CHAPTER 17

Paffir Eket still exerted a faint tug at this distance, Clark knew, but he could not feel it. There was no atmosphere and no sound at the feeder station, the weather nexus, third and weeping moon. Light reflected from the planet's surface played on the stream of feed particles issuing steadily from a labeled spout. After the initial impulse, these fell in slowly widening rings down to the aeroplankton that kept the weather calm. The machine vibrated with internal workings. Had there been sound, Clark would hear it hum like a suckling kitten.

A com receiver on the side away from Paffir Eket watched the greater moon. On instruction from the Ketry outpost there, the machine would shut its feeder spout. A wide angry mouth would open to launch storm crystals, heaters or coolants that would make the winds of famine blow, or poisons to rend the aeroplankton cloud and expose a province to years of solar rays. Clark blinded the ominous eye with a whiting screen, jammed open the feeder spout and jetted away to Huey's ship.

He thought, here I am in the vac, and happy. This time he felt not sick and alone as before, but tranquil. To ensure good weather was happiness-producing work, of course, the kind he had always wanted. He would have loved that to be his only work now, to find sad storm-ridden planets and set their winds at peace. Still, this quiet moment had not come without cost. To achieve it they had had to come to Paffir Eket and struggle violently to tip the rulers' hand. The farmers of Itscriye had to rebel to provoke the droughts and floods to show what the weather satellite could do, and Pahid rage against the whole Middle Plains to make them act. Even Paula's death was necessary to this moment, because when he saw it, Pahid, evidently frightened, had gone into the bush and invoked his god, who was the god of storm, and Fuego had traced the signal's path. They would have liked to find its source as well as its destination and kill Pahid, but after one desperate cursing prayer the Lir priest had fallen silent.

Meanwhile, the Daybreakers reckoned their loss. There had been no disasterous weather yet, but the food was gone. If Pahid had destroyed only the buildings and let the mice and the insects at the grain, the people would have eaten the mice and insects. If it were blight or mold they would have found some way to brew or breed some foodstock. But what happened was much simpler and much worse. At each of the granaries, a priest set himself on fire. By the time people came to the blood-curdling suicides, the buildings were full of flames, and two exploded. By this subtle and wonderful attack, so expressive of love for Paffir Eket, so full of courage, Pahid had triumphed. Hardly a bird or tree had to suffer, but the food was turned to light and they could only gather the sweet-smelling ash and dig it into the fields.

Clark had never before appreciated how ravenous and how selective his species was. All the life of this enormous swamp, a day's paddle on three sides round, could not support them. They calculated, budgeted, and undertook restricted diets. To sit down hungry to a meal and get up longing for more depressed Clark, and for a week he divided his thoughts between leavetakings, his stomach, and death while teams set off, each with a tiny provision and plenty of nets and line, optimistically headed nowhere in little boats, drifting as the Daybreakers had when they first appeared on the Lir.

Huey called them then, and Clark packed up the two brain implants together with all his evidence on Ecclesiam purpuream and went up on the mountain with Tiyar to meet the ship as it swung low in its orbit. They admired the deep, clear Paffir sky together. Tiyar said, "We may be gone as soon as you, whether you reach the ship or not."

Clark had stuffed Luz's and Paula's landing suits full of ugewa blooms for making Love's Arrow. He ignited the launch capsules on Huey's signal. The acceleration naturally caused him to faint, and then he came to, his head nestled against a mannikin, flower petals falling softly onto him and onto the dummy and on blinking lights and meters. White ribbons fluttered overhead. He thought he had died. He tried to relax, prepared to learn the rules of this surprising afterlife, but then he realized the ribbons were shreds of an exploded landing suit and fainted again.

It could have been him, but wasn't. Another of the suits had set off a monitor, been shot at by a watchdog satellite and blown to tatters as it entered the ship. He tried to feel lucky.

When Clark finished with the weather satellite and went back to the ship's receiving bay, Huey was still cleaning it, touching a lift wand to the last corners and crevices where the crumbled blossoms had gathered. "Returned!" he beamed. "Come join the party. I've finished sweeping up our victim of the blockade in time to relieve my first mate--tiresome fellow--at the watch. You missed a fine display of astromatical skill," he remarked, speaking blandly but keeping his eyes on Clark as they slid up the hatch. "Seems one of the flower ladies tripped a wave coming out of the Paffir exo. Would have had unpleasant consequences, I dare swear, but the twit caught it. No opportunities for a chase, however. We are entirely free."

"Where--" Clark began. They entered the control room.

Greyesar answered, his back to Clark and face pressed against a gage-eye that let him see status indicators throughout the ship. "We are now leaving the Paffir system and going into mid run. Hugh, I told you to fix the psi oscillator."

Huey brushed him away from the eye and grasped a tactile monitor, saying, "Step aside, step aside, do. The psi's are in excellent condition and need only be activated, a step which, in your insectish frenzy, you neglected to take."

Greysar glared down at him. "I turned them on," he announced. "They went into resonance in point three four. That's point zero two above the recommended acceleration time, as you know or should know. If you continue to mistreat your equipment--"

Huey looked over his shoulder. "Shut up."

Greyesar strode around the table, clearing off the notes, tapes and charts that littered it. He fitted the chart griver into place with a thump and began to superimpose detail on a rough micro of Paffir Eket, using Huey's map as the image. "Let me know when we're stable. I've got some communications to make," he told Huey.

"Who do you com through?" Clark asked.

Greyesar raised his eyebrows. "We don't com through anybody. Using a middlecom is tantamount to filing our pattern with Interplanetary Security as far as secrecy is concerned. One doesn't."

"However, if you'd like to bounce through to your folks, I will graciously acquiesce," Huey said. He spoke with his eye to the gage as Greyesar had. "Since you left your Reshecomp card with Teresa daFlora, we patched your voiceoff onto a family-type number from General Ditties and sent it to them at New Years."

"I missed New Year," Clark whispered. "It was one of the days I was out on language pills. I couldn't read. Paula said something about it when they wore off, but it was the third by then and we both had the talkies. I guess it didn't sink in."

Huey and Greyesar were looking at him. He had wandered from Eyimalian to his native tongue and the only word they understood was, "Paula." Switching back to Eyimalian, he said, "Yes, that was a good idea. Thank you."

Greyesar returned to his work. Huey smiled. Not a chuckle from him yet, Clark thought. Holy Huey had lost some of his unctuous mannerisms, but he had learned to argue with Greyesar face to face. Clark watched him pore over the course charts. "We're not following your usual route, are we?" he asked.

"That's right," Huey replied. "I'm straight arms-and-fodder now. No more holy cargo. Not a speck of righteous ardor on the ship. Just equipment. Excepting your contribution." He glanced at Greyesar. "And at the next stop we will bid that morsel adieu."

"In return for money, which, as you occasionally forget, is what we use to buy your arms and fodder," Greyesar put in.

Huey brushed a hair from the sleeve of his rumpled flightsuit. "Yes, we shall buy equipment, and with all dispatch, using the proceeds of your morsel. Back to the morass, hm? Catalepsy, sleep that aspires to death. And whom, my companion in sorrow and joy, am I to catalepse?"

"You don't know the dealer here," Greyesar said, drawing himself up so he almost touched the cieling. He inclined his head to look at Huey. "We will pick up some orders from him and deliver on the way back. That--" He indicated Clark, meaning the Love's Arrow he had brought with him. "That is only a sample."

"Without objection, beacon of my soul, provided that orders are accompanied by casheeks. Righteousness will be dispensed to those who thirst after it," Huey answered, smiling.

Greyesar's attention had shifted to Clark. "Describe the seizures again," he commanded.

"I told you. They were asymmetrical, hypertonic, controlled. No facial spasms. It was induced by a variable-intensity radio signal to an implanted transmitter in her brain. Why do you keep--"

"Let me see it," Greyesar said.

Clark took the titanium bead from the canister in his pocket and held it in his palm. Greyesar squinted at it, then reached for it. Clark closed his fist.

"How did you find it?" Huey asked quietly.

"Akiva sifted her ashes with a detector," Clark said. He went on to the next point without prompting. "We knew these things were in use on Paffir Eket." He waited. Greyesar and Huey sighed, as though they wanted to flee their bodies. Both were afraid they had implants.

"They're large enough to detect with a standard bounce reader," Huey said.

"With a fair degree of accuracy," Greyesar put in.

"Above seventy percent," Huey said. "And they can be removed."

"With a fair degree of safety," Greyesar said,

"The matter of how many people have them deserves investigation," Huey concluded.

"We can't tip off whoever controls them," Greyesar cautioned.

"The triggering signal is highly specific, isn't it?" Huey asked Clark.

"Yes. The probability of hitting the right frequencies without the activating code is very small. It's usually wired into a mechanical device."

"But you've seen it happen by accident," Greyesar reminded him.

"In lab animals," Huey qualified.

"Once," Clark affirmed.

Huey rolled his eyes slightly and fingered his mustache. "So it's in use on Paffir Eket. "And possibly on Eyimalia. Yes, it bears looking into."

Greyesar inclined his head a little farther, throwing his face into shadow. "Since we lack the time and knowledge to conduct an investigation, and have no reason to give the information we do have to anyone else, it merits no looking into by this organization. Additionally, your services are still essential to the Uchide. The possibility of success in the venture must be weighed against the likelihood that we would not survive it."

Huey looked up at him. "Do you think so? I had begun to suspect I was immortal." He shook his head. "Well, cheer up, Grey. We've scanned you and there's nothing behind that finely graven visage but the purest organic matter."

"At seventy-eight percent accuracy," Greyesar said. "And since the surgery required for implantation takes perhaps fifteen minutes--is that correct?" He looked at Clark.

Clark said nothing. He wondered why Greyesar, who usually insisted on his full name, now answered to Grey. Did Paula call him that?

"We could easily lose the organic purity of our crania, as you put it," Greyesar went on.

"I take your mimicry as a compliment," Huey replied.

"Additional to that, as I have stressed, is the importance of avoiding any upset to the people who control the signals. That would be difficult unless we knew who they were."

The discussion usually ended here when one or the other wandered off to do something else. Huey would not have known where to begin his investigation. And you, Clark told himself, still going barefoot for her. Moping around stubbing your toes like a widower. If everyone who ever loved Paula had burned their shoes with her, the flames would have burnt the clouds and whole cities been immobilized. He could not have gone barefoot on Paffir Eket. Greyesar made the affectation supportable.

"All right, king of dreams, tell me where to go," Huey said.

Greyesar had gone back to his map. "Inward," he said over his shoulder.

No wonder these two are at a loss, Clark thought. They knew only Eyimalia, the weapons trade and the contramedical network. He sat back in his chair, trying to get an idea. Don't close with a problem too soon, he thought in Paffir. Then he thought it in Eyimalian and the Intersystems Language. Wake up, he thought. He took the two implants from his pocket.

Huey activated the viewscreen. He smiled at the astral panorama. "Stable in the corridor. Smoothest run in the system here, though at cost." He nodded significantly at his shipmates.

"Cost?"

"Quite a number of people died constructing it. We lost a nation here," Huey said. "My com relays are at your disposal, Grey." He bent over Clark's shoulder to examine the implants. "These simple fellows are the great secret weapon, hm? Let's have a look."

Clark fitted one of the implants into an analytic beam and projected an image as big as himself onto the wall. Five arm-sized titanium peaks stood out from the main sphere, their broken tips ragged, sides smooth as lava flows. Below, irregular dark ridges showed where the five drops of molten titanium had met in a violent clash and frozen.

"Those projections are the leads. They've all been broken off. Otherwise, they'd extend past the range of the beam, out of the picture, and at their ends they'd be as fine as hairs," Clark said. "They can be anchored anywhere in the brain. The metal is for amplification."

"I know, I know, but that was two years ago, for Sunny's sake," Greyesar was saying, one side of the com receiver pressed to his outsize head. The giant's eyes darted back and forth to the rythm of the speech or static he heard, occasionally looking toward his companions. Abstraction lent ferocity to his gaze. "Listen," he went on. "You've been with the Uchide for four generations. Now it's going to count."

"Did she know?" asked Huey

"About this thing? She never told me about it." He tipped back in his seat and turned his face to the smoothly illuminated cieling. "I never asked her, though. We scanned every native in sight, but not each other. We just didn't..." He watched the near-mass board chatter and then go blank as they passed a cluster. Since Huey remained silent, he finished, "...look. We assumed the Vars were using them on their Outlander agents."

Huey looked away.

"When it happened, though, Akiva recognized the seizures. He's positive an old priest he knew died the same way." Clark looked at the backs of his hands. The fingers were broader than before, and he had acquired new scars on Paffir Eket. Lab work would be more difficult now. Well, he could pass the rest of his life examining people for implants. "I can't think of a connection between Paula and the priest," he said.

"Sleep on it. We'll meet in the same place." Greyesar signed off with a wave at the address taker. "All right, Hugh. He has orders. They agree to pay in polly plates and sonics. Half pre."

"Very well, though Resheborian casheeks are considerably--" Huey got up, wheezing slightly for effect. "Let me clear a spot for the new dainties."

"If it comes in as weapons, I know I'll take it off as weapons without any evaporation," Greyesar told his partner as they went into the corridor.

Clark sat watching the screens for a while. All remained blank. The ship was alone. He put Paula's implant into the magnifier. Its outer coating had been partially blasted away and he could see the network of white fibers through gaps in the surface. In one place the metal was deeply gouged. Turning the beam to get a better look at the damage, he saw that the gouging was deliberate. He switched to a lower magnification to read the engraving. It was a Reshecomp registration number.

CONTINUE