‘What was she like?’
‘Like? She was … she was a lot like Wendra Gentrack. Edible. And sweet. Like some baby animal, soft, and giggly. Kind of fearful. Not interested in much. A good cook. Beautiful looking. She only had one way to act toward men, flirtatious. She didn’t mean anything by it. She fluffed up even for me, and I’m nobody.’
‘I wouldn’t say that,’ she objected softly.
He shook his head in mock protest, going on. ‘What I mean is, you got this very strong urge to take care of her, even when she didn’t need it. She’d give this little breathless laugh or sigh, like a child, and you’d feel your chest swelling with protective fervor.’ He laughed. ‘Not like you, Clarin. Not independent.’
‘No, I haven’t noticed myself arousing any of that protective fervor.’
‘She couldn’t relate to women at all – always had her claws out. And that was fear, I figured out. She had any woman between the ages of eight and eighty slotted as a possible competitor. Poor Master Ferrence could only sneak over to see his mother when she wasn’t looking. I’d always figured it was lucky we didn’t have any women Tripsingers at Deepsoil Five, or she’d have made his life miserable.’
‘She’s dead,’ Clarin said. ‘That sounds hard, but it’s the simple truth, Reb. She’s dead. She’s not going to come back from the bottom of the Enigma. She’s gone. Eventually, he’ll realize that. If there is any eventuality. I keep forgetting there may not be….’
‘You’re planning on being around if he does?’
‘If any of us are still alive, you bet your sex life I do.’ She managed a rueful smile, then stiffened. Her eyes had caught a tiny motion, far down the valley. ‘Give me the glasses,’ she said, with an imperative gesture. ‘Quick!’
She stared, searching the clearing where the movement had caught her eye.
‘It’s them,’ she said, disbelieving. ‘Tasmin and Don.’
‘Alone?’
‘All alone. On foot. Coming back this way. They must have hidden the mules. Or lost the mules. Or the way’s blocked down there as it was for us.’ She urged her tired animal into a trot. ‘Come along, acolyte. We’re not as alone as I thought we were.’
Jamieson’s report to Tasmin of their effort to find an open route to the west made it clear they had no other choice than to return. ‘We were cut off,’ Jamieson snarled. ‘We tried three routes west, and every one of them had an encampment of troops arrayed across it. Guards, sentries, whatever. With life detectors of some kind, too. They damn near caught us!’
‘Every trooper with weapons bristling all over him,’ Clarin said. ‘We’ve thought all along that Justin had the troopers in his pocket. Now we know for sure. Half the garrison is camped between us and the ’Soilcoast. They had Explorers with them. Jamieson spied out one group last night.’
‘They were talking about guarding the routes out of the Presences,’ Jamieson said. ‘Except for regular brou caravans, anyone coming from the west is supposed to be stopped. The troopers were arguing with the Explorers whether it would be acceptable to engage in a little robbery and rape in the process. The Explorers were really tense about the whole thing – sitting back-to-back kind of tense. Somebody in that setup is going to get killed!’
‘How did the Explorers get mixed up in this?’
‘I got the impression they didn’t really know what was going on, Master Ferrence. They’d been hired to bring the troopers in because no Tripsingers were available.’
‘Not available!’ Tasmin’s exclamation was sheer reflex. Tripsingers were always available!
Clarin sighed. She looked exhausted, damp ringlets of hair scalloping her cheeks and forehead. ‘Thyle Vowe has obviously sent the word to the citadels that Tripsingers are not to lead troopers anywhere. The word may not have reached the interior yet, but there’s been plenty of time for Vowe to tie up the Coast.’
‘It would explain what happened,’ Tasmin agreed thoughtfully.
Clarin’s voice shook as she said, ‘Listen, Tasmin. We haven’t told you the worst thing yet. The troopers were doing a lot of talking about the equipment they had with them.’
‘Demolition equipment,’ explained Jamieson. ‘White noise projectors and chemical explosives with various kinds of propulsion devices. I snooped around a little while Clarin yodeled down a canyon to draw them off. She sounded exactly like about twenty Tripsingers on a practice trip through the Crazies. The troopers thought there were at least a dozen of her, all female, so the putative rapists went zipping off in pursuit.’
‘Clarin!’ cried Tasmin. ‘What happened?’
‘They ran into some ’lings and about half of them got killed,’ she said with a calmness that was belied by her shaking hands and bloodless lips. ‘I was lying above them on a parapet I’d got through to by using Don’s machine.’
‘It gave me plenty of time,’ Jamieson said, irrepressibly. ‘I got a good look at the equipment they’re carrying. I also got away with a copy of their map.’ He drew it from one of the deep pockets of his robe and unfolded it, spreading it on the ground before them. It was a satellite map of the area stretching from Deepsoil Five on the east to the Deepsoil Coast on the west and from the southern coast to the Jut.
‘Justin isn’t going to waste any time,’ Clarin said, pointing to the markings on the map. The Watchers, the Startles, the Creeping Desert, the Mad Gap, the list went on and on, all marked for destruction, with a line of march leading from demolition site to demolition site as the road was cleared before them. They wouldn’t need any Tripsingers. There wouldn’t be anything to get in their way!
Tasmin shivered. He felt suddenly cold, as though it was his own body someone had scheduled for destruction. As soon as the Commission findings were announced, Justin would begin!
Don interrupted his musing, angrily. ‘I recognized the voice of that woman on the trail
