Hellspark. Part 8

The excitement was too much for the sprookje. Even as it repeated swift-Kalat's words, it backed hastily away, its cheek-feathers now unmistakably puffed.

"Quietly," said Tocohl. "-That's a moss cloak," she explained. "Your sprookje can obviously tell the difference between living and nonliving. It didn't bite the arachne, after all. And it lost interest in the moss cloak having bitten it once."

She glanced at the pinp.r.i.c.k on her wrist. "I think 'sample tooth' is dead on.-As for Alfvaen, Alfvaen tastes different than the rest of us!"

"Of course," said Alfvaen, "I have Cana's disease!"

"Yes," said Tocohl. (Maggy,) she added privately (tomorrow morning, if necessary, I will have a violent attack of an unidentifiable plague, probably from having been bitten by our fine feathered friend over there. If I have to get this planet quarantined to gain time, I will!)

Sunrise on Flashfever met the omnipresent rainclouds with a rare brilliance. From within swift Kalat's cabin came the sweet, silvery sound of the tyril. Tocohl leaned back against the door frame to appreciate them both before returning her consideration to the compound.

Any creature's behavior is affected by its environment. Like most survey camps Tocohl had seen, this was utilitarian. It was standard operating procedure to sterilize an area of ground for base camp.

Here, the result was thick red mud everywhere. Tocohl thought it odd that no walks had been built, either at ground level or higher. The uniform, nondescript cabins (a small town of them-privacy was a very real need when some forty people had to spend two to ten years together) stood partly raised from the mud on stubby stilts.

Only one of these had been personalized on the exterior. It was painted a lavish blue and decorated with Yn mystic symbols of white and gold. Two pennants hung near the door, drooping heavily with rainwater. That must have belonged to the dead man, Oloitokitok, she thought.

A sprookje splashed through muddy puddles to stop some distance away. Seemingly attracted by the sound of swift-Kalat's tyril, it c.o.c.ked its head to listen, but made no attempt to mimic the spritely dance tune. After a while, it knelt, pressed its hands into the mud. She wondered what it might be doing.

The sprookje's presence reminded Tocohl that she was ill-ill with something unknown but notdebilitating enough to require bed rest. With Maggy's a.s.sistance, she chose a handful of symptoms and set to work initiating them.

By the time she was done, the sprookje also had finished its task, if indeed it had been at one, and stood gracefully. It ran long fingers through the feathers on its knees and shook away some of the clinging mud. Tocohl blinked at it but, for a moment, she could not see clearly.

Still dazed from effort, she was dazzled by the flashwood that ringed the camp, pressing at every length of fence, as if offended by and yet drawn to the barren s.p.a.ce within. Its glitter made the camp more stark by contrast.

As her vision cleared, she saw that the fence was barbed wire, not the electrified barrier favored by survey teams. When the dance tune came to an end, she peeled back the membrane and asked swift-Kalat, "Why barbed wire?"

Swift-Kalat laid his tyril aside and joined her in the doorway. His glittering bracelets and the sun raising iridescent highlights in his black braid shamed the compound as much as the flashwood.

"So much of Flashfever's wildlife uses electricity as an energy source that an electric fence only attracts trouble. Buntec suggested we try that sort. It works quite well."

"I see," said Tocohl.

She judged it time to act, and because swift-Kalat was Jenji and had the traditional reputation for truthfulness, she decided to let him draw his own conclusions. She raised her hand to her forehead and, looking puzzled, let the blood drain from her face as if she might faint.

"Your hand," he said, and caught her wrist to examine the pinp.r.i.c.k she'd received from the sprookje the night before.

The area around the puncture was an angry red and slightly puffed-a matter of dilating the local capillaries. Once done, Tocohl could maintain it indefinitely without strain, despite the effort of concentration it required to initiate.

It had the desired effect. Swift-Kalat pressed gently but firmly at the edges of the swollen area; his fingers left whitened marks. Tocohl winced. "The doctor must see this," said swift-Kalat. Without releasing her hand, he drew her across the compound to the blue cabin. He struck a chime.

"You may enter," said a regal voice from within.

The survey team's doctor sat cross-legged in the center of the room, on a blue mat ornamented with designs of power. Her mouth was broad and rich with hidden smiles, the fine lines at the corners of her eyes could only have come from laughter. Her whole face was designed for joy-and yet she did not smile. Her dark eyes brimmed with anger, although it was not directed at Tocohl or swift-Kalat.

She was plump and deceptively well muscled beneath that plumpness. By swift-Kalat's standards she was, no doubt, overweight; but Tocohl, who was already thinking in Yn, took her on her own culture's terms and found her beautiful.

In her lap lay the rich glitter of a koli thread with its fantastical tangle of knots. Around her lay a chalice, three silver knives, and a strawlike pile of jievnal sticks: she was preparing to enter deep mourning. Tocohl was glad she had decided to act quickly; to interrupt mourning would be risky, even for her.

Tocohl raised both hands in greeting and, as the woman lifted her head and hands to reply in kind, all of Tocohl's hopes for a quarantine vanished. Two long scars slashed across her left cheek and on each index finger she bore a bluestone ring. The doctor was an Yn shaman.

"I am layli-layli calulan," she said, in a cool, quiet voice.

Tocohl inclined her head a fraction of an inch and responded, "I am the tocohli susumo." To give one's true name to an Yn was to give that Yn power over one. Accordingly the h.e.l.lsparks had, from the very beginning of their trade relationships with the Yn, convinced them that no h.e.l.lspark name was more than a t.i.tle, the equivalent of the designations Yn women gave to others. She also took the liberty of ascribing to herself the sound of power, the tiny phoneme i, which gave her status, though nothing like that the doubling i gave layli-layli calulan.

"You lie," said the shaman, in GalLing'.

Swift-Kalat took in his breath with a hiss. His braceleted arm came up as if to ward off a blow, b.u.t.tocohl caught it and quieted him with the sharp negative tap of a finger.

To layli-layli, she said solemnly, "As do you."

(I don't understand,) said the voice in Tocohl's ear.

(Check a tourist guide to Y and I'll fill you in later, Maggy.) Tocohl turned to swift-Kalat. His forehead was beaded with sweat. "It is a ritual greeting," she said.

"I apologize for the mistranslation."

Swift-Kalat jerked his head from one to the other. "In my culture," he said, "it is an insult of the highest order."

"I am aware of that. I said, 'mistranslation,'" Tocohl repeated. "The Yn word means both 'lie' and 'dream'-it only becomes a problem when you try to pick an equivalent in GalLing'. There is no equivalent in GalLing', but 'dream' is much closer to its emotional meaning."

She could see him make a visible effort to replace his emotional reaction with an intellectual one.

Then he pointed to Tocohl's swollen hand. "She was bitten by a sprookje," he began.

Tocohl interrupted. "Your pardon, swift-Kalat, but I must speak to layli-layli calulan alone."

Gratefully, swift-Kalat accepted the dismissal.

When he was gone, layli-layli calulan said, "You are not alone with me."

Tocohl was startled. Either layli-layli calulan was sharp-eyed enough to have seen the muscle twitch that signaled her subvocal exchange with Maggy, or she was relying on her shaman's espabilities.

"No," admitted Tocohl. She tapped the implant. "My partner, the maggy-maggy lynn listens as well."

Because she now spoke Yn, Tocohl used the my that signaled personal relationship rather than property, which in Yn culture included males as well. That was how she thought of Maggy, she realized, as both her partner and female. She had also translated lord into the Yn doubling, quite unintentionally giving her equal status with layli-layli herself. She made a mental note not to introduce Maggy as a demonstration of state-of-the-art after all.

Instead, she said, "I would introduce you properly, but maggy-maggy has no facilities for speech except through me. If you wish to greet her, please do. She will acknowledge the introduction through the vocoder in her arachne later."

Layli-layli calulan made Yn formal greeting to Maggy.

When she was finished, Tocohl crossed her ankles and sat before the Yn shaman. She held out the "injured" hand. Her ruse was still worth the try, but it was not worth upsetting swift-Kalat if she was found out. "I was bitten by a sprookje last night. This morning... well, it's infected, I think, and swift-Kalat tells me that's never happened before."

The shaman lit a jievnal stick and its piney odor filled the small room. She thrust the slender rod into her hair, took Tocohl's hand gently in her own. For a moment, her dark eyes looked puzzled, then she said, "You did this to yourself? To my knowledge, there is no one in the survey team who could have done this for you."

"Could have done what?" said Tocohl with puzzled innocence.

Layli-layli calulan's dark eyes lit suddenly with amus.e.m.e.nt, and Tocohl dropped her gaze before that knowing scrutiny. "All right," she said, "I was trained in the Methven rituals."

"You are an adept," said layli-layli calulan.

"Not adept enough."

Layli-layli released Tocohl's hand and twisted the bluestone ring from her left finger. The rings, by Yn tradition, prevented the accidental release of power. In reality, Tocohl suspected that the rings only worked because the Yns believed they worked-many espabilities needed a channel or focus or, in this case, a control.

The shaman held out her right hand and Tocohl laid her swollen wrist across the waiting palm. The tip of layli-layli's bare finger touched her injury with feathery delicacy.

Just for a moment, for the pure devilment, Tocohl concentrated on maintaining the dilation of the capillaries. Dark eyes met the h.e.l.lspark gold, and a trace of smile touched the corners of layli-layli calulan's broad mouth. Then the heat in Tocohl's wrist cooled, the swelling began to subside.Activated by layli-layli's espability, Tocohl's cells found their normal pattern and set about to regain it. Against the shaman's gift, Tocohl had no chance of maintaining the artificial illness.

The red faded to its original shade. Soon only the pinp.r.i.c.k remained, and that too was healing rapidly.

Layli-layli calulan replaced her ring and said, "You too believe swift-Kalat. So did Oloitokitok."

She took up the koli thread from her lap, and as she spoke, her fingers added knot after intricate knot to its tangled glitter.

"Long before you dreamed your first dream," layli-layli calulan began, in the manner of a mother telling a tale to a child, "there was a man named Oloitokitok who was not like other men. He thought and dreamed like a woman. He dreamed a dream so strong that it took him to a world no woman's eye had ever seen..."

Listening to the Tale of Oloitokitok, Tocohl heard much that someone unfamiliar with Yn culture would have missed. The Yn were so gynocentric that only in the last hundred years had their men been taught to read. For Oloitokitok to have achieved as much as he had, he must have been very special indeed.

He had agreed with swift-Kalat's a.s.sessment of the evidence, and he had chosen to gather evidence of the sprookjes' sentience on his own. Although layli-layli calulan confirmed swift-Kalat's observations about Oloitokitok's manner on the day of his disapperence, Oloitokitok had told no one, not even what he planned to do or where he planned to go.

Tocohl wasn't surprised. To the members of the survey team, Oloitokitok may not have been a token male but, in his own mind, he may have thought himself so. Given partial evidence in favor of the sprookjes' sentience and a belief that no one would credit his opinion, he had quite likely chosen to gather such overwhelming evidence as to present a fait accompli that would force belief.

Now what evidence he might have had was lost with him.

As if echoing Tocohl's thoughts, layli-layli calulan said, her voice harsh, hurt, "The dream was lost with Oloitokitok." With that, she grasped the free ends of the koli thread and gave a slow, steady pull.

One by one, the glittering knots unraveled, until she held only straight bare line shining coldly between her outstretched hands. The tale was ended.

Tocohl gave a sharp upward jerk of her chin. "No," she said, "I keep the dream." She gestured at the string. "It's true a single koli thread leaves no knots, but, alive, Oloitokitok would have knotted his thread with the beings of this world. Despite his death, it is still possible if you wish it."

Layli-layli looked hesitant. Tocohl wondered how important Oloitokitok had been to her. Looking down, she once again saw the chalice, the knives, the jievnal sticks. This time she registered them properly. Layli-layli calulan was preparing to go into deep mourning-something only done for women, never for men.

When she looked up again, layli-layli placed her palms together, ring on ring, and said with quiet defiance, "He was my mate." She used the my for relationship.

Tocohl held out both her hands, the strongest symbol of understanding and agreement available to her in the Yn mode, and clasped layli-layli calulan's wrists in her own supporting grip.

Swift-Kalat was only partially relieved that Tocohl Susumo had sent him away. He needed the time to put his thoughts in order. The last time he had heard someone call another a liar in GalLing', the ensuing fight had resulted in a death, so he was well aware of the potency of the word even in its unreliable Gal-Ling' form. To hear it used as a greeting was more than he could handle. He found himself envying the h.e.l.lsparks their ability to deal with such rupturing of their social order. Having at last settled his thoughts on the matter, intellectually if not emotionally, he now wished he were back inside layli-layli calulan's cabin, listening to the conversation between the two.

"Jaef! Jaef!"

Even though the sound was distorted by the shout from across the compound and a peal of far-off thunder, he knew it had to be Alfvaen. Of all the surveyors, she alone knew and had the right to use his soft-name. She raced toward him, heedless of the muddy water she splashed with every footfall.Breathless, she drew up beside him-too far away, some small portion of his mind noted-and said in GalLing', "Jaef, Kejes-sli's-s readying an automated message capsule... He's s-sending the report to MGE now!"

It was deductively true: beyond her swift-Kalat could see the other surveyors coming from their cabins to gather before Kejesli's quarters. The final report was a matter of ritual, requiring the presence of all those responsible. Except that Oloitokitok would not be present.

Still staring up at him anxiously, Alfvaen swayed suddenly. He shot out a hand to steady her, remembering as he did so that stress aggravated her condition. "Your medication, Alfvaen," he said. She focused with effort on his face, then her eyes widened in an exaggerated manner and she reached for her pouch. He waited only long enough to a.s.sure himself she could stand on her own, then he released her arm to ring the chime beside the door to layli-layli calulan's cabin.

He did not wait for an answer. Instead, he thrust his head inside, to find layli-layli calulan and Tocohl Susumo with their hands clasped.

"Will you help?" Tocohl asked layli-layli calulan. Wanting to hear the answer as much as she, swift-Kalat held his tongue. Layli-layli calulan said, "By quarantining La.s.sti? That would give you time, not necessarily understanding."

She said no more. Swift-Kalat felt he must make the urgency of the query clear. "Alfvaen tells me that Captain Kejesli is preparing an automated message capsule for MGE now," he said.

Tocohl jerked her head back to stare at him. Releasing layli-layli calulan's hands with a few murmured words in another language, Tocohl rose smoothly to her feet. Layli-layli calulan remained as she had been, her stare holding Tocohl in place.

She said, "Should I help creatures that were responsible for Oloitokitok's death?" Spoken as it was in GalLing', the question was directed at him as well, but he had no answer. The question itself was unreliable.

Again Tocohl dealt with the matter on a level he himself would not have been able to. She spoke one word only; the word was, "No."

Catching him by the elbow, she ushered him out, stopped momentarily in her tracks to scan the compound, said, "Ah: Kejesli's quarters?" When he confirmed that, she touched her fingers briefly to the ornate pin at her throat. "One more try," she said, pausing to give Alfvaen a rea.s.suring smile, then she squared her shoulders and strode across the compound, her cloak swirling like heavy mist in the light rain.

Swift-Kalat put his arm around Alfvaen's shoulder, as much to comfort himself as to support her, and led her in the same direction. At the edge of the crowd, he heard Tocohl bark rapid-fire some dozen or so words, each with the sound of a different language to it. Heads turned in succession, and the crowd parted to let her through.

Without Tocohl's skill at linguistic manipulation, swift-Kalat and Alfvaen found themselves stayed at the edge of the crowd. "I must get her to teach me that," Alfvaen said, giggling despite her overall anxiety.

"Teach you what?"

"I only recognized the Sheveschkem 'Cheap tattoos!' but I'll bet all the others were the same-whatever a waiter says to negotiate a crowd with a tray of hot dishes."

He stared down at her, fondly at first, appreciating the joke as she had found it, then he raised his eyes to stare into the distance, deep in consideration.

Tocohl had found something in layli-layli calulan's last phrase that she could answer, and that fact still concerned him. Could the question be answered in Jenji? Could it even be asked in Jenji?

He tried framing it carefully in his mind: Should I help creatures that were responsible for Oloitokitok's death? But death in GalLing' was ambiguous; it could mean "natural death" or "accidental death" or even "murder."

Murder, he thought. He patted Alfvaen's arm absently and released it, to pace away from the noise of the crowd to follow the thought. He himself had told Tocohl the causes given for Oloitokitok's death were unlikely. "What then killed Oloitokitok?" she had asked.That was a question that indeed could be framed in Jenji... One to which he would very much like an answer.

Chapter Six.

THE CEILING IN the captain's quarters had been lowered to conform to Sheveschkem spatial standards-no doubt to the extreme discomfort of most members of the survey team, thought Tocohl.

Generations of sailing had left their mark on Kejesli even here, as a need to keep the ceiling within reach.

Nothing better sustained balance below deck in stormy seas than a flattened palm against a ceiling. Under the circ.u.mstances, Tocohl had to suppress her own impulse to reach for the ceiling. "Captain," she repeated, "all I'm asking is a few months' grace."

Alone with Kejesli, she automatically followed his lead and "danced" Sheveschkem, despite the fact that he spoke GalLing' and she replied in kind. She spoke in GalLing' because Kejesli refused to speak Sheveschkem with her. She wished it weren't so; she might have been more convincing in Sheveschkem.

She continued, "If you send your final report now..."