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Overview
How can you stop a conspiracy of telepaths? The alien Lyhhrt are powerful enough to read the human mind; if they find you know too much, they can erase your memory, or simply stop your heart. The normally peaceful Lyhhrt society has been splintered by technological change, the bitter legacy of their exploitation by the Zamos crime family. Now a few renegade Lyhhrt, driven mad by isolation from their group mind, seem to be planning terrible crimes--or are they again being used as deadly tools in someone else's scheme?
When the illicit corporation created by Zamos collapsed, it disrupted the lives of heroes as well as villains. With gambling dens shut down, gladiator Ned Gaddes has nowhere to fight. Beautiful Lorrice had hoped to sell her ESP talents to Zamos, but was forced to sell her body instead. And on the planet Khagodis, scholarly Hasso will be forced to leave his archives and unravel the shadowy web that has entangled their fate with the Lyhhrt's.
The struggle that ensues provides the ultimate test of their resources - Ned's savvy toughness, Lorrice's psychic insight, and the fact that even a gentle Khagodi like Hasso could go head-to-head with a dinosaur. Like the best science fiction, Mindworlds is simultaneously exciting and thought provoking. Gotlieb offers a satisfyingly complex look at the ambiguous consequences of toppling even the most evil of empires, and the sacrifices that ordinary people must make to prevent the vacuum of power from being filled by equally corrupt forces.
Ursula K. Le Guin found Gotlieb's earlier novel Flesh and Gold "dazzling," lit up by "sex, violence, intricate plotting, light-speed pacing, an amazing variety of aliens, touches of Philip K. Dick's sardonic humor and Cordwainer Smith's obstinate idealism." Its sequel, Violent Stars, was described in Maclean's as "above all a poet's novel.... Gotlieb's language lifts her book from exotic thriller to literary achievement." Mindworlds offers a resounding climax to the story that began in these celebrated novels.
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781429974417 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Tor Publishing Group |
| Publication date: | 05/17/2002 |
| Series: | Lyhhrt Trilogy , #3 |
| Sold by: | Macmillan |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 272 |
| File size: | 234 KB |
About the Author
Phyllis Gotlieb lives in Toronto, Canada.
Read an Excerpt
Mindworlds
ONE
Khagodis, Burning Mountain: Hasso Deconstructs an Archive
" ... and as my first example I offer you in all humility my own dissertation ..."
Hasso son of Evarny leaned harder on the lectern to ease his wasted leg, and faced the hundred-odd other Khagodi men and women squatting on their circled places in the Hall of Learning. The Hall was a beautiful structure in the shape of a Kylkladi bower, and in fact had been erected by Kylkladi to house Galactic Federation's Interworld Court. But its heat in Khagodis's equatorial summer had been detested by so many other Interworld jurists that it was finally being given up.
The students, young and healthy as they were, did not worry about heat in this winter season, when cooler winds hushed through the bower's leaves; they tilted their heads eagerly toward Hasso's lectern, the scales glistened over their massive bodies in colors that were bright and fresh, and their heavy tails were tightly wrapped around them.
Hasso hated public speaking, and in his law studies had carefully avoided any direction that led to open court. But he was determined to make his own young generation as passionate as he was about creating archives. Now he was proud to be standing in this historical setting and, bracing himself for a new and scholarly endeavor, he stood tall, gulped air three times—"but before I build the structure, I will show you the building materials,"—and launched himself into the great work of his life, speaking at times by swallowing air, at time by esp, sometimes with gestures, occasionally rubbing down his scales to keep them from rising in the heat of his passion and devotion:
On the world Sol Three that they call Earth the people are born one by one, and kept together in a jumble of sexes and ages crowded into only one single dwelling where they can barely breathe, and whatever faults or flaws they have are intensified. Where there is goodness they beget wonders, and where there is evil they grow demons. I thank all of the Saints that I have dear friends among Earthers, but when I think of the Zamos family my head begins to steam! We grow bad eggs enough but we keep them carefully apart from the healthy.
Two hundred years ago Zamos and his clutch of families became a Corporation specializing in fraud, money laundering, extortion and prostitution, and eventually bought a company called NeoGenics that created specialized human clones for serving on worlds with extreme conditions. They began a special branch of that company to manufacture clones for sexual exploitation and built hundreds of brothels-legal brothels-on seven worlds—and even on this world!
—a pause to settle the little stir of shame——and all who worked in them were slaves! And there were those of us—of us!—who became slave masters.
For Zamos discovered gold in the waters of our Isthmuses and dropped down its cloned undersea workers to collect it. It was Chief Justice Skerow, then wife of my father Evarny, who first discovered this horror. At that time, the Saints preserve us, I suppose we were smug enough to think no such evil could touch us ... but we were slavers in the Isthmuses and brothel-masters even here in this city of Burning Mountain!
While all these evil things were happening two more worlds had come to haunt us, and these were Lyhhr and Iyax. The Lyhhrt we have known long and been uneasy with because their telepathic power is so much greater even than ours, and they are so frightened of being separated from their equals. The Ix nobody knew, nor wanted to when they did—
—everyone knew someone who had known someone who had seen an Ix and its specter rose up before them in chitinous black six-limbed horror, its sting-smell of hallucinatory pheromones and the spaceless black-flaming sparklings of their aura, and all shivered—
—because they were egglayers who had so fouled their home world that they could not produce the nourishment to incubate their young ... and by exploration of other worlds they found this in the bodies of Lyhhrt.
Neither world belonged to Galactic Federation. The Ix had been unknown. The Lyhhrt were neutrals with some Federation ties, and they begged GalFed for help but no one would risk the money and the manpower.
Zamos came to their rescue.
In their laboratories they created an artificial egg-hatching medium, and from the Lyhhrt demanded theirservice to Zamos for one Cosmic Cycle, one hundred and twenty-nine of their years. The Lyhhrt had no choice, except to destroy themselves. Zamos gained the use of Lyhhrt robotics, surgical techniques and telepathy, and the Lyhhrt took away nothing but shame. Though Zamos's fall came as that Cycle was ending, the Lyhhrt had spent what seemed to them an eon of slavery helping Zamos create slaves and monsters to serve on ten score worlds ... sacrificing their souls to save their lives ... and when that reign was ended and they were freed they helped to save our world and got little thanks ... .
Another Mysterious Stranger
Hasso thought there was no place on the world Khagodis, or in the whole universe for that matter, so pleasant as the rooftop of his house in the city of Burning Mountain. The white winter sun, faintly gilded with mist, hung between afternoon and evening; its light fell softly on the rainwashed pastel walls of the stuccoed houses and shops clustered on the slopes down to the river.
At the other corner of the sky two alabaster moons were launching themselves, and the brightest stars and worlds were flaming in the deep sky. The air was wonderfully warm, not the choking heat of summer, and several of his neighbors were out on their roofs enjoying it with him. Hasso could just hear the peaceful tink! of the goldbeater's hammer from the jewelsmith's across the way.
He was waiting for his stepmother Skerow, who always came down from her home in the Northern Spines to celebrate the Green Wreath Festival with him on her way to the Raintree Island Poetry Conference. Both had been invited to attend the Consecration of the New Interworld Court, arecently finished complex, now based deep in among the cold mesas of the Southern Diluvian Continent, that would replace the old bower, and house World Government as well. But Skerow, recently and gratefully retired from the lectern and from power, had declined.
"I do wish you would come and enjoy the occasion with me, goodmother."
"I am coming to your warm land to be with you, Hasso, and though I love my own cold desert I needn't go to another one." She was stubborn as always, and Hasso tilted his head and gave up.
The chimes rang at the entryway downstairs as he was brewing a pot of sprigwort tea for himself. He had bought a jug of white-thorn essence for Skerow, who liked something stronger; the grill was fired up, a good shank of crockbull waiting on its platter ... .
Skerow would never ring: this was a stranger. With a spit of annoyance Hasso set the teabowl down. His servant was gone for the day after lugging all the crockery up to the roof and helping him set up the grill, he'd left his impervious helmet below in his kitchen, and, weary from his stint propped on the lectern in the Hall of Learning, he did not want to crawl all the way down the stone stairs and up again for someone he didn't know.
He felt no telepathic emanation, and no ordinary citizen in the street goes about wearing a damned heavy scratchy helmet only to be fashionable. Stranger ...
"Eh." Not good news. An alien perhaps. After the trials that brought the Zamos Corporation down at last, the ranks of jurists and packs of journalists had diminished offworld toward the newest sensation, leaving a few tourists, clusters of diplomats and the merchants supplying them to maintain the alien contingent.
Hasso sucked in a bellyful of air, said, "I will be with you in one tick of a stad!" and picked up his staff. He beganlimping his way toward the top step of the long downward passage.
"I will come up if you permit," the low resonant voice said boldly.
Having no better answer, Hasso said, "Come." The street was in shadow and no light came from the entrance below. He settled back on the broad base of his tail and waited as the dark shape rose.
Its edges were not quite clear. Khagodi, whose sight and hearing are slightly duller than those of non-ESPs, depend on each other to verify them. Now the neighboring roofs seemed to be empty, and the goldbeater's hammer had fallen silent.
The visitor was an outworlder, likely an Earther, Hasso thought, from his hominid form. No shorter than Hasso, he was wearing black clothing, with a dark wide-brimmed hat, and seemed to pull in light without illuminating himself.
Hasso did not have time to open his mouth before the stranger said: "You are Citizen Hasso known as Master of Archives for Sector 706.394 inclusive of systems Fthel and Darhei." He spoke very standard unaccented lingua.
Hasso would not have claimed so great a territory for himself; it included his sun's worlds and also those of Galactic Federation Headquarters. He forced himself not to step back from this aggressive speech and said, "Citizen Hasso, yes."
"I have been advised by the world Lyrrh to inform you that you will be called as a witness in an action being brought against your government for negligence in refusing to support and defend Lyhhrt action against the attack of the world Iyax in local year 7514."
Hasso drew a slow depth of air. "Who are you, citizen, and what is your authority?" Whoever he was he was not a guest, now, but an opponent. "There is no Lyhhrt ship inorbit, and Lyhhr no longer has a permanent embassy on this world. Show me identification."
"My genitors are Lyhhrt." The stranger's hand flashed the gold disk: the Cosmic symbols of Lyhhr swarmed on it. Hasso's scales rose, and for a moment he thought he was going to be hypnotized. But in an instant the emblem vanished somewhere in that body or its clothing, and Hasso knew that his visitor was truly a Lyhhrt. In anyone else's hand the disk would have turned ash-white and crumbled.
"I will presume you are satisfied that I am Lyhhrt?"
But Lyhhrt, those brain-sized lumps of protoplasm, walk the streets of alien worlds encased in brilliant workshells of beaten gold and bronze, not imitations of Earthers' flesh and cloth. "Yes, but not that you have authority."
"I live on this world with the permission of your government, and my people have made use of my citizenship to send you a message. They have certainly begun this action. They will arrive on Khagodis within three thirtydays to bring it to Interworld Court. The message is from them, not me. I have had unofficial information that if Lyhhr is not satisfied there will be an actual attack. Although I am an exile from my world and I can find fault with it, I cannot believe it would ever bring any kind of army or armada to any world."
"Are you warning me, citizen? I have no personal authority. You ought to tell this to World Government, and I must tell you, it is well documented, that all of this world's council offered to sacrifice themselves to save the Lyhhrt. So why come to me?"
"You may have that dangerous frailty, a withered leg and only one heart," the Lyhhrt said calmly. "But I am the only Lyhhrt on Khagodis and I have no power or influence."
"But how do you exp—"
While Hasso was drawing in another of those deep and angry bellyfuls of air the chimes jangled a warning, and Skerow'stelepathic voice said, :He doesn't mean to insult you, Hasso.:
"That is quite right," the Lyhhrt said abruptly, "I meant no harm. Lyhhrt rarely do." To emphasize the words he shrank his height, and his long coat pleated on the flooring.
While Hasso struggled to find sense in what the Lyhhrt was saying—Lyhhr attacking Khagodis!—Skerow was mounting the stairs with unusual speed. The Lyhhrt turned to meet her, rose in height and extended a hand to help her up the last step. "Sta'atha Amfa Skerow, the respected Justice and distinguished poet," he said.
"My fame precedes me ever." Skerow's tone was both gracious and wry. The breath was whistling harshly in and out of her gill-slits. She did not need to tell him that she was a retired Justice.
Nor did Hasso bother introducing her to the nameless Lyhhrt. "Citizen," to the Lyhhrt, "I hope you will be able to tell me more clearly what Lyhhr intends, and what I have to do with it." He said this much more civilly than he had intended.
"No, Archivist, I have spoken enough. You know all that is necessary for now." He turned in a swirl of cloth without any hurry and ... flowed down the stairs, gone. The sky brightened, and Hasso saw that his rooftop neighbors were enjoying their meals.
"Eki, goodmother, what a strange one."
"Indeed so, Hasso—a full complement of Lyhhrtish tricks! But let us have our dinner before your tea turns sour and the sun cooks that delicious cut of meat."
"I must know of that Lyhhrt in some recorded source if he is a genuine citizen."
"You will remember eventually. But don't brood now, Hasso dear. I am delighted to be with you and ever so hungry."
And for a little while Hasso and Skerow did no morethan share a dinner with pleasure and affection. Although there would always be a shadow standing between them, however faint: Evarny, who had been Skerow's husband for twenty years, until he divorced her for infertility when their young daughter died. The woman he then married to give him his Lineage had been able to bear only Hasso, and Evarny had died before knowing his wife and son would ever meet. Or that they would form a powerful bond.
Skerow dipped her tongue into the bowl for the last drop of the fiery essence. : You know that Lyrhht, Hasso. I am sure you know him.: Then, on taking thought, Unless, perhaps, a robot ... :
"No no! The Lyhhrt would never send a robot in the shape of an Earther on Khagodis! They are far too esthetic—and that awkward clothing was ridiculous—"
"That's true. He seemed to realize he was ridiculous ... you know, Hasso, I believe that fellow was probably very frightened, and that clothing was meant to make him inconspicuous."
"Yes, goodmother, only it didn't work very well! If he truly is the only Lyhhrt on Khagodis, most likely he—eh, I have got him now! You and I both know of the Galactic Federation agent who was present when he was born—helped him to be born! Eki, I suppose I should not expect to keep everything in the top of my brain. The agent was that Earther fellow Ned Gattes that you must remember."
"I certainly do. I know no more Earthers than I have fingers!"
Hasso's mood darkened even further; the long and agonizing history still flickered in his mind as darkly as the Inland Sea of Pitch on whose shores he had spent his youth. At that troubled time five years ago when the orbiting Ix had demanded the subjugation of Khagodis, the two Lyhhrt who were on the world then had given their lives and their ship to destroy the vast and lowering Ixi vessel, the greatest oneof its kind. But before they did so they had conjugated to produce one descendant who would tell their story.
"Yes, we know who this Lyhhrt is now." :But why come to me, and in an Earther-shaped workshell, why anyway is he a citizen of this world?:
"Perhaps he became too well known on his own," Skerow said. "An individual, and one who drew too much attention to himself."
"A heretic in the minds of others, then. He ought to have been honored on his world, and able to find all Others ... no use thinking of that, I suppose. But why come to me?"
"No insult. Most likely he wanted to warn someone he respected, and whom he felt was as vulnerable as himself."
"You believe he was really trying to be friendly? I wish he would not have spoken in riddles! I cannot believe the Lyhhrt could want to stir up any kind of war. I must find out whether the Ministry knows of this."
"I'm sure he meant for you to tell them."
"He left me a heavy burden. I hope he finds himself lightened of it."
:Poor fellow, I hope so too.:
Crouching with joined minds in the last of the reddened sunlight as the shadows rose and the rising night wind sparked the fading coals in the firepot ...
Fthel IV, Cinnabar Keys: Crawlers
Around the time Hasso was giving his lecture on archive construction, Ned Gattes was just about to step off the train in a place he wasn't sure he wanted to be. Three days earlier a voice on his comm had told him to come to an arena in Lisboa today at fifteen hours, there was money in it.
Lisboa was a town on a local rail line about a hundredand fifty kilometers from his home in Miramar, and he'd fought in the arena occasionally to earn a few cred. But he hadn't been there, or even fought seriously for years, just in exhibitions and giving lessons for not much money, and this call promised a good handful.
Since Zamos had collapsed there hadn't been much of it for a used-up pug with a wife and three kids. Galactic Federation had left him alone, and he wasn't calling them either. In the past he and Zella had made most of their living fighting in Zamos arenas on five worlds; Zamos's corruption-riddled empire had given work to millions upon millions, and with its disintegration the vast realms of gambling houses, arenas and brothels had shrunk and devolved into small businesses and private clubs.
Live pugs now fought down back alleys in smoky rooms where Ned and Zella did not want to go, and the gladiatorial school where they had been teaching young pugs their moves had gone out of business: now fights were mainly fought by robots—even the cockfights were robotic. And most of the live fights had become criminally controlled and much bloodier.
He wouldn't let Zella go to those places, and ducked them himself. He had some hopes for this one.
The train let him off at the usual station; its clay tile roof was crumbling and the stucco walls were cracking. Ned tried not to see the shabbiness of the main street and its loungers, the rutted roads and dust-spewing landcars. On most blocks the walkways had stopped moving and the treads were buckled.
It was mid-afternoon and the westering sun was fairly kind to the small shops and eateries he was passing. At the first street branching north he turned right and after the corner fruit market, there was a door, the same thick slab of wood-comp he remembered.
A big red-lit sign above it said: The CrawlSpace!That was new, and so was the slot for i.d. He paused. Private club ... . The back of his neck prickled and he rubbed at it.
But he'd spent more than an hour on the train and he'd be stuck here for two more hours. He slotted in his District Worker's Permit.
The door clicked and buzzed, slammed back in its socket, ricocheted once and slid back again slowly.
Beyond it was a square room with a high ceiling and skylight. All kinds of crests and shields hung on the walls, naming champions and associations that Ned had never heard of. The ring in the center was bedded with clean sand.
As he stepped inside Trax came forward with his old fighter's strut, grinning with new white teeth. He was otherwise exactly as Ned remembered him, with the same bald head and hairy arms and legs. "Come on in, Neddo, welcome to the CrawlSpace—we got some good times today!"
He came closer, where Ned could smell his sweat. "It's chebok, your specialty, innit?" And in a low voice through his teeth, "Today you lose."
Ned took one breath. "I don't fight to lose."
"You do if you wanna be paid."
Ned smelled bloodfight—that often hinted threat he'd managed to dodge in Zamos arenas.
Behind Trax he could see in the white bloodless light that along one wall fifteen or twenty men, one Varvani, and one or two women were crouched on stools and folding chairs. The youngest were middle-aged with reddened faces and wrinkled foreheads; they wore snapcaps and leather pea jackets, half had thick gold chains and rings. There were curls of jhat smoke rising from their fingers and mouths. They did not speak but every once in a while one would lean over to give a pat on the head or shoulder to a much younger man in leather breeks who was sitting on the floor in front of them with legs crossed. The champion.
"Here he is!" Trax's face was all teeth. "Jammer, the winnerof the silver Terra Cup, just waiting for you, Ned-boy!"
The youngling stood up, stretched, and did a little dance in place. He had dark curly hair and smooth skin, looked strong and graceful enough, and well-kept, rather like somebody's pet. Ned did not waste time wondering who the owner was. His mind was spinning.
He refused the offered refresher bottle, then shucked his jacket and top and dropped them in a corner, baring his years of scars. Nothing to show for them either. He accepted the chebok, a mailed fist with sharp steel spikes, very new and shiny. And the heavy leather buckler with metal studs that had never been scratched. Chebok fighting went with the trade, but Ned did not like it; he didn't mind a taste of blood and a touch of fear, but chebok meant too much of both.
Jammer danced forward snarling and feinted with his chebok to cover the lunge with his shield meant to drive Ned's own spikes into his flesh. He had frightened eyes, Ned thought; he blocked that and caught a couple of scratches on his jaw: first blood that fell in a spatter on his shoulder. There was a crackling hiss of breath from the audience.
Jammer followed hard with his chebok and Ned, dodging that, was caught off guard for a fraction of a second too late, and left himself open to a slam on shoulder and cheekbone from Jammer's shield. He lost balance and landed sprawled on his back. Winded and dizzy, he heard the hissing deepen to a low roar: Give it to him, Jammer!
Jammer leaped forward to kick at him, an illegal move, but Ned caught him hard on the leg with his own chebok. Dripping blood, Jammer hopped on one leg, screaming, "I'll kill you! I'll kill you!"
Silence. Somebody said, "Yes." Ned pulled himself to his feet, stood back, and waited. His head was still ringing and he had sparkles in his eyes. He shook them away.
Jammer stumbled forward frantically, eyes in a stare. Ned took pity on him, knocked the chebok out of Jammer's handwith his own and pushed him down with his buckler.
Empty hand, a legal end to the fight.
The audience rose and roared like a thousand. C'mon! Let's get'm! Ned stood watching them for a moment, while they shook their fists. He waited for them to step forward, but they did not, yet. Two or three of them gathered around Jammer, Get up, boy, you ain't hurt bad! There were no guns here, but throwing knives were common enough. Now, though, maybe the jhat had dulled their aims as it was slurring their speech.
He'd seen all these men and women, or others too much like them no matter what their species, standing in the doorways of their offices in casinos, brothels, arenas, waiting for the money to be counted. And now that the empire they had served was fallen, they had laid their money down on such small hopes he would have felt sorry for them if he could afford it.
He picked up the other 'bok so that he had two of them, and clashed them together, in case anyone had ideas. No one came near him. "Go kiss your boy where it hurts and send him back to the nursery," he said.
Trax was kneeling beside Jammer, bandaging his leg. He screamed at Ned, "You crazy bastard, you ain't getting paid for none of this!" His face was purple, and he was shaking.
"I guess not," Ned said. "I guess you won't be, either." He dropped the weapons, picked up his clothes and was out of there.
He went down the street quickly, wiping blood off his jaw with a cloth that had gone through many launderings, and eventually put his top and jacket back on. No one came after him, and he spent the rest of the time sitting on a hard bench in the station, reading the graffiti and watching local news on the sputtering screens.
He had a bad time of it with Zella when he got back, with that black eye and the slashes.
I can't believe you didn't know what you were in for!
She was crying, touching him, dabbing him with wet swabs and antiseptics.
I didn't, Zel! The pay sounded so good!
I'm going to be afraid to leave you alone ... .
As he would be left tomorrow. Zella and the children were leaving for Montador to wait at the deathbed of her mother, with whom she had never gotten along, but who had relocated here from her pioneers' world for an easier old age. Zella usually did this two or three times a year. Her mother specialized in deathbed scenes.
I'm a grown-up boy, I'll get along all right.
I don't care about the money! It's not going to happen again!
He agreed with that. They found a minder for the kids and went to Dusky Dell's for beers.
Spartakos Cuts a Deal
The fight going on in Dusky Dell's sea-front bar in the Grottoes district of Miramar was a different kind; the awkward punching scuffles weren't rare around Happy Hour when Dell gave out three for the price of two, and Ned was safely niched in a dark corner with Zella. He was touching his rough fingers very gently to that spot on her neck just over the second cervical vertebra, that was still soft as a baby's. She hunched her back like a cat. "You're tickling."
"It feels so good."
But the back of his neck was still prickling, along with the hurts and his anger. There were other reasons for twinges of the spine that did not account for this one, and one of them was Spartakos, the robot created by the Lyhhrt as an exhibit, servant, calculator, storehouse of secrets, pet. At theirfirst meeting Spartakos had declared Ned his friend, and when Galactic Federation and the Lyhhrt took them into service and sent them into danger the two had saved each other more than once. Five years ago the Lyhhrt, in releasing Ned, had left the robot with him.
Spartakos was no longer a servant or an ornament, but a world-citizen. He had vowed to serve the O'e, the slave-race his makers had created: he was up on Dell's stage now, dancing with an O'e woman and a Varvani who had also become his friends. For this display he had transformed himself into a serpent twining among the limbs of the other two while a couple of Bengtvadi played a nose-flute and a bucciphone. An audience clustered around the stage clapping in time, while drinkers slammed their mugs on tables.
Dell paid Spartakos a lot of money: he had doubled and redoubled her business. He used the money for energy and upkeep, for tending the O'e with food and medicines wherever he could find them. That took most of it. And what was left over he gave to Ned and Zella.
That bothered Ned deeply. No way to fight, what can we do? We could find cheaper digs and at least keep the kids in school ... . Better than sponging free meals from Dell and letting Spartakos pay the rent.
Money meant little to Spartakos and could not do much more for him than supply energy: when the Lyhhrt had left him with Ned they had deserted him, and he had no way to cure the deep tarnish of his gold-plated head and hands or the flaking of his chromed body, and lately his coordination had begun to suffer. Even if there were automaton specialists who were skilled enough to restore him to blazing brilliance, none of them would have dared touch a Lyhhrt work. Spartakos would have self-destructed.
There was a sudden eruption from the fighters who, borne by the circulation of the audience toward the bar, had reached a bottle-breaking stage in their battle. The Varvaniraised his hand to stop the music, jumped down from the stage; the customers parted for him as the sea had done for Moses: he was a head taller than everyone else and had arms as thick as taqqa trees. He plucked up the fighters by the scruff, carried them through the exit and tossed them over the railing into the sea. At this level of the Grottoes it was not deep and had no hungry beasts. The Varvani returned and the dance went on.
The room calmed, and Ned turned his mind back to whatever else was giving him that twinge at the back of his neck. Out of the corner of his eye he had noticed the workman—at least a fiercely weathered Earther in denims with a neckerchief and shabby cap—who seemed to be looking at him with a peculiar intensity. Now as he thought about that he felt himself forced to turn his head and look again. For a moment he thought this might be someone from Lisboa after him.
No. This was a telepath. Looking at him, pushing at his mind. His anger rose and was damped down by that push. Before he could shake free of the effect the workman rose and squatted by the doorway.
The show was finishing with a flourish and a bow, with Spartakos reforming into his still handsome self; in the quiet that followed Dell came onstage to announce last round and saw the workman, a stranger. "Hullo, mister! Looking for work? I'm not hiring on right now but I'll give you a meal." He was not one of the kind she'd hire anyway, too awkward and sullen-looking.
Blue-shirt looked up at her with strange eyes, and Ned could see her eyebrows rising at whatever message he was giving her. Dell was an old fighter friend of Ned's, muscular enough to be her own bouncer, and Ned thought she was paler than usual. She crooked a finger at Ned. "That one wants you. Don't ask me."
"I don't like the looks of him," Zella whispered.
"Nor do I," Ned said. But he got up uneasily and headed for the doorway. Spartakos came down the steps to join him without being asked. Ned realized: But he has been asked. Radio signal. That boyo is a Lyhhrt.
Blue-shirt said, "I am not one of those from Lisboa. Come out of here where we can talk."
"What about?" Ned said. "You never come near me unless you want something. Eh, I guess you want Spartakos back. Well you'll have to ask him nicely now you've made him a world-cit."
"That's not what he wants, Ned," Spartakos said.
"Something else? No, wait, I know. You have a little work for me. Get blown up, beat up, shot at—"
"Please listen, Mister Gattes!"
Ned followed him out to the grotto stairway and down a few steps with a very reluctant tread. The night was warm and the sky full of stars out there, and the sea swept with the crossed paths of two or three moons. "Whatever it is, no," Ned muttered.
The workman said, "Listen, please! There is not much you owe Lyhhr, but you can give us that."
Ned reflected that, since he and Zella had been living off the avails of Spartakos for the last half-year, he owed him that. He settled himself on the stone step; it was warm, but he felt cold.
The Lyhhrt began: "I/we are—we were, I and my Other—attached to the Lyhhrt Embassy at Galactic Federation Headquarters on this world. Our Embassy did not know that we were also GalFed agents investigating—"
"Wait a minute! This sounds like very high-level business—you sure you really want to tell me—"
"A block has been on you since I took sight of you, and if you refuse my request you will forget this conversation. We were placed here because our world government suspected that the Ambassadors were assuming authority theywere not given. In fact they are claiming to represent all of Lyhhr and threatening to bring an action against Khagodis for some imagined insult! We had been gathering evidence, they found us—" The workings of his shell began a barely audible hum and he paused to control it.
"Last night in Montador City one of them killed the contact I depended on, murdered my Other, and shot at me—and that murderer was one of them/us, one of our own people—who is searching for me now and he will find me before the police find him!"
Ned stared at this ragged creature who was like nothing he knew of as Lyhhrt. "How do I know all this is true? And if it is, what do you want me to do about it?"
The worker pulled the collar of his blue shirt down from his shoulder. His self-repair had filled in and reshaped the steel-mesh matrix where the shot had hit him, but he had no time to replate himself; he was working in economode, and there was a jagged star of blackness on his surface. Then he pulled the shirt back over his shoulder and hit Ned with:
Brezant bloody overtures in Montador/ESP woman- fear/Bronze and Brass-and-silver and ten thousand dropdown Khagodis smashglass/smokeflick——beggarcurb WATCH YOU DON'T OUTSMART YOURSELF says Willson——(greisbach is that you?/NO BUT I WILL DO/Lyhhrt/Tzuk! Willson!/omygod nononothing/TZUK! AND AGAIN!/ /SMASH! I-WE/US-MY OTHER!!!MY/BEING—my LIFE—I still living?
—alone with white-hot thoughts crashing rebounding reverberating against the seared walls of the mind—no tears for eyeless Lyhhrt ... .
"I understand, I think," Ned said. "A chukker named Brezant, wants to send an army to attack ... Khagodis?"
Workman calmed himself and told the story. "It has to do with what happened on Khagodis when you were there five of your years ago."
"And was it this Brezant that sent the Lyhhrt to kill you?"
"I cannot tell that. One of the two he had with him might have done it, but I didn't dare esp him ... ."
"And you want me for—"
"There is nothing you can do about any of those—I am trying to explain my desperation. We have never lost sight of you and this artifact"—a nod at Spartakos—"even when we had no need of your services, and I am grateful to have found you here—"
Ned believed Lyhhrt did not tell lies; he assumed that this one was telling what he thought was the truth. "Because now you need me—"
"Lyhhr needs—"
"—to go down all those alleys through the garbage heaps where people have dirty faces and forgot to shave, where you couldn't go even if you dress up like one of them, and want to send me instead because you think I'm one of them!" Unconsciously he rubbed his jaw, which had been badly repaired and grafted long ago, and tended to flame or whiten when he was upset. Now it was red with slashes under the padding.
"No!" :I might have shut your mouth but I would not.:
"Thanks."
"My maker means well, Ned-Gattes-my-friend," Spartakos said unreproachfully. Ned wondered how he managed this.
"Ned!" He had not seen Zella slipping through the door and waiting in the shadow. Now she grabbed him around the shoulders and whispered, "Stop it, Ned." And to theworkman-Lyhhrt, "He's not doing your dirty work!"
"Listen, Earthers! Listen, Edmund Gattes!" The workman crouched and thrust his arms out as if his body was truly a fleshly one, and the skin split over the crown of his head for a moment to show a glint of metal. "I am trapped on this world without a ship or even a shuttle, I have money that will not buy me protection, because of the work we have been doing I have no public accreditation, and the one person I trust to speak for me is running for her life—(Greisbach, is that you?)—and I cannot go back to the Embassy when the Ambassadors are plotting a war!"
The workshell gritted under the false skin from his effort to control himself. "Who can tell me from any other Lyhhrt now? I am alone, I have no Other, I have no accreditation! Only my genome can identify me, and I dare not show myself as long as I am hunted! The worlds of strangers are all too glad to be rid of us, but I cannot get off this one! Yes, I/we ask those like you to do dangerous work, and it may be in rubbish heaps, but we need you most because we trust you. We chose to look like common people now because other species are so frightened and suspicious of us, and come to you again because a fighter who is not a thug is the most valuable person to do this work for us—help me escape from this world and carry a message to the world Khagodis that anyone who threatens to attack them is a vicious criminal and not a representative of our people!"
Ned was taken aback at the longest speech he had ever heard from a Lyhhrt.
"Please! Say that you will consider helping me/us do this! If such an action came to pass Galactic Federation would become involved, there would be threats and embargoes, then military operations, and our already crumbling world would be completely shattered!"
Ned muttered, "I have a wife and children." He was breathing hard, and Zella was still clutching him around theneck, with her fists a knot under his chin. And I'm over-age for a pug. The lesson had been well drummed into him a few hours ago.
"The Khagodi know you from your work there five years ago," the Lyhhrt said. "They owe you favors. And when I/ we can find help we will take care of your wife and children while you are away—and later you and your family for at least as far as the third generation. After that, if things go on as they are doing, we may be incommunicado."
"I don't see how it could get that bad."
"It may seem like a local quarrel to you! But our Councils, which we would never have needed one Cosmic Cycle ago, because we were One, have been torn into factions over the states of individuality, kinds of individuality we can allow among us, what we can afford to accept, and what we must refuse.
"All because of our trade, travels, explorations. Every day we grow a megamultiple of dogmas—why need I tell you this? If we are drawn into any kind of exoplanetary action there will be complete chaos!"
"And I'm to say all that to the Khagodi?" Khagodi were six times his weight and nearly twice his height, and looked like that dinosaur—
"Allosaurus. Say anything you like as long as it keeps Khagodis from believing we will attack them! My Other has been destroyed and I have nowhere else to turn, but I will make myself their hostage."
"But will that work!"
"Your friends Skerow and Hasso will know you, and Spartakos will be our own best represent—"
"One moment, my Maker," Spartakos said in a voice even deeper and warmer than the Lyhhrt's.
"—representative of—what? what?"
"Do you say that you want me to go with you, Maker?"
"Of course! You would be—"
"You are not asking me whether I want to go! I have had a useful existence here finding friends and taking care of the O'e, whom you made and then deserted when you gathered yourselves in. You made me a world-citizen, if you remember, with volition, and I want to stay where I am."
The Lyhhrt seemed thunderstruck. Spartakos was the one being among the worlds that he could not esp, and now was not allowed to touch without permission. The Lyhhrt stared at him for a speechless moment and Spartakos stood straight before him as if his splendor had not dulled.
"I need you, Spartakos," the Lyhhrt said weakly, almost wheedling, "to be our representative of Lyhhr's mastery of crafts Khagodi have depended on for—" He stumbled a bit and then recovered his passion: "Please! If we can carry out this mission we will give you new bearings of sapphire and titanium, replate your head and hands with newly-refined gold, and coat your steel body with rhodium! We will tip your fingers with iridium, give you fingernails of nacre from the finest shells of the hugest pearls in the seas of Xirifor, we will burnish you!!!"
Ned's only thought was if.
Spartakos stood silent for a moment, then said, "Will you also take care of the ones I have been serving?"
After the same scrupulously timed moment, the Lyhhrt said, "I/we will."
He turned to Ned. "Of course, we will give you risk pay also." And as an afterthought, "And we will rebuild that ugly jaw with newly grown skin and real bone."
"If I get back," Ned said. "I'll take you up on it."
"Ned!"
"It's all right, Zel. I have to risk it. I'm damned if I'm going back to Lisboa. This way everybody gets taken care of and that's how it's gotta be." The sloshing of a wave at the sea-wall made him jump, and he stared as a thick hairy armcame over the edge and got a grip, pulled up a soaked head with a draggled beard. "What—"
The Lyhhrt stood up and bent forward; Ned caught a flash of truly alien suspicion and terror that nearly cracked his skull. He gasped, "Watch it, man—that's Geordie, he drinks here!"
Zella cried, "Ned? What is it?" No one else had noticed the flash, and Ned shook his head; he'd learned something else he didn't want to know: that a Lyhhrt could be caught off guard.
The Lyhhrt hunched his workman's shoulders once and then the hand reached out of its sleeve further than an arm ought to go, he gripped the fleshly one, another hairy arm grabbed the railing, and it was one of the tavern brawlers who finally dragged his thick body up and over to stand dripping on the steps.
"Much obliged."
"Any time."
Ned said, "Hey Geordie, where's your friend?"
"Over by the pier waitin till his head stops spinnin!" He pulled himself up the Grottoes steps into shadow, with no idea how narrowly he had missed—what? Being struck down? Dropped back into the sea?
The Lyhhrt, for all his admitted weaknesses, his lack of the usual splendor, once again gave Ned a sense of being bound in deep and uncontrollable forces.
There was a silence, full of thoughts that might have been spoken but were let pass. After a few moments the Lyhhrt broke it.
"Ned Gattes, now you know everything I know. I beg you, as soon as you are able, take a walk at noon in that market up the road from here." He slipped away down the Grottoes stairs toward the darkness.
Ned and Zella did not watch him go but, arm-wrapped,climbed the steps upward toward home and bed. Spartakos looked once at his friends, then turned and followed his maker with footsteps faintly ringing.
Good Night
"If your old man was such a sonofabitch what are you doing here with Brezant?"
It was a house, a hotel, a castle, it could be anything, they'd been travelling in darkness, and now they were here, alone and hidden in the depth of a forest. A place with stucco-effect walls, and its doorways were arched. Tyloe had hardly seen the light of day since he joined up with Brezant. Tyloe and Lorrice had adjoining rooms, too cozy; she'd opened her door into his, and was standing in its arch, her face sharpened by curiosity.
He was just sitting on the edge of his bed digging in his bag for tooth-cleaner. He stood up. "My father wasn't a sonofabitch, he just wouldn't give me room to breathe." Mercifully, she was wearing an impervious helmet, muting the tuning fork; its velvet sheathing looked like crisscrosses of red veins. Her dressing-gown was quilted black satin, an almost too obvious emblem of the darkness of night and the forest around them; somewhere in the depths of forests over the world, ten thousand men. He felt vulnerable, almost virginal, in his paper-white seersucker jams. "Does your ah ... employer know what you think of him?"
"He knows everybody's scared shitless. He likes that."
"I don't like being scared. What does he want from me? So far all I've done is hang around."
"Well ... I think you're sort of a reward for me ... for letting every slimy exo crawl around in my skull ... ."
"What does he think of this?"
"I'm the one with the esp here, and he doesn't say a word."
He stared at her and his hair stood on end. He was profoundly grateful for her helmet. Picturing those thick fingers twisting the fabric. Keeping his face straight, not put off. That's his idea, is it? But he dared not ask that question, or the other one, What about crawling in my skull?
"But he thinks you'll make the business look more respectable, give it some class, you've got height and build, went to a bunch of expensive schools, you can talk right. Not like those greasy lawyers and thick-butt thugs who sit around playing skambi all day."
"I was kicked out of all of those schools."
"But they chipped off some of your edges just the same, didn't they? Otherwise you wouldn't be here."
"What about you? You're here too, and I know you're a registered ESP."
"Ah, yes, one star." She grimaced. "The Registry sent me out here. I thought I was going to be the high-salary hostess of a wonderful luxury entertainment complex, know just what everybody wanted or needed and make sure somebody else got it for them. But Zamos blew up and I fell into a cheap whorehouse where the johns were scared I knew their secrets ... so I was getting beat up in S&M fantasies until Andres found me, and I'm grateful for that, and I'm loyal, even though he is nervewracking. And he's—he's even kind of exciting ... but you—you ran away from all the ones that wouldn't let you breathe. Do you breathe easy here? What are you loyal to?" Stepping forward, closer to him.
He found himself mumbling. "Maybe I never found out. I wanted to be something completely different. Thought I might be a pug and even went to a training school, but with my height I'm more of a target than a weapon and they all went out of business anyway. Like with you. Right now Ithink all I wanted was another chance to start over. Save up a little money and go home."
She said nothing to that, and it occurred to him that staying with Andres Brezant and starting over were mutually exclusive possibilities. Tyloe knew he was naive, but he wasn't stupid. Brezant, after all, had allowed him to see and hear everything. "But this minute I'm loyal to Andres Brezant, and you can tell him whatever you want." Almost, in his mind, "him" with a capital H.
"I'm damned if I'll tell him anything." She grabbed his wrists and took backward steps toward her doorway, pulling him with her; she had strong cool hands, very white on his brown ones. "I'm the one that picked you off the street, and I'm here to make sure you have plenty to do." Drawing him over her threshold, flinging open her black quilted satin to clench him against her nakedness, crinkled jams and all.
What she wanted. No mirrors in these ceilings ... not a Zamos whorehouse, but ... anybody watching?
Copyright © 2002 by Phyllis Gotlieb