Skeen's Leap (25 page)

Day flowed into day with peaceful memory as the ship moved down the river. For a while Pegwai was uncomfortable when Skeen was around; he would not even look at her, but as the calm days slid past, they began warily working their way back to the friendship they'd shared before. For a while they avoided any circumstances that would present them with the temptation to explore again that kinship in pain at once so lethal and so unbearably intimate, then they began setting tests for each other and smiling at each other in righteous complicity when they withstood those self-imposed trials. One night there was apple brandy with the supper. The ship was tied up at one of the larger rivertowns, the last before they went into the canyon the river had cut through the mountains, and Pegwai bought a skin of homebrew from one of the new deckers and Skeen went with him to his cabin to share it and ended up sharing a good deal more before the night was out. Both woke with the clear knowledge that more of this meant one of them would quite likely kill the other. Pegwai had a broken rib, a deep gouge on his neck uncomfortably close to a carotid, Skeen had fingermarks on her neck and a memory of a black moment when she was sure she was dead. They helped each other clean up and went to sit on the bunk.

“We've got no boundaries,” Skeen said.

“No stopping points.” He reached over and ran his hand down her arm; she shuddered with fear and desire and groaned when he took his hand away. “It's impossible,” he said. “I want … lifefire, Skeen, look at me, you'd think I'd be drained after.…”

“I know, I know,” she whispered. “I'm a rag, but I'd start again, do everything again, even if it meant … Djabo, Peg, I don't understand any of this. I don't understand me, I've never.… I'm not like this. And you—you're a kind, gentle … don't shake your head, it's true.”

He sat pushing his hands down his thighs, pulling them back, pushing them down. “Skeen.…”

“Peg?”

“I … you … I've thought about you, I've thought … it's like I wake in you the need to punish yourself for something I don't … something that makes you feel less … less worthy than … than you should.” He looked past her at the gray light coming through the parchment window-cover. “It's my fault. I tried to tell you, I should have let you … made you go when you offered to. It's what I am Skeen. I walked the manfire and became a man in name, in deed was something else. I played the man with a girl or two my cousins, a night or two, much drunk, and with one … I woke on a morning like this, Skeen, gray light around me, gray in heart and soul. It's the sin we don't forgive. Hurting.… If my family knew … the girl didn't guess what I did was … I left the Spray and came to the Tanul Lumat. Except for a few times when I went to Mallat's women, when I couldn't push … the need off any longer, I've lived a celibate life. It got easier as I got older, wasn't ever all that hard to abstain. Sex for me, my friend, means a lot less than learning, and as I said, the older I got, the easier it was to …” sudden grin, “handle the urges. They stayed shut inside me. Women were like the reformed drunk's full bottle of brandy, sealed and intact, a challenge and a reminder. Until you tempted me to drink. Lifefire, no! Forget that. No! You couldn't know, I could have sent you away, not your fault. Help me, Skeen. Help. Me.”

She drew her hand down the side of his face, tenderly along his shoulder, down his arm, closed her fingers about his wrist. “I love the feel of you, the taste of you, Mala Fortuna, Mala, Mala, why?” She lifted his arm, let it drop and pushed onto her feet. “Do you want to stop here, go back to the Lumat?”

“I should … no!”

“I suppose I shouldn't be, but I am pleased. I'd miss you, Peg.” She sighed and started pulling on her clothes. “At least we've learned how stupid we can be. Maybe that will serve to keep us straight.”

From the first day the Aggitj tetrad (who had insisted on traveling as deck passengers) made themselves useful about the ship, helping with the myriad small tasks that kept a sailing ship in prime condition, helping to load and off-load cargo when they stopped at open towns along the river. They were friendly, easy-going; they liked to keep busy, were as willing to listen to wild tales as they were to tell their own. And they were the most unaggressive young men Skeen had seen in all her travels. They never quarreled and smoothed over quarrels among other men with a supple skill more instinctive than learned. Not dull-witted or slow in any real sense, they were inclined to drift rather than plan, had little interest in the why or how of things. They were curious about other lives because it amused them to listen, but they seldom bothered probing beneath the surface. In Skeen's experience such mild and amiable youths would have been victims a hundred times over, but the Balayar sailors gave friendliness in return for friendliness and always treated the boys with respect, even the worst-tempered among them. As did the deck passengers, and the other cabin passengers, one of them a perpetually angry Chalarosh.

As the ship moved into the canyon, Skeen stood leaning on the rail of the quarterdeck looking down at the swarm on the deck, watching a game of bones and tiles. Hal and Hart were playing a pair of deck passengers, Ders and Domi kneeling behind them. Skeen glanced at the Captain, snapped thumb against finger. “I've watched that game a dozen times, a dozen different combinations of players, some bold and fancy cheating, but no one ever cheats the Aggitj.”

“You don't know much about Extras.”

“True.”

“Obviously you haven't hurt or cheated an Aggitj.”

“What? They're nice boys. I like them.”

“Oh I agree. Speaks well of you.” He smiled at her, his teeth very white in his handsome sunburnt face. “This is how it goes. Anyone can cheat an Aggitj once; like you said, they're nice boys, they're all nice boys, slow to believe someone is doing what it seems obvious he is doing. Try it twice, his heart is roasting over a fire, the Aggitj have themselves a feast. That's when they stop being nice. You might have noticed, they don't have much imagination. Got just the one penalty—two coppers, twenty gold, all the same. Not so nice.”

Skeen looked at the animated faces below, shook her head. “No, I don't know much about Extras.”

Timka was a center of disturbance among the male passengers and the crew for the first two days on the river, then she moved her body and bags into the Captain's quarters. She took the bag of gold with her; she couldn't be as casual about it as Skeen. The Captain's cabin had a door that locked.

Day flowed into day, the river meandered eventually into a winding canyon that took them through a mountain range and out into another broad plain. They left Funor Ashon cities behind as they left the Ashon savannahs and the river wandered now among the Skirrik domes, great gray humps like wasps' nests surrounded by gardens and fields that merged into complex growths of vegetable and flower, some of the blooms larger than a man's head. Skeen stood at the rail and enjoyed the living tapestry spread out before her. Impossible to tell which plants were ornaments and which were food, or where the thready streams ended and the land began. The chitinous forms of the Skirrik swarmed through these fields and like the exotic plants they grew, seemed to have pushed all native life far from the river. No Min about, at least, none she could identify. She thought of asking Timka but the Min spent most of her time in the Captain's quarters, especially since Skirrik started coming on board. The Meyeberri slipped along, stopping at the domed settlements, loading, off-loading, staying a few hours, starting on again, until they came to a collection of domes a dozen times larger than the others. When they were tied to the wharf, the Captain came out and announced they were staying for three days. The deck passengers would have to go ashore and find accommodation there, but should be back on board by dawn three days hence.

“As cabin passengers you and Pegwai are free to stay aboard,” the Captain told Skeen, “but you might be more comfortable in one of the Wayfarer's Domes. Timka will stay with me.”

Pegwai and Skeen wandered through the crowded spaces between the Nests. Small black Skirrik darted everywhere, the size of large dogs; their constant chatter made an ache in Skeen's head though she could hear very little of it.

“Neuters,” Pegwai said. “Do most of the scut work. Not very intelligent, but lots of energy.”

A huge old male, his carapace glittering with jet, its greenish brown darkened to old bronze, sat in one of the larger commons, playing an intricate stringed instrument, using three of his forelimbs to produce a strong rhythmic music that served as background to the words he declaimed. Off to one side four young females were ignoring his words but dancing to the music. A fifth was tapping against her chitin and improvising a pattersong that had the dancers and the youngsters (a mix of male and female) gathered about them giggling and clicking their grippers in appreciation. Pegwai led Skeen through a market where a thin scatter of Balayar and Chalarosh mixed with the Skirrik and did their bargaining in Trade-Min. He ambled along at Skeen's side, amused by her fascination with everything around her, particularly some free-form wood sculptures whose tight grain had been rubbed and waxed until it had a wonderful luster. “They grow those,” he said, “not a touch of a chisel anywhere.”

“I know two men and a sinalure, any one of them would pay the price of Terwel's ship for that. Djabo! To see all this and take nothing away.…”

“Dissarahnet is a Skirrik scholar at the Lumat. A good friend. I talked to her about finding Ykx. No, no, she won't chatter. Not outside the Lumat, and what's so secret about a Scholar hunting Ykx? Her bodymother is one of the High Mothers in the Nests here at Istryamozhe. If Ramanarrahnet chooses to listen to her daughter, she can give us an introduction into Atsila Vana that will make a large difference in how we are received.”

SKIRRIK
: Their nest domes are made of macerated wood treated with a hardener to waterproof them; they are bunched together like clusters of soapbubbles, each cluster a separate Nest. They are light and airy inside, with drafts that move gently but constantly through the complex structure, carrying with them the fresh green smells from the many small gardens and fountains scattered about the knobby complex of openface rooms and the walkways that are made from a lacy webbing that looks fragile but is capable of supporting the weight of the oldest and heaviest females. Plants grow everywhere, some throwing out blooms, some producing brilliantly colored galls, pods, nodules, or seeds. Except around the fountains, these plants are gathered in clusters like highly colored abstract tapestries, living tapestries that change day by day as parts grow, mature, die, are removed, and replaced. The changes are coaxed and guided by individuals who live near the clusters. Skirrik see no need for privacy, though each has territorial rights to specific corners of the Nest and each spends time and effort making his or her corner both recognizably separate from the nearby areas and recognizably his or hers. The neuters have their own separate society and customs that rarely agree with or impinge on those of the males, the breeding females, or the non-breeding females who act as neuters but are not—their state being a choice usually taken because they are too busy and interested in what they occupy themselves with to take time out for the debilitating process of producing eggs. Also they tend to lack ambition; the road to power among the Skirrik is motherhood. Female minds shut down when the body is gravid, female bodies go into a torpor that lasts until the eggs are expelled. But the breeding female is a nexus of relationships that give her constituencies that make the sacrifice worth while; the greater the number of males mated with, the wider her net is thrown. An average laying produces five fertile females, two fertile males, eight or ten neuters. A special cadre of neuters, the elite among them, tend the brooding mothers, wash and wipe them, feed them, give them drink, treat them like mindless infants for the six months the brooding lasts.

Pegwai and Skeen followed the immature female through the complex interior of the nest to an airy chamber near the apex of the largest dome. The room swam with sunlight. A huge female sat in the sac-like open space, her carapace a purple so dark it was nearly black, only the sliding highlights as she moved testifying to the true color. The chitin on her upper body was elaborately inlaid with amethyst and ivory until it seemed she wore jeweled armor. Like all mated females, her antennas were a matte black, rising over her head in graceful arcs, so fine at the tips they were more like stiff thread. They swayed as she moved her great head, swayed when she was still, touched by the circling air currents. The walls of the chamber were a mosaic of mosses, greens and ochers, winding threads of vermilion and garnet. A subtle varying of textures wove a secondary pattern across the pattern of the colors. The old female (High Mother Ramanarrahnet) was working on more of the mosses, using tools with points so fine she wore magnifying lenses over her triune eyes. Ferns swayed about her head, providing a lacy sweet-smelling shade.

Their guide scurried over to the High Mother and skritched at her, more than half of what she said inaudible to the visitors. Ramanarrahnet took off the goggles and turned to gaze at Pegwai. When she spoke, her voice was full and rich though she had a little trouble with her plosives, but her Trade-Min was clear and easily understood. “Pegwai Dih, young Helsi tells me you bring news of Daughter Scholar Dissarahnet.”

Pegwai bowed low, held out with both hands the thick packet he'd brought from the ship.

High Mother Ramanarrahnet took the packet and slit it open with the claw at the end of one of her grippers and scanned the looping scrawl that made bold patterns on the shiny surface of the pale gray sheet. When she was finished, she eased herself about, settled her large stiff body more comfortably for talking. A number of the small black neuters came rushing in, helped her shift her legs, moved her worktable out of the way, brought cushions to tuck around her until they were satisfied she was settled properly, then they vanished as quickly as they'd arrived.