“I think you’re absolutely wonderful, oh man.” Giggling, she dropped into a deep curtsy. “I worship at your shrine.”

  “Snip.”

  “Hush, you.” She looked at the case. “What else you got in there?”

  With a rumbling chuckle, big hands moving swiftly and surely, he assembled a multiphasic probe and lockpick, assorted alarm sensors and overrides. The Compleat Burglar Kit guaranteed to get the possessor into most places he had no business being.

  Taggert glanced at the readout cupped in his palm, thrust out his other hand. Shadith stopped Linfyar, shifted her grip on the psychprobe’s case, watched Taggert dig out one of the overrides. He set the squat cylinder in the center of the tunnel, eased back and stood waiting, his eyes on the readout.

  Linfyar curled up his ears and pressed himself against Shadith.

  Taggert began pacing back and forth, watching the light bead hop about on the face of the readout. After a tense few minutes, he walked back to Shadith. “Too much,” he muttered. “Ajin’s got that hole covered like an arkoutch expecting a cold winter.

  “What’s the problem?”

  “Field isn’t wide enough.”

  “Two?”

  “Can’t. They’d cancel. Maybe we’d better.”

  “Cancel? No.” She went silent, frowning at the cylinder, trying to remember all she knew about that sort of override. Pulsed subsonics. Supposed to overwhelm the alarm, confuse it, keep it too occupied with what was happening to its own circuits to notice the sound patterns it was supposed to listen for. Obsolete alarm system, too easily countered. Couldn’t be Kell’s work. Must be something the Ajin had bought for himself. Got cheated too. Or maybe not. “All this stone?”

  “Could be.”

  “Mmm. Linfy.”

  He stirred against her.

  “I know it hurts your ears, but do you think you can listen to that thing, then make the same kind of pulses, only louder? Well, louder to you—we don’t hear them.”

  His mouth shifted through many shapes, his ears unfurled a little. He moved few steps away from her and stood poised like a deer on the verge of flight. He stood like that, ears full out, body quivering, one moment, two. Then he flashed a grin at her. He nodded, opened his mouth. His throat began to quiver like a bird in full song.

  Taggert glanced at the bead, lifted his brows, then nodded to Shadith and started walking down the tunnel.

  Shadith followed slowly, supporting Linfyar with one arm, clutching the probe case with the other, slowly slowly along the dark tunnel diving into the mountain’s rock, moist with seepage, thick with cold musty smells, slowly slowly, every scrape a thunder in her ears, slowly slowly, Linfyar straining, shaking, draining himself into the pulsing subsonics, slowly slowly, Taggert stalking ahead of them, his eyes on the light bead, laying another override, Linfyar struggling to hold the match, fitting himself into the pulses as subtly as he fit his whistles into her croons.

  The door to the Ajin’s room. Ponderous. Laminated plasmeta. Complex internal lock. Shadith stretched out her mindrider senses, felt for the Ajin, found him, a ghostly touch, just enough to recognize him. As far as she could tell (he was at the limit of her perceptions), he was sleeping, sunk in the slough between dream states. Taggert knelt by the lock, examined its external parts without touching them, then eased the electronic lockpick over it. He sat on his heels and waited.

  The pick flashed through families of settings.

  Linfyar’s fingers dug into Shadith’s arm, and he sagged heavily against her, but he kept the pulses surging out of his reedy throat.

  The door started sliding open.

  Taggert snatched off his pick and stepped inside, alert, ready to counter anything set to jump him, though Shadith had told him the Ajin didn’t trust any of his men enough to leave them loose in those rooms, preferring to guard himself with more incorruptible mechanicals.

  Shadith half-lifted Linfyar into the room as the door began sliding shut. When she let go, he coughed and dropped in a heap; she set the probe case down, knelt beside him, rested his head and shoulders against her thigh. “You all right?”

  He massaged his throat, managed a weak grin, amplified it with a nod that made a soft brushing sound on the black cloth of her trousers. He didn’t try to speak. She could feel his fierce pride. They wouldn’t be here without him, and he knew it.

  Shadith tapped his nose. “Yeah, you’re doing fine, eh, imp?”

  He nodded again, pushed away from her, using her shoulder as a prop to help him get back on his feet. With a little shake of his body he brushed away fatigue and stood with ears twitching, waiting for what happened next with the exuberant anticipation he maintained in spite of all hardship.

  She laughed softly, got to her feet. “Wait here if you want, Linfy. This shouldn’t take long now.”

  He produced a faint scornful hiss and moved to join Taggert, who’d been prowling about the room watching the bead dance in his readout. When Shadith came over to him he murmured, “Dampers in the wall. No hand weapons will work in here.” He smiled at her, his pale blue eyes shining with a gentle amusement. “Just as well we didn’t bring any. He always leave the lights on?”

  “Not in the bedrooms, but out here?” She shrugged. “I suppose. The one night I spent here, I didn’t go exploring.”

  “Right. Which way to the bedroom?” Shadith started past him, but he caught her shoulder, stopped her. “Together. In case of surprises.”

  With Taggert keeping a close eye on the readout and Linfyar coming close behind, Shadith led them to the door into the Ajin’s bedroom. No alarms, more dampers in the walls, some weapons, but they lay quiet; whatever the three of them were doing, it wasn’t enough to trip their triggers. Behind his locked door the Ajin slept the sleep of the just man he knew himself to be, serenely trusting in the gadgets he’d installed to ensure his security, undisturbed by what was happening around him. Shadith found she was looking forward to seeing his consternation when he discovered he’d been trapped by the girl child he thought he had cowed; she savored every moment of his quiet sleep. When Taggert knelt before the lock, she stepped aside laughing to herself; if he was the Ajin, he wouldn’t trust her with such delicate work, but because he was Tag, she knew he was only indulging himself in one of his favorite activities, teasing a lock open, not thinking of her at all. At least the Ajin’s paranoia isn’t rubbing off on me.

  He stood, touched the latch and waited until the door was completely open, then moved the readout along the posts and lintel, being careful not to move into the doorspace. No reaction. He slipped the readout into his pocket, turned to Shadith, raised his brows. She shook her head vigorously, moved to stand beside him looking into the bedroom.

  It was dark but the darkness was not complete. Glow strips stuck low on the walls provided a bluish light that was sufficient to show shapes without detail. The Ajin lay on his back, his arms flung out, his chest bare, blankets pushed into a crumpled roll across his waist. He was profoundly asleep. Taggert handed her one of the extensible claws, took out a sleep-gas canister and the tangler, transferred the tangler to his left hand, lobbed the canister onto the bed, tensing as it passed through the doorway. Nothing happened. The canister plopped down beside the Ajin’s shoulder and popped open. Taggert slapped Shadith’s shoulder lightly, grinned at her. She squeezed his hand, then listened to the Ajin’s mind, felt the rhythms change from sleep into unconsciousness. Taggert held up the tangler. She nodded. Holding her breath but not as tense as she’d been before he’d thrown the canister, she pointed the rod at the Ajin, touched the trigger. The rod shivered against her hand; the end shot out and out until the knob was bouncing lightly up and down above the sleeper’s stomach. She twisted the base. The claws sprang out, opening like the segments of an orange. Working with extreme care, she lowered them until they were nearly touching the blanket; she eased the needle points into the blanket, twisted the claws shut and drew the blanket off the bed, moving slowly because she didn’t want to touch his flesh, she didn’t know why, but she listened to the impulses and kept the pole clear of him. She opened the claw, dropped the blanket on the floor, retracted the pole.

  “What’s that around his neck?” Taggert’s voice was low, but he’d given up whispering.

  “Nothing to do with the trap. At least I think it isn’t. It’s supposed to be a control; he planted a thermit grenade in my back that he said would explode if I went farther than a kilometer from him. Or he died. No problem. Friend of mine cut the grenade out yesterday.”

  “Nice timing.”

  “Meant to be.”

  “I don’t see anything else on him. Not even a ring. He was wearing one yesterday.”

  “On the table by the bed, I think—at least, there’s something small there.”

  “Careless, if that’s it.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Better get on with the fishing.” He transferred the tangler to his right hand, narrowed his eyes, swung his arm a few times to get the feel, then tossed the tangler onto the Ajin’s chest. The sticky translucent threads whipped out and bound themselves around his arms, his neck, winding down around his pelvis and legs. Taggert sighed and took out another extensible claw. “You get a wrist, I’ll go for an ankle, then we reel him in.”

  Shadith nodded. The feeling came again stronger than before. Don’t touch. She ignored it, extended the pole and positioned the claw over the Ajin’s wrist. A click of Taggert’s tongue told her he was ready. She lowered her claw as he lowered his, edged the prongs under and over the wrist, then twisted them tight, the needle points sinking into the Ajin’s flesh.

  “Right.” The word was an explosion in her ear. “Pull!”

  Together she and Taggert began hauling the unconscious man along the bed.

  There was an odd humming in her ears. The faint blue light seemed to waver. One moment she could feel the butt of the pole pressed against her hand, then there was nothing. Nothing there. No light either. She shouted and could not hear her voice. A horrible sucking feeling. Then she was drifting in grayness, nothing but grayness, no smells, nothing to touch, no sounds not even the sounds of her own body, nothing ….

  Cobarzh On Askalor

  Vrithian

  WITNESS [5]

  A CLERK IN THE CUSTOMS HOUSE IN COBARZH (A COLONY OF CABOZH)

  My name is Peixen. I work in the customs office. I have a very important position with five men under my direction. Yes, it is a very interesting position, there are always things happening about me, my hand is on the nerves of government, I am like a doctor protecting the body of the state, keeping out of it those things that will make the body ill. Oh thank you, I have always thought I could be a writer if I had the time, a poet even. You should hear the stories that come through my office. Why, just a day ago—ah-ah, no, my friend, that is a secret, you can’t entice it from me; I am loyal to the Governor and too sharp for you. Oh, that’s all right. Why yes, I’ll have another. A quechax this time, since you’re buying. What’s the strangest thing I’ve seen? Well, let me think. Yes, I can tell this one. There was this turezxh from somewhere way back in the forest, didn’t even know what shoes were, hadn’t had a bath since he was hatched, yes, a native, one of the orpetzh that infest this place, with a head thicker than his stink. Get them all the time, just make trouble, no more than beasts mat can walk about like men, that’s what they are, don’t see why the government doesn’t treat them like beasts, sterilize the males and set the females and the others to doing something useful, no, no, that’s not a criticism of the government, certainly not, who am I to tell the exalted what to do, they must have their reasons, no no, never say I criticize. Oh yes, thank you, I will have another. A warm apology for sure. Another quechax, crizhao, and don’t take so long about h this time or I’ll complain to your employer. Where was I? Oh, yes, thank you. This turezxh. He wanted to go to Fospor, at least that was what we got out of him. He had this big wicker basket and he didn’t want to open it. In the end we had to call the guard to hold him. Turned out in the basket was the biggest snake you ever saw. Big around as a man’s thigh, and heavy! You wouldn’t believe how heavy that obresh was, all wrapped up in coils until it filled the whole basket. Well, I ask him why is he taking that thing to Fospor and he says a cousin of his has a circus there and wants the snake to make the Fospri gape. That sounds reasonable enough, doesn’t it? But I didn’t like all the fuss he made about opening the basket. I said to myself he’s hiding something. So I made him take the creature out of the basket and stretch it on the floor. You would have laughed to see how nervous my underclerks were, backing away, looking over the counter with just their eyes showing. Even the guards backed off. I’m sure they felt foolish a bit later, because the snake was sleepy as a raw recruit back from his first leave. Thank you. I think the comparison is very apt. There was nothing in the basket but some leaves and grasses, I had them emptied onto the floor and went through them with a stick, you never can tell what vermin these dirty turezxh will bring with them. Nothing there. Even the captain of the guards wanted to let the mushhead go with his torpid beast, but I smelled something wrong. Yes, I’ve got a good nose for that sort of thing. There was a lump about halfway along the obresh’s body. I ask the turezxh about the lump, he says it was a porzao he fed the snake so it would stay quiet. And that seems reasonable, doesn’t it? Wouldn’t you believe that? No, you’re right. I didn’t. My nose was telling me there was something there, something more. The guard captain wouldn’t touch the obrezh, but I take his sword and slice open the snake and there’s this porzao inside all right, and inside the porzao there’s a sack with fifteen emeralds in it, big enough to choke a man. Well, the turezxh he tried to run off when he saw that, but the guards jumped him. I did it to serve my country, it was simply my duty, you know, but to show you what splendid types they are who rule us, they awarded me a bonus and an extra day off when they didn’t have to do any such thing. The turezxh? The governor was more merciful than I would have been, just cut his thieving hands off and let him go find a living how he could. Just goes to show I was right a while back, should clean them all out of the jungle, get rid of them, worthless beasts. Some softheads say those beasts, nothings like that, they got rights, some of those traitors in the ‘versity, sitting there with their books and salaries paid by the government, paid out of taxes folk like you and me pay, traitors got no gratitude, no feel for real life, looking down their stupid noses at an honest working man who could be a poet or writer if he wanted to, anytime he wanted to, if he could take the time from his work, and it’s important work too, keeping out the filth that would corrupt sosh … sozheety … you know. Better poet even so than them, a man, you bet, not a gutlesh ol’ woman …. Got to go? Sh … sorry ‘bout that … good company’s h … hard to fin’ … Tempestao ble … blesh you ‘n y’r f mly.

  Vrithian

  action on the periphery [4]

  Dum Ymori. One hour from the dome. Silent, deserted, a mourning wind blowing dead leaves into broken dead houses. Looted houses. Muri said it, wolves on two legs prowling. Amaiki tried to grieve for the lost life of the Dum as she guided the skimsled past the empty houses, but all she could feel now was her own fear. The last time she reached to touch her mate-meld, she’d sensed anger and frustration and alarm overlaying their welcome-warmth; then she thought that blend was aimed at Hyaroll, now she realized how blind she’d been; this was what they’d been living with, this desolation and danger. That they’d waited as long as they had was a measure of their love for her. She felt shamed by how lightly she’d held that love, by the anger she’d felt when they went off without her. Sitting comfortable and well fed—and safe—in Hyaroll’s dome, she hadn’t the least notion what was happening outside, what the little less than two years she’d been away had done to the uplands and the people living there.

  She left Ymori behind and moved off the produce road into the fields, but there were too many fences; they slowed her badly and she was afraid of getting lost. She dug into the toolkit and found the graft tool, adjusted the cutting beam until it reached out a body length from her, then she took the sled back to the road, the tool ready for use if anything came after her.

  The rest of the day she rode stiffly alert along the gradual sweep of the road, circling wide about two more deserted villages, seeing no living thing except a few raptors gliding high overhead. Death and desolation. How could he let it happen? It must have been coming for years; all this couldn’t happen overnight. Could it? She could remember water getting short, the planted acreage shrinking gradually, year by year, but the families were still comfortable, everyone had enough to eat and hope that next year would be better. The rains came, though they were shorter and lighter each year. Life had diminished a little when the lot chose her to be one of the fifteen servers, but with a bit of care there was enough to go around for everyone, sometimes more than enough.

  The day darkened swiftly once the sun went down; because of her late start she’d planned to travel all night, but after she’d gone off the road twice and nearly wrecked the sled, she crept along until she came to an abandoned farm. Afraid to sleep in the house, since that seemed the most obvious point of attack, she found an empty shed (it smelled like a tedo cote, though her flashlight showed her walls and floor swept carefully clean; not a wisp of straw or a tangle of fleece left behind) whose walls were tight enough to keep any light from getting out and betraying her presence. She ate a cold meal, heated water for tea on the portastove, sat in the doorway sipping at the tea, watching a waxing Araxos swim across the faint glow of the skymist. The difficulty, she thought, doesn’t lie in the amount of light, but in how it is focused. I hadn’t noticed before how much I depend on shadows to judge distances. She wrapped her hands about the cup, the warmth sliding down her arms to join the warmth in her belly. In the distance one edinga howled at the moon, then others joined the chorus. She shivered and gulped at the tea, emptying the cup, desperately glad she needn’t force herself farther into that half-dark with its deceptive shadows. She felt her alone-ness in her bones and wanted to howl like the edinga; she’d never been so alone in her life, not ever; even in the dome there was a naish to curl against when the ache of apartness bit too deep. No naish here. If I stay like this any longer, I certainly will start howling. She pushed onto her feet, feeling every ache in every weary muscle of her body. I wonder if Hyaroll will bother looking for me … who’s to remind him … not the odd folk. She patted the earth with her foot, a reverent caress. Earth mother bless them and what they are trying. She pulled the door shut; there was no catch on the inside, but she pushed the sled across the opening and scattered metal tools along it so she’d have their rattle to warn her if something or someone tried to get inside. In the light of the flash she snapped her sleep-pad out of its roll, wound a quilt around her and lay down clutching the graft tool. With weary patience she disciplined her whirling thoughts, and once the quilt warmed the chill out of her aching body, she dropped into a heavy sleep.