Hellspark. Part 1

h.e.l.lspark.

Janet Kagan.

1988.

This one's for Eileen Enquist, Lincoln Park Volunteer Hose Company No. 2, Bob Lippman, Warren LeMay, Tom Cleary, and Danny ???, David G. Hartwell, and Rick Sternbach -all of whom came to the rescue- THANK YOU ALL! and for Susan and Gardner, fellow alumni of the hottest writers' workshop in the history of sf; Chris, who had the "unique perspective;"

and Ricky, as always-with love

Sometimes I think if it wasn't for the words, Corporal, I should be very given to talking. There's things To be said which would surprise us if we ever said them.

-Christopher Fry, A Sleep of Prisoners

A Note on Orthography: I have chosen to follow GalLing' usage: italicizing the term layli-layli calulan and capitalizing it only when it begins a sentence. This should serve as a constant reminder that what appears to be a name is rather a designation. Layli-layli calulan's name is unknown to any but a very few of her most trusted intimates. And her world of origin bears the designation (not the name) Y, meaning (very roughly) both "sound of strength" and "source of strength."

Again following GalLing' usage, I do not capitalize the Jenji t.i.tle "swift-" except where it begins a sentence.

-MLL, ed.

Prologue: La.s.sti

SOUTH OF BASE camp, a daisy-clipper skimmed through the flashwood, buffeting the undergrowth into a brilliant display of light. Its beauty was lost on swift-Kalat twis Jalakat. The dazzle was merely one more distraction that might prevent him from finding some trace of Oloitokitok, the survey team's physicist-he had been missing for two days now.

Swift-Kalat, a small slender man with a ruddy complexion and, normally, an easygoing temperament, punched the daisy-clipper's comtab as if it were to blame for Oloitokitok's disappearance. The weighty silver bracelets that on his homeworld of Jenje would have chimed his status here clashed and jangled.

The sound only served to remind him that such expertise was useless in the situation he faced, and he jammed the bracelets almost to his elbows to silence them. When he addressed himself to base camp, his voice was clipped with exhaustion and anger.

"Swift-Kalat and Megeve," he began, identifying himself and his companion, "we have completed the search of sector four." He paused to choose his words with care. In his own language, he would have had no hesitation; his own language would have included in any statement the warning that he was neither suited to this task nor physically reliable because of his weariness. In GalLing', he was unable to speak with such accuracy. He found himself limited to saying: "We've seen nothing we are able to interpret as an indication of Oloitokitok's presence." His eyes flicked to the right, seeking a denial from Timosie Megeve, the Maldeneantine who piloted, but it was as futile as asking the loan of a Bluesippan's knife.

He received only a glare of anger and frustration.

"Nothing in sector four. Acknowledged." The answering voice was low and weary, despite its careful control: it was that of layli-layli calulan, the team's physician-and Oloitokitok's wife. She went on, "Dyxte says there's another storm, a bad one, coming up fast in your area. Return to base and get some rest."

The small screen on the pilot's side lit to show the projected path of the storm. Frowning at it, Timosie Megeve opened his mouth as if to voice an objection, but before he could even begin, layli-layli added, "Doctor's orders."

"Acknowledged," said swift-Kalat wearily. He thumbed the comtab off and closed his eyes.

"She's right, I suppose," said Megeve. "We've been searching for nearly twenty hours." He ran a cream-colored hand through a tangle of gray curls, dropped it to his thigh, and stared at it unseeing.

"We're both so tired we'd likely miss a drab-death's-eye if somebody dropped it into our laps.-And if we miss something we should spot, we're worse than useless."

What Megeve spoke was true, swift-Kalat knew, but he also knew that rest would not come easily: even Oloitokitok's disappearance could not drive the sprookjes from his mind.

Megeve shifted forward, glared at the instrument panel, then thrust out a hand to tap a nail against an indicator. He said something in his own language that was clearly a curse and tapped it again before returning to GalLing'. "One equipment failure after another," he said, still growling. "This wouldn't have happened if that transceiver hadn't failed on us."

"This wouldn't have happened if Tinling Alfvaen had been here," swift-Kalat countered, surprised tofind that the statement approached the proper degree of reliability even in GalLing'.

"Who?-Oh, your serendipitist friend." With a second disgusted snort, Megeve gave up on the indicator and guided the daisy-clipper forward, following the snaky curve of the river back to base camp.

"Maybe, maybe not. A serendipitist isn't all-seeing, you know."

Swift-Kalat made no response, but the thought worried him further.

Allowing three months for the letter he'd sent with the last supply ship to reach Alfvaen and another for Alfvaen to act on it, the polyglot he'd requested was at least four months overdue. Perhaps he had misjudged-not Alfvaen-but Alfvaen's culture, which was so alien to him. Perhaps her custom prevented her from a.s.sisting him. Swift-Kalat had worked with people of differing cultures long enough to be aware that one culture's truth was not necessarily another's.

He called from his memory the image of her smiling face with its exotic pale skin, sharp features, eyes a striking green. She was beautiful to him, but it was her eyes that held him always, even in memory: the fierceness of her eyes when she believed in something or someone. She would have believed the message he'd sent because he had sent it. Even custom could not have prevented her from acting on it, as custom would not have prevented him from aiding her were their situations reversed.

If not custom, then what had delayed her?

He formed the truth for himself: his real fear was for Alfvaen's safety. Perhaps the disease she had contracted on Inumaru was more severe than she, or he, knew.

The shock of the discovery jerked him back to reality. To his added surprise, he found that Megeve had turned the daisy-clipper to a new heading.

"What is it? Can you see something?" Swift-Kalat looked out, forcing himself to alertness.

He saw only a small stream, still swollen from the noon storm. A lush growth of drunken dabblers bobbed and weaved in the rumbling water; at every surge their dead-black leaves came alight with veins of eye-burning amber, the precise shade and glare of an antique sodium light. Beside them, smug erics danced, churning and whirring-each pale white leaf edged, each silver stem spined, with a harsh glitter of actinic blue. There was no sign of Oloitokitok. Blinking to clear his eyes, swift-Kalat turned to Megeve for explanation.

Megeve listened to a faint roll of thunder and said, "I make it twenty minutes before that storm hits here. That means we have enough time to reach your blind and change the tapes. There's always a chance they may show some act of the sprookjes that the captain can credit as intelligent."

It was a faint hope and both of them knew it, but swift-Kalat accepted it gratefully, and Megeve went on, "I know you're concerned about the sprookjes. So was-is-Oloitokitok."

Despite the immediate correction, Megeve's use of the past tense chilled swift-Kalat. GalLing' was an artificial language and it did not have the same accountability as Jenji, but swift-Kalat still reacted sharply when someone misspoke in such a matter.

It affected Megeve almost as strongly. He and Oloitokitok had been close companions since the beginning of the survey. He took a deep breath and went on, "Oloitokitok wants to prove their sentience as much as you-and he's bought them a reprieve. Kejesli won't send his status report while a member of the team is missing. I only wish it hadn't happened this way."

Megeve turned the daisy-clipper across country, threading it through the flashwood, where the turbulence of its wash whipped the Shante damasks from pure white to ripples of silver and stirred the blue-monks mistily alight. To their right, a row of smoldering pines went from black to the dull red glow of embers that had earned them their name. As the craft rose to avoid a deadly Eilo's-kiss, swift-Kalat pointed to a vast, gaunt stand of lightning rods, black and limbless spikes that rose to astonishing heights.

"About thirty meters to the right of that," he said.

Megeve brought the daisy-clipper to a hovering stop in the small patch of flashgra.s.s swift-Kalat indicated and asked, "Shall I go in closer, or will that disturb your wildlife?"

"You wait here," responded swift-Kalat, "I'll be quick." He folded back the transparent membrane, but was stopped by Megeve, who said, "Remember? We're back to Extraordinary Precautions."

Swift-Kalat had indeed forgotten. To lose a team member this late in a preliminary survey implied a danger that had not been catalogued. Until Oloitokitok was found, the team was to take the sameprecautions they had their first few months on La.s.sti.

The first and foremost of those precautions was to seal his 2nd skin. He popped his epaulets to draw out his hood and gloves, laying them across his knees. Once the epaulets were closed, he shook the hood open and coiled his glossy black braid into it; pulling it tight over his head, he ran a finger about his neck to seal it. Even where there was no need for life support canisters, the habit remained; gloves came second because they were clumsy enough to make sealing the hood difficult.

As Megeve double-checked the seams for him, swift-Kalat found himself wondering how much good Oloitokitok's 2nd skin might be doing him. Even a carefully sealed 2nd skin was no proof against electric shock-and shock was La.s.sti's major hazard.

"Sealed," Megeve p.r.o.nounced.

Swift-Kalat thanked him and slid the few feet to the ground, buffeted at a slight slant by the daisy-clipper's ground effect. Around his ankles, flashgra.s.s whipped violently to and fro. Like so many of La.s.sti's plants, it tapped energy from motion piezoelectrically, discharging any excess as alternating flickers of vivid green and white light. Swift-Kalat paused a moment to tune his hood, shielding his eyes from the ever-increasing dazzle the oncoming storm winds raised within the flashwood, and then plunged into its riot of light.

He pushed through a stand of solemnly chiding tick-ticks, thinking as he did so that it was too bad the 2nd skins MGE supplied its employees weren't sophisticated enough to damp his other senses to this world as well. Squat hilarities cackled, competing noisily with the tick-ticks for the attention of a swarm of vikries, La.s.sti's version of the b.u.mblebee.

Some hundred yards in, he reached the clearing where he had erected his blind. Here, flames-of-Veschke and penny-Jannisett unfurled their deep red and copper leaves. Both species used the more conventional method of photosynthesis, and against the storm-brought brilliance of the background, they looked almost black-and deeply restful. He breathed a sigh of relief at the quiet.

And then stopped in his tracks. The clearing should not have been so still, even in the absence of thunder or roar of rain.

The first time the survey team had stepped into this clearing, those small, golden-furred creatures had shrieked out. Oloitokitok had shrieked back at them, startling everyone as much as the creatures themselves had. Laughing, but defiant, Oloitokitok had explained that in his tongue they seemed to be saying, "I don't believe it! Not for a minute!"

"I couldn't let it pa.s.s without comment," he had added. "I had to tell them to believe it."

On each subsequent visit swift-Kalat had paid to the blind, no matter what precautions he had taken, the flock of golden scoffers-for so they'd become in the surveyors' common tongue-had shrieked out their incredulity at his presence.

Now, there was no flash and beat of wings, no scornful shrilling. The only sound was the distant chiding and cackling of plants.

In the uncanny stillness, a sudden whiplike crack against his ankle made swift-Kalat start. He looked down to find he had brushed against a small blue-striped zap-me. The zap-me fed on electricity and obtained it by startling small animals that used a charge for defense. Swift-Kalat did not respond in the desired manner: he gave no shocks. As he watched, the plant patiently reset its whip-tendril to await a creature that would.

Something gold lay at the base of the zap-me; swift-Kalat knelt for a closer look.

It was a golden scoffer. Its bright fur was unmarked, but it was dead. Three more were scattered a few feet beyond. All dead, A flicker of motion partially hidden behind his blind caught his eye. For one brief moment, hope rose to sting his eyes. Here? Oloitokitok here? But before he could shout a query, he saw a flash of scarlet, and a different hope stifled any sound from his throat.

A sprookje!

Swift-Kalat forgot the golden scoffers, forgot the oncoming storm. A crested sprookje! Afraid to disturb it by rising, he moved only his head, craning awkwardly for a better look.

It was humanoid, but neither parody nor deformation of human. It was instead exotically beautiful:tall, slender, and deceptively fragile. Like its fellows at base camp, it was covered with short feathers, subtly patterned in shades of brown. (After dark or in dim light of an overcast, swift-Kalat knew, the feathers would emit a ghostly light.) This sprookje, however, was a type that the survey team had not seen since their first contact with the species nearly three years ago. It was superbly crested in scarlet, and its long, smooth neck rose from a swirling yoke of red and blue feathers.

It knelt on both knees, over something shiny that was hidden from swift-Kalat's view by the art-nouveau tracings of an arabesque vine. Its head dipped rapidly-once, twice, three times-but swift-Kalat was unable to see what it was doing.

At last the sprookje stood and turned to face him. Enormous golden eyes stared at swift-Kalat from the sharp-featured, scarlet face. It opened its beaklike mouth as if to speak, but made no sound. Its tongue glowed an ominous red. Then, feathers ruffling, it backed slowly away and vanished into the flashwood.

Swift-Kalat realized that he had been holding his breath. He exhaled with a sigh and rose, just as a rattle of thunder recalled the need for haste.

Cautiously, he pushed through the heavy underbrush to see what had so interested the sprookje. A large object with the sheen of plastic lay beside his blind, reflecting b.l.o.o.d.y red the flames-of-Veschke it lay among. Scattered around it were a dozen more dead golden scoffers. For a long moment, his mind fought identification of the object.

He closed his eyes. The golden scoffers were scavengers. When swift-Kalat opened his eyes once again, he saw that Oloitokitok was dead. In death, Oloitokitok had silenced the scoffers once and for all.

Megeve and swift-Kalat found Oloitokitok's daisy-clipper on the far side of the stand of lightning rods. They lifted the remains of his body into it and Megeve switched the hovercraft to follow mode.

This bitter parody of a funeral cortege-the only rites Oloitokitok would have until the cause of his death had been ascertained-arrived at base camp on the edge of the breaking storm.

Torrents of rain dimmed even the field of flashgra.s.s. It distorted into unrecognizability the tiny crowd of surveyors who huddled grimly at the main gate. Only layli-layli calulan seemed sharp-edged, in focus, as she came forward to take charge of the body.

No one could find the words to speak to her. A moment later, the crowd disbanded in total silence.

Swift-Kalat sat in the grounded daisy-clipper and watched them all go.

Wearily, he gathered up his specimen bag and fought through the thick red mud of the compound to his cabin.

He taped a record of his sprookje-sighting while it was still fresh in his mind; then, unable to sleep, he took the dead golden scoffers from his specimen bag and spent the next few hours dissecting one. His exhaustion had at last caught up with him. He put the second small corpse to one side and played back his report: the voice that issued from the recorder sounded chilled and shaky.

The thunderstorm pa.s.sed and the rain settled down to a steady drizzle. He fastened the cabin door open-he wanted company but he was too tired to seek it out-and his sprookje entered. (At least, he a.s.sumed this one was "his"; like Gaian cats, each of the sprookjes in camp seemed to favor a particular person.) It was not the company he had hoped for but, unlike most of the other surveyors, swift-Kalat didn't mind the sprookje. His inability to communicate with it was troublesome; its presence was not.

It shook rainwater from its feathers with a controlled shiver.

Swift-Kalat rubbed his eyes. "Don't drip on the floor," he said. As always, he spoke to the sprookje as if it might understand.

The creature rubbed its own silver-blue eyes and blinked at him. "Don't drip on the floor," it said, its Adam's apple bobbing; and swift-Kalat was again disturbed to hear the shakiness in his own voice, this time captured by the sprookje.

It parroted everything he said with the same accuracy and retention as his recorder, and only the beaklike shape of its mouth made its mimicry imperfect.

Swift-Kalat sighed.

The sprookje did likewise. Then it looked down at the table and saw the golden scoffer. It leanedover and opened its mouth.

"Hey! Don't do that!" said swift-Kalat sharply.

The sprookje echoed both his words and his tone and went on as it had intended. Swift-Kalat caught a quick glimpse of the sprookje's "sample tooth"-the single retractable needlelike organ that was ordinarily concealed within its beak-as the sprookje nipped the golden scoffer.

It was an irrational response, he knew, but the sharp thrust of the beak, the bite, always seemed aggressive. The first time they had seen crested sprookjes, van Zoveel had stepped forward to attempt to communicate with them. He had been examined and bitten. And everyone a.s.sumed he was being attacked. The resultant commotion had driven the sprookjes away.

Now he reacted not only to that, but to the thought of the dead golden scoffers as well. Eating Oloitokitok's flesh had poisoned them, as eating from the humans' garbage dump had poisoned the scavengers near base camp. With considerable relief, swift-Kalat remembered that he'd been bitten by the sprookje when it first arrived at base camp, with no ill effects to either of them.

The sprookje lifted its brown cheek-feathers slightly, as if in surprise; then it walked away, out the door and out into La.s.sti's brilliant dusk. Swift-Kalat was too tired to follow, too tired to wonder at the sprookje's behavior. He sank into his chair, closed his eyes, and lay his head on his arms just for a moment...

When he awoke, it was to the sound of thunder and the spray of rain streaming through the open door. Stiffly, he crossed the room and drew the opaque membrane closed. Reflected patterns of dull yellow light made him turn to the computer in the corner-he donned his spectacles and reluctantly called up the message the computer was holding for him.

The image of Ruurd van Zoveel, the survey team's polyglot, sprang into view. Van Zoveel was a large, solidly built man with a smokewood face, s.h.a.ggy dark blond hair, and s.h.a.ggier sideburns. Even seated before his computer console to tape a message, he was in constant motion. His gaudily beribboned tunic rippled with his agitation.

He spoke Jenji without a trace of accent, however, and he spoke it with a high degree of reliability.

Swift-Kalat closed his eyes and found comfort in the sounds of his native tongue that he did not find in the content of the message.

"Layli-layli calulan has finished the autopsy: she concludes that Oloitokitok died of heart failure due to severe electric shock. I saw what I took to be burns on his chest and shoulder. His locator had been fused; Megeve says in that condition even Oloitokitok's death wouldn't have set it off. The captain concludes that Oloitokitok startled a shocker-"

At that, swift-Kalat found himself frowning. Several of the indigenous predators used an electric charge to stun or kill their prey but the idea that a live-wire or a blitzen would mistake Oloitokitok for prey seemed out of keeping with what he knew of the habits of the creatures the team had dubbed shockers. A charger, perhaps? Unlikely in that area of the flashwood...

"-or perhaps was simply struck by lightning. The captain has therefore lifted Extraordinary Precautions."

Something in van Zoveel's voice made swift-Kalat open his eyes. Van Zoveel brushed his sideburns anxiously, then he swallowed hard and finished, "There will be no final rites-at least, no public ones.

Layli-layli calulan's culture restricts death rites to the surviving family, in private."

Apparently, layli-layli had broken one of the taboos of van Zoveel's culture. For the sake of understanding, swift-Kalat would have to look into the matter.