REALGAR WAS SURE he had the key now, the key to unlock the Sharer mind. Siderite's story confirmed it; just to double-check, he had Jade run the man through the mindprobes.
“He's on the levelâalmost,” Jade reported. “Siderite believes the catfish could wipe us out, or hold us hostage to some latent disease, but that they are psychologically incapable of it.”
He fisted his palm. “There's the answer. It's what the Envoy must have expected of us from the start: to teach the Sharers to kill.”
Jade raised an eyebrow. “A novel approach. Where does that get us?”
“Don't you see, the Sharer mind is constructed entirely around not-killing. If you break that, everything else breaks down. Merwen herself admitted they'd be too scared even for lifeshaping; it's too dangerous, in the hand of killers. And MerwenâProtector or not, the whole damn planet listens to her.” He had read enough clickfly messages about Merwen. If she fell, countless others would follow.
“It won't be easy,” Jade warned. “Catfish are good at mind games, if nothing else. They've had generations to practice on each other.”
“But they have one weakness. They have a limit to the stakes they will play, whereas I have none.”
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Only one event marred the steady campaign of attrition by the Sardish troops. Two soldiers lost since Berenice's attack on Headquarters showed up on Sayra-el raft, wearing native seasilk blankets but otherwise alive and well. The native lifeshapers had nursed them back to health.
Realgar was infuriated. The last thing he needed was any possible excuse for native sympathizing. He grilled the pair closely. “Why did you stay so long in enemy hands? Why did you fail to get in touch with us?”
“We tried, sir.” Lieutenant Colonel Adrian, a special assistant from Jade's staff, spoke with impeccable correctness. “The natives risked their lives to inform the troops. Three of them were shot.”
Realgar eyed her coldly. “You expect me to believe that?” He
cursed the words as soon as spoken; of course, it was just typical insane native behavior.
“They couldn't do enough for us,” said the other excitedly. “On the night of the explosion they fished us from the sea. I'd been stripped to the bone by fleshborers, but the natives pulled me through. In one of those lab warrens, they grew this sort of green film all over meâit was weird as the devil. But my flesh grew back underneath, see?” In his eagerness, the man pulled his sleeve back to show the skin, mottled with a slightly shadowed texture. A glance at the general's face shut him up.
“You will keep quiet, both of you,” Realgar ordered. “Not a word of this will get out; is that clear?”
Officially it was put out that the two had survived despite barbaric conditions as prisoners of the natives, who had returned them only under pressure from Valan forces. Even so, some of the troops had got the idea that any native who approached them might have a rescued man to deliver.
To put a stop to it, search teams scoured every lab warren they could find for others “rescued” since the terrorist attack. Sure enough, two missing guards and a construction engineer turned up in the tunnels of Umesh-el. Doctor Nathan was sent out immediately.
On the general's viewing stage the missing men appeared, each encased in a greenish cocoon that bristled with vines and trailers, while native lifeshapers bustled about as fretfully as ants disturbed in their nest. Realgar was repulsed, but Nathan assured him all was well. “A living bandage covers the patient almost like another skin, to promote tissue regeneration. Their prognosis is excellent,” said Nathan as he bent over one of the cocoons.
“I hope your follow-up confirms that assessment, Doctor.”
From their partly exposed faces, the men appeared healthy, and one was awake enough to be debriefed, even exchanging wisecracks with members of the search team.
Nathan's face turned up toward the camera. “Another week, sir, and they'll be out and ready for duty, the lifeshapers say.”
Realgar had heard enough of what lifeshapers had to say. “Good; ship them back to the infirmary.”
“Oh, no, sir, I wouldn't move them. They're progressing fine here. I'm not sure I'd have the know-how to maintain those bandages properly.”
A lifeshaper stared boldly at the camera and nodded for emphasis.
Blackmail, thought Realgar, and his jaw clenched. “You propose to leave them hostage in enemy territory?”
Wrinkles deepened in Nathan's forehead, and he wiped his hand back over his scalp. He looked away as he said, “I simply can't guarantee their recovery if they're moved.”
“Can you guarantee it if they stay?”
Nathan swallowed once and laid a hand on the cocoon, pressing it as if somehow to coax an answer to his dilemma. The doctor had aged fast during this campaign, Realgar thought. Did Nathan, too, suspect what Siderite had told the generaâthat native life science might already be potent enough to spell disaster for Valedon?
The man in the cocoon opened his eyelids wide and stretched his lips to speak. “Please, sir; I'll be all right here. I looked like mincemeat when they put me in, but I'll be strong as a troll when I'm done. They promised. I'm not afraid, sir; I'm lucky to be alive.”
The natives must have brainwashed him. “Nathan, I will not leave prisoners in enemy hands. Return them right now for intensive care in your own facility. And I want a full report on their state of healthâphysical and psychological.” That was that, as far as Realgar was concerned. No native witch-doctor was going to make a fool of him.
DAYS PASSED, EACH marked by which one of the seven raftsâonly seven, since the abandonment of Leni-elâsent witnessers to the soldier-place. None had yet returned, not even to Sayra-el, where soldiers rescued on that night of death had been nursed back to life. To heal in body is not always to heal in spirit.
The steady trickle of deaths bore down on Lystra, worse than having her own fingers broken one by one. She swam out to other rafts to share the sorrow of loved ones left behind, though she risked being caught; boats could not even get safely out of the branch channels.
Around the ocean, clickflies white-eyed for mourning brought similar tales from every cluster, though few were as hard-pressed as Per-elion, where the Valan sickness was most acute.
The only Sharer whom clickflies had sighted alive at a soldier-place was Merwen. Many requests came for Merwen: had she survived and come home yet, and did she still believe that Valans were human? Lystra was surprised to see how important her mother's judgment had become to distant sisters who had never touched a branch of Raia-el. Merwen was just Lystra's mother, yet to others she seemed to be almost a legend. Faintly annoyed, Lystra caught herself wishing she had an ordinary mother living at home, rather than a legend dying in hell.
However impossible things got, starworms were there to keep her busy, and Spinel to share some comfort. Spinel even swam strongly enough to help her and Elonwy tend the starworms, raking their hide and their mouth filters, and refitting their bindings with new shockwraith sinews. Spinel had let his hair grow out about a thumb's length, and it waved underwater like an anemone. There was always something new and cheerful about Spinel, as well as the everpresent hope that he might yet provide an answer to the scourge from Valedon.
A rainstorm came over, not hard enough to send everyone down to the tunnels, but enough so that the family crowded together in the silkhouse for supper. Wellen and Weia were grumpy because they kept knocking elbows. Flossa and Mirri huddled together, whispering as if to shut out the rest of the dismal world. Lystra pulled her fingertips through Spinel's hair and remembered when he had hair before, in his early time here that had ended with the day he faced the breathmicrobes in his skin. That had not been easy, any more than for Lystra to survive the cage of stone.
Ishma was telling Usha, “We can't let the seaswallowers pass us by again. Stripeweed would strangle the silk groves, legfish would overrun the raft, and what next? The balance must be restored before it's beyond hope.” Ishma spoke stiffly, in the tone she always used when Spinel was there. It vexed Lystra no end, but she could not help it if the stonesick ones Unspoke him.
“The swallowers will return,” Usha replied. “Nira the Narrowminded of Wan-elion has analyzed the toxin from the soldier-place and lifeshaped a microbe to consume it. She sent me the strain, and I think
its efficiency can be improved a hundredfold; if released, then it will solve the problem. Mirri and Flossa will share this task.”
“Can they bear such a crucial burden?”
“I hope so. I myself won't be around forever.”
Lystra was stricken. Surely her mothersister did not intend to follow Merwen to the soldier-place?
Usha looked up from her plate, where seaweeds were tangled, uneaten. “We also need some new leaders for evening learnsharing, Spinel.”
Startled, Spinel sat up and shook the hair off his forehead. “Who, me? I'm no good at learnsharing. I never learned a thing in school.”
“You're a good learnsharer,” Usha insisted. “You must know so many useful things: about Valedon, for instance.”
“About Valans,” suggested Flossa. “About why theyâ” She did not finish.
Spinel looked stricken.
“What more can Spinel know about that?” Lystra demanded. “
That
seems to be the only thing anyone ever wants from him. I have a better idea, Spinel. Share with us what you know about stone.”
At that, even Wellen's eyes widened with interest. Ishma stiffened and turned her back, but she did not leave the room, as she could have.
Usha nodded. “On the nature of stone, and whether its atoms are alive or dead. That would make a good lesson.”
“Butâbut that's forbidden.” Disconcerted, Spinel looked back and forth between Usha and Lystra, and the icy star flickered on his chest.
“No learnsharing is forbidden.”
“Oh, but I can't, that's all. I don't have any chipping tools, or even different kinds of stone, to demonstrate.”
Lystra snapped, “All right, so you don't want to.” Disappointed, she glanced across the cluttered table to Wellen, who was stretching her arms and lazily fluttering her fingers although she ought to have cleared the table by now. “Wellen, if you don't finish cleaning up I'm going to sit outside in the rain until you do.”
“If you do, I'll go to the soldier-place tomorrow.”
All around, shocked eyes stared at the child. Wellen pulled a ferocious frown, but she got up and stacked plates with a clatter.
Lystra could not bear it any longer. She escaped down into the tunnels, where the patter of rain was shut out and she was alone except for
a few apprentice lifeshapers still at work in their vine-filled chambers. After a minute or so Spinel found her, since he knew her favorite paths. He caught her waist and rested his chin on her neck. “Come back,” he whispered in her ear. “You got everybody upset.”
“I'm tired of it all.” Too many hours wrestling the starworms. Every bend in a tunnel seemed to open into the gut of such a beast.
“You have to come for the singing, so we can sing the song for theâfor âThose who dwell on land.'”
“Is that all we can do for them?” Lystra shuddered violently. How could she go on living, while so many were dying? Trurl, Perlianir, Grandmother Ama; in the dim phosphorescence their faces rose to beckon her.
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Lystra dreamed she was back in the stone cell with her skin tearing off, a nightmare that often cursed her sleep. She awoke with a start. Light was seeping in, and the raft was still. The rain must have spent itself overnight.
On the mat beside her, Spinel was still curled up in his blanket, his furry head turned away. Lystra pressed the hair gently, careful not to wake him, and thought, This might be the last time.
Lystra stole outside and blinked in the light of the sun, which blazed at the far edge of the ocean. She clucked her tongue until a clickfly appeared and stuttered out what the time was. Then she walked slowly down to the water's edge and sat in the damp weeds. It would not be long, now, before the two soldiers came for their stroll, as they did every morning, regular as the sun.
Suddenly each remaining moment became infinitely precious, full of meaning beyond sharing. A leaf tickled her foot, and a millipede crawled to the green tip, then fell off. The leaf sprang back, and droplets of water spattered Lystra's skin, each one with a spark to it, as round and expectant as a door. Each moment was a door that opened into the next, and even the Last, when it came, would only open into the First again.
Two dusty figures took form in the distance, as they approached along the water line. They grew into malefreaks, swinging their rust-feathered arms.
Lystra rose to her feet and stepped deliberately, one foot ahead of the other. The malefreaks stolidly kept up their approach. One was actually a “normal” female, Lystra saw, not that it made any difference.
Their faces came into focus, four flat blue eyes with black pinhead pupils.
One of the figures slowed, and their steps broke synchrony. “What do you want, catfish? You got one of us hidden in the raft?”
Lystra spread her hands. “What have I to hide? Do you hide yourself behind your skin?”
Boots ground to a halt in the mud. “Catfish, if you get lost I'll pretend I didn't see you.”
“Why hide truth behind words?”
“I'll have to kill you,” said the blue-eyed face.
“And why kill?”
“It's my duty, that's all.” The face looked away, as if impatient.
“I know what your âduty' is,” Lystra said. “Your âduty' is to protect mothers and children, not to kill them.”
“The devil take you.” A silver stick flew at Lystra's head, and that was the last she recalled.
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Her eyelids flickered open. Her arms were so heavy they might have been weighted with coral, yet she dimly realized that she was not quite ready to sink to the ocean floor. As her mind cleared, Lystra saw Spinel leaning over, his forehead as wrinkled as silkweave with a pulled thread. His hands clenched tight over his starstone.
With an immense effort Lystra pulled herself up, until her head spun. “IâI'm still here. The death-hasteners came, and they ⦔ There were only the bootprints sunk in the mud, to track all around the raft.
From behind, Usha said, “They left you alive. It's a good sign.”
Usha's casual tone startled her. Lystra blinked and twisted herself around.
“Well, what do you expect?” Usha demanded. “At this point I couldn't even stop Wellen from throwing herself into the fray, much less you. I know it's unfair of me, but just remember all the same who will blame me for whatever trouble you share.”
Lystra shut her eyes. “Unfair you are, Mothersister.”
A kiss touched her scalp as Usha whispered. “She would be as proud of you as I am.”
With a sigh Lystra sat up straight, her head throbbing though her mind had cleared. Spinel cupped her head in his hands. “Lystra, why? Why didn't you tell me?”
She winced at the pain in his voice. “For that which can't be shared.”
“Well, you're still alive, and I won't let you go again. I won't leave you alone until you promise.”
She relaxed in his hands, still dazed at the wonder of it, that she was still here, that once again the Last Door had shut in her face. “I do what I have to. And so will you.”
For answer, he pulled away and scooped something up in his hand to show her: five brittle shapes of stone, one clear and sharp, the others polished round. “I found
these
outside the door this morning. How do you suppose they got there?”
Lystra laughed wearily. That Ishma must have squirreled away a few of the forbidden objects, all this time. “Well, stoneshaper, you have your work cut out for you.”
“A stonecutter,” Spinel muttered in Valan, “to teach what stone is made of. If only my father could see me now.”