Shadow of the Warmaster

IV

1. Three years std. earlier.

Aslan aici Adlaar daughter to Adelaar aici Arash riding to an unknown destination in the hold of a Salado transport.

Aslan muttered and blinked as she came out of a dragged sleep. She lifted her head, let it fall back as pain lanced from ear to ear. “Stinking… what now?”

Dim blue light. A cylinder. She was on a cot inside a tincan, cots spreading out on either side, above and below. She was catheterized but was not uncomfortable with it, the appliance was more resilient than most; there were restraints on her wrists and ankles, but they had sufficient play to let her sit up, even hang her legs over the cot’s edge. She was surprised that she wasn’t under full automatic care, her body processes reduced to a low hum. This waking restraint was wasteful and from what she knew of contract labor transports, unusual. She tried again and this time made it up. When her head stopped pounding, she looked around.

The other contractees… no, she thought, don’t funk the name… slaves, some of the slaves were stretched out sleeping, some were sitting up, staring morosely into the blue gloom, others were talking together, still others had books and were reading or earphones, listening to flake players. She hadn’t seen any of them before, Bolodo had kept her in solitary for months, probably so she’d have no chance to pass on anything about the Oligarchy and what they were doing to the Unntoualar; she had two coveralls, one clean each day, whatever flakes or books she asked for, but nothing from her own gear. She’d asked for that, but no one bothered to listen to her and she decided they’d ashed her things, just another paranoid precaution. Hmm. My own personal paranoid was too too right, mama’ll beat me over the head with that for the next hundred years. She clicked her tongue, smiled as she remembered her mother’s habitual t’k t’k that used to irritate her so much when she was a teener.

She went back to inspecting her companions. They were past adolescence, none of them old (making allowances for ananiles and mutational differences). All of them seemed to be sprouts on the cousin stem and there was a more intangible likeness-they were all professionals or artisans (no slogworkers in the mix) wearing the kind of gear experienced travelers chose, plenty of zippered pockets and easy to take care of. She looked down. She was back in her own tans, boots and all, the Ridaar unit in its belt case. Evidently they hadn’t ashed everything. Refusing to think about that, she slid off the cot, stretched, the tethers stretching with her, the catheter giving her no trouble.

Her equipment cases were strapped beneath the cot where she could get at them if she wanted to.

She edged around and stared at them, despair cold inside her. They are by god sure I’m not going to get back, unless… She uncased the Ridaar, ran through the overt index, then called up the last of the hidden files.

Report: deepfile Ridaar: re: Unntoualar

Code: icy eagle’s child damn you Tamarralda I am not 324sub e minus one one half.

… I’m sure of it now, subject Zed has opened up enough to feed me some songs. It’s the usual thing, they’ve made an accommodation with the new powercenters and they’re not about to endanger their survival to help a transient female of more or less the same species as the invaders who took their world from them. The Unntoualar I’m living with are confused, on the one hand I seem to be here with the blessing of the invaders, on the other they’ve been quick to see the not-so-hidden hostility to me. I’ve been careful to limit my inquiries to their songs and the story tapestries connected with these, with those dozens of thready fingers it’s no wonder they’re marvelous weavers. No color vision, so line and texture dominate; almost but not quite writing; from what I’ve seen so far (which I admit is severely limited) they never did develop a written language, which was another clue since most races with a high psi quotient don’t, concepts are too complex for the forced simplification of the written word. Why am I deepfiling this? Their psi-capacity is the hot spot; whenever I get anywhere near that, Zed, Wye, even crazy Tau start sweating blood. Mike and Sigurd have done wonders with the language, it’s a stinker, Tam, you’d guess it would be since a good half the nuance comes from esp fringes. Duncan lived up to his reputation by producing a crystal set, so the youngsters could record a good portion of those fringes and give us access the Unntoualar and the Styernnese don’t suspect. I hope.

They’re projective telepaths, that’s clear from the songs, one of the few such capable of transferring images into the minds of species alien to them. Physically nonaggressive but not passive. Their aggressions came out in psychic attacks; before the colonists came, they were the dominant species on Styernna, having more or less wiped out all competition. Zed pulled a sneak on the censor, included a song in the first batch he let me flake about the arrival of the colonists and the short depressing settlement war; I haven’t any idea why he did it, there’s no evidence he can read me, maybe a gesture of rebellion, one he understands is probably futile. The Unntoualar tried their standard attack on the invaders, but the full force and flavor of it was blunted by the stolidity of those alien minds. Their single weapon was not only useless but proved to be disastrous for them; their most vicious attacks were perceived as surrealistic and erotic dreams. The last part of the song is one long wail against Fate as the Unntoualar realize this and begin dimly to see what it means for them.

Yesterday he brought in Rho and Nu, alpha males like him, they picked out a new tapestry and started singing, but the song had shit-all to do with the images. It was about what was happening to the Unntoualar now. Since the Final Dispossession, the Oligarchs have hoarded for their own use the most powerful of the PT’s (their name in the song is a complex combination of dream dancer, custodian of race memory, spear of the Unn, verbal shorthand: Stahoho idam kaij), parceling out the lesser PT’s for the entertainment of their favorites. All very secret, of course. The homeworld has rules for handling the natives and Styernna can’t live without help yet; besides they know the ordure that will splatter over them if what they’re doing gets out, plus the fact that half the scavs in the universe will come zooming over to harvest their share. Oh Tam, what they’re doing, it’s a lot worse than forcing a PT to do his thing. They’re torturing the miserable creatures to get more piquant dreams out of them. Sickening.

I didn’t want to hear that, Tam, makes me nervous. I don’t know what the hell’s going on, I thought I’d better get this deepfiled before Zed’s plot (whatever it is) starts fruiting. Question: Is this a setup? Are the Oligarchs using Zed to snooker me into accusations I couldn’t possibly substantiate? Is Zed doing this on his own? Is he working with or for other Unntoualar? What do I do? Well, I’ve got the kernel down, up to you to see there’s heavy pressure put to investigate the Oligarchy and how it’s using the Unntoualar.

Distorted, bleeding, the Unn staggered into the circle, shrieking with voice and mind, ululating interling and Unnspeech, flopping in front of Aslan, accusations foaming out of him, curses on the name of the Oligarch who owned him, tortured him, stole his dreams out of him.

Guards surrounding her taking her away, taking away the Unn, dead Unn, twisted tormented. Dead too late for her. At least she was alone, Duncan and the others were at the base camp two sectors away, oh god, she was alone, Mama was right, she shouldn’t have come.