''We've brought you everything we could think of that might be of help to you, considering that no one would tell us anything outright,' Gabriel said. 'Electronics supplies, mostly. What I don't understand is what you're doing here! This is not supposed to be an inhabited planet.'
'Not supposed to be,' said the leader, and dropped his jaw in that sesheyan grin, possibly responding to Gabriel's aggrieved one, similar to that of a tourist complaining that the colorful native dancers were not going to perform today, even though the brochure had said that they would. 'No. You have come a long way, and we thank you for it, even though you should not have come. But we must get your ship out of sight very quickly. Things happen here at night.'
Gabriel looked around him at the scared looks on the faces of some of the sesheyans, at the way they looked up at the sky as if it might suddenly rain knives. 'Tell us where to put it,' he said, 'then we need to talk.'
Chapter Seventeen
IT TOOK ABOUT half an hour to get everything squared away. Sunshine was tucked into a cave just big enough to take her, and the cave's opening was sealed over with such care that Gabriel might have thought the locals were expecting a police search. Then he and Enda were led through caves and tunnels into a large dim space. The heat they had detected from orbit and assumed to be a dome was actually a substantial network of caves that the sesheyans had very carefully joined and sealed off over the years. The interior was carefully and sparingly lit by powered lights and much subdivided into 'apartments' and private areas. The main area, under the highest arch of a huge natural dome of stone, was left open with many wildly assorted pads and blankets and coverings scattered around. Gabriel thought of the encampment on Grith, the floor of the main clearing having been carefully scattered with branches and plant needles gathered for the purpose, and saw here a faint sad echo of the forest. Food was served out to them with the great care of people who have not been expecting visitors and have little to spare, but are pleased to give them the best they can manage. There were no questions while they were eating. But when the bowls were taken away and the drink was brought out-mostly chai of a vile Phorcyn kind that Gabriel had had too much of while awaiting trial-many sesheyans gathered around them in a circle, and Gabriel got the sense that there would be grilling now. There was some, conducted politely enough in human idiom. Names and ship registries were demanded, along with details about how Gabriel and Enda had come to meet Ondway and what had happened afterwards. The sesheyans sitting closest to them, many with guns nearby, listened to every word intently. Gabriel got the very strong feeling that had their story diverged at all significantly from what the sesheyans' own sources must have told them, Helm would have had to make his way home alone.
When they were finished, and Gabriel and Enda had detailed what they had brought in the ship and why, the adult sesheyans in the circle began visibly to relax. Gabriel seized the moment and said, 'All I want to know is: what are you doing here? How did you get here? And how is it that no one knows?' The colony leader, Kaiste, replied a little wearily, 'I would not say that no one knows, alas for that. Since you have been kind enough to have come all this way, we will gladly tell you our history, or as much of it that matters. We cannot tell you all of it. That might be an unnecessary burden on you some day.'
If VoidCorp got to hear about it, yes, I just bet, Gabriel thought.
'Obviously we have not been here for very long,' said Kaiste, 'about twenty standard years. We were originally a large subcontracted work crew who were transshipped here as what we think must have been a very early venture of the Company to investigate or perhaps even colonize this part of space. Certainly they sent us out with full colonial packs, though we were told that we would be executing a subcontract, doing subcontracted non- suited mining work.' ' 'Ditchdigging,' ' Enda said.
'Yes, but something happened. There was an accident in transit. We came a long way-many starfalls- and after perhaps twenty of them, the ship in which we were being transported suffered an explosion that either caused or was the result of some kind of stardrive failure. The explosion may even have been sabotage. The Company'- again he would not say its name-'was not popular on the world from which we had just been removed. I am not an expert and cannot describe the nature of the failure accurately, but the ship came out of drivespace after the failure and could not locate itself. There was a problem with its navigational systems as well, probably due to the explosion-one of the computers involved in the control of both systems was affected.'
Kaiste looked a little bleak. 'There is no way to put a good face on this, but we took our chance and rose up, killing almost all the Company people on the ship. Even with the chance that we might do nothing more after that than drift and die slowly in space, we could not let the possibility slip past and know for the rest of our lives that, if we had acted, we might be free. Indeed for some weeks there was confusion. Even among our own people there were killings until we established leadership and some kind of plan. Finally though, among the two thousand aboard, including some of the surviving humans, some of us were found who had a very little experience with stardrives and system drives. After many false starts we set course, as we thought, for Corrivale, hoping that surprise would allow us to reach Grith before the Company could do anything. Perhaps it was a feeble hope, but it was the only course that we could get all the people involved to agree to.'
'So you set coordinates,' Gabriel said, 'and made starfall again.'
'That we did. But there was either a fault in the coordinates, or another fault in the stardrive, or perhaps the same one. After five days we came out here. We knew where we were in a general way, but everyone was very afraid that if we tried another starfall, we would rise somewhere even less predictable-inside a sun, say. No one wanted to take another chance. So at last we stripped the ship of supplies and spent a month establishing a sealed colony down here. We used the ship's emergency supplies and shelters to seal and connect the natural caves we found here, which hold air nearly as well as they might water. Then we took our last few people off the ship in a shuttle and sent the ship out on her last starfall. No one knows where she made starrise, though as far as we know, the Company never found her again.'
'And you've been here for twenty years,' Gabriel said, 'scratching out an existence.'
'It has not been a proud life,' said Kaiste, 'but it has at least been a free one. A while after we came, we were finally able to make contact with the traders from Phorcys and Ino, and we traded them what few goods we had and were able to mine-we are good at that at least. We did a good business in the carboniferous stones-our rubies and sapphires are particularly fine.'
'Surely you don't think to stay here forever?' Enda said.
Kaiste gazed across the room to where some small sesheyans were playing. An older child was scolding a younger one, who was pulling on his wings and rolling around on the floor. 'Our children dream of the forests,' Kaiste said. 'We very much hope they will see them again. Or rather, for the first time.' 'But why are you still here?' Gabriel said. 'You're not that far from Grith. You could have arranged something-not with the traders maybe, but with some freighter firm based on Grith. Ondway would have helped you, or the people who worked with him.'
Kaiste's head was bowed in what Gabriel was learning to recognize as the sesheyan version of shaking one's head 'no.' When he looked at Gabriel again, that distress was back in his eyes, and a chill ran down Gabriel's back, irrational but impossible to ignore.
Very softly, after a moment, Kaiste said, 'We have been betrayed once before. I should say, almost betrayed. Ondway had contacted a trader, a freighter captain whom he trusted. He intended to bring us away from here to Grith on this human's ship in two or three quiet runs. The captain came to look the situation over. We made her welcome, ate fruit with her, did our best to keep her safe here in our home. Then we caught her in the very act of attempting to call VoidCorp to tell them of our presence here. So we killed her.' A helpless shrug of the wings. 'There was nothing else we could do to protect ourselves. Some among us thought to use her ship ourselves, but when we tried to power up the craft, the entire drive and computer system overloaded, frying the equipment. Apparently the captain had installed some sort of fail-safe device to prevent exactly what we were intending.'
Kaiste took a small sip from the metal cup he held. 'After that we decided that we would have no more such cases of self-defense on our consciences. Ondway tried to convince us otherwise, wanted to keep trying to organize a way out of here for us, but there would have been no way to be sure that, no matter how much he trusted those who offered him help, they might nevertheless have betrayed him and us. The Company is too powerful. The temptation of what they could offer another betrayer would always be too great. We had come too close to being recaptured or killed, and we would not take that chance again-or the chance of again causing Ondway such guilt
