You need more rest, Khorii,” Jaya said. “You’ve been working much too hard if you think I am ever going to let that thug back on my ship.”
“We need him where we can keep an eye on him,” Khorii replied.
“And this time we can take restraints from the police station. Jalonzo wants to go, too, along with a couple of his larger gaming friends. Marl will have an entire jail to himself here.”
Captain Bates hadn’t said anything as Khorii outlined her plan to Jaya. Khorii, Jaya, Captain Bates, and Sesseli sat around one of the round tables in the common room while Abuelita clinked dishes in the kitchen. Each of them had a fragrant and steaming cup of chocolate in front of her, and Jaya, Captain Bates, and Sesseli each had a cinnamon pastry. The scent from the large batch Abuelita had baked earlier still filled the common room. She made dozens of batches at a time actually, something easily accomplished in the cafeteria’s industrial kitchen. Later, people would come and pick up the rolls and other foods Abuelita prepared and take them around to places where survivors gathered. At midmorning, additional people, mostly women and girls but some of the boys and a couple of men as well, arrived to assist Abuelita in cooking food that would sustain anyone who came to the cafeteria from midday until darkness fell. Some of this cooking would also be distributed among those who could not easily walk. There were other kitchens in the area, in former restaurants, schools, and churches. Soon the people helping Abuelita would leave to staff those feeding stations, but for now, with everyone still so frightened and grieving, it was comforting to come to one place to find a meal and so many other survivors. The Linyaari rescue teams had suggested this sort of arrangement be adopted on other worlds, in other cities and towns.
Khorii used the roof garden for her own grazing, sure that no one had died or was buried there. It was small but easy to maintain, with its own water supply and plenty of sunshine. Well, part of the day. The funny thing about the rainy season was that usually the sky was sunny and warm during the early part of the day, but in midafternoon the rain began and by evening at the latest, the rains turned to violent storms.
“I think Khorii has a good point,” Captain Bates said. Her wavy brown hair was pulled back at the nape of her neck, around which she wore a stunning beaded necklace with long, sparkling fringes that matched her earrings. It was a startling transformation since none of them had ever seen their astrophysics and astral navigation teacher in anything but utilitarian clothing before. But it turned out that for most of her life before she was a teacher, Captain Bates had been making beautiful things when she finished the prodigious amount of work she seemed to accomplish each day. “I don’t need much sleep,” she told them. “So I need something quiet to do.”
Before the last Linyaari rescue ship took Khorii on her mission, the captain had come to her with a sheepish expression on her face. “This is very selfish of me, I know, but I need you to cleanse a place for me. It’s not very large, but it’s something I need, and I think it can be used to help some of the survivors as well.”
Khorii had felt very low at that time, since her parents and Captain Becker had gone into self-imposed exile among the Ancestors on Vhiliinyar. Asha Bates had led her to a small shop on the fringes of the city, between the downtown district and the factories, warehouses, and residential facilities where Jalonzo and Abuelita had lived prior to the plague.
“I was helping the team with search and rescue in the areas your parents couldn’t cover, Khorii, driving a supply shuttle with fresh untainted grasses and water for them if they needed it. While they were working in an apartment building, I noticed a shop next door. I only read a little Spandard, but the hanks of beads in the window told me what was sold there. I was embarrassed to ask the team to cleanse the shop for me when they had so much to do to help others. But, well, making things is therapeutic. When I was a kid, my mother and I got parked on the terraformed moon the colonists call the Bosque Redondo. Most of the settlers were Dine and Lakota people, tribal people who were resettled there from Old Terra. Their original homelands were among the first to be rendered uninhabitable, long before the rest of the planet. Anyway, they named the moon after a historic prison camp where the Dine had once been forced to live far from their homeland. But it wasn’t intended to be a prison, and people could bring with them whatever they liked. High-tech stuff was useless to most of them since the power supplies were limited there, so they brought the low-tech traditional things their ancestors had used. This time, though, they were able to bring the means to create and manufacture the materials they needed to make beads and fabrics as well. It turned out to be one of the best places I ever lived. If I had been the crying type, I’d have cried when we left there. My mother was busy fascinating the local men and cheating them at cards and dice; but the women felt sorry for me and taught me to bead and weave, sew blankets and quilts. I wanted to teach classes to the kids at Maganos, but Phador thought beading was beneath the dignity of an astrophysics instructor.”
Cleansing the shop hadn’t actually required much effort since Khorii had found ways to decontaminate large numbers of things and heal large numbers of people using water to conduct the power of her horn. As it turned out, most of the shop wasn’t contaminated anyway. Khorii saw the blue dots she identified with plague hovering around only certain displays in the store. Sesseli, young enough to be immune to the hormone-related disease, happily hauled plasgrass baskets full of glittering crystals, glowing pearls, and shiny seed beads as well as trays of intricate creations Captain Bates said were made with the use of a torch. Each basket was then immersed in the old-fashioned bathtub of the shop’s lavatory. Like many shops in many places, it had once been a home, and the new owners left the sanitary facilities as they were. Khorii dipped her horn in the water, purifying it, and the cleansing was transferred to the basketsful of beads as well. The shop’s books, videos, computer, and some bead looms were the only items that needed individual attention.
The next morning, Captain Bates had presented Khorii with a beautiful blue-and-silver bracelet beaded with the pattern of the constellations visible in the night sky of Vhiliinyar. “I got the rescue team to pull up the configuration on their computer,” the captain told her. “This way you will be able to look at the same stars as your folks.”
Khorii did not wear it all the time because she did not wish to dirty it while she was working. She kept it in her travel pack and sometimes before she went to sleep pulled it out to admire it, pretending for a moment that the silver beads were the stars of Vhiliinyar and that they would beam her love and longing to her family.
Jaya looked balky for a moment, but she trusted Captain Bates and Khorii, so she finally said, “Okay. I guess we’d better collect Marl and get it over with so Khorii will have a chance to rest up before she has to rejoin the rescue teams again. But I want him locked up tight and guarded all the time.”
“My thoughts exactly,” Captain Bates agreed.
Dinero Grande was a short commuter hop from Corazon, and the Mana was fueled and ready to go with all hands on board by midafternoon.
Captain Bates and Jaya landed in the private space dock of La Villa de Estrella, house of stars, the mansion Marl Fidd had marked as his own share of the booty. He had forced Khorii to go with him so that she could cleanse the house and anything else he wanted, but she had outsmarted him, then outrun him, leaving him shaking his fist at Captain Bates’s shuttle as it left him behind. Had he not been so awful, she’d have felt bad that she had not thought to rescue him before now, but somehow even suggesting to the Linyaari teams that there might be anyone in this area had totally slipped her mind, what with all of the other people she had to help.
She had cleared the kitchen for him, so if he was smart, and he was, he would plant himself in there and wait for help. He would have enough to eat and drink and could sleep on the floor, but unless he got desperate enough to risk infection from the bodies littering other rooms of the villa, he was trapped with no shelter except one that offered a full fridge and a nice wine cellar.
His lodgings on Corazon would be a big comedown.
The recapture was uneventful. Once within Dinero Grande’s orbit, the Mana dispatched the roomiest of the three shuttles aboard, Elviiz at the helm.
With Khorii leading the way, they left the shuttle and entered the opulent mansion, where she, Elviiz, Hap, Jalonzo, and his burly gaming buddies made their way through the grand entryway and connecting halls to the kitchen.
Khorii blinked incredulously. There were no longer any of the blue plague dots sparkling in the air. She hoped Marl hadn’t figured it out that apparently she had either cleared the place better than she had believed or that it had somehow dissipated. But if the plague had vanished, it was the only contaminant in the air that had. The place was rotten with the stench of decay from the decomposing bodies in other rooms.
To her relief, they found Marl in a drunken stupor on the kitchen floor. He was a far cry from the vain and elegant young tough she had deserted by hopping into the shuttle.
He’d grown fat from having nothing to do but eat the rich food stored in the kitchen and drink the wine she’d glimpsed in storage racks along the walls. His dark hair, formerly close-cut, was long and matted. He stank. There was much to drink in the kitchen but since he could not reach the villa’s generator from the kitchen or any of the places he had seen Khorii clear, he had not been able to reactivate the water pump.
One corner of the room he had used as a toilet and in other areas he had vomited. Many times.
Surprising the others, who regarded the sleeping thug with distaste, Jalonzo ignored the stench and knelt beside him, tapping him on the shoulder. “Hey, amigo, wake up.” When Marl grumbled, sputtered, and drooled but otherwise made no response, Jalonzo, who had organized care for plague victims in an auditorium full of his gaming friends and become used to the foulness of human illness, maneuvered Marl so that he could lift his shoulders, then nodded for the others to help him. Together, they hauled him out to the waiting shuttle.
Khorii struggled with her conscience. She was supposed to rest so she could help with the search and rescue missions but really, she still felt fine, with lots of energy again and no signs of depletion of her horn’s power. The plague seemed to be absent from the areas she’d previously cleared, so she thought it would be no trick to decontaminate the rest of it. The mansion could serve as a center for rebuilding the area once survivors migrated this far. She didn’t want them to blunder back into the plague. Besides, she was curious to see if the plague still lingered in the other rooms. If it was gone there, too, and she could determine why, the contamination throughout the galaxy might be far less prolonged than they had dared hope.
Her shipmates were dead set against her returning to the mansion.
“You know the rules, Khorii,” Elviiz told her. “Every bit of cleansing work you do when you should be resting may mean one less sick person you can heal.”
“But I hardly heal anyone on those missions, Elviiz!” she protested. “The teams are so afraid I’ll get so tired that I won’t be able see the plague anymore that they won’t let me do anything else. You can tell by looking at my horn that I’m fine. I really am. If survivors blunder into an area as contaminated as this one, they could start the plague all over again. And you know how it mutates.”
She won, as she knew she would. Who was the one with the horn among them, after all? Who was the one who could see the plague? She was.
Besides, she didn’t think she would be taxing her horn at all going back in there. If the plague was gone, she’d have spent none of her horn’s energy except maybe to make the place smell better.
She didn’t win when she tried to persuade Elviiz to stay with the shuttle. He insisted that he come with her while the others returned to the Mana and secured Marl Fidd. Then the shuttle could return for Khorii and him. Khorii had to agree that this was a good plan. Although she hated to tell him everything since he already knew so much more than she did, his data-collecting capabilities would doubtlessly be helpful in trying to determine the various conditions in the atmosphere, aside from her horn’s power, that might have caused the plague to dissipate.
They began a systematic search of the mansion. She had previously glimpsed bodies in some of three rooms, but although the stench from them remained, the plague was not in those rooms either. And except for the skeletons and a few scraps of flesh and clothing, plus quite a lot of very fat insects, little remained of the corpses. Khorii was glad of that.
Meanwhile, having collected the data and samples she requested, Elviiz decontaminated the kitchen. The android activated the water pump without the aid of the larger generator and pulled what seemed like a vein from his leg, pulling and pulling until it reached the required length, attached it to the faucet of the lake-sized sinks, and sprayed down the floor. It was made of a solid sheet of granite aggregate and sloped into a drain in the floor opposite the sinks, something Elviiz had noticed immediately that seemed to have escaped Marl’s attention during all of the many months he had remained in the room. Once the liquid waste was disposed of, Elviiz used his laser on a low setting to turn the solid waste to dust, which he also washed down the drain.
Which brought up an interesting question.
“Khorii?” His inquiry took her by surprise. She had stopped her serious work to decontaminate a closet containing gowns in a rainbow of fabrics. Many of their components were embellished with embroidery, beadwork, crystals, sequins, even real gemstones, and trimmed with ribbons, fur, fringe, lace, and strips of other embroideries. Khorii had apparently done a very thorough job of decontaminating the contents of a jewel chest, too, as many glittering and sparkling items of personal adornment lay spread and heaped upon a mirrored dressing table.
She looked up, her eyes shining in a way he had never seen any male’s shine. Their silvery color reflected the hues of the gowns and the sparkle of the trims and jewels. “The people these belonged to are dead, Elviiz. Do you think it would be wrong to take some of these beaded trims back to Captain Bates for her work? Not the valuable gems of course, just the beads and less precious things. Actually, perhaps it would be wise to collect the portable valuables and label them as coming from this place, then store them somewhere safe in the event that there are heirs wishing to claim them.”
Elviiz said, “That is a job for policemen, Khorii, not for healers. What about the septic systems?”
“What about them?” she asked, and then her face showed comprehension. “Oh.”
“Yes, I was disposing of Marl’s waste when it occurred to me that some infected material may have invaded the septic system and quite probably nearby waterways. Instead of cataloging the material possessions of the deceased, perhaps since you have decided to decontaminate this place, it would be good to include the septic areas and the waterways and water table serving this home and others in the area.”
He was no longer concerned that she would deplete her horn’s power. Although the horn’s cleansing powers required no conscious effort on the part of the Linyaari possessing it, Elviiz knew the postures Khorii assumed when she was deliberately performing the task, the facial expressions she assumed. So far, this house had not required her horn’s powers at all.
Elviiz tapped his chest com unit and informed the Mana that he and Khorii would be delayed somewhat longer.
Upon awakening in his new quarters aboard the Mana, Marl Fidd spewed obscenities along with the contents of his stomach at his captors. They had him penned inside a huge cargo net, bolted to the deck and the bulkhead as it was for heavier loads. The mesh was too fine to climb and it rose twelve meters or so where it was attached to the ceiling. They’d kenneled him good, they had. Marl expressed his opinion with another selection from the extensive linguistic cesspit portion of his vocabulary.
The huge kid with the long black hair who was standing guard outside the net widened his eyes and shrugged. “No hablo Standard, amigo,” he said apologetically.
Marl wound down after that, not wishing to waste his energy and his gift for shockingly creative verbal expression on this stupid git. Instead, he looked around, getting his bearings. They’d strung up cargo nets to isolate him, but he was in the larger cargo hold aboard the supply ship. It was empty. None of the drugs he’d made the others load from the docks of Rio Boca remained, nor the supplies that had been aboard when he first boarded. All that remained of the cargo were the boxes that formed the walls of the makeshift graveyard the Hellstrom kid and the android had created for the Mana’s original crew. Hellstrom wanted to impress the girl, of course, but it wasn’t like she was going to give him anything for it. Lot of bother for nothing, in Marl’s opinion. Why not just space ’em? That’s what he’d have done.
He pantomimed being thirsty, needing a drink, and the big kid pointed at a bottle of water inside the makeshift jail.
Marl noted that the kid was not about to come right up to the net and seemed to be trying to hold his breath. That was understandable. To his surprise, Marl found he had been doing the same thing ever since he came to. He definitely was not looking or smelling his best, but that was Khorii’s fault. Going off like that without making sure he had water or power. Bloody inconsiderate alien cow.
Or mare or nanny goat, judging from her more exotic attributes. Those didn’t interest him at the moment, though he was sure she was nearby.
He pantomimed bathing to the kid next. The obliging oaf said something in his local gibberish over the com and got an answer in the same language. A short time later another big kid showed up with a bundle of clothes and some soap. Behind him was another carrying a huge hose. The first kid slipped the soap through the mesh with a flip so it landed where Marl could reach it. Then, without waiting for him to undress, the guard hosed him down with such a powerful blast it knocked him on his ass.
Marl swore again, and the kid aimed the blast at his head, nearly drowning him. Inhumane treatment of a prisoner that was. Definitely have to report the kid, though that was a laugh. Nobody to report anybody to left anymore. That was what Khorii and her gang didn’t get. They were on their own now. They made the rules. One of these days he would make the rules; and then this giant jerk had better watch out. Marl Fidd never had been one for reporting people so much as repaying them, with interest, for any injury, insult, or other failure to recognize that he was definitely a power to reckon with.
The kid didn’t get it for sure. He calmly waited until Marl undressed and soaped up, then hosed him again with definite glee.
The water shut off, and Marl stood there shivering as the puddle drained away into the deck’s recycling system. While his buddy watched, the big kid unbolted the edge of the net and pulled it aside far enough for him to give the bundle to Marl.
Once Marl’s hands were full, the kid immediately left again and re-bolted the net. This made a dandy brig, okay. Have to remember this arrangement when he took over the ship next time. Good holding pen for extra crew members he might need later.
The bundle was wrapped in a towel, which Marl used with one hand while keeping the clothing dry under his other arm. They could have at least put a bunk in here.
He opened the clothing bundle and another bottle of water and three nutrient bars fell to the deck. After the rich food he’d prepared for himself on the mansion’s gas range, this was a bit of a comedown. However, his head ached, and his stomach still roiled from the wine of the night before. He’d gone through the best years in the kitchen’s supply within the first couple of months. He had been down to the cooking sherry and was appalled that the mansion’s chef had been gypping his employers by using such inferior swill.
The clothes were not a bad fit, standard shipboard gear for most crewmen, and as soon as Marl was dressed again he fastidiously dried off a patch of deck close to the bulkhead and sat down to pull on the soft slippers thoughtfully included in his care package. Must be the doing of one of the females, he thought. Women fancied him, though ones like Jaya and Bates pretended to be disinterested or even repulsed. Just being coy, he reckoned. Sooner or later, one way or another, they’d all come around.
The big kid and his buddy sat down—they had cartons to sit on and one between them on which they began playing cards. He went over to the net to kibitz, for want of anything better to do, but all their remarks were in Spandard, and they ignored his.
He was so bloody bored with being bored.
Wandering back to the water bottle and nutrient bars, he sat down and ate and drank the lot, despite his uneasy gut. He barely finished the last one before he was out like a light.
He wasn’t sure when he awakened that he actually was awake. Someone had put cuffs and leg irons on him and shackled them to the bulkhead. The second big kid was outside the net, his crate pushed up against the wall, his head drooping against his chest, fast asleep. No sign of the first kid.
The overhead lights were dimmed to conserve energy. The ship’s engines still hummed in the background, so they had not landed. Marl wondered where the frag they were taking him anyway. Back to Kezdet?
He hadn’t had any news the whole time he’d been in the mansion, hadn’t dared go out to try to learn anything else lest he get the plague. Once he began drinking himself to sleep, he’d often wondered just how well Khorii had cleaned the kitchen of plague anyway. He’d enjoyed some spectacular hangovers that made him think he was definitely about to die. But he had continued to live, and he wanted it that way. So he’d stayed put. What had happened in the meantime? If kids were standing guard over him, apparently the Federation cops were still out of commission.
This was no Federation brig either. Even if he hadn’t recognized the subtler features of the Mana’s cargo hold, the onboard boneyard was a—ha-ha—dead giveaway.
When he sneered in its general direction, which was when he saw the movement over there. Just movement, like air currents shifting which, naturally, they didn’t much on shipboard other than what came out of the ducts, and that wasn’t exactly active.
He kept watching. Maybe some of the water from the hose had dripped onto the mesh and was dripping down—maybe that’s what he saw. Maybe he needed his eyes checked.
But no, the floor around him was now totally dry, so the netting would be, too. It was plas-encased titanium, so it would have shed the water long ago.
He watched intently. He wanted to stand and go over to the net and peer through it to get a better look, but his legs had fallen asleep and, shackled as he was, he was on a rather short leash. Why did he bother about it anyway? Probably just one of the bloody cats using Jaya’s parents’ graves for a sandbox.
“Ssst,” he said, trying to wake his guard and for some stupid reason trying not to make much noise about it. Face it, he was desperate for entertainment.
The boy didn’t stir. Marl thought maybe his food or drink had contained a sedative so they could come in and chain him without any bother; but the way the guard was snoring, you’d have thought he was sedated, too.
A bunch of times, Marl had thought the mansion kitchen was a nightmare, and he’d wake up back on Maganos, but then sometimes he’d thought Maganos was a nightmare, too, and his life before that and before that. So this new nightmare wasn’t exactly startling. It was unusual though. Marl fancied himself well-grounded in reality, however nightmarish, and he didn’t usually see things that didn’t actually seem to be there.
Another movement caught his eye as the cargo bay hatch slid open and there was a soft plop followed by small muffled footsteps across the bay.
Marl saw the cat at the same time the cat saw him. The wretched thing was hard to see in profile, a gray-stippled cat against a gray shadow-stippled background. But when the cat turned its face toward him, its big gold eyes glittered with red in the dark.
Marl didn’t know why he hated this particular cat so much except that Khorii seemed to love it and it had a better life than he did overall. It didn’t deserve that. Whereas Khorii and other imbeciles saw small furry beasts as alternatively shaped stuffed pandas, to pet and cuddle and play with, Marl had always been interested in how tough they were to catch, how loud they screamed, how fast they stopped when he took them apart. They were things to him.
Objects. Practice.
But this one was different. Why?
“Because you’re somewhat like me. However, you are mistaken to think of me as prey. Beneath this cute and fluffy exterior hides a true force to be reckoned with. Pull my tail again at your own peril. My wrath is mighty.”
Who said that? He looked around for Khorii or Sesseli, the little psychic freak. But there were only the boy and the cat, who turned away from him, tail high, and trotted toward the graveyard.
He was in very bad shape indeed from his long residence in the kitchen. Cats did not talk and they especially did not talk inside his head. Besides which, this particular moggy was terrified of him. If he so much as said “Boo!” it would run away.
While he was thinking about it, the cat stopped. It looked up at the graveyard, jumped a couple of meters into the air, and landed halfway back to the hatch, whereupon it kept scooting until it was out of the bay, the door still open, its little paddy paws thundering down the corridor like a herd of pachyderms.
Marl hadn’t realized he’d yelped when the cat jumped but he must have, because his guard woke up.
“Huh?” The boy shook his head to clear it and looked at Marl. “¿Qué pasa?”
“There’s something moving about over in the graveyard,” Marl told him, certain now that there was since the cat had seen it, too. He pointed, in case the kid really didn’t understand Standard.
The kid lumbered to his feet and plodded toward the mound of dirt.
He stood on tiptoes outside the crate wall, looked from one side to the other, then plodded back toward the cargo net, shaking his head and shrugging.
Although neither the kid nor Marl closed their eyes after that, he didn’t see the movement again. On the bright side, he didn’t see the cat either.