Janet Morris Silistra 03 Wind from the Abyss

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to land." And this last was finally spoken in M'ksakkan: the converse was
ended, that temporary immunity he had bestowed upon me perceptibly revoked.
And as he pulled about him yet another alien tongue, he seemed to cast away
his righteousness, or to secrete it again in that pocket we all construct to
keep our selves sacrosanct, lest they be tarnished by the diverse oils come
from a mulitude of fingering strangers.
But I had seen; even banded, I did not fail to mark him.
"Then why," I injected into that demanding silence, "approach Yhrillia at
all?"
"I want to let the A consult with cohort," he informed me brusquely. "I want
also to make sure that I live through this. The ship can negotiate for
M'ksakka from wherever I choose. I can make this journey and be back orbiting
Silistra in quicker time than you might suppose, with the ship on an A-systems
slave basis."
"I did not know machines took slaves," I said, moving my left leg, which now
only ached. Experimentally I stretched it out in front of me, straight,
pointing my toes. "Could you not just call this other machine?"
"I can't use their communications systems for A to A. It's too complex to
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explain. And it would be too dangerous to prematurely update their system so
that I could use it."
I nodded. Once we had sent a message to M'ksakka, Sereth, Chayin and I, or
rather we had caused such a message to be sent. The delay time from
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planet to planet was three Silistran days, dependably. It had been important
to us at that time. We had needed the lengthy delay. Silistra is far from the
nearest congruence, so far that it was a B.S. light-day and a half that signal
traveled, upon a lasered beam, before entering the congruence. Exiting
immediately at the M'ksakkan equivalent, it had then traveled a light-day and
a quarter to M'ksakka.
"So we're just going," added M'tras. "We'll have our orbit before morning."
"How can you have morning in a place like this?" I stretched out my other leg
slowly.
"We observe M'ksakkan days and nights." He shrugged. "I've gotten used to it."
His smile was grim, like dawn burst upon the northern sea. "You're making it
hard for me to be pleasant to you," he observed, bouncing in his squat to
loosen his own calves. His belt, quiet, seemed only ornamented black leather.
"Such was not my intention," I said. He was stretching a point, I reflected,
to call his treatment of me pleasant. I looked at my hardly touched food, took
the jeri, for something to hold in my hands. I thought, any moment, he would
sit. He sat himself down, cross-legged. Upon my tray still lay most of my
meal. I remembered my resolve to gain back some weight. I shrugged. M'tras,
misunderstanding, grinned, a curling back of lips. I decided I cared not if I
was too thin, sipping the jeri, which was, blessedly, not synthetic, but clear
and tangy. And it would, I knew, relax me, and blur the ache in my body from
enths of kneeling.
"What do you think of Dellin?" he asked.
I sighed to myself behind the cup. It was beginning again, if on a lower key.
"What would you like to know?"
"I'm curious." He raised his arms away from his body, showing his sleeping
symbiote, curled around
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Janet E. Morris him like some somnolent slitsa. "Why did you think he would
hurt you?"
"Sometimes," I said quietly, "with Dellin, one forgets he is not Silistran. I
did, I suppose, nothing for which he would hold me to account." I ran my
tongue along the cup's yellow rim, catching an escaped amber drop. I could see
him only above the shoulders, over the rim. He waited. I could not imagine
that M'tras did not know what the Ebvra-sea, the cahndor of Nemar, and I had
done to Dellin, in his own keep, before we went to take Celendra out of
Astria. "It has been years since he and I had converse," I added. "When last I
saw him, he bore no birthing strand, nor the strand of threxman at his waist."
"Birthing strand?" prompted M'tras.
"He has gotten, I would venture, a Silistran woman with child. The gold strand
is not easily acquired. Dellin has built a good start for a chald."
M'tras rose fluidly from his cross-legged seat. As he approached the slab
before the partition, he touched his belt. By the time he stood there, the
screen glared bluely, out from hiding.
"I thought you had nothing to say to me." It was Dellin's voice, truculent.
"Did you get some local woman pregant?" M'tras demanded, lounging sprawled
across the velveted slab.
"No." Dellin's surprise was evident. I imagined him: touching his chald
somewhere upon three deck. I stayed where I was beside my tray. "It was a
political move I made." Condescending, was Dellin. "I took up the chald of
another, with respect to one child only. It is a complicated chaldric matter,
nothing you could understand. The fitness was debated for four passes by
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Silistran authorities before any decision was made. It's very delicate, this
whole thing. Or was."
I thought his words oddly tinged with pride for
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one who fled his chaldric commitments. And with regret. M'tras, also, marked
it strange. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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