Undertow (15 page)

Three explosions in three days, and not even one of them had been Closs’s idea. Standing on the ravaged street beside what remained of Cricket Earl Murphy’s flat, he contemplated a fourth—more metaphorical than actual. But he considered it a point of honor that when his staff reported a failure, they did so with more shame than trepidation. He didn’t care to be feared—at least, not by his allies and subordinates. That was a crutch for men insecure in their power. Machiavelli’s outlook had not been so much simplistic as limited by his times.

There
was
a certain sort of person for whom fear was the most powerful motivator. Closs understood and accepted this, but he considered such people erratic and unpredictable, and they were not the ones with whom he chose to surround himself.

Of course, Machiavelli’s prince had not had the luxury of selecting his subjects, and Closs did not have the luxury of selecting his…prince. But then, what soldier did?

He bore that in mind, and kept his temper and his voice level as team leaders and liaisons explained in painful detail exactly what had gone so wrong with the attempt to capture Cricket Earl Murphy, aka Moon Morrow. And truthfully, he couldn’t muster much anger.

Legally, in both Core and Rim, the cloned offspring became the parent at the moment of birth. This cheerful legislative dodge effectively discouraged replica cloning except in terminal cases. Given his own close association with Morrow’s clone-daughter—the new, legal Moon Morrow—he was reasonably certain that the original was more than a match for Rim security.

It was to his officers’ credit that they had come even so close as they had. Especially considering the shoestring haste of the operation.

And now, Closs had to call up his own version of Morrow and explain to her how they had missed. And see if he could get her to explain how somebody got from Earth all the way out to the Rim in…less than two Terran standard years.

He already had a headache.

“Maurice, please.”

“What would you do if I ever left this office, Major?” The image was, again, high quality. Maurice wasn’t at his desk this time, unless he was running a skin; the background was the bay view through the screens in the staff lounge. Nobody had died in this explosion: the spiral up the fluted edge of Maurice’s ear shimmered crimson, fuchsia, silver.

“What can you tell me about experimental or theoretical means of faster-than-light travel?”

“Experimental? There’s no such animal, unless I missed an
Astrophysics Monthly
. Theoretical…space warps, tesseracts, what, you want something practical?”

“Let me give you a base assumption. Assume it has been done. How did they do it?”

“Oh, chum the water, Timothy. That’ll keep me up nights. Okay, how did they do
what,
exactly? What are my parameters?”

“Get one person from Earth to Greene’s World.”

“How fast?”

Closs shrugged. “I don’t know. A couple of standard.”

“Man, you don’t come cheap. All right, I’ll get back to you. Would you like any more impossible things before breakfast, Major?”

Closs smiled. “
I’ll
get back to
you
.”

Eventually, the rain stopped and André slithered from the shelter of the overturned skiff. Clotting mud flaked from his shirt, cracking off his skin when he bent his neck. Something was wrong with the shirt now; it didn’t flex properly across his shoulders or in the crease of his underarms.

“Lousy damned tech.” The point of the smartshirt on a trip such as this was not to have to worry about laundry or carrying extra supplies. If it had stopped processing dirt and perspiration, he couldn’t repair it by rinsing in a channel and drying over a branch.

He should have prepared for an equipment failure. It was his own foolishness. But this wasn’t his usual venue, and he hadn’t exactly had a lot of time to pack.

He tipped the skiff back onto its belly and rummaged in the hull. Fortunately, his supplies had been lashed securely—otherwise he’d be picking everything out of the mud. He pitched his shelter and set it to inflate, assembled the filtration system, and walked the perimeter of his mud spit until he found a bank that wasn’t strictly slime and shattered reeds like broken knife blades. He took a leak against a shrub, then picked a gingerly path to the water’s edge, keeping his boots on. The jumble of hollow stems looked sharp enough that he wasn’t sure even thick soles would protect him.

Bruised and strained muscle twinged as he squatted at the channel’s edge. He’d never get
clean
this way, but he didn’t have to be crusted.

Babysitting, he thought, rolling his eyes. It wasn’t just the coolie that Jean Kroc was getting out of the way. André knew he shouldn’t expect more. He was paying the immemorial price of apprenticeship: things concealed, games of trust.

He didn’t believe for an instant that Jean was through testing him.

He paused, elbows on thighs for a moment, resting. Sunset was over, the sky still dimming. The smells of rot—some rich, some fetid—rose all around him. The mud was full of flat black-stained particles of decaying leaf; he worked his tongue against his palate, turned his head, and spat. Mud curled over the projecting edges of his boot soles.

Full moons tonight; there’d be enough light to go on by, if he chose to. But if he was hunting a running coolie, he’d camp for the night rather than risking the swamp in darkness. The savages killed people.

And under cover of night, he could have a longer conversation with his tour guides without fear of satellite observation. They would be invisible, as long as they stayed in the moonshadows. Amphibians did not show up as warm spots to a sky eye.

He palmed up water, scrubbed crusty dollops from his eyebrows, and rubbed them from his beard. The mud had dried in little hard berries; they crushed into powder and the powder, wetted, melted instantly back into mud.

That was a good sign that it would dry due to body heat and crack off his shirt if he just kept wearing it. The autofit and self-clean might be able to take care of the rest if he gave them a chance to regenerate.

He washed his face again and rested a few moments longer, contemplating the deep ache in his muscles, the pull of tendons against bones. He was tired—weary—but despite exhaustion and bruises and the sharply tender spot on the back of his head, he was also hungry. And thirsty, but the water purifier could satisfy that want.

He parted reeds and stepped through, surprised to find two of the three ranids crouched beside his cooker, three bright fish speared on twigs turning over it. “Hello, Tetra,” he said, making an effort to sound polite and then rolling his eyes at his own silliness. As if they could hear the sound of his voice. “Hello, Caetei.”

The short one made a gesture André took as greeting. The tall one extended a scraped and roasted fish; he pinched the twig between his thumb and first two fingers. He expected bland meat, scorched with the scales burned off. But it smelled of herbs. He sucked flaking flesh from the skeleton, chewing carefully. Gagging on a fish bone out in the bayou would be a hell of a way to die.

Not bad, but it could use some salt.

He’d never actually seen them eat before—not anything more solid than green tea or gruel—and the process was fascinating, if revolting. They hadn’t teeth; they were filter feeders. Their wide bony mouths weren’t fitted to chew or tear, though the bony frill around the rim of mandible and maxilla could deliver a nasty bite…if you believed the media.

Tetra was processing the filets, using an unlotus leaf spread in a flat dryish spot as a cutting board. It did not so much slice into bites as mince into a paste. The knife was teak-handled, with a blade of some plastic or shock ceramic. The ranid cradled it in a three-fingered, one-thumbed hand. The thumb and the outside two fingers folded around the handle; the first finger extended along the spine of the blade, turning the knife, in essence, into a slicing claw.

A claw that it used with graceful facility. It portioned the minced fish into thirds, scraped each onto another unlotus leaf, and handed the first to Caetei. As it was half rising—to call Gourami from the water, at a guess—André realized he had the means to give the fish the help it needed. He stuck the twig with the nibbled meat on it into the ground and stood as well.

He was turning back, a squeeze tube of salted plum paste in his hand, when he realized that Tetra and Caetei had both frozen in place like run-down clockwork novelties. Caetei was still couched on the ground, fingers spidered over its plate. Tetra was drawn up tall, shivering slightly with the strain of standing erect on its crooked legs. It stared at André, both eyes focused on his chest, pupils contracted. If it had been human, he would have guessed that it was about to go for him.

It was about to go for him. Or it was waiting for him to go for it.

He leaned forward, against the pressure of the regard. Not to make the ranid look down; it wasn’t staring him in the eyes. But trying to reassure it, to reach out to it without grabbing or invading its space.

Caetei hunched lower on the ground, a glossy mottled rock.

André actually yelped when something wet touched his hand. The third frog was there, Gourami. It beckoned him closer with two webbed, hooking fingers, and when he hunkered down, it tapped the backs of his knees.

Well, that was plain enough.
Sit
. André dropped onto the reed-covered mud and leaned toward the slate Gourami held out. Backlit letters confronted him.

—You stood when se stood.

André nodded, hoping the ranid would understand the gesture. Without retracting the slate, it keyed a next phrase, and a next.

—
Se reacted to threat. Se is a far-swimmer. Se would fight.

André lifted his gaze from the panel. He didn’t want to get into a fight with a ranid in a swamp. “Far-swimmer?” He shaped words carefully.

Gourami’s fingers rippled, one of them lumpy and swollen. Whether this was agreement or irritation, André was too human to tell. He turned to Tetra; it was fussing with Gourami’s leaf plate as easily as if nothing had happened. It reached out without looking up and brushed the side of its hand against André’s. He was already coming to recognize that gesture, the request for attention, like catching someone’s eye if one were human.

You couldn’t catch another frog’s gaze through muddy water, though, could you? It made sense, if you thought about it.

Tetra held out its hand, making a pincher movement. Its webs expanded, as if sucking something that might wriggle away into its grasp. The fingers pointed down; the overall effect was rather like the grab of a crane.

Bemused, André lifted the salted plum paste into the creature’s grasp. Startlingly swift and deft, Tetra unscrewed the top and began investigating the contents just as any chef would.

“I’m not sure that’s safe,” André said, but all three ranids ignored him. He turned back to Gourami and its damaged hand. Its fingers writhed on the slate, as if it was trying to frame a comment. When André reached out to touch, the ranid did not withdraw its hand though it leaned its whole body aside.

André touched gently, stroking tacky, coated skin. There was no heat in the injured flesh, which was odd, because he could feel the sponginess of retained fluid, cushioning the twisted joint. “That needs to be put right,” he said, enunciating carefully as Gourami watched his mouth. “It will slow us.”

Of course, Tetra wouldn’t understand his words—could barely hear his voice. And even if it could lipread, it wasn’t watching André. But the noises he was making must have drawn its attention, because it sealed the tube of plum paste and shuffled over. André scootched back, not wishing to make the mistake of standing again.

Even if his butt was getting soaked.

Tetra reached past him and took Gourami’s hand, disentangling the sticky fingers from the case of the slate. Gourami shuddered, eyes staring off at an obtuse angle from each other. André had the bizarre impression that it was staring at its knees. Tetra must have said something, because Gourami flinched dramatically. And Tetra did something sudden and uncomplicated with its hands. A slight nauseating pop followed, and Gourami made a sound André felt more than heard.

These conversations would be easier on the headset, he thought. But who’d let a ranid uplink to their wetware through a slate?

But then it was done, and Tetra went back to fixing Gourami’s dinner. It handed the plate to Gourami without ceremony, though Gourami made a little dance of receiving it. It dabbed at the smears of plum paste decorating the minced fish doubtfully.

Tuna tartare, André told himself resolutely, watching Gourami scoop the pasty substance into its mouth between sidelong glances at Tetra. The taller ranid crouched over its own dinner in apparent oblivion. Some sort of courtship ritual? Gourami seemed flustered enough.

André shrugged and applied himself to his own dinner, much improved by the addition of a condiment. As Gourami was wiping the sheen of fat and salt from its leaf with a forefinger, André piled the last sucked fish bones on the ground. “You were going to tell me about far-swimmers,” he said, when the motion caught Gourami’s attention. Maybe he was getting the hang of this.

The froggie scrubbed its hands together, then wiped them on the underside of the leaf before searching out its slate.

—One who has earned mating.
It still favored the finger when it typed.

André touched the tip of his tongue to the center of his upper lip and pressed, feeling flesh indent. “But you don’t…mate.”

—We don’t fuck,
Gourami corrected, stabbing at the keys with vicious satisfaction.
—We have exoparents and endoparents.

Typing more slowly now. André wondered if he had guessed right, if it had been angry, or just in a hurry. “Fathers and mothers?” André tried. He had some idea how it worked, or thought he did, anyway.

Gourami nearly slapped the
no
key with the side of its palm. —
Exoparents mate. Endoparents bear
.