Voices of Chaos (9 page)

When he finally did ease the door aside and step into the corridor, the walkway was moving, sign someone stood on it-- but when he would have jerked back into hiding, Khyriz came into sight from the direction of the royal vehicle-storage. The Prince's eyes met his, widened as he moved off the walk and Bhelan took a step into the open. When the pilot would have spoken, Khyriz flicked a hand and an ear in their private code:
Not here;
someone may be listening.
It was primitive, but all Bhelan could have interpreted at the moment. He made an alien nod of assent, then followed Khyriz back to the walkway. Two steps along the carpeted platform gave the sensors direction; Bhelan concentrated on getting his breathing back near normal, until they descended into the covered and guarded storage area, and gained entry to Khyriz's enclosed vehicle.

The Prince settled into the nearest passenger bench, pressed the controls that would seal the car, start the atmosphere-adjusters and darken the glass; as Bhelan settled onto the pilot's padded and high-backed seat, Khyriz pressed the

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enameled outsider device and hissed in the foreign tongue he'd called Mizari. The air in the fore cabin crackled; both males felt their short, sleek fur stand on end as the energy field activated. It would prevent any Arekkhi spy device from overhearing them.

Khyriz touched his pilot's hand. "Something went wrong," he said quietly.

"I... yes," Bhelan managed. His voice sounded high and thin to his own ears.

"Ulfar--he had a talon. He said--"

"No," Khyriz broke in when it became clear his companion couldn't speak.

"Don't say it, I understand. Ulfar without a talon is frightening enough."

"Threats," Bhelan said finally. "Against you, me, the outsider women, my family ..."

"As I feared," Khyriz murmured. "But we expected this from the first, the threat if not the form it would take. My friend, this changes matters, a little.

They have shifted the odds, nothing more; we will match the wager. Let me off outside the old palace, take the flitter straight to the shuttle-field and launch as soon as you can. Once I reach the safe-room, I'll put a shielded-frequency call to my estate manager. As soon as you reach orbit, call and I'll pass on what Lijahr can tell us."

Shielded frequency. Safe-room. The outsider devices that allowed Khyriz to make audio-calls without using Arekkhi wires, and the shield on the barren little chamber that supposedly kept it both protected from Arekkhi spy devices--
and
unnoticed by them. Such things felt all at once like magical toys from old tales. "You're certain...?" Bhelan began nervously.

Khyriz gave him an outsider nod. "My friend, I
am
certain. The distance-speakers bounce their signals off the outer wall of the station
and
off the second moon before reaching my estate, and my First of House. Even if Arekkhi tech could match the path of the signal, they'd never be able to follow the unpatterned shifts in frequency. And both units--mine and Lijahr's--

are sealed against spying of any sort."

"I'm ... sorry."

"Don't be sorry, Bhelan. Father's Council is years wiser

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than we are, so far as intrigue is concerned--but thanks to my years at the Academy, our side has an advantage in technology."

"It won't save either of us if the Council moves against us."

"No." Khyriz's whiskers flicked toward his cheekbones.
He is afraid,
Bhelan realized.
But he still goes on, and tries not to show his fear.
"But someone has to oppose them. Father confirmed to me today that if he could, Zhenu and the Prelate would eliminate every single Asha from Arekkhi soil. Against a need like that..." His eyes slid sideways in embarrassment. "Well, the age-old heroes and gods must still be asleep, so it is up to the rest of us, isn't it?

And at least your family and their farm-tenants are safe. I had a very short confirming message from Lijahr before I went to eat first-meal with Father. All safe."

"I... thank you, sir," Bhelan said formally.

"Not 'sir'," Khyriz replied with a smile. "We are equally at risk here, after all.

Now: What else did the Iron Duke's Butcher say to you?"

"To lie to the alien females about the ship, Arekkhi, Asha, language..."

"And who better suited than Bhelan, the actor?" Khyriz spatted a sour little laugh. "Poor Ulfar! He knows nothing of anything beyond Arekkhi space, does he? Still, Bhelan: I know you can act--not just in the life-vids or in the ancient plays, but anywhere that you must. So"--his whiskers touched--"as my friend Alexis would say, 'these precepts in thy ear.' "

The pilot eyed him sidelong; Khyriz had shifted into Old Earth English, of which the actor understood barely a hundred words. Khyriz's whiskers and ear tufts quivered. "It's an ancient human play, Bhelan. About a tragic prince who dithers over his choices while dire events occur all around him and eventually kill him. I think you would like the plays of this Shakespeare; in fact, I'll have a copy translated for you, somehow--I owe you so much, my good friend. But"--the Prince became suddenly very sober

indeed--"apologies. I needed a moment such as that. I meant to say, let me suggest to you various things you might do, under certain circumstances."

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"Oh...of course." Bhelan glanced to both sides of the closed-up vehicle, then down at the gauges; the air was heating up, and besides, anyone watching the flitter would have expected it to lift off its padded blocks and move out by now. He flicked switches, spoke into the voice-tube--it took two commands for the thing to start up and the air cushion to lift it--then spoke again to turn the flitter toward the old palace.

"Nothing difficult to remember," Khyriz assured him as they emerged into bright early-morning sun. "For now, because it suits us, we will play Zhenu's game. Be careful. The CLS translator, the dark woman, will know if you lie to her, or if you attempt to misdirect her. She's sensitive to such things. You must be subtle...."

"But not too subtle," Bhelan replied as Khyriz hesitated.

"Just so. The other, the female with pale hair, Interrelator Ortovsky--she's extremely clever and she knows Arekkhi well. Not just our language, but as much of our ways as she could learn away from our world."

"What of Shiksara? Will she be with them?" Bhelan eased the flitter across paved grounds toward the three-story building that had once been the Emperor's palace and now housed the clerical staff, the enormous blocks of underground computer equipment that ran the planet's vid, audio, and other communication devices, as well as private apartments for a few nobles and minor royals who held a presence on the island year-round. Khyriz kept a suite here; Zhikna had recently been granted a very small set of rooms. The new CLS team had been assigned the entire middle floor.

Khyriz smiled, a faint forward movement of whiskers. "Don't worry about Shiksara; I know your family bought goods from hers, and you count her a friend. She has another year to go at StarBridge... and she may not come home even then."

"No?" Despite his best effort to remain dispassionate, Bhelan could hear the concern in his voice; Shiksara and he had both been round-eared cubs when they'd first met.

"No," Khyriz said firmly. "She wants to do some translating ... Mizari and other ancient tales to our language, perhaps some of our tales to their languages. She'll be safe there,

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never fear. Though she has done nothing to let Zhenu believe she's said one word he did not dictate."

Safe,
the pilot thought as he eased the multifunction flitter above the ground cover, pausing only long enough to let Khyriz out a few paces from the old palace. His face was grim as he sealed the door and turned the machine toward open water, gaining altitude so he could reach the shuttle field as quickly as possible.
Would that we could all be safe....

Two hours out from the Arekkhi station, a midsized, alien cargo and passenger ship slowed and began the first of several maneuvers that would bring it into one of two recently built ports designed to berth outsider vessels.

Magdalena felt the change in engine strength through the soles of her pink-slippered feet and stared at her companion. Alexis Ortovsky, who'd put in considerably more hours in space than the translator, smiled and shook her head.

"No sweat; they warn you if something goes wrong." Not always true, but it was a useful lie. "We're getting close to the station--but they'll warn us about that, too." Magdalena sighed with relief and reset the music cube she held in her right hand, then settled her shoulders against the bulkhead and sat cross-legged on the small bench seat, giving Alexis what floor space there was. Even with the beds tipped up and latched against the white-painted walls, and the two shelves removed and slid into the tiny head, Alexis had just enough room to manage four steps in any direction. Small steps.

Ordinarily, the two women held dance practice in the corridor, but at this hour the crew needed that space.

Reedy, bouncy Arekkhi music began again; Magdalena nodded vigorously for her companion to begin, then counted off beats with an upraised hand.

"Three, four--right arm high, back, step-step-step, to the side, bring the arm down--and--that's good! You got it!" She silently applauded the interrelator, who grinned up at her triumphantly. "I told you that you'd make sense of it,"

she added as the music repeated itself.

"I had a very good teacher," Alexis replied; she shoved loose strands of damp, pale hair off her temples and behind

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her ears. "Too bad you had such a lousy student." She grinned ruefully.

Magdalena laughed. "You do just fine. Except for Khyriz, the Arekkhi won't expect either of us to know which foot is which, remember?"

"Just as well in my case," Alexis said. The jigging little dance concluded and the cube clicked off. Magdalena crossed to the head, shoved the cube into her small carryall, and sealed the top. She resisted--barely--the urge to ask

"Well, now what?"

Two more hours at least before they'd dock. Their personal bags were packed and set aside, taking up most of the space between the tiny shower and the toilet, and the room neatened. The only other passengers the entire voyage had been three electrical techs (two Jolie humans and a Heeyoon wearing an old-fashioned voder) who had mostly talked techie jargon, among themselves. They'd been set down at the half-completed jump-point station three days ago. The small ship's crew--humans who'd worked together for the past ten standard years-- were entirely too busy at the moment to be any company.

Magdalena privately thought Alexis had invented the glitch in her memory on how to start the giguelike Eglidha dance, solely to give her translator something to do. Alexis had the kind of mind that picked things up quickly and retained nearly everything. "I don't envy you," the interrelator went on,

"trying to teach a squatty broad like me to be graceful." The dancer merely laughed and waved a hand at her.

Alexis Ortovsky was short--not much above five feet by the old Earth-style measure Solomon Smith's cult had used. Solidly built like the athlete she was, Alexis looked like a girl who'd grown up doing hard farm chores. But her stocky build did not mean she was clumsy--on the contrary, Alexis was graceful, thanks to many years of gymnastics back on Earth. She'd taken two World gold medals in all-around--something Magdalena had learned only by accident.

She was almost a study in opposites to the tall, slender, dark-haired Magdalena. Alexis was fair-skinned, her hair so pale a gold it looked white in some lights, her eyes were ice

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blue ringed in a deeper blue, like a hunting bird's. Confident and poised, she was extremely competent.

"Nonsense," Magdalena said cheerfully. "Tall and skinny like me only counts if you're a European-style ballet dancer-- and I'm almost
too
tall for ballet. And there are short, squatty Arekkhi, too, remember that, Madame Interrelator."

Alexis laughed and squeezed her companion's fingers. "You're getting giddy, Madame Translator. Too close to real gravity, I guess."

"Lead me to it," Magdalena replied fervently. This was her third voyage, and even though this ship--and the one that had taken her from New Am to StarBridge--were smooth, well maintained, and clean, she still thought of space travel in terms of the flying disaster Father Saul had chartered to take his cult from West Texas to New Am.
Maybe if I keep at this, I'll adjust,
she told herself. It didn't seem likely, not even after an uneventful journey of nearly three months, more than half of it in hibernation. She jumped again as the com above the door crackled sharply and the navigator's voice filled the area:

"We're coming around to approach the station from the planet side, and the mural will be in full view for some time. Captain says you can use the view-screens in Crew Mess, or come to the bridge if you want a straight view."

The little receiver buzzed unpleasantly. Alexis cocked an eye at Magdalena and mouthed, "Crew Mess?" To date, the translator had avoided the small view-ports on the bridge the few times they'd been offered.

To the interrelator's surprise, the dark girl shook her head and said, "No, I want to see the real thing. I've really been looking forward to this."

"This," of course, was one of the wonders of all Arekkhi space: The thirty-kilometer-long station, suspended in geosynchronous orbit above the Emperor's Island and the capital city, was impressive, particularly since the Arekkhi had built it nearly eighty years earlier, just after the last battles of the long Civil War. After all, their technology level at present wasn't much above early-twenty-first-century Earth tech.

Being Arekkhi, they hadn't just made it practical, they'd

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also made it beautiful. It had taken nearly twenty years for crafts-beings to attach the thousands of brilliantly enameled ceramic tiles to a stationary shield on the planet side of the station, a mural almost eighteen kilometers long depicting their Creation Myth.

Magdalena caught her breath sharply as she gazed through several