Hellspark (2 page)

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 bloody 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.

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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 flashgrass. 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 passed 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 assumed 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 leaned over 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 assumed 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 Lassti’s brilliant dusk. Swift-Kalat was too tired to follow, too tired to
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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, shaggy dark blond hair, and shaggier 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.

With visible effort, van Zoveel composed himself. After a moment, he said, “That’s not what I called about. I must speak to you, swift-Kalat, as soon as you’ve rested. Captain Kejesli wants my formal decision on the sprookjes.”

To swift-Kalat’s surprise, van Zoveel abruptly switched to GalLing’ and went on, “I apologize for switching languages on you, swift-Kalat, but I can’t say this in Jenji without creating an untruth: I believe that Kejesli wants the sprookjes found non sentient. No! No, it’s not even that—I think he wants this survey over and done with, and it doesn’t matter to him how sloppily he goes about it. It doesn’t matter to him what the sprookjes are as long as we decide now

.”

Again, he made the effort to compose himself. Then he added, “Please understand that this statement has no reliability whatsoever; it’s only the feeling I have. But I must discuss my report with you.”

The tape beeped end-of-message and then there was nothing to see but cabin wall. Swift-Kalat took off his spectacles and continued to stare at it. Even in GalLing’, and even with van Zoveel’s careful disclaimer, the words were chilling. They could do the sprookjes no good. He did not want to face van

Zoveel for fear of the further harm the man might do with his words.

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To postpone the unpleasant duty as long as he could, he ate, telling himself throughout that van

Zoveel’s words in GalLing’ could have no adverse effect on the sprookjes’ situation. That, in fact, he knew that reliability was an aid to understanding only; that it was only superstition that it had an effect on reality. Having reassured himself somewhat, he showered as well, rebraiding his hair while it was still damp. There was no point in waiting for it to dry: it would only get wet again as he crossed the compound to van Zoveel’s cabin.

The thunderstorm had not let up. He stood on the sheltered step of his cabin for a long time, reluctant to venture into the storm. Thunder rattled, numbing his ears; a sheet of lightning whited out even the red mud of the compound.

For a long moment, he was deaf and blind. He blinked furiously to clear his eyes, shielding them with a raised hand from ensuing flashes as the lightning repeatedly struck the stand of lightning rods that grew only two kilometers from camp.

When at last he found his vision returning, swift-Kalat could no longer distinguish between the dazzle of the Lassti flash wood and that in his own optic nerves. He drew an angry breath and plunged into the pouring rain. All around him sparks flew.

W

IND ROSE TO sweep the great bay known as The Goblet, where the Sheveschkem fleet gathered to honor Veschke, patron saint of thieves and traders, and to be blessed by her priests.

The hissing light of torches along the wharf shaped and shadowed a hundred small craft, all alive with whispered sounds as if they shared the festival excitement. Ironwood hulls groaned and ropes creaked to the pulse of the waves; pennants and ribbons snapped counterpoint in the wind. They spoke of a thousand more ships beyond the acrid blaze of torchlight.

The same wind brought the wood-smoke of the festival fires, the tang of keshri bark, and the warm, rich smell of great cauldrons of stew.

It was the sailing wind of Sheveschke, and it whipped through Tocohl Susumo’s red-gold hair and sent her moss cloak streaming about her. Her 2nd skin glistened over her tanned flesh like rubbed-in oil, reflecting the sparks riding the wind.

She was tall and spare, and she acknowledged her kinship to the captains of these tiny craft with a nod that, on another world, would have been a bow. Momentarily caught by torchlight, her eyes flared gold.

Beyond the bay, a thousand extra stars bejeweled the clear, cold skies of Sheveschke, their light splintered and spattered by the rowdy waves of Shatterglass Sea. A thousand extra stars—the Hellspark traders come to pay their own respects to Veschke, to have their ships blessed, side by side with the tiny skiffs and the sleek schooners of Sheveschke.

Tocohl Susumo looked up at the sky, into constellations old and new. (Where are you, Maggy?) she subvocalized. (Here,) came the response, and a tiny arrow appeared against the night sky, projected on

Tocohl’s spectacles, to indicate a new star at the tail-tip of the smallest Lunatic Cat.

Tocohl smiled her satisfaction, then leaned against the ironwood railing and said, (Now play back the message from Nevelen Darragh.)

(Your adrenaline level has dropped two points in the last five minutes. Playing Nevelen Darragh’s message would only raise it again,) said Maggy; and Tocohl imagined a plump and prim Trethowan

attempting to speak Jannisetti without using any taboo words.

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(Cheeky,) Tocohl said, (don’t argue with me.)

(I can’t argue.)

Not half, you can’t, thought Tocohl, amused; then she subvocalized again, (Play back the tape.) This time Maggy made no objection.

There was no image, only the voice of a stranger. Her words were crisp, formal, and legally binding:

“Tocohl Susumo is hereby notified of case pending judgment and enjoined from her proposed run to dOrnano to answer the charge of Tinling Alfvaen.” A single bell-like note sounded. The crisp voice said, in signature, “Byworld Judge Nevelen Darragh,” and then there was silence, except for the night sounds of the bay.