“What people do you locate? And for whom?”
He merely smiled at me.
“Oh, right. You’re a Sibling of Silence. Very well. We won’t talk about that. What shall we talk about?”
He mused, “I was interested in your story last night, about how you got here to B’yurngrad. You said you could have gone on a ship into Mercan space. Any idea where it was going?”
I shook my head, still annoyed by the memory. “I found out later, yes. It was headed for Fajnard. Where the Frossians are. How about you? How did you get into the academy?”
“I don’t know, and they don’t say. They just tell you you’ve been recommended, and that’s it. Many of the cadets were from well-to-do families, and heaven knows I wasn’t. I got in with the group I told you about the other night, Naumi and the others, and we all did well through our fellowship, six of us, all of us helping each other when needful. When I graduated, I was sent on one of those ‘can’t remember’ missions…”
“Which is…?”
“One I literally can’t remember. They take the memory away, so no matter what some inimical force might try, they can’t get it out of me. I don’t even know if I joined the Siblings before or after, but I’ve been with them ever since.”
“At least you’ve traveled. Except for my youth on Phobos and ten years or so on Earth, I’ve spent my whole life here on B’yurngrad, and I spend too much time regretting all those years of school, learning languages I’ve never used. When the shaman died, I fulfilled her burdens, which I’ll tell you about another time; and then I was briefly apprenticed to a full-time ghyrm-hunter. That’s when the Siblinghood made me a member.”
“B’yurngrad isn’t a bad world. It has some really beautiful places on it.”
“Unless ghyrm have been reported at one of them, I’ve never been there.”
“No vacation?” he asked, seemingly astonished.
“I’ve never asked for one,” I said, somewhat surprised at my own admission. “I didn’t know it was allowed.”
“It’s a rule that we’re allowed to have vacations. You’re probably entitled to at least a year’s off-time by now.” He mused, staring at the still-steaming cup before him. “Tell you what. There’s something happening, something I think you’d be helpful at. Let’s arrange for some vacation, and we’ll do some traveling together.”
The idea was attractive. I could not remember being so taken with an idea for many years. Not since…not since childhood. Not since the visit to Mars.
“Mars,” I murmured. “The dragonfly.”
He looked at me wonderingly. “Is that where they are? On Mars?”
“Where what are?”
“The dragonfly ships. The ones the…person pilots. It was a kind of vision or dream Naumi had, at the Academy. I don’t really remember what he said.” He laughed ruefully. “Do you ever get these weird memories? As though you’ve been somewhere or done a particular thing before?”
I could only nod, yes, indeed, we all did.
In the morning, the sun came out, the day warmed. The girl, G’lil, who had spent the previous night bundled up next to the coil in my room, began to moan and quiver. At noon, she awoke, and I fed her soup, as much as she would swallow.
“Now,” I demanded, “suppose you tell me where you got that thing that we stopped from killing you.”
“What thing…you mean the Taker. Ma…where’s Ma?”
I took several deep breaths and told myself to be patient. “G’lil. Your mother is dead. She was not taken to Joy, she was eaten, and you came very close to being eaten, because that is what the ghyrm do. They are parasites, like leeches, they live off other creatures’ lives.”
“But,” she cried, “but Ma said, but the man said, they said she’d go to Joy, it would take her there.”
“It didn’t take her there! It didn’t take her anywhere.”
“I don’t believe you,” the girl cried. “I won’t!”
From the doorway, Ferni spoke. “She has too much invested in pretty lies, M’urgi.”
“I know,” I said grimly. “So, we do this another way.” I put both my hands on her shaved head, closed my eyes and chanted. The girl quivered, tried to squirm away, then went limp, eyes wide open, seeing something. She moaned, cried out, then began to scream.
Below us, in the oasthall, furniture tumbled, boots thundered up the stairs. B’Oag came down the corridor bearing a truncheon, his face red with anger.
Ferni held up his hand, stopping the big man as though he had run into a wall. When Ferni beckoned, B’Oag came to stand beside him in the door. The screams were subsiding into moans once more. I removed my hands and stood up, staggering a little. G’lil’s eyes opened. “Aaaah,” she cried. “Dead. All dead.”
“Right,” I snapped rather weakly. “All dead. As your mother is dead. As you would have been dead.”
“What did you show her?” Ferni asked in an awed voice.
“I showed her that little colony from Earth, Cranesroost. I showed her in lengthy detail how that looked, before and during.”
“What?” demanded B’Oag.
Ferni said, “The envoy showed the girl a memory of a human colony that was eaten by the ghyrm, Oastkeeper. When the ghyrm were through with them, nothing human lived in those places at all. Not a hair. Not a cell.”
“He said…” The girl wept. “He said it would take her to Joy. The man said it would.”
“Now we get to it,” I growled. “What man?”
“The man at the mill. I was there to get supplies for the winter weaving, and he was delivering sacks of cocoons to the mill boss. He heard me telling my friend how bad off Mama was, and he said he
