INTELLIGENT INDIGENOUS LIFE: None known.

  The Inhabited Regions Of Avosing

  Conversation with more information

  about Pajungg and Avosing

  a short reading with interpolations

  Aleytys’s sitting room without Aleytys, late at night, a few days before the departure of Taggert and Shadith, eventual destination Avosing. Present: HEAD, SHADITH, TAGGERT

  HEAD: Ortizhao pulsed this over from University. Background on Pajunggs. (she ruffles through a pile of fax sheets, draws out a small stack held together with a paperclip, passes it to Taggert, locates another, gives that one to Shadith) You can read all that later. Let me give you the more interesting parts, then if you’ve got questions I can’t answer, I’ll toss them back to him and see what he says, (she lifts the top sheet, runs her eyes down it, begins reading phrases from it) Pajungg is a theocracy. Very stable. Lasted more than a thousand years standard. Very very slow progress in basic science. Every little thing had to be passed through a church board to see if it had the correct theological implications. Before Trader Madaskin found them, they’d reached mid-industrial technology, inching into subatomic physics.

  TAGGERT: (scowling at his bundle of sheets) I’ve had to deal with theocracies before. Touchy. You have to be born into something like that to know how to survive the traps, (pause, slow tapping of fingertips on the sheets) But we won’t be operating on Pajungg, Luck be blessed. Hmm. Colonies. They can be more rigid than the homeworld, or looser, depending on who’s doing the colonizing, fanatics or rebels.

  HEAD: Breathe easier, Tag, you got the rebels. It’s still going to be tricky, (looks at the sheet, reads) On Pajungg, the ordinary believer measures his favor with his god by how lucky he is. The hierarchy exploits this, rakes in a hefty percentage of most incomes; the churches are essentially gambling casinos, (she looks up, laughs) Curb yourself, Tag. Gambling’s a religion with them, (she laughs again as Shadith grimaces at the half-pun, then reads some more) No taxes. Don’t need them. And the richer you are, the holier. Closer to god. Chosen. More or less: Stealing is blasphemy; thieves can be killed by anyone who catches them. Doesn’t rid Pajungg of thieves, just the stupid ones. With that sort of selection, what’s left is very slick indeed. Thieves don’t opt out of the system. Got their own government. The shadow side, as they call it, runs very much like the licit side. They’re heretics, not unbelievers. The Ajin got too close too fast to the top men on the shadow side. Ajin. That’s an earned honorific meaning something like the man with the nimblest of feet and fingers, or super-thief. He left Pajungg for his health, but didn’t leave his ambition behind, (she looks up) Slickest thief on Pajungg, that’s your target.

  TAGGERT: But we’re hunting him on Avosing. Different place, different mix of people, different rules.

  SHADITH: How’d they ever manage to get offworld? Like Taggert, I’ve seen a few theocracies. Stagnant is too mild a world.

  HEAD: (switches sheets, glances at the new page, looks up) Dropped in their laps, (reads) A free trader happened on them, (smiles) Poor dumb son thought he’d found himself a rich new field to plunder, (reads) The Grand Doawai wanted new worlds to rule. He had Madaskin brought before him and questioned about his ship: when the Doawai wasn’t satisfied with the answers he got, he handed Madaskin over to the engiaja-tah, the whips of god. (looks up, no laughter this time, eyes move from Shadith to Taggert and back) There are engiaja on Avosing too—do your best to keep away from them, (a short pause while she reads to the end of the page, slips it onto the bottom of the pile; she reads aloud from the new page) Can’t get answers if you don’t know the right questions. The engiaja are very good at getting answers, they have a lot of experience in the field, but they didn’t know the right questions. He convinced them he had only the dimmest notion how his ship worked, that he knew how to fly it and that was all he bothered to learn, why should he stuff his head with more. They asked what was left of him where they could get ships like his and the training to fly them, the knowledge how to build their own. He told them. Told them how to summon another free-trader. Then they let him die. (new page) Because they knew too much about the malice of the dying, they did not trust his information. Pajungg lifespan averages three hundred years-standard. They are patient. They waited for another trader to show up. Took a hundred years, but one came. Him they treated politely. He sold them computers and software, stole programs for them, kidnapped technicians and sold them as slaves to teach the Pajunggs how to use the technology. And when they’d got all he could give them, the Grand Doawai gave him to the engiaja with instructions to learn all they could about the out-there. Then he sent ships scouting for suitable worlds. Kept starflight technology tight in the church fist. Only engiaja and fanatics fly the starships. (new page) Found four marginally useful worlds, set up colonies on these, then panicked. Pajunggs willing to leave comfortable familiar surroundings for danger and uncertainty were definitely not your ordinary citizen. And once they got settled into the new world, well, a world’s a big place and they were a long long way from home. The problems were different on each world and pulled the colonists in different directions, but always away from the hard hand of the church. About fifty years-standard ago the Grand Doawai shut down all exploration and emigration and began sending out legions of enforcers to impose tight church control on the colonies. He did fairly well—even restless Pajunggs are a pretty calm bunch—then the Ajin showed up on Avosing and started aggravating the itches in the body politic. They couldn’t catch him and they couldn’t stop him; he wasn’t about to sweep the Avosingers into kicking the homeworlders back home; they weren’t going to get excited about any outsider, but they were willing to be amused by his antics and there was enough disaffection for him to collect a sizable following and keep the situation in a slow boil. Avosing’s a peculiar world anyway. Lot of smuggling, the pollen, something fairly odd developing among the born-Avosingers. (she looks up, smiling) Ortizhao has several students there, observing. Smuggled them in, Pajunggs doesn’t know about them, the Avosingers don’t mind them, find their questions funny most of the time. He thinks the Avosingers will kick both the Colonial Authority and the Ajin offworld when they’re ready to act. That’s the general situation you’ll be dropping into Questions?

  SHADITH: Yeah. Colonial Authority’s a joke. Who really runs the place?

  HEAD: Good question. Hard to answer. The grasslanders have developed a loose confederation between the villages, communal sort of thing, no one obviously in authority, but a few men and women who act as judges in disputes, settle questions of property value, act as advisers especially in deals with smugglers. Only consensus to back them, but everyone accepts their pronouncements. Why they’re chosen, how they’re chosen (a shrug), Ortizhao’s students haven’t been able to figure that out, everyone just seems to know who to ask for help. In the forest area—this includes Keama Dusta—amber miners, especially the retired ones, play the same role as the grassland judges. Just about everyone, whatever they do, if they live in or around the forest, they give lip service to the Colonial Authority but go to the nearest miner with their real problems. Ortizhao says he’s beginning to get a glimmer of some organizing force behind all this but doesn’t want to talk about it yet. And there’s always the pollen. That complicates everything. There’s some kind of potion the Avosingers make that’s fairly safe to take in small quantities that seems to nullify some of the worst effects of the pollen, enough to let you move around without falling over your feet. The Pajunggs provided us with some when we insisted. University has been working on it, trying to duplicate it, but it’s an enormously complicated organic. Partly from the liver of a fish the Avosingers won’t identify, partly from an herb mix they say even less about. Doawai’s engiaja have never managed to catch anyone who knew the ingredients, or they wouldn’t talk if they did get caught. Anyway, right now we can’t make it or analyze it, so we do what everyone else does and go by rule of thumb, one gram for every fifty kilos bodyweight every three days. And hope you aren’t allergic to it.

  SHADITH: Uh-huh. Given there’s Kell’s trap waiting for the next Hunter, the Ajin’s probable paranoia about strangers, church enforcers looking for anything they can stomp, a population that doesn’t care a whole helluva for either side and is leery of strangers, and that invisible government, I’d say we go in very carefully and very quietly ….

  TAGGERT: And separately.

  SHADITH: Right. And hope we meet in the middle with our hands around the Ajin’s throat.

  Avosing

  developing a second line of attack

  Shadith brought the lander down about two hours before the local sunset; the globular little ship looked like a giant boulder and had some very sneaky shields. Swardheld was noncommittal about where and from whom he’d purchased that lander and even less forthcoming about why—though Shadith had some well-developed theories about that. When she finally located him, he groused about being left out of the game, but didn’t complain all that much, let her have the flier and looked relieved when she left; he was nosing into something that interested him rather more than Aleytys’s difficulties. Is that what’s coming to us, Shadith wondered, do we drift apart and finally have nothing to say to each other after so many years together?

  She landed on a tiny island, little more than a volcanic peak with touches of green, a few vines crawling up out of the sea, testing out the land, their roots still deep submerged. The pebbly shore was alive with small crustaceans that followed the vines out of the water, noisy with their cricks and clatters. With Linfyar helping her, she carried smaller stones and piled them haphazard about the lander until it looked as much a part of the island as they did, then she and Linfy juggled the shell and its bubble-seal across the groaning shifting vines, launched the shell and spent the straggles of daylight locking the plastic bubble in place, getting wet and battered, giggling and staggering about, beyond all expectation enjoying this misery perhaps because it was the beginning of danger and excitement, perhaps because they were young and healthy and simmering with unused energy.

  Shadith pushed Linfy in through the hatch, tumbled in after him, checked to see the gear was properly tied down, then stretched out on the padded cot and started the motors driving the waterjets. As they eased away from the shore, Linfyar curled up on the other cot, more subdued inside the bubble: it shut off his major sense like a blindfold on a sighted boy. He dabbed at his arms and legs with a spongy towel, leaving for Shadith all worry about where they were going and how they were going to get there.

  The shell ran low in the water, half the time almost submerged, the Lokattor holding them on course. It was a rough jolting ride, the shell tossed up by the wave it was mounting, slammed back down, over and over and over, without respite. The motor that powered the jets was nearly silent, any small sounds it made lost in the scramble of wind and water, but that silence cost them speed—the shell forged steadily ahead, swept up and slammed down, cutting across the long waves as it moved toward the mainland, but it moved no faster than a man’s quick walk. A touch of insurance, perhaps not needed, but Shadith took chances only where there some possibility of payoff. Not far to the north was the large island that held the world’s sole spaceport and most of the on-planet detection equipment, along with a garrison of church enforcers meant to discourage illegal landings such as the one she’d just made. According to Head’s notes, the Pajunggs were dickering with several Companies for satellites and emission sniffers, hoping to cut into the hordes of smugglers hitting the surface of Avosing, drawn like flies by the sweetamber and the drugs distilled by the foresters from local plants, but they wanted the Avosingers to pay for the scanners. The colonists got a good portion of their income from dealing with those smugglers, and a lot of technology the church didn’t want them to have; they weren’t about to put themselves out of business, though they were too wary of the homeworld to be blunt about it; they just dragged their feet, studied the proposed systems with skeptical intensity, made reasonable objections and went on dealing with the smugglers, who had no more difficulty than Shadith evading the limited resources of the Authority. Up the Avosingers, she thought, may their shadows ever increase.

  For four long hours the shell jolted across the ocean, then Shadith brought it nosing into an inlet about a day’s march south of Keama Dusta, found a place where the land sloped to a flat sandy beach and drove the shell up onto the sand.

  Standing in the hatch, she used a flamer on low power to sweep a section of the beach clean of vine and the scurrying life swarming there; with Linfyar perched on top of the bubble, ears twitching, pulsing out exploring whistles, she set up a tingler fence to keep the sand clean and discourage anything hungry that might come out of the forest tempted by the scent of warm meat. I’ll keep my meat on my bones, thank you. She wrinkled her nose at the huge dark trees that came to the edge of the low wall of earth at the back of the beach, brooding in a silence filled with creaks, crackles, rustling leaves, long wavering cries. “Definitely not in the dark,” she said.

  “What?” Linfy slid off the bubble and came to stand beside her.

  “We’ll spend the rest of the night here.”

  “Sure. I’m hungry.”

  “Well, help me unload the shell and hide it. Then we’ll eat.

  Shadith spread her blanket close to the fence and sat looking out across the water. She felt extraordinarily alive. Free. On her own again, in her own body. Operating a scam of sorts, living by her wits and her talents. Speaking of talents, wonder if mindriding works on arthropods, the big ones making all that noise. She reached into the forest and sought out the most organized mind, meaning to slip into it and see what she could learn. Ah, here we go. She started in, gulped in surprise, wrenched herself loose before she was controlled by something operating in that mind, a mind that was so close to true self-awareness, so close to true intelligence, she hadn’t a hope of controlling it even without that other thing. Shaken but fascinated—no hostility in that touch, just curiosity and a cheerful interest—she reached again, more cautiously. Who?

  Who you?

  A giggle tickled through her. Singer, poet, friend. Another giggle.

  Wanting?

  Knowing. Hunting. Lots and lots and lots of things.

  Patience, small voice.

  Why?

  Why not? The presence withdrew.

  “Now that’s a thing.” She pulled her legs up and clasped her arms about them. “Did that really happen or am I zonked in spite of that liver juice?” She giggled and dug at the wet sand with her bare toes. “Me with voices in my head. Funny, uh-huh.”

  In a half-dream, deeply relaxed, she drifted for several hours until, toward dawn, mist rose from the waves and danced for her, silver streamers that shaped themselves into forms she remembered from so long ago she couldn’t count the years, her six sisters, Weavers of Shayalin.

  She gazed at the graceful swaying images, black-and-silver similitudes of Naya, Zayalla, Annethi, Itsaya, Talitt and Sullan. Six sisters, weaving dreams and selling them to anyone who’d buy; from alien eyes, she gazed and could not quite believe in them. Weavers of Shayalin, dancing dreams.

  She watched the figures spin threads from themselves to shape shifting images, icons out of memory, dreams she’d learned too well in that long ago, that time long past.

  But the dance was silent, it lacked the play of the blended voices, was painful in that lack; when she could bear the silence no longer, she began to sing the ancient croon that mated with that dance, faltering at first because the human larynx could not produce all the overtones the Shayalin throat could hold; almost of their own volition her fingers sought out pebbles on the beach; she cupped them in a closed hand and clicked them together. Deep within her she was aware it was all illusion, a creation of her mind and the ambient pollen, but she was willing, more than willing, to accept the show and enjoy this projection of memory outside her head.

  As she worked herself into the croon, shaking the three water-smoothed stones, the images of her sisters grew more detailed; eventually she thought she saw Itsaya wink at her, saw Naya smile, Zaya shake her hips and grin over her shoulder, saw each of the sisters acknowledging her with some characteristic gesture. She let herself sink into the experience, her whole body responding with both joy and sorrow.

  Linfyar slept, hearing nothing.

  The song went on. She moved in the dream dance with her sisters as she had before, odd one out, half the age of the others, the link to store the dance patterns, the shaping words, and pass them on to her children, her six and then one, six sterile daughters and one fertile hatchling that could be either male or female.

  When the dawn was a faint red line on the horizon, when her voice had grown hoarse, her arm weary, she stopped her song and watched the similitudes dissolve into shapeless shreds of mist. As her concentration lapsed, she felt the presence behind her, listening and responding. Laughter and applause flooded over her. The presence retreated. She wondered again if it was just a twist of her imagination, then shook her head. Something different there, an alien quality she could almost taste, yes that was it, a different flavor on the tongue. She watched water and sky redden, then fade to an icy gray with the dawning.

  When the sun was fully up, she woke a reluctant, grumbling Linfyar, handed him a meal pack and began rolling up the blankets, buckling them into the shoulder straps so Linfy could carry them. She collapsed the tingler fence and tucked it in her pack, smoothed her hand down the outside of the harp case, tapped her fingers on the leather, snapped it open, touched the loosened strings, sighed at the dull toneless tunks she produced. “Well, that can wait.”