A Prison Unsought Read online

  He said, “Did you pass it?”

  “I . . . postponed it. What did you think of Vannis?”

  Jaim drew in a deep breath. “Diamond.”

  Brandon laughed. “I’ve heard that before. I don’t know her at all—she’s always avoided me. I suppose my duty now is to find out why.”

  They had been steadily approaching a grove of low-sweeping trees. As he passed the first of them, Brandon whipped his arm around in a lethal strike.

  Jaim snorted a laugh, blocked the blow, then grabbed at Brandon’s arm to spin him around. Just barely the Aerenarch avoided his fingers, whirling to kick up at Jaim’s face.

  It was the Ulanshu Kay-To, wherein either partner can attack the other at any time. It was an ancient form of training—the origin of its name had been lost in the Exile—but it was a fundamental aspect of the Ulanshu disciplines. Vi’ya had insisted on it from time to time, when the gang was on either base for more than a few days.

  The outcome was inevitable, but it did take Jaim somewhat longer than before to get Brandon pinned down on the mossy ground, one arm twisted up behind his back. “Give?” Jaim asked helpfully.

  Brandon was laughing too hard to reply, his breath wheezing. Jaim lifted his hands and they stood up, Brandon spitting out bits of green plant matter. He brushed absently at his clothes, which were much the worse for grass and mud stains.

  Jaim wiped absently at the side of his face, discovering a streak of dirt. He thought they would return to the Enclave directly, and was surprised when Brandon resumed walking toward the barely visible row of splendid villas, formerly the homes of the upper-ranking officers’ families, and now the quarters of the high-end nicks.

  When they crossed a little bridge and emerged beyond a low fence clustered with blooming trumpet lilies, Jaim and Brandon scanned the row of villas built around little ponds or gardens. No one visible; Jaim wondered if the nicks were still abed.

  “We have business here?” Jaim asked.

  “Of a sort.” Brandon gave Jaim a rueful smile. “More of a duty. While things are still relatively peaceful.”

  Jaim remembered Brandon’s injunction. “What?”

  Brandon gestured at the houses. “The ones who have nothing to prove or to pursue are probably sound asleep. The others are glaring at one another over coffee at one of three parties. Long odds,” he added under his breath, “on Her Highness.”

  They walked up a gravel pathway, and Jaim felt the subtle touch of a security scan. Then Brandon turned up a flower-lined path and tapped at a door in a pleasant, low-roofed villa set around a shrub-framed pool.

  The door was opened by a woman wearing a plain gown in midnight blue, almost black, edged with gold at sleeves and neck: the former Aerenarch’s personal colors. She bowed.

  “Morning,” Brandon said. “Is Vannis here for visitors?”

  The woman’s gaze flicked from Brandon’s messy clothes to his own face, then to the ground. “She is out, Your Highness. Would you like to leave a message?” She opened the door wider and indicated a guest console inset in the foyer; Jaim wondered if it was considered rude among nicks to use their boswells.

  “We’ll meet up eventually,” Brandon said with a casual wave of his hand. “Bid her good morning.”

  They walked away, but not back to the Enclave. Brandon led the way to the closest transtube. “Vahn says they’re ready for Ivard right now. Nice timing, what?”

  They crossed a little bridge, and met several Douloi on the path. Jaim watched them register the Aerenarch, then perform the most informal of the formal bows, which Vahn had told him was used for morning accidental encounters with one of higher rank. Laughter fluttered in his chest at the oblique glances at Brandon’s disheveled appearance.

  As they entered the tube, Jaim wondered how many private messages were radiating outward.

  o0o

  For the Panarchists, the prospective . . . what to call it? Meeting? Medical intervention? They had no official term for it because it was a first in the Panarchy’s long history, and everyone in each involved chain of command was nervous.

  This was the worst possible timing.

  For the Kelly trinity known to humans as Portos-Dartinus-Atos, the attempted recovery of the Eldest’s genome from a human carried far more import than mere governments, or wars. Threir sovereign status gave threm total control; threir careful choreography extended even, perhaps especially, to the order of arrival of those involved, here at the dual-jurisdiction meeting space in front of the Kelly Embassy.

  First the High Phanist, as with all sophonts naked to the synesthetic unity of Kelly senses, which can only be described sequentially in human narratives. The livid glow of the Digrammaton exposed on her chest over the sonic shadow of the rad-shield concealed by multi-buttoned black; posture and movement, outward and inward, pulse, peristalsis and much more; from every pore the waft of her metabolism and the savor of her biome; all testified to her uncertainty, which apparently encompassed everything about the ceremony except her conviction that she must attend. Threy knew she had used the full weight of the Magisterium to ensure her presence.

  And to ensure access for Portos-Dartinus-Atos to the Eya’a and their pet human.

  Threy knew of no other Kelly who had yet encountered that odd trinity, first fruit, perhaps, of the reluctant Kelly intervention on that dreadful ice planet, after the invading humans were wiped out and quarantine imposed from both sides of the atmosphere. Previous access had been blocked, somewhat apologetically, by the Navy until after the acquittal, largely due to Eloatri’s testimony, of the captain who had brought her here. Thus, they greeted the High Phanist with unbounded appreciation.

  Eloatri had once before, long ago, seen a Kelly trinity in person, but had never met one. She found herself swarmed by three dancing Kelly, threir head-stalks sinuous and rapid in their twirling grace as their velvety lips caressed her gently from head to toe. Threy smelled of cinnamon and burned cork; threir voices reminded her of the living wind-harps on the peaks of the Hazard Mountains of Donialan.

  “Welcome, Numen,” the Intermittor of the trinity fluted, as all three withdrew slightly and twisted threir head-stalks into a sinuous interpretation of a formal deference.

  She bowed in return, finding an unexpected joy in the obvious delight the Kelly expressed in imitating human gestures, while adding threir own inimitable trinitarian grace. Portus-Dartinus-Atos pivoted threir attention to the next arrivals coming through the hatch, the pro forma Marine guard fading into the background.

  Vi’ya had several times seen the Kelly Chirurgeon or threir Kelly visitors dancing through the corridors of Rifthaven, but like Markham, she’d had little interest in Kelly. Not so the Eya’a.

  She braced herself as the hatch opened onto the plaza before the Embassy; even so, the blast of fi with which the Eya’a greeted the Kelly ambassador still rattled her teeth, echoing her shock the first time they’d met the trinity—was it only last week? It strengthened her desire to avoid the Kelly. She had enough to keep out of her head in this madhouse.

  Vi’ya’s nose wrinkled at the cursing-powder and old boots smell of the Kelly as the Eya’a glided rapidly to threm, their movements somehow more fluid. The little sophonts piped shrilly, their emotional signature intense as the scream of shearing metal. She turned physically, longing to turn psychically, and here was that old woman from Desrien.

  The mind-noise of the Eya’a made other minds hard to hear; Vi’ya gave the black-gowned woman her blankest stare. In response she got a pleasant smile, empty of any other message, and a slight nod. Then the Kelly spun across the deck toward her. Again she braced herself, this time against the comparatively lesser trespass of the highly-physical Kelly greeting.

  Eloatri saw the tension in Vi’ya’s flare of nostrils as Portus-Dartinus-Atos gave the Dol’jharian an equally enthusiastic greeting. Beyond her, Commander Buersco, the medical officer from Xeno—fitted with an ajna, no less—observed the Eya’a, his throat working in synchrony
with an arrhythmic thinning and bulging of the semi-living lens on his forehead. He might not like hearing that it looks like he’s trying to grow a horn. An appropriate image, she decided, as the man’s department head had used influence to horn Buersco into this occasion, displacing the LTC who’d followed Ivard’s treatment so far.

  Buersco tried to hide his thoroughly unprofessional thrill. If this goes well, it will make your career, his chief had said. And if it’s a disaster, you’ll make a fortune selling your images to the novosti. Buersco had said everything his chief expected to hear, but oh, what he truly wished to witness was a meeting of polysemous minds.

  He noticed the High Phanist’s considering gaze, and tendered her a respectful salute.

  When the Eya’a moved toward Eloatri, everyone but the Kelly stilled, Vi’ya with her eyes closed, and the Marine guards shifting uneasily.

  When Eloatri met the faceted eyes, the sophonts chittered softly as they tilted back their heads. The Eya’a drifted past to inspect a diorama on one wall as the hatch opened. Two Kelly headstalks whipped sinuously to take in Ivard, and the two dogs who apparently had played an important role in keeping him alive, followed by more Marines.

  With them, the Chief Wrangler of Ares Base, a plain, muscular woman whose incandescent smile transformed her. No wrangler needed Eloatri’s welcoming nod, but the forms were important, especially when dealing with someone well into a liminal state with regard to oneself; Eloatri felt the impact of that smile like a lancing ray of sunlight through the interminable clouds over Desrien.

  M’liss was more than half in love with Eloatri, despite being less than half her age. Her promotion to Chief—now no longer Acting—was a gift of the war, as for so many others; in the normal course of events, they would never have met, but the High Phanist had been firm in her insistence that M’liss be present. She drew in a deep breath of intense pleasure: this scene was a wrangler’s dream. All but one of the known sophonts together in one space, plus the first Dol’jharian she’d ever seen, sibling Arkad dogs . . .

  . . .and the Rifter youth Ivard, who, she’d already decided, didn’t seem to fit any of those categories. M’liss watched Eloatri’s customary inscrutability altered subtly to tenderness as her gaze rested on Ivard.

  Buersco choked on an exhalation, a hand to his mouth. How is that youth even alive? Although he’d followed LTC Dorn’s reports closely, the reality was more disturbing, the effect heightened by the complex scents of the Kelly slamming the limbic system.

  Buersco focused the ajna on Ivard as the youth stumbled toward the Kelly in a boneless lurch. It looked like the two Arkad dogs were the only things keeping him upright. He could see the muscles in their shoulders and haunches bunch as the youth’s weight came down on them erratically; nonetheless, each had one ear cocked at Ivard, the other alertly forward, flicking to the side occasionally.

  Buersco’s gaze arrowed to the green ribbon embedded in Ivard’s wrist. There, replicated by the strange biology of the Kelly ribbons, which were both sexual and neural tissue, resided the last trace of the Archon and threir memories. It should have killed Ivard.

  He focused the ajna in close. Ivard had begun life ugly, with the pale, blotchy skin of an atavism and improbably red hair, now patchy from the trichotillomania that had presented this last week. Add in the gawky coltishness of late adolescence compounded by malnutrition, the unsettling bonelessness to his movements (not to mention their three-four rhythm), and the greenish cast to his skin, deepening to emerald on his arm . . . Ivard had crossed well over into the uncanny valley.

  Portus-Dartinus-Atos also found Ivard uncanny, though not for the same reason. It was the wafts of the Third of Three’s personality emanating from the youngling with increasing strength, and Ivard’s new habit of plucking out his hair, recapitulating the death and dispersal of that Elder following the bombing of the Arkad princeling’s Enkainion.

  Threy greeted Ivard gently, guiding his hands away from his head as threy noted further degeneration of his condition. The Third of Three would burst this vessel soon; thus this desperate effort, whose efficacy the humans seemed to take for granted. Portus-Dartinus-Atos would let events confirm or collapse that assumption which, for now, upheld the humans’ spirits.

  Eloatri sensed the infinite tenderness in the Kelly’s manner as they swarmed around Ivard, honking and hooting. Ivard honked back, startling Eloatri. She hadn’t known a human throat could make such noises. It could, but not comfortably; Ivard broke off, coughing.

  The Kelly pressed in closer around Ivard, and Eloatri’s perspective underwent a dizzying change. She’d accepted the stereotype of the Kelly as a comical race of sophonts, taking an unlikely delight in copying various elements of human culture. Now she comprehended that for the protective camouflage it was.

  These sophonts represented a culture ancient with a weight of ancestral memories that in humans were accessible only in dreams, if then. For the Kelly, the memories of those passed into the embrace of Telos were vividly present and immediate. And threir Archon, murdered on Arthelion by Eusabian, was the repository of threir most ancient knowledge: only that Kelly trinity remembered the awakening of the race to sentience, a million years past and more.

  By contrast, M’liss concentrated on the dogs, suppressing a spurt of jealousy at the ease with which the Kelly so effortlessly conversed with Trev and Gray. Freed from supporting Ivard by the embrace of the Kelly, the two dogs gamboled in a complex pattern among the nine legs of the trinity, often rearing up to push their noses deep into the fleshy ribbons of threir pelts and then sneezing in an ecstasy of scent-sorting.

  M’liss wrinkled her nose and sneezed, too; some of the scents Portus-Dartinus-Atos emitted were reminiscent of something any dog would be eager to roll in—carrion was too bland a word for it. Several of the Marines wrinkled their noses and backed up slightly as the dogs returned to Ivard’s side and sat down.

  “All are here,” announced the Kelly in a mellifluous woodwind chorale, a sinuous triplicate motion toward Trev and Gray. “The collars must be removed from these two of Ivard’s three. All must play their role here freely, with moral agency intact.” All three head-stalks arched toward M’liss, who reddened.

  “You can’t do that,” said the Marine squad leader as M’liss stepped forward. “The dogs are to be collared whenever they are with the Rifter. Our orders are clear.”

  “So are mine,” replied M’liss as she bent over Trev and pressed her fingertip to his collar. “To assist in this procedure as may be requested or directed by Portus-Dartinus-Atos as the representative of a sovereign nation.” Her boswell clucked and the collar fell into her hand. She freed Gray and straightened up. “And I’m Chief Wrangler, and you’re not,” she said with a big smile.

  The smile was instinctive, but she could see its impact on the Marine; That smile is your secret weapon, her mother had insisted. Going from plain to dazzling can throw almost anyone off balance, if your timing is correct. M’liss had hated that lesson in manipulation—it was perhaps one of the many reasons she had chosen to work with non-humans—but she’d found it bearable when her mother had added trenchantly, Keep your heart clean, though, or your smile will become an insufferable smirk.

  Buersco let out his breath. The truce was holding. Greater access to the Eya’a had been the prize for his chief at Xeno; the upper ranks didn’t care about the dogs. Their mistake, he thought; he’d spent all his internship studying the Arkad dogs.

  Eloatri was surprised by the pang in her heart when M’liss smiled. She’d been alone so long she’d thought it in accordance with her calling. Now she doubted that, but even if she had the time for personal pursuits, she would never drag M’liss into the lethal politics of the Tetrad Centrum Douloi. Eloatri knew herself untouchable, but only so long as she remained alone.

  Buersco fell in next to Eloatri on the way into the Embassy proper, acknowledging M’liss at her other arm with a polite nod. “Was Ivard this bad before Desrien?”

  �
��He was even less coherent. I was told he was dying, his immune system overwhelmed by the Kelly ribbon. Afterward he seemed to . . . not recover, but to experience a remission.”

  Buersco gestured at Ivard. “What happened, then? Why the relapse?”

  “The Dreamtime apparently wasn’t done with him. It may be that today is when it releases him.”

  “As much as it releases anyone,” said Buersco under his breath.

  That explains his irenic attitude, Eloatri thought. He’s a haj. She bowed with the inflection of one returned from a pilgrimage to Desrien, which Buersco returned, confirming her supposition.

  The Kelly ushered all but the Marine guards into the warm interior of the building, which was humid and evocative of the spicy atmosphere of the Kelly home world, suitably filtered of its usual load of anaphylactic triggers, prions, and similar unpleasant or lethal agents. Eloatri’s first impression was of overwhelming greenness, against which Ivard’s red hair made a startling contrast, while the Kelly became oddly hard to see as threy and the youth and the dogs pirouetted ahead of the rest of the group.

  Down a short, oddly-proportioned corridor an archway opened into a spacious room with a pile of colorful pillows in the center that glowed in an atrocious medley of colors, as if in challenge to the viridian splendor of the lush foliage that obscured the room’s perimeter. As the Kelly moved with Ivard to the pillows, Eloatri saw another Kelly approach. No. Mirrors stood among the foliage. Her understanding of the space around her opened up abruptly, and she shivered as echoes of the Dreamtime stirred within her.

  Ivard’s movements had become less uncoordinated; he dropped with a semblance of ease and relaxed into the nest of pillows, snorting and snuffling, while the two dogs, as if commanded by someone unseen, sat on guard to either side of Ivard’s knees, ears and eyes alert.

  Vi’ya took up a stance nearby, breathing with less effort as the psychic pressure of Ivard’s fear and anxiety eased to something near euphoria.