others? Why not? After all, your own sages kept secrets from the rest of you. If Danel Ozawa tried speaking to Mudfoot, it means someone must have already known about the tytlal, even in those early days, and kept the confidence all this time.”
Absently, she reached out to stroke the noor’s sleek fur. Mudfoot rolled over, presenting his belly.
“What is the key?” she asked the creature. “Some code word? Something like a Tymbrimi empathy glyph? Why did you talk to the Niss once, then clam up?”
And why did you follow me across mountains and deserts? Dwer added, silently, enthralled by the mystery tale, although the complexity combined with his ever-present claustrophobia to foster a growing headache.
“Excuse me,” he said, breaking into Gillian’s ruminations. “But can we go back to the thing I came here about? I know the problems you’re wrestling with are bigger and more important than mine, and I’d help you if I could. But I can’t see any way to change your star-god troubles with my bow and arrows.
“I’m not asking you to risk your ship, and I’m sorry about being a pest.… But if there’s any way you could just let me … well … try to swim ashore, I really do have things I’ve got to do.”
That was when the tytlal rolled back onto his feet, wearing a look of evident surprise on his narrow face. Spines that normally lay hidden in the fur behind his ears now stood in stiff bristles. Moreover, Dwer felt sure he glimpsed something take shape briefly, in the air above Mudfoot. A ghostly wisp, less than vapor, which seemed to speak of its own accord.
So do I it said, evidently responding to Dwer’s statement.
Things to do.
Dwer rubbed his eyes and would gladly have dismissed the brief specter as another imagining … another product of the pummeling his nervous system had gone through.
Only Gillian must have noted the same event. She blinked a few times, pointed at the now-worried expression on Mudfoot’s face … and burst out laughing.
Dwer stared at her, then found himself breaking up, as well. Till that moment, he had not yet decided about the beautiful Earthwoman. But anyone who could set Mudfoot back like that must be all right.
Rety
AS THE GUARD ESCORTED HER TO THE CAPTIVES’ cell, she eyed several air-circulation grates. Schematics showed the system to be equipped with many safety valves, and the ducts were much too small for prisoners to squeeze through.
But not for a little urrish male, armed with borrowed laser cutters.
Rety’s plan was chancy, and she hated sending her “husband” into the maze of air pipes. But yee seemed confident that he would not get lost.
“this maze no worse than stinky passages under the grass plain,”he had sniffed while examining a holographic chart. “it easier than dodging through root tunnels where urrish grubs and males must scurry, when we have no sweet wife pouch to lie in.” yee curled his long neck in a shrug, “don’t you worry, wife! yee take tools to locked-up men. we do this neat!”
That would be the critical phase. Once Kunn and Jass were beyond the brig airlock, all the other obstacles should quickly fall. Rety felt positive.
Two prison cells had red lights glaring above reinforced hatches. The far one, she knew, contained Jophur rings that had been captured in the swamp. The little g’Kek named Huck was helping the Niss Machine interrogate those captives. Rety had racked her brain to come up with a way they might fit her plan, but finally deemed it best to leave them where they were.
This Streaker ship won’t dare chase us, once we get a star boat outside … but the Jophur ship might. Especially if those rings had a way to signal their crew mates.
As the guard approached Kunn’s cell, Rety fondled a folded scrap of paper on which she had laboriously printed instructions, sounding out the words letter by letter, stretching her newborn literacy to the limit. She knew it must look wrong, but no one could afford to be picky these days.
KUN I KAN GIT U OT UV HIR WANT TU GO?
So went the first line of the note she planned slipping him, while pretending to ask questions. If the Danik pilot understood and agreed to the plan, she would depart and set yee loose to worm his small, lithe body through Streaker’s ducting system. Meanwhile Rety had selected good places to set fires — in a ship lounge and a caigo locker — to distract the Streaker crew away from this area while Kunn used smuggled tools to break out. If all went well, they could then dash for the OutLock, steal a star boat, and escape.
There’s just one condition, Kunn. You gotta agree that we get away from here. Away from these Earthers, away from Daniks and Rothens and Jophur monsters and all that crap. Away from Jijo.
Rety felt sure he’d accept. Anyway, if he or Jass give me any trouble, they’ll find they’re dealin’ with a different Rety now.
The guard maneuvered his walker unit carefully in the narrow hallway. The gangly machine had to bend in order for him to bring a key against the door panel. Finally, it slid aside. Rety glimpsed two bunks within, each supporting a blanket-covered human form.
“Hey, Kunn,” she said, crossing the narrow distance and nudging his shoulder. “Wake up! No more delayin’ or foolin’ now. These folks want t’know how you followed em.…”
The blanket slipped off, revealing his shock of glossy hair, but there was no tremor of movement.
They must have him doped, she thought. I hope he’s not too far under. This can’t wait!
Rety shook harder, rolling Kunn toward her—
And jumped back with a gasp of surprise.
The Danik’s face was purple. His eyes bulged from their sockets, and his tongue had swollen to fill his mouth.
The dolphin guard chattered a dismayed squeal in the instinctive animal language of his kind.
Rety struggled with shock. She had grown up with death, but it took all her force of will to quash the horror rising in her gorge.
Somehow, she made herself turn toward the other bunk.
Sara
“Oh, Doctor Faustus was a good man,
He whipped his scholars now and then;
When he whipped them he made them dance,
Out of Scotland into France,
Out of France, and into Spain,
Then he whipped them back again!”
Emerson’s song resonated through the Hall of Spinning Disks, where dust motes sparkled in narrow shafts of rhythmic light.
Sara winced at the violent lyrics, but the starman clearly enjoyed these outbursts, gushing from unknown recesses of his scarred brain. He laughed, as did a crowd of urrish males who followed him, clambering through the scaffolding of Uriel’s fantastic machine, helping him fine-tune each delicate part. The little urs cackled at Emerson’s rough humor, and showed their devotion by diving between whirling glass plates to tighten a strap here, or a pulley there, wherever he gestured with quick hand signs.
Once an engineer, always an engineer, Sara thought. At times, Emerson resembled her own father, who might go silent for days while tending his beloved paper mill, drawing more satisfaction from the poetry of pulping hammers and rollers than the white sheets that made literacy possible on a barbaric world.
A parallel occurred to her.
Paper suited the Six Races, who needed a memory storage system that was invisible from space. But Uriel’s machine has similar traits — an analog computer that no satellite or spaceship can detect, because it uses no electricity and has no digital cognizance. Above all, Galactics would never imagine such an ornate contraption.
