Part 24 (1/2)
”What? But you've said?”
She stared at him, cold cat-eyes dark as the waters beneath the ice sea. ”If he should be slain by someone unknown, far from here, if he should perish before we again meet, then I will be barred the delicious op-portunity of killing him myself.” She spoke calmly, as if discussing the most ordinary, obvious thing in the world.
”Of course. I should've thought of that.”
She continued to stare at him, her head c.o.c.ked slightly to one side. ”You fancy you know us, do you not, Sir Ethan?”
”Know you?” Ethan felt glad of the expression-distorting face mask and the goggles behind. ”Teeliam, I've lived among you for more than a year now.”
” 'Tis true then, you indeed believe you know us. I've seen it in your gestures, in the way you converse with your companions from this distant land of Sofold. But you do not understand us. When I spoke of killing the Thing, it showed in your body and your way of forming words.
”You are?” she paused, half-smiled, ”much too civilized, in the sense I believe you use that term. For all that you have shared with such as the magnificent Sir Hunnar and my good friend Elfa, they are still not part of you, nor you of them. They are part of me and this world. You will never change that.” There was pride in her tone, and a hint of arrogance.
”Perhaps not.” He knew better than to argue with such a recalcitrant customer. ”I can only try to help as best I can, the people I've come to care for so strongly.”
Teeliam grunted noncommittally, chivaned away. Ethan was unable to tell whether she was voicing a deeply felt opinion, or if such challenge and gruffness were traits forced upon her by the actions of Rakossa. The results might simply have made her resentful of anyone who happened to be happy or optimistic.
Or male.
Still, he considered her words apart from their emotion-charged source. How well _did_ he know any Tran? He counted Elfa, Hunnar, and many others his friends. But he had to admit there were occasions when he could not puzzle out their reasoning, or they his. Might they be doomed to exist forever as psy-chological penpals, able to communicate but only across a vast mental sea of alienness?
So indeed he might not know them as well as he thought. As to never getting to know them, that he hoped was the brash opinion of one used to dealing only in absolutes.
Of one thing he was certain. Despite Teeliam's insistence, contact with and members.h.i.+p in the Com-monwealth would change the Tran, and their world. It had happened to other primitive peoples.
Several had already risen to coequal status with human and thranx, and had been raised to full members.h.i.+p within the government. Others were working hard. Perseverance coupled with safe and benevolent supervision by the government and the United Church would aid any less sophisticated society in making the transition to a modern s.p.a.cetraversing technology with as little pain as possible.
That there sometimes was pain he could not deny, even to himself. That pain would be lessened con-siderably as soon as they returned to Bra.s.s Monkey and conveyed news of their discovery to the proper authorities-doing so took precedence over adding new states to the Trannish confederation. He had no doubt they could swing wide around Poyolavomaar and return to Arsudun uncontested.
He lost a mental step. What could they do, what should they do, on reaching the distant humanx out-post? Who could they report to? He was still unsure of Jobius Trell's exact involvement with Calonnin RoVijar. There was a possibility that Trell was operating directly with the Landgrave of Arsudun. September seemed to think so, but they had no firm proof.
Not that he was inclined to shrug off the giant's opinions. More than once September had hinted that he was used to dealing with a higher echelon of power than was Ethan, that a.n.a.lyzing the motives and actions of powerwielders was not new to him.
Consider that Trell was the Resident Humanx Com-missioner, that he had knowledge of every aspect of outpost operation. Bra.s.s Monkey had a few peaceforcers, stationed there more to protect the natives from the humanx than vice versa. Were they in league with Trell, or with RoVijar directly? And what about the customs handlers, or the portmaster Xenaxis, not to mention the computers and processors?
Who within the modest complement stationed at the outpost could they entrust with such a momentous set of discoveries? Who could not only record and preserve such information against a possibly hostile bureaucracy, but could also transmit that knowledge to incorruptibles offplanet, where they would quickly become so widely disseminated that neither Trell nor anyone else could conceal them?
He took the problem to September. The giant was sitting on the frozen sh.o.r.eline, his white hair blending into the background of sea and land.
September was not moving, simply staring motion-less at the sheet of snow-dusted white where it ran up against the walls of the canyon. It was unusual to see him in such a reflective, downright pensive mood.
”Still in the egg?” The thranx phrase had long since entered the burgeoning roster of interspecies colloquialisms.
”Mmmm? Oh, h.e.l.lo, young feller-me-lad.” How oddly quiet he was, Ethan thought, as he turned his attention back to the ice. ”No, not in the egg.”
”What are you thinking about?”
”My brother. Leastwise, the man who was my brother once.”
”You mentioned him before, a long time ago.” Ethan sat down alongside the mountainous form. ”You said, 'I had a brother, once.' I didn't understand what you meant by 'once.' ”
September's mouth relaxed into a grin. He was watching the antics of two furry beetle-sized creatures. They were performing a miniature iceballet, skitter-ing smoothly about where the sh.o.r.e met the frozen river.
”I suppose technically we're still brothers. Once born one, I guess you're stuck with it. Haven't seen him in twenty, twenty-five years. I've done a lot of growin' up since then. Sometimes wonder if he has, though I doubt it.”
”If you haven't seen him, then how do you know he hasn't, as you say, done any growing up?”
”You don't understand, feller-me-lad. Sawbill, he was born bad.” Long minutes of quiet pa.s.sed.
Septem-ber raised his gaze from skatebugs to skating clouds racing overhead. ”Got himself into a rotten, stinking business much too soon. That's a part of it.”
”What kind of business?” September hardly ever talked about himself, and then always in his joking manner. To find him both loquacious and introspec-tive was rare enough that Ethan forgot his original reason for seeking out the big man and probed on.
”He dug too deeply into- well, put it brief, he trained himself to become an emoman.”
Ethan knew of the men and women and thranx who sold emotions. Their status was only marginally legal, and what they sold was usually best left hidden away in the darker sections of hospitals.
Commonwealth law guaranteeing so much freedom kept them from being closed down, though it could not prevent the occasional killing of one who grew too bold, or re-mained in one place too long. The social side-effects of their profession being what they were, few chose it as a life's work. An emoman (or woman) rarely grew rich. There were other satisfactions to the pro-fession, however, which induced a few to practice it That gave rise to the saying that the most likely candidate for an emoman's trade was himself.
”There was a girl,” September continued, rus.h.i.+ng the words as if anxious to be rid of them. ”There's always a girl.” He chuckled in a bitter, bad-tasting sort of way. ”I was interested in her, too much so. I was very young then. Sawbill was also interested in her- as a customer, and in other ways.
”We argued, we fought. I thought- anyhow, Sawbill sold her something he shouldn't have. She wanted it-it's a free galaxy. But he shouldn't have done it She was-repressed, I think's the best way o' puttin' it.
What Sawbill sold her made her unrepressed. Any-ways, she overdosed herself. She-” his expression twisted horribly, ”became somethin' less than human but more than dead. Voluntarily turned herself into a commodity. Not a lynx or somethin' decent like that, but something lower, beneath vileness, who?” He stopped, unable to continue.
Ethan wondered if he dared say anything. Finally he spoke as softly, gently as he could. ”Maybe if you could find her now. She might've changed, tossed what she was engulfed by, and you could?”
”Lad, I said she overdosed herself. She didn't follow instructions. Happens all the time to those who make use of an emoman's merchandise.” There was a mountainous sadness in his voice.
”When Sawbill finally stopped supplyin' her, she hunted up others who would. I can't find her because she's dead, lad. To me and most o' the worlds, any-way. She just sort of got eaten away from the inside.
Not physically. That I might've been able to cope with. The body did just fine, 'til it got used up too. By the time that started, her mind was long gone.” He turned his attention back to the ice.
”I hope she's dead, Ethan. Should've done her a great kindness and killed her myself. I couldn't, but as I told you, I was very young then. Everything Sawbill did was perfectly legal. He was always very careful about that. Probably still is, whatever he's doing.”
”But couldn't you have stopped him, legal or not? The man was your brother. Couldn't he see what he was doing to the girl?”
”feller-me-lad, emomen have their own code, their own set o' morals. 'Cording to his way of thinkin', he wasn't doing a thing to her. She was doin' it to herself. Commonwealth law sides with him. Emomen's drugs have never proven addictive, not like something such as bloodhype, say. They're big on legality.
Not morality.”
”How can you act legally and not morally?” Ethan wanted to know.
September laughed, looking with pity at his young friend. ”feller-me-lad, you don't know much about government, do you? Or law.”
”Government-that reminds me.” Ethan hastened to change the subject. He'd tunneled too deeply into another's soul and had entered hollows he now wished he'd stayed out of. ”How are we going to make our discoveries known to proper Commonwealth authorities without letting anyone cover them up?”
”So you're finally as suspicious of Trell as I am, feller-me-lad?”