Necessary Evils (Adventures in the Liaden Universe®?) (7 page)

In the end, however, nothing was proven. The accusing Houses each paid a fine to the court; House Albren paid a fine to the court and the case was dismissed. So was justice served in the Spiral Arm. By and by, House Albren quietly withdrew from the business of designing sentients, its standing among the Great Houses of the Vine having risen . . . considerably.

Which, Seltin thought, was interesting, but illuminated the Kapoori not at all. She glanced at the time in the corner of her screen and felt her throat tighten. Gods, the time! He would--

She picked up the wand, closed the subscreen, and sealed her notes, in a flurry of finger strokes.

"Quickly, quickly," she whispered to herself. "You must go . . ."

"Must you at once?" a sibilant voice asked from the darkness at her back. Gasping, Seltin dropped the wand, and spun, back pressed against her worktable, hands out before her.

"Who's there?" she called, voice quavering and high. "Show yourself!"

"No need to shout," the voice chided her. The darkness yielded a movement, and the movement became a woman--or a sort of woman. Her hair was long and vibrantly green, her skin brown. She was small, and rounded, a brief skirt her only garment. Tattoos in the pattern of grape vines twined up and down her forearms and across her heavy breasts. Her eyes were amber, and they glowed in the dimness, like cat eyes.

Seltin remembered to breathe.

"Who are you?" she whispered, then, not a question: "Another of the Kapoori."

"My sister speaks too freely," the woman murmured. "It is a failing of youth. Do you have the same failing?"

"I speak when I'm spoken to," Seltin said, and tasted bitterness along her tongue. "If you've come to ask me to bear a message to Zanith vel'Albren, I--"

"Indeed, indeed." The other raised her hands, smoothing the dim air with broad, calloused fingers. "Regain your peace, I beg you. I have come to be sure that you will
not
bear any message at all to Zanith vel'Albren, nor even whisper that you have seen us."

Seltin looked down, awash with humiliation.

"Unfortunately, I cannot promise that, either."

"Repine not. I can make that promise for you." The other woman drifted forward, silent on brown, naked feet.

Seltin considered her curiously. She should, she thought distantly, be afraid. Instead, she felt only curiosity, and a sort of anticipatory relief. If this tattooed woman should end her life, would it not also end the suffering, the degradation, and--

Out of the darkness came the hiss of a door opening, and a man's mild voice:

"Seltin?"

She spun, knees wobbling, hands rising uselessly before her, breath rattling in a throat already tight.

"Seltin?" the voice came again, faintly chiding. "What keeps you here so late?"

"Your work, master," she gasped, hating the high breathiness of fear she heard in her own voice. "Only your work. I--I was just now finished, and--"

"Just now finished?" He asked, and she heard him moving toward her through the dark. Even in her terror, she spared a thought, flung a look over her shoulder--but there was only darkness, all around. The tattooed Kapoori had, wisely, made an escape.

"The usage stats show you logged off whole minutes ago, and still I find you dallying here. Is it possible that you thought to shirk your evening duties, Seltin?"

No
, she thought hopelessly. She had long since given up any pretext of resistance. And yet--knowing her danger, she had tarried, as if--

"You do not answer," her master said, softly, sadly--and the agony struck.

*

She roused to the sound of someone gasping painfully for breath, and scrabbled after unconsciousness, foreknowing the nightmare of waking.

Alas, the stupor continued to lighten, and she knew the gasping for her own, her abused throat working painfully; her muscles shivering with residual agony.

Gradually, she came to know that she was lying on her side on a cold, hard surface, which could be anywhere. Once, he had left her naked outside when he had done with his pleasure, and it was only her bad luck that she had woken before she froze.

This time . . .

Warm, rough fingers brushed sticky hair away from her cold forehead, then touched her cheek gently.

"Wake, Little Mother," the voice of the second Kapoori whispered. "He is gone, and here is one with the means to aid you."

Cautiously, she pried her eyes open, and stared into the strong, brown face.

"Will you kill me?" she whispered, the words fractured and desperate. She raised a trembling hand and gripped the Kapoori's strong wrist. "Please."

Hot amber eyes burned into hers. "If there is no other choice, I swear that I will grant you death. However, you must rely on my judgment when I say that today despair is not the victor. Today, I will give you ease and comfort, and some small tithe of strength. Trust me."

She bent forward and placed her lips against Seltin's in a firm kiss. Seltin lay, shivering, too tired to fight, too worn to care, even when the Kapoori's tongue slid into her mouth, and the kiss grew deeper, waking a--glow, an effervescence, a feeling of health and of joy . . .

Languidly, the Kapoori ended the kiss, sitting back with a smile on her wide mouth.

"To your good health, Little Mother," she murmured, and moved her hand, brushing the palm down across Seltin's eyes. "Sleep now."

*

"They should all be given to the vines," the Old One said coldly, "so that we may continue our work in peace."

"Nay!" Pinori cried, out of turn, and in apparent alarm. "Auntie, surely we should do no such thing!"

"Pah!" the Old One answered, a sentiment with which Katauba found herself in some accord. However--

"Our sister speaks truly," she said, forcing herself to calmness, forcing herself to consider calmly that which she had seen and heard in the course of the young mother's torture. "We must not act in haste." She extended a hand and slipped the cup from the Old One's hand. She took the ritual sip and closed her eyes, savoring the complex flavors, before opening her eyes once more.

"Nor," she said, "must we forget our purpose--the purpose for which the House saw us created."

"The vines!" the Old One cried, in a tone of curious triumph.

Katauba inclined her head. "Indeed. The House created us to tend the vines, and to coax from them the finest grapes that could be had, which the House then presses into wine, and sells abroad--"

"To the benefit of the House!" Pinori interrupted, passionately. "Thus, we are of value to the House, and to speak of, of-- "

"Correct," Katauba said crisply. "Those of the House are necessary to us, as we are to the House. There should be respect and accord between us, as we all work toward and for the same goals."

"There ye have it aslant," the Old One said, interrupting in her turn. Katauba frowned at her.

"I don't understand."

"We care for the vines, and the fruit that comes to them," the Old One said. "Right enough ye are. The House, though, the House cares nothing for the vines, nor yet the grapes, excepting as those things are a means to amassing more for the House."

Katauba blinked. This was a long and unusually complex speech for the Old One, and as such bore thinking upon.

"More?" Pinori asked, who was apparently thinking rapidly, or not at all. "More
what,
Auntie?"

"Power," the Old One answered, and nodded wisely.

Katauba thought of the man standing in the pool of light, fingers stroking the gems set into his bracelet, smiling and aroused as the woman writhed and strangled at his feet. She shuddered, and took an unprecedented second sip from the cup.

"Sisters," she said, and marked the unsteadiness of her own voice. "Perhaps the time has come for us to reassess our position. Thinking upon our sister's words, it comes to me that we are at a disadvantage, for without the protection, the contacts and the supplies provided by the House, we are vulnerable in ways that the House is not, did we merely--" Her throat closed, but she forced the words out anyway. "Did we merely stop tending the vines."

There was silence, as the other two thought. Katauba put the cup down on the rock at her side, and in due time Pinori leaned over and picked it up.

"If we are in danger," she said slowly, "perhaps we should leave."

"Leave the vines!" cried the Old One. "That's not possible, younger!"

"It
is
possible," Pinori answered hotly. "I have done so!"

"Now, that is true," Katauba said, remembering. "You went with the Senior Seller on a trip to promote the House's wines, some many seasons ago." She turned and caught the Old One's eye. "You recall it, sister."

"I do." She shrugged one stick-like shoulder. "It was why they designed her to look as they do." She stood, shifting from one strong foot to another. "So, one of us might leave. If she wished to," she said. "Solves nothing."

...and Katuaba had to admit that she was right.

*

"How goes the work?"

The one who asked it was Garad vel'Albren, the Master Vintner, and as usual he addressed Zanith, giving slightly less attention to Seltin, who was doing the actual work, as he might to a chair, or a crucible. Indeed, she thought, meticulously noting the latest sugar levels in the fruits she had harvested that morning, it seemed that the Master Vintner considered her not only blind and deaf, but dead.

"The work proceeds," Zanith murmured in answer behind her. "I do not believe that anything in the analysis has proven beyond our capability to duplicate--and so we establish that They are endowed with no special magic, such as the ignorant and the House-bound would have us believe. Would you like a copy of the log, yourself?"

Garad, predictably, hesitated, and Seltin bent closely over her table, making sure that her motions were slow and fumbling, as they should be after such a night as she had endured.

That she was
not
weakened, ill, clumsy and stupid was--interesting. Indeed, she felt not only well, but
very well
, a state so alien to her late situation that she had known a moment of alarm upon rising--and before she had recalled that the Kapoori had been with her when she had regained consciousness.

And if the Kapoori were able to reverse the damage of extended neural overload with a simple kiss, then perhaps they did partake somewhat of the "magic" her master so scorned.

"If Their techniques and abilities are only what may be reproduced in the laboratory," Garad was saying, in uncanny echo of her thought, "why were They created in the first place?"

"It were the vogue at one time to design creatures adept at one or two necessary and repetitive tasks, and thus free time for other, more complex pursuits," Zanith answered with the airy insolence that characterized him. "I believe me that the House encompassed less members in those days, and thus creating spare hands made a certain amount of sense.

"The sums of the past, however, are not those of the present. Now we have learned that such designed creatures may take distempers, and turn upon those who gave them life, and duty. Clearly, it is our own duty to rid the House of such a menace to itself, despite those who would have us cling to the old ways."

"Indeed, indeed," Garad said hastily.

"It was not my intention to malign the work, or to withdraw my support . . ."

Idly, Seltin wondered what it was that Zanith held over the head of his cousin and co-conspirator, who was clearly of a timid nature, and none-too-adroit at any thinking that did not involve vines and vintages.

Garad took a breath. "I would very much like to have a copy of the log, cousin," he said, with uncharacteristic firmness. "I have a number of test vines, and it is none too soon, perhaps, to try your findings in the field."

Now, that, Seltin thought, startled, was actually sensible. Zanith believed in numbers, tests, and analyses, and tended to ignore the fact that the practical application of those results might be . . . difficult to effect. Extensive field testing of their findings--into several years--was only prudent before the system in place were declared obsolete.