Part of the choice was easy. The Amaiki of two days ago was dead; it would be like living in a rotting corpse if she tried going back to that one and denying what had happened. But the choice between the other two was far more difficult. Now—especially now—the call of the pack was terrible and powerful; even in the stillness she could hear their shouts and careless laughter, and feel the communion they shared.

  In the end—she laughed at herself when she realized just what had made her choice for her, had to stuff the corner of the quilt in her mouth to muffle that delivering laughter—she put the pack aside also. No noble gesture, no reaching toward the rational, civilized self, no urge to duty convinced her. It was the stink of her body and her yearning for a hot soapy bath. She detested being dirty; her mothers used to tease her about her compulsion to neatness, saying even her diapers had been models of decorum. No long hot baths if she went running under the moons, no crisp fresh tabards every day, no cool clean sheets to slide between each night. As things were right now, it might be days, even as long as a year, before she had all those things again, but she would one day, that she promised herself. She’d never ever have them if she joined the pack. Toward dawn, at peace with herself again, she smiled into the thick darkness and thought of Reran’s sardonic laughter when she told them all of this night, of Muri’s vocal bewilderment, Betaki’s understanding smiles, Kimpri’s snorts and Se-Passhi pressed warm and pliant against her. Her breath came more quickly and raggedly; how could she ever entertain the thought of never seeing them again? It was all this mess around her, she was light-headed from not eating or drinking enough, that had to explain it, but she was honest enough now to admit to herself that there was a part of her that wanted everything the pack offered, that resented the others of the meld even though she loved them all and was bound to them with ties she would not and could not break.

  In the gray light of early morning the wolf pack rode away from the farm without discovering Amaiki or even suspecting she was there. She stayed hidden a full hour after the last sounds faded, then jumped the sled down and set it in the sun so the batteries could finish charging. She got out a clean tabard, then used some of her too rapidly diminishing water supply to scrub her body clean. She climbed to the top pole of the nearest corral fence and sat there letting the sun scour away the last feeling of contamination as it dried her body.

  By the time she’d fixed a hearty breakfast and downed it with several cups of herb tea, she was feeling better than she had in days, not only prepared, but relishing the challenge of dealing with the greedy, thievish and altogether detestable lowlanders between her and Shim Shupat.

  Two days later, with no more shocks to her system, but her opinion of lowlanders thoroughly confirmed, she hummed into the port city, sold the skimsled to a dealer as furtive as he was miserly, and went looking for the hall of the line-mothers and news of her kin.

  Cobarzh On Askalor

  Vrithian

  WITNESS [6]

  SHAMAN ON THE STREET (ROSARO/COBARZH)

  My name is Heomchi Kangavie, but folk here call me Aveyish. Ah yes, that’s local street talk, means “old man” and is suitable enough; as you see I am antique, not to say rotting in place. My father’s name was Kugapolush-je Omudda-popakush, which is a mouthful in any language and means, more or less, he who sees around corners no one else knows is there. A mouthful, yes. When the Ujihadda—a salimsaram word for the hurry-hurry folk—came down the river in their ships with roars in them like that in the belly of a hungry akko-yo, he moved out of the mawlihip, that is to say out of his house and away from wife and other, and sat beneath the Uyaggung tree. To most of the salimsaram he said nothing, but to me he said: Before you are a man, Heomchi, the Kwichi-jai will go away from the forest, the Kwichi-jai will go away from the salimsaram. And after he said that, he said nothing at all. He sat for a day, a night, a day, and sometime in the second night he died. It is so. I swear it. He saw what I would be, what the forest would be, and would have nothing to do with any of that. He couldn’t stop it coming so he stopped himself.

  Me? Oh, awhile I was a student in a church school, then the daughters sent me across the sea to the hurry-hurry men’s homeplace. Awhile I was a student in the university at Inchacobesh outside the capital. Awhile I was a teacher. Awhile I was an author and a lion in the parlors, and the Cabozhi damazelas used to stroke my scales and marvel that a beast could talk like a man and so entertainingly too. But I had no kwi. I was like a tree flood-ripped from the soil that fed me. I went one way wrong, another way wrong, and turn and turn and it was all gone and I was a fat old fool dangling from the fringes of the hurry-hurry world.

  So with one thing and another, here I am.

  It is to laugh, my friend, it is the world’s joke. The hurry men stomped the kwi out of the forest, and turned their back on the devastation they made, and kwi came to dance in the streets with the poor folk, hurry-hurry poor and salimsaram poor and other sorts of poor. The Ujihadda chased it from the forest and it ran here to live beneath their noses.

  That’s one thing.

  The Ujihadda came with their storm-god boasting his dominion, I bow my empty head to him and go out of the forest. Now I sit here and see the undying flying about their mountain, the undying who make small the storm-god who makes nothing of hurry-hurry waitings and all their hurry this way, hurry that. I see the Ujihadda crawl to lick the toes of the undying and remember a forest boy not-quite-crawling to lick hurry-hurry toes and I see the Kwichi-jai dance in the street come rain-blow or bluest sky.

  The undying? They walk like gods among the peoples of all lands. They even look like people, but they never change, never age; when they come strolling among us they put on light like a body suit and who touches them dies. They never bother to warn, what do they care? They care for nothing, we entertain them by our needs and our striving, then they go away again. They prick the bubble of hurry-hurry pride. You see? You see? And kwi lives in the street and laughs.

  Vrithian

  action on the primary line

  Shareem slept restlessly on her pallet in the flier, woke with an aching head, soreness in her hips and shoulders where her weight had pushed them against the thinly padded floor, a stuffy nose from the dust. Muzzy and irritable, annoyed with Aleytys and Kell, she groaned up onto her knees, massaged her temples, patted a yawn, then crawled out of the flier feeling grubby and melancholy and wholly disgruntled with the fate that had brought her to this pass. She straightened and looked around. “Whatever you did, we’re still in one piece.” She stretched, ran her hands through her hair, rubbed bare feet on the cool wiry grass. “Lee,” she called out. “Hoop hoop hoop, hey Lee, breakfast time. Up, my girl, your mama’s hungry.”

  The mewls of the sea birds, the distant mutter of the sea, the drip of water in the fountains, that was all she heard. The house was silent, the gardens quiet, nothing moving, shadows stark in the early sun. Patches of frost lingered in the long shadows, and there was the smell of frost to come in the air, a hint that the short summer was nearing its end. Shareem pulled her toe across the powdery white, feeling the chill of it bite into her flesh, watching the black line her toe drew lengthen and fade as the frost patch faded. Abruptly she felt thrust back into time, into the primitive time where nothing changed with any permanence, where everything recurred again and again. In the seasons of her life it was Kell’s time again, a time of flight and terror, but—or so she told herself and tried to believe it—the old theme was turned on its back, this time Kell would be the driven one. She stared at the silent house, suddenly frightened. “Lee,” she called, urgency in her voice. ‘“Lee!’’

  No answer. Shareem fought panic. Dead? Fled? What … She forced herself to walk slowly toward the house. Slow and calm, she thought, slow and calm, slow and calm, but she was breathing hard and almost running by the time she reached the door. She tore it open, slammed it back against the stone, but she didn’t care, she didn’t care if the noise triggered the menace, she didn’t care about anything but Aleytys. In the middle of the great hall she scrambled to a stop and screamed her daughter’s name.

  No answer but the echoes.

  She tried to control her terror, tried to think. Told herself: Remember, you can precipitate the thing you want to avoid, you can kill Aleytys, kill yourself, reduce house and hold to slag, let Kell win. She hugged her arms across her breasts and tried to calm herself, dragging up the ways she’d learned to shunt aside uncomfortable thoughts and shaming memories. “Ikanom,” she called, her voice still ragged but settling into control. “Ikanom.”

  The android came from the back of the house, moving into the hall with that liquid grace that all of Synkatta’s designs possessed. “You desire, anassa?”

  She cleared her throat. “Where is Aleytys?”

  Ikanom went quiet, consulting the kephalos, at first listening calmly, then turning its head so the planes of its face made a pattern of puzzlement, then it faced Shareem once more. “It is difficult to say, anassa. Within the dome, yes, somewhere, but precisely where is not at all clear.”

  Shareem swallowed, fought to control her fear. “Is she alive?”

  Ikanom went still. Shareem’s throat closed up. Its face made a pattern of puzzlement again. “Kephalos is confused, anassa.”

  Shareem waited, unable to speak.

  “Aleytys archira is living but dormant.”

  Shareem swallowed again, stiffened back and knees. “It is certain?”

  “It is certain, anassa.”

  “Then find her, Ikanom, bring her to me. It’s important. It’s more important than anything kephalos has ever done. Find her. Bring her to me.” She looked around. “Here. I think here. When I see her I’ll know better what to do.”

  “Kephalos searches, anassa. Would you care to eat while you wait?”

  She stared at the shifting planes of the android’s face. How can I eat? She pressed her hand against her middle. I should. I don’t know, yes I’d better. “Yes,” she said. “Bring me … bring me an omelet, toast … um … some shalla juice … um … a pot of cha. Over there.” A small table and two chairs, in a deep alcove whose windows opened onto one of the gardens.

  “In twenty minutes, anassa. If that suits you?”

  “It suits.” ,

  Ikanom left. She walked with slow careful steps across the elaborate parquetry of the hall floor and sat in one of the chairs, her back to the hall so she needn’t see how empty it was, her shakes changing into numbness, fear and anger blunting into passivity. If Aleytys failed last night, this afternoon’s missile could trigger the tumor at the house’s heart. Or tomorrow’s. Or a thousand other things. She didn’t care. Couldn’t care. All she wanted was for this torment to be over, one way or another. If Kell walked in the next moment with a knife to cut her throat, she’d lift her chin to make his task easier.

  Time dragged, each second an eternity. A few eternities later one of the house serviteurs rolled up and began setting out her meal.

  She stared at the food. At first her stomach rebelled, but she forced herself to nibble at a piece of toast and sip at the fruit juice. In a few minutes her revulsion vanished, and her hunger returned so fiercely she had to discipline herself into eating more slowly.

  Cradled by the quiet of the great hall, the hot meal scaring away the worst of her anxieties, she began to recover her composure and back away from that lethargy that was a kind of suicide. She sat a little longer at the table, watching the day brighten outside, expecting to hear at any moment that the kephalos had located Aleytys. After half an hour had slipped away, she got to her feet and began wandering through the house, room to room, kicking along the flow spaces, into closets and storage niches, prying into chests, not admitting to herself she was searching for her daughter’s comatose body, just looking. She poked her nose into every crazy corner of that crazy house and found nothing. I’ll get close enough to her, I’ll feel her, I know I will, she told herself; whether that was true or not, she felt nothing.

  Midafternoon. She was in the bookroom passing a window when she saw the flare of light that meant another missile had been destroyed. She glanced at her ringchron. Right on time. Eyes closed, she listened. Nothing happened. Either it wasn’t supposed to or Aleytys had pulled the thing’s teeth. She dropped into the chair by the desk and sat with her head propped on her hands, thinking. One place left. And I can’t get in there. Househeart. Tumor on the heart. Yes.

  Charged with sudden irrational certainty, she pushed way from the desk and ran from the room. Along the flow-way, down and down, through the cellars, across the vast manufactury with its shrouded machines and stores of raw materials, past the undeployed maze, down down until she bounced off the resilient membrane that protected the househeart. She pressed herself against it; she could see the edge of the control chair—empty—a portion of the floor and console, nothing there. For the first time she felt that Aleytys was truly somewhere nearby; maybe it was imagination, maybe it was her need convincing her to feel what she so desperately wanted to feel, but she knew Aleytys was there. She had to be there. Nowhere else she could be.

  Shareem pushed harder against the membrane. “Kephalos,” she cried, “have you looked within yourself? She is here. I know she is.”

  No response. In a way that was comforting; as long as Aleytys was alive, kephalos’s programming held and it would permit no one else into the house heart, would speak directly to no one but Aleytys. Calmed by the continuing silence, Shareem backed away from the membrane and began the long climb up to the living spaces. Shareem was pacing restlessly about the great hall when Ikanom brought Aleytys up from the cellars. She heard the sound of the door sliding, swung around, caught her breath when she saw what the android held cradled in his arms. She hurried to meet him, touched her daughter’s clammy skin, made a soft distressed sound when she saw her daughter’s drawn face. “Infirmary,” she said, then rushed ahead of him along the flow spaces to the bubble room.

  Ikanom laid Aleytys on the broad couch of the autodoc and stepped back, stood by the door watching as Shareem stripped the stained, filthy clothing off Aleytys, stared in shock at the skeletal body, clicked her tongue at the raw groove in her daughter’s left wrist. “You look like the tail end of a seven-year famine,” she said aloud. Whatever had happened during the night, it had cost Aleytys more than a third of her body weight. Her hair was coming out in handfuls, her skin was roughened and reddened, large patches of dead skin peeled up and fell away at the lightest touch. Her pulse was strong but frighteningly slow; the readouts said she was sunk in a sleep so profound it approached coma. Over her shoulder, Shareem said, “Ikanom, a sponge and warm water.”

  While the android was gone, Shareem looked more closely at the readouts. Extreme fatigue and starvation. No serious cell damage. What there was, Aleytys was repairing as she slept. The autodoc was monitoring this and didn’t seem inclined to interfere. It recommended frequent small meals of thick broth and hot sweetened fruit juices. Hold Aleytys up and let the swallowing reflex take the food down, don’t try to wake her. Keep her clean and comfortable. Nothing else was necessary. She’d wake when she was ready. The autodoc was almost purring as it contemplated its mistress. In spite of her distress, Shareem was amused by the proprietorial pride the machine took in Aleytys. Autodocs were like that. Even Kell’s. She shivered, jumped as Ikanom spoke softly behind her. “The water, anassa.” She took the basin and sponge and began washing the dead skin and dirt from her daughter’s skin.

  * * * *

  The days that followed were the happiest in all her long life. In this strange way she had her baby back, a very large baby to be sure, but that didn’t matter. She washed and fed the sleeping woman, cuddled her, sang to her, told her stories she didn’t hear, gave rein to the deep and possessive joy she took in her daughter. When Aleytys woke, their relationship would return to what it was before, a slowly developing friendship and undemanding affection, but for now she had her baby back, and she reveled in it.

  The missiles kept coming, day after day, six seven eight nine. Same time, right on schedule. And right on schedule kephalos destroyed them. Aleytys stirred and almost woke each time, but Shareem took her daughter’s hand and held it tight, singing softly to her, calming her back into that revivifying sleep.

  On the eleventh day there was no missile, so Aleytys must have done whatever was needed. After feeding Aleytys her fifth cup of broth for the day, she called Ikanom to the infirmary. “There was no missile today,” she said.

  “No, anassa.”

  “There is a bomb or something similar inside kephalos. Aleytys has defused it. I know this because there was no missile today; I know also that Kell understands Aleytys thwarted his plan. Kephalos should be wary these next days before Aleytys wakes.”