, Morgan thought, was this conversation.

“I’m not arguing, Brother,” Huido said, a suspiciously saber-like click of his great handling claw hinting otherwise. “I merely state the difficulties. Where do you suggest I start looking?”

Morgan—busy unpacking the cases Huido had brought, bypassing Plexis’ Port Authority being much easier for a station resident—glared at his friend. It was growing harder to restrain his anger, to keep from lashing out at random, especially when he was tired, as now, and frustrated, as always. A nightmare-haunted sleep spent trying to find Sira’s body in a larger, darker, jungle hadn’t improved his state of mind. “Ettler’s Planet.”

“Ettler’s? Why there?”

“We’d planned, if anything happened to separate us, to meet here or on Ettler’s. I wanted a rendezvous, a place with a lot of traffic and few regulations, somewhere two people could travel easily without being noticed.” Morgan’s voice trailed away as he remembered Sira’s own interest in Ettler’s, to complete the passage she’d negotiated from him during their first meeting on the Fox, when she’d been a desperate fugitive. She was curious about everything.

Grunting approval, Morgan unrolled the packaging that both protected and hid the several hi-tech and restricted objects within: Plexis being the best place to buy such equipment and conversely, one of the most difficult to smuggle it through. This had more to do with a desire to collect the appropriate taxes than to adhere to any particular Trade Pact regulations. He anticipated no problems; the Fox’s hold had a few unusual and well-proven hiding places of its own. He’d meant to show their secrets to Sira, but hadn’t.

Odd. It was easier to remember Sira-of-the-past than focus on the present. His purpose continued to cloud her face in his mind. He forced himself to picture it, to see those gray eyes, sparkling with intelligence and warmth. He needed to know she was safe—at least, part of him did.

He needed Huido.

“I don’t like Ettler’s,” that worthy grumbled as if on cue, plate sliding over plate with an irritated hiss. “It’s a ball of dust. Why can’t I go with you?”

“You won’t have to go hiking in the dunes. You’ve got the list of meeting places we’d arranged—”

One of Huido’s mobile eyes peered over the rim of his lower head plate to better examine the sheet of plas he held delicately in one clawtip. Two other claws were busy negotiating the passage of a mug of beer. Then the claws hesitated in midair, the beer only half-poured.

“Something isn’t right,” Huido stated, an ominous shudder under the words. Suddenly, all of his eyes riveted on Morgan. “Something about you isn’t right, Blood Brother.”

Morgan’s hands tended to curl into fists these days. He deliberately flattened both, palms down on his knees, before asking: “How so?”

Huido turned down the tip of one claw, a gesture meaning a foul taste or a warning of poison. “Your grist. Now I smell it clearly. And it carries the taint of another’s.”

“You know Sira gave me some of her strength—” Morgan found himself beginning to explain.

The Carasian’s broad head tilted, all eyes disconcertingly stayed level within the shadowed gap. “I have scented you since that time, Brother. This is different. Have you been attacked by one of the Clan?” A pause, then a repeat of the saber-rattling sound. “Would you know?”

I know, Morgan thought sadly, but to himself. Huido’s suspicion only added evidence to his own, that Sira had unintentionally imposed her rage, her need for revenge, on top of his when she sent him after her enemies. “What you sense about me is not from an attack, Huido,” he said slowly, struggling to find an explanation for the non-telepathic being. “When we parted, Sira—gave me more of herself. She knew I’d need it to deal with her enemies.”

“A gift?” Huido growled. “It smells to me like a curse.”

Morgan whirled angrily, fists raised. “You know nothing about it—nothing! Are you going to help me or not?”

The echoes of his shout filled the cargo hold, curling around the edges of bulkheads, knocking at open cases of weaponry—legal and otherwise—before sighing to silence over the hoard laid out for inspection on the low table between them. Morgan made himself drop his hands, unclenching his fists, shuddering with the effort to regain his composure.

The Carasian might have been a carving, save for the movements necessary to continue pouring beer into the orifice at the tip of his top righthand claw, then to tuck that claw tip into the dark boundary serving him as a face. Clearly, he chose not to take offense, however justified.

“Huido,” Morgan began unsteadily. “I’m sorry—” His control of the rage wasn’t as tight as he’d hoped. More reason to get away from anyone he cared about, where he could be free to loose it. He made himself sit back down.

A satisfied slurp. Then Huido said ponderously: “Something about all this, about you, my Blood Brother, reminds me of long ago.”

“I don’t know what—”

The raising of a large claw silenced Morgan’s protest. “When we met, Brother. Then you owned such anger as this.”

Morgan remembered. How could he not? “Different times, Huido,” he countered wearily, running one hand through his hair as though it would soothe the ache there. “I was hardly more than a kid.”

“You had been betrayed.”

“The past doesn’t matter.”

“You had been betrayed,” Huido repeated, eyes converging to focus completely on Morgan, an unnerving amount of attention. “And you wanted revenge. I had never seen such rage in a being before, nor since. Until now.”

Morgan sighed. “I take it you have a point?”

Huido said slowly: “Only that you be careful. Your rage almost destroyed you once. You are not that young Human, granted, but now you have even more power, more anger. I would not see you turn it on yourself.”

“No chance of that, my Brother,” Morgan said almost lightly. “This time I have a target within reach.”

Before the Carasian could respond, the Human changed the subject. “Now, let’s go see if Hom K’tar has filled my order yet, shall we?”

Chapter 17

“HUMANS?”

Copelup nodded his blind head, yellow plumes waving. “There is no Embassy for your kind here,” he reminded me unnecessarily. There were no Clan Embassies on any world, Trade Pact or otherwise.

I gazed out the windows of the local transport, grateful for the chance to see my surroundings for once, and asked the obvious: “What’s an Embassy of any species doing in a border town? They belong on Embassy Row, near the shipcity.”