Skeen's Leap Read online

  She was on fire with possibility, trying to calm herself, telling herself it’s a braindead’s wet dream—you can’t think of believing him—it’s foolishness—you can’t afford foolishness, but while she was telling herself all that, she was also thinking, I know Tol Chorok—first colony ruins—two, three days walk into the mountains—nothing there. They say. No, Skeen, don’t be a fool, a Soak? You couldn’t believe him if he said it was dark when the sun went down. Tol Chorok. Treasure?

  BACK TO PRESENT TIME, SKEEN RUNNING THROUGH THE MOUNTAINS, KEEPING AHEAD OF THE SAAYUNGKAS BUT ONLY JUST.

  Skeen heard the whine of a float and flung herself into a patch of brush, lying very still, willing it to go away. It hovered a moment. Heat seekers, she thought, and fought down a panic she’d kept off till now. A laser bolt stabbed into the brush a few paces downslope. A bull hijjik bellowed and went crashing away. The float whined on.

  Hijjik. Where there’s one.… Dawn was close. Clouds were gathering in the east, piling up over the worn peaks; there was that touch of heavy dampness in the air that meant rain. She started moving toward the clouds, working her way higher into the mountains. If she could keep loose until it rained, she was loose forever. Well, just about. Maybe jump a herd of hijjik cows and use them to cut her trail. She settled grimly to a slow grope through darkness the cloud cover made total, keeping her line as best she could with little faith in how well she was doing. Cities were her natural domain; in a city there was always something to measure against, every face a city showed you was different, not this eternal tree and rock, rock and tree, with one peak so much like the last it might have been cloned from it.

  She broke out of trees into a marshy meadow, a large herd of hijjik cows and their calves in sleepstand out in the middle of the grass. She slithered to a stop, tested the wind, then went cautiously around the edge of the meadow, keeping in the thick shadow under the trees, moving as quietly as she could. When she reached the stream that ran along one edge of the meadow, she took off her boots, gathered small water-polished stones and filled them, then eased herself into the water. Stumbling, sliding, tottering, she began working her way upstream, jamming her toes, banging her ankles, scraping skin off, the cold intensifying the pain and at the same time numbing her feet until she could barely feel them; walking grew increasingly chancy and it certainly wasn’t silent. She felt like a marching band. The herd took no notice of her and continued to doze placidly out there in the lush soggy meadow. The wind was still her friend. She stopped when she was a little past the herd, found relatively firm footing, dug into a boot, and brought out a handful of stones. All right, you cows, get ready. She let out a shrill warbling whoop and side-armed the stones at the nearest hijjik.

  Yelling and hurling handfuls of stones she exploded the herd into a wild honking flight into the trees, tramping in a wide band across her backtrail, spraying the musk of their terror over her scent. Wiping out her traces. At least she hoped so.

  Before the uproar of their flight faded, she started moving upstream, sliding, tottering, bruising every bone in foot and shin, shivering from the cold, cursing everything and everyone—the night, the world, Tibo, P’jaa, Atsabani, Honjiukum, Yoech, herself—as she plodded on.

  After what felt like a hundred kilometers she climbed out of the creek and stood shivering on a flat stone, her teeth clicking together, her feet so numb she could not feel them at first, then shot with a thousand tiny pains that added up to one fuckin’ huge hurt. The eddersil of her trousers shed the water caught in its fibers in an icy whoosh. She yelled and hopped around, then rubbed instep and sole on her pantleg and hoped about some more as she pulled her boots back on. She stomped her feet down in them and sighed with a combination of pleasure and pain. Hands warming in her armpits, she listened. Nothing but the usual night yammer. She moved her shoulders, took a few tentative steps, and decided her feet would hold her a while longer. She looked up. The cloud cover was too dense to let much light show through. Should be raining sometime soon. Just let me keep loose until then, hah! and the Junks can go suck a duck.

  TURN BACK THREE DAYS. PUTTING A FACE ON FANTASY.

  Hunting Yoech in the dark, hypospray in hand charged with songbird jellies. Tracking by his smell, his mutters.

  Prowling around him in the dusty dark, him nervous and jerking, wary as a hijjik calf with a pack of rii sniffing around the herd.

  Working closer, closer, nozzle against the neck, songbird spraying through his skin.

  “Sleep, old Yoech, sleep, no danger, no hurt, sleep, sleep, no need to fight, sleep, sleep ahhh.…”

  She knelt beside him. “Friend am I, friend to Yoech. Who am I, Yoech? What’s my name?”

  “Sessi? Sessi-girl, coming for me?” Breath whined through his awful nose, fighting with the snot. “Comin through the Gate?”

  “Yes, it’s Sessi. Sessi come to see my love. Where’s the Gate, my Yoech? I’ve forgot. I’m frightened, my Yoech, I want to go home. Help me, tell me how to find the Gate.”

  “Tol Chorok, Sessi, I tol you and tol you, Tol Chorok.”

  “Where is Tol Chorok, my Yoech? This is Chukunsa, how do I get to Tol Chorok from here?”

  “Everybody knows Tol Chorok.” He wriggled under her hand and she wondered if she should shoot him again. She didn’t want to; Djabo only knew how it’d mix with all that chigger in him. “Uh. Uh. Uh,” he said. What he meant by it she had no idea. “Dry valley right up there under Chol Dachay, highest peak around with the tip bent over like it’s broke.” He giggled and started groping her. “I ain’t broke, Sessi, I ain’t broke, feel it.” He fumbled at her arm trying to get hold of her hand. Before she had to decide what she’d do about that, he went vague and forgot what he was doing, and started mumbling to himself like he had last night. “Wouldn’t believe me. Said I was era zy said I was dream ming chig head dream ming.…” He went on muttering about pull and crazy and gate and this peculiar female named Sessi and going back to Somewhere.

  She listened until she was convinced she’d learn nothing useful, bent over him, and tugged at his beard. “Yoech,” she said, “my Yoech, tell me about the Gate.”

  “Running,” he said, “Pack, uh, pack uh, there. Thing. Grabbed me. You know. Grabbed me just me, I fell through on you, you know.” His eyes filmed over, and he no longer seemed aware that she was there with him. She listened to his mutterings. They were incoherent and wandering with almost no sense of time so he talked of things he’d seen yesterday in the street, events on the far side of the Gate, the accident that stranded him here on Kildun Aalda, running from the saayungkas, the words mushing up more and more until the time came when she couldn’t understand a thing no matter how hard she listened. He grew restless. She stroked her hand over his matted hair trying not to think of what she was touching.

  “I might be owing you a lot, old man. Mmm. With all that songbird mixing with all that chigger you’re going to be sicker than a wert after beyrasco half-night. Food.” She dug into her limp purse and pulled out a few coins. She looked at them a moment, then shrugged. “Not enough to do much outfitting—you might as well have it.” She dropped the coins beside him. “You’re going to be sick, nothing I can do about that, but food in the belly cuts the shakes. Food,” she said firmly, making her voice soft as honey on velvet, something Tibo that baster said to her once when she coaxed him into doing something he called insane (right about that too, Djabo send him boils on his jutty little butt). “Food, sweet food, lovely food, comforting food, food to make the world look bright. When you wake, old Yoech, my Yoech, you’re going to be hungry. Very hungry, my Yoech. Soon as you’re awake, your belly says fill me. There’s money in your blankets. Hunt it out and go eat yourself a fine hot meal. That’s an order, Old Yoech, your Sessi orders you to eat. So what will you do when you wake?”

  His mouth worked, he looked marginally more alert, rheumy eyes peering up at her, blinking slowly as he struggled to make out her face through nightshadows that were too thick for him. “Eat,”
he managed. “Eat b’fa. Sessi.”

  “And you’re going to forget all this, old Yoech. It’s only a dream, a dream that fades like mist in sunlight, only a dream.”

  “Duhreeem.”

  “Forget.”

  “Faagaa.”

  “Sleep now, old Yoech. Sleep calm and wake rested. Sleeeep.…”

  A snore.

  She looked down at him with wry affection. Tough old buzzard. Didn’t I think it’d hurt more than help, I’d try conditioning you to stop drinking. By Djabo’s ivory overbite, I am tempted. Better not. You’re getting along all right the way you are and sure wouldn’t thank me for interfering. She got to her feet and strolled to the other end of the warehouse where she had her nest. She climbed wall beams and swung onto the slab, stretched out on a scavenged blanket and began making mental lists of what she’d need to go take a look at Tol Chorok. Fantasy maybe, but what the hell, what else did she have to do.

  PRESENT TIME. DO OR DIE IN TOL CHOROK.

  No rain. The clouds hung lower and lower but didn’t let go.

  The trick with the hijjiks and the creek didn’t puzzle the saayungkas much. Not long after noon, when what shadow she had was puddled about her feet, she heard the howling behind her; the pack was closing fast.

  She’d run out of hope and almost out of will but kept moving, drowning in that euphoric confusion that comes before collapse. Weaving, stumbling, sweat blinding her, she got down the last slope and moved onto the stony floor of a dessicated valley. No grass, no water, only dead rock with a thin layer of dust, dust that lifted at the lightest touch and hung about her. Looming over the valley (she kept seeing it through dust and sweat, losing it again as if it were a mirage teasing her) was a mountain peak, a peak that was leaner, more jagged, higher than the others, its point twisted sideways like a crumpled horn.

  When she stumbled over the remnant of a wall and crashed onto hands and knees, she stayed down, dazed. Wall? She shook her head, trying to clear out some of the fatigue-trash clogging it, lifted it and saw the crumpled horn of Chol Dachay. Wall? She pushed up and back until she was sitting on her heels, rubbed at her eyes, stared at the lacerated palms of her hands, wiped them on her tunic.

  Howling. Close. She looked over her shoulder and saw low dark beasts running at her. Minutes away. In a last desperate effort which she knew meant nothing but a little more time gained before the inevitable capture, she drove her body up and into a ragged run toward the center of that dry ghost of a city, toward a cluster of taller ruins where she could hole up and make them hurt before they got her.

  Dust rose and circled about her. She thought it was her feet kicking it up, but it wheeled too high, whipped too vigorously about her. She thought it was the wind. But she couldn’t feel any wind. The air was thin, dry, still.

  She staggered through street-traces, her mind floating away from the beasts closing on her as she left the direct line to the center and began weaving a complex pattern through the ruins, body moving now at the hest of something else, the dust thickening and swirling closer, leaving a circle of clean air about her. Muffled by that enveloping dust she could hear snuffling and foot thuds of the saayungkas, the rattle of their harness; she thought she could feel the heat of their breath on her back; she caught glimpses of the dark forms circling her. For some reason they didn’t seem able to get at her, couldn’t break through the bubble. She couldn’t make sense of any of this, she didn’t want to try.

  Pattern, Yoech said, there is a pattern. Her feet traced it until she reached a sketch of a doorway, two posts and a lintel, the lintel carved, the carving sand-scrubbed into anonymity. Gate. Subliminal humming. Other sounds muted, distanced.

  Her ensorcelled feet danced her through the Gate.

  SKEEN’S LEAP

  or

  I’M STANDING ON COOL GREEN GRASS THAT CAN’T POSSIBLY EXIST.

  Skeen stepped into greenness and calm. Into humidity and hush. The thing that gripped her body lost most of its hold on her. Lost it suddenly. She staggered, crashed onto her knees, stayed there grasping in great gulps of the thick wet air, air that acted on her body like food and drink, recharging her. The thing that had yanked her through the Gate started tugging at her, felt as if it’d tied monofilament line about her arm and was trying to lead her about like a family pet. She ignored it and passed her tongue over her lips, like rubbing leather over leather. “Djabo’s claws,” she croaked. “He wasn’t crazy after all.”

  She got slowly to her feet and moved closer to the Gate. On this side the posts and lintel were fresher, the carving was clearer—recognizable shapes—kites or flying squirrels, something like that. Some weathering, the shapes partly obscured by patches of dry lichen and damp moss. Dust swirled between the posts. She waited for it to settle so she could see what was happening on the other side. Why hadn’t the saayungkas come through with her?

  The dust didn’t settle. It kept billowing and eddying, filling the space between the posts.

  She listened, couldn’t hear a thing.

  “That’s that, then.” She used the tip of her knife to mark the stone of one of the posts. Djabo only knew how many of these things were scattered about, no point in taking chances, losing the way back. Nah nah, Tibo, you don’t get away that easy. The SKA for Skeen, the PI for Picarefy. Neat not flashy, but quick ID when needed. Satisfied, she turned to inspect the glade. What was this place? Some kind of cemetery? The air hung still and silent, not a leaf was moving. No insect or bird noises. Trees like painted images. Short thick grass, not a blade moving. Weird. She moved her arm impatiently as the tugging on it increased in fervor and frequency. She turned, glared along the line of the pull. A short distance off, behind a thin screen of trees, she saw a shining white wall. For some reason that had nothing to do with logic she shivered as she scowled at it. Silly looking thing, a lot like a white-tiled bathroom wall, ridiculous out here in the middle of nowhere. The Wall or Something behind it reached out and tried to get a firmer hold on her; she began hearing music in her head, a soft summoning siren’s song. Not fuckin’ likely, she told the thing and swung around, fighting against the pull. One step. Another. Tiny change in the glade: a breath of air moved against her face, leaves rustled, small branches creaked. Through these small sounds she heard another, water falling, a liquid lovely music that drowned out the summons from the Wall. She tried swallowing but her throat was too dry, then she started walking toward the sound, tautly alert. She distrusted all this tranquility; life had taught her it was bound to change suddenly and violently. She pulled clear the holster flap and loosened her darter, engaged the lanyard that would keep the weapon tied to her even through spills and tumbles, moved on, laughing a little at herself, prowling through an embroidered garden. Dark feral figure, pale topaz eyes shifting, shifting, seeking, predator in Eden. She played with the idea but didn’t lose her alertness even when she stepped into another sun-dappled glade and saw the fountain playing in the middle of it.

  Water went up through a central pipe, rose a short distance beyond the pipe and fell in crystal showers into a cylindrical basin; the basin’s wall stood knee-high covered with randomly shaped black and white tiles laid in a swirling abstract pattern; the outthrust lip was a solid black.

  Cautiously she looked about her. The sky overhead was clear and cloudless, no sun visible. It felt more like late afternoon than morning, time would tell about that. Her throat felt like something with lots of quills had died there; the watermusic was cruelly lovely, enticing, but she didn’t move. Nothing happened. She waited several breaths then moved a short way into the glade. There was neither dust nor moss on that shining tile. Hmm, who was the local char? Tongue between her teeth she frowned at the water, then she shrugged and walked to the fountain.

  She touched the lip-tiles with a fingertip (little finger on her left hand, her least useful digit). No burn. Nothing jumped out at her. She straightened, touched that expendable finger to the falling water. Cool. Wet. Hah! of course wet. Touched her finger
to her tongue. A hint of that wild green flavor that mountain water often had. She shrugged again. If it was poison, well, it’d be a quicker death than dessication.

  After pulling off her boots, discarding toolbelt and backpack, with a joyful whoop she let herself fall back into the pool. A marvelous splash. Heavenly coolness. She pulled herself up so she could breathe, braced her head against the pipe, and lay languidly moving her hands in the crystalline water. After a moment she pushed away from the pipe, sat with her head tilted back so she could catch the falling water. She drank and drank until she was near foundering.

  The clear blue of the sky acquired a faint violet tinge as she splashed happily about, stripping off her tunic and trousers, peeling off the filthy underpants and undershirt, scrubbing at them, getting the tough translucent cloth as clean as she could without soap. There was soap in her backpack but she was caught in the grip of an immense lethargy. She didn’t want to get out of the basin. She tossed the underwear onto the grass beside the tunic and trousers and went back to paddling about in the water.

  The darkening sky brought a cool wind with it and she started to shiver. Reluctantly she pulled herself out of the basin and stood dripping, her stomach cramping a little, the grass very soft under her bare feet. She wrung out her hair (short and straight, like a cat’s fur), ran her fingers through it. Euphoria still bubbling in her blood, she kicked her clothing onto a dry patch of grass, stretched and laughed, danced wheeling about the glade, the exercise warming away the chills. She couldn’t quite believe all this was true, but peeling off those underpants brought the realness close. She stopped dancing. So did hungerpains.