Tropic of Creation (41 page)

Eli nodded to him. The sergeant powered down the engines, a twitch in his good cheek the only comment.

In another instant, the crew pounded up to the flight deck, stopping in the corridor, worried faces poking through the hatchway.

He turned to face them. “Corporal Nazim,” he said. “Here is an ahtra that we will have reason to speak with. Escort her to captain’s quarters. With all courtesy.”

“Sir,” the astonished Nazim managed to say. Vecchi’s
face had gone closed and narrow, while Pig looked like he had just lost the last thought he ever owned.

She stood facing him, small and dark, eyes so large they must take in a wider world than he could ever know. Her skin markings, affording such excellent camouflage outside, set her into sharp relief against the bulkheads.

He reached out his hand. “Maret.” It surprised him, how much it pleased him to see her.

Looking at his hand, she answered, “Eli.”

The low register of her voice made her hard to hear when she spoke softly, as now: “You have done everything we told you was impossible,” she said. “It gives me two happinesses to see you yet alive.”

“And me, I’m more than glad. I never thought to see you again.” He couldn’t know what she had endured, but saw her scars, here and there. “Are you well? Would you like water, anything?”

“No, but one thanks you.”

Not wanting to embarrass her about ronid, he carefully said, “Do you have everything you hoped for?”

“Yes,” was all she answered. She was looking around his cabin, observing his personal space.

Seeing it from her perspective, he thought the place should be more than it was. It had no decoration, no art, nothing personal. A photo of his parents and brothers was all. It was this she looked at for a long while. Then she waved her hand at him. “Please sit down, Eli. You tend to be too tall.”

He sat and they faced each other in silence.

“Your people are not happy to see me, Eli.”

He smiled. “They don’t want to be here longer than they have to.”

“Neither do mine.”

At her level stare, he knew her suspicions. The bots.
“We stopped them,” he said. “We shut them down and left them disabled.”

Her face acquired a softer expression, if he could remember from what now seemed a very long time ago, and very deep underground.

“But now we have a harder job,” he said.

“War …” she said. “Your people dead. You must tell your generals we raised no hand against them.”

He shook his head. “That doesn’t matter now. Nefer has changed the game. Raised the stakes.”

Maret closed her eyes for a moment, as though just the sound of her old nemesis’ name brought dismay. She sat on the extra chair, hands resting on her knees. “Tell me.”

He said what he knew, which was only as much as Tirinn had told him. They sat a long while in silence. Her skin had paled, and Eli realized how much better she looked in her clear, dark markings. Finally she said, “Vod has challenged her. Perhaps he will prevail.” Her voice betrayed how likely she thought that was. “He demands fluxor rule. But such a thing has never been seen in ten-thousand cycles.”

This was news. “How does Vod fare against her?”

She shrugged. “It has been three intervals since I had any news from those ascending.”

“Go and lend him your support, Maret.” He didn’t know much about Vod, but he thought of Nefer and wondered who could prevail against her.

“Yes, one will, soon. But first, there is my promise to you. That I would help your people …” She blinked, one of those slow ahtran blinks.

“What is it, Maret?”

Another blink. Then: “The young one lives, Eli.”

As his eyes locked on hers she continued, “The one you call Sascha Olander. I saw her.”

He sat very still. He whispered, “Where?”

“In the OverWoods, in the nest of the vone.”

His voice came out scrappy. “Nest?”

“Yes, in their kin grouping. They keep her.”

He took a deep breath to replenish the air he’d been holding in his chest for the last while, maybe the last weeks.

“Tell me. Tell me what you saw.”

He listened to her story—the gray-green swamp, the young human in the trees, with black ropes of hair—but in his heart, he was already on his way back to the forest.

The crew would not be happy about this.

The crew be damned.

It was news best told quickly. “We’re going back,” he said.

Nazim, Vecchi, and Pig stared at him, each with their own thoughts, but not hard to parse out. Juric slept on a bunk some paces away, finally collapsed. Maret waited outside, on the access ramp, Eli’s concession to the crew’s long history of killing ahtra and being killed by them.

He told them about the granddaughter of the general, alive out there in the woods. They didn’t seem as relieved as he was.

Vecchi raised his hand. At Eli’s nod, he said, “That pock could be lying. Sir.”

“I judge otherwise, Private.”

“It’s a bloody pock!” Vecchi’s mouth quivered with more words itching to get out.

“Shut up,” Nazim snarled at him.

Vecchi turned on her as though she had struck him. “Shut up? Shut up? That’s all I done is shut up for the last bloody ten miles!” He turned vacant, urgent eyes on each of them. “We’ll never get home, you know? We’ll never get out now. Pitch your tents, boys and girls, and slit your throats!”

Pig shook his head sadly. “Now you went and made me lose count.”

“Enough, Private,” Eli said.

“Enough? You think it’s enough?” Vecchi looked startled, like a vessel had blown somewhere in his head. He turned, lunging for the gun belt slung on the post of the nearest cot.

Pig fumbled for a gun, but before he could fire, Vecchi stopped short, gulping.

He took a step backward. Swiveling around to face the others, he looked surprised. A knife protruded from the front of his neck. He ripped it out, clutching his bleeding throat, then sat abruptly on the bunk. Then he slid to the floor, slowly, as though careful not to hurt himself.

Juric was propped up by one elbow, staring at Vecchi as he twitched on the floor. “Should have killed him days ago,” he mumbled.

Eli nodded at Nazim to attend to Vecchi. She went for a med kit, and by the time she got to work, Vecchi was unconscious. Nazim applied pressure to the wound, but it streamed blood between her fingers.

Juric managed to sit up on the edge of his bunk, cradling his arm and staring at his knife on the floor as though it were a damn shame he’d have to clean it again.

Pig was fumbling to get his pistol back in the holster.

Noticing, Juric caught Pig’s eye. “Boy,” he said almost gently. “No call to fire a gun shipboard, now, is there?”

“No, sir,” Pig answered, eyes wide.

Juric nodded. “Just so you remember. We got a long flight home.”

Nazim stood up from her position by Vecchi’s body. “Dead, sir,” she said to Eli.

“Chi Chi was scared shitless of going back out again. Guess he died anyway.”

“Then he died for nothing,” Eli said.

Pig looked at him, a furrow between his eyes.

“I’m going alone. I never thought to take any of you. That ahtra and I are going back for the girl by ourselves.”

A coughing sound came from Juric’s cot. He lay back down, very slowly, favoring his arm. After a few more rumbles from that quarter they realized that Juric was laughing.

I
t had become a violent struggle between the White and the Red. Nefer had appropriated the sacred red for her own banner, leaving ignominious white, with all its gomin implications, for Vod’s ragtag rebellion.

With his white robes swirling around him as he walked, Vod went abroad freely, striding through the ways. UnderPrime was his. OverPrime was Nefer’s.

The PrimeWay was the zone of struggle. It lay empty now, the latest skirmish having left fleshy wounds in the hab, the data pedestals and screens flashing their chaotic messages. And on those screens, the wagers still flowed, even now, after many deaths. Odds had it for Red.

Harn raced into the SecondWay, huffing with the effort.

“She’s out,” he said simply.

Vod was on his feet and down the corridor; Zehops was at his side, thrusting her gun into her belt.

“You’re ready?” he asked Harn.

Harn nodded, glancing at Zehops. Their joint command of troops was an uneasy compromise; she for the gomin, he for the diggers.

“More than ready. What say you, Zehops-as?”

She grinned. “Gomin have been ready for a thousand cycles.”

They rushed through UnderPrime, collecting their forces. It was no secret he stalked Nefer Ton Enkar. Now he had found her. His spies were among the Red, as he had no doubt their spies were among the White. Nefer sometimes left her dead-end galleries, the collapsed tunnels surrounding her lair. This time they would snare her.

At the portal to PrimeWay, Vod turned to his lieutenants. “For the White Reign,” he said, “or may we never sit our rugs again.”

“The White Reign,” Harn growled.

“And for Vod-as, White Prime,” Zehops said, looking even more fierce than Harn.

With a hundred count of armed Whites, they poured into the deserted PrimeWay. In the dim promenade, the screens flickered, lending a jerky quality to their movements as they hurried across to the one portal they thought they might penetrate. It had been blocked, but a snaking tunnel remained in the debris, work of their allies in OverPrime, in preparation for this moment. One by one, Vod’s force entered the portal and began crawling.

A skirmish at the head of the upway. By the time Vod emerged, three Red had fallen.

Vod changed into his old clothes. “My own troops will think me a Red,” he muttered.

“They know you, Vod-as. No one will mistake you.”

“If I am killed, Zehops-as, it falls to you.”

“But Harn-as …”

“He will follow you. Harn follows, it is how he tends. Promise me.”

She jutted her chin to the side. “We’re not ready for a gomin Extreme Prime.”

“But we are for a digger?” Vod grinned at her. “Zehops-as, you may have no choice.”

He saluted her, then turned and ran, with his fighters—disguised, as he was—following at a distance to avoid drawing attention.

At a branching in the way he slowed to a walk. Here, avoiding knots of Red, he followed the ways, taking the least crowded, circuitous routes to his destination: the OverPrime forward edge of Ankhorat.

To a DreamGallery.

Here, his supporters caught up with him. There were no guards at the portal. That meant they either were inside with her, or Nefer was no longer in the gallery.

Vod and his fighters entered the gallery. Not many slots were full. Of those that were, just the rounded skulls could be seen, as the dwellers lay in dormancy. And standing at the far wall, Nefer Extreme Prime.

She stood there, still and calm, watching him. He managed to retrieve his voice: “Do you lie down to dream, Nefer Ton Enkar?” His voice came to his ears muffled, eaten up by the gaping honeycombs.

“Certainly not, one assures you.” Still not moving, she said, “Perhaps you, however, grow weary of the fight, Vod Ceb Rilvinn.”

He advanced, gun drawn. “White holds this portal. Times tend toward change, Nefer-as.”

“Sweetly put. A poet revolutionary.”

Her body was so completely still. He had to admire her inwardness, here, where his own hand was shaking as he held his gun.

“Nefer-as, I believe you are my prisoner.” He gestured toward the portal. “This way, and move slowly.”

“Do you know where we are, Vod-as?”

“Will you come now, Nefer-as?” She saw his fighters. She was no fool.

She continued, disregarding his question. “On the other side of this wall would be the birthplace of ships.”

“I know about your war plans.” A chill floated around him. The empty slots of the gallery reminded him of a reliquary, where dark holes waited for the bodies that would fill them in war.

Nefer smiled, her white teeth very delicate in her dark face. “Yes, certainly. You chanced upon my foundry. You left your name tag—so clumsily, one must point out. But all you were apt to see was a glimpse. One is willing to show you all.”

Behind her, a bank of slots disappeared. They were projections. Now a narrow passageway was revealed.

“All my ships might be yours, my young White Prime.” She looked at him with jewel eyes, beautiful, cutting. “Perhaps you will deign to look upon this new kingdom.” She glanced at his followers. “Of course, you tend to worry for yourself. Bring your soldiers, then. How many shall you need to be safe from one small ex-Prime?”

He kept his face neutral. “I do not pretend that you are harmless, Nefer-as. But it is a charming pose.” Her eyes glittered at him as he backed away from her to the portal, calling a few soldiers to join him. Nefer was not giving up; he was not so foolish to think so. He had not surprised her in this gallery. She had been waiting for him.

Now, standing with a group of five soldiers, Vod faced her again. “What do you have to show me, then?”

“A time tending toward change,” she murmured. “Heralded now by a fleet of twenty-four fast ships. Twenty-three are finished. One regrets that the last one is unready. No matter. You may watch them leave the birthing den.”