Jo Clayton - Diadem 7 - Ghosthunt

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Ghosthunt
Diadem, Book 7
Jo Clayton
1983
ALEYTYS ...
hated Company worlds ... planets owned and ruled solely by the inbred elite descendants of those
who had first found and exploited them. Company worlds were like slave plantations in too many ways.
Everything for the owners and crumbs for everyone else.
But on one such set of linked worlds, the owners were running scared. A kidnapper of superhuman
cunning had already collected ransom on their class kinsmen. And their own security agencies had
proved helpless. So they had finally called on Star Hunters—and Star Hunters had called on Aleytys of
the Diadem ...
The Hunt Proposed
“How’s the ship working out?” Head’s bright blue eyes moved over Aleytys, amused and assessing.
“You’re looking fit.” She leaned back in her chair, her hands resting lightly on the wide arms, not fiddling
with the fax sheets piled neatly on the desk in front of her.
She’s cooler than usual, Aleytys thought. Why? Aloud, she said, “Grey tells me I’m worse than a
silvercoat with a sickly cub.” She smiled. “He was getting a bit testy when you called him for his Hunt. He
said to me, we’re together maybe two months of any year and he wants my attention on him, not on
some stupid ship.”
“I take it you’re satisfied with its performance.” Head was growing visibly impatient with these chatty
exchanges.
“Hah!” Aleytys chuckled. “Sly, that’s you. My fuel bills. Madar!”
“Then you’re ready for a new Hunt.” Head straightened, the chair hummed forward. She bent over
the desk, her eyes fixed on Aleytys.
“Ready enough. Depends.” Aleytys eyed the fax sheets warily. “You’re in an odd mood. Should I
worry?”
“Mmm, there are things you’re not going to like, but they’ve got little to do with the Hunt
itself—that’s relatively straightforward. Cazar Company wants you to chase down a ghost who’s been
oozing through their security and walking off with clients of theirs. By the way, you mind having a trainee
along?”
“Me? You’re joking.”
“No.” Head shifted away from Aleytys, a faint flush staining her cheeks. Aleytys waited.
“My daughter.” Head stared at her hand for a moment, closed it into a fist. “She finished her classes
at University a few months ago.” She separated four sheets from the others, pushed them across the desk
toward Aleytys. “Her report summaries. I want ... no.” She shook her head, with a rueful smile. “If she
finds out I finagled this, she’ll kill me. She wants to make her own way. Read the reports. Favor to me.
Think about taking her—up to you, Lee. Has nothing to do with this Hunt.” She began fiddling with the
sheets, let the silence stretch between them. Finally she lifted a hand in a quick impatient gesture. “Lee,
take her with you and look after her a little. And, damn it, don’t let her know what you’re doing.”
“That’d be a good trick.” Aleytys wrinkled her nose. “She knows you too well, I suspect.” She
folded the sheets into a small square packet and put them in her shoulder bag. “Ghost?”
“The Hunt.” Head slid open the cover over the sensor plate and touched one of the squares. This first
bit is background, what makes the Cazar so nervous.”
The wall screen lit as Head’s fingers moved through a short sequence. A star map appeared,
showing a section of one of the spiral arms thickly populated with stars. The focus altered until five suns
filled the oblong screen, arranged in a ragged oval, highlighted so they stood out starkly against the
dusting of stars behind them. “The Aghir suns, so called because their Lords descend from the five sons
of a pirate—” Head grinned—”though they’d object vociferously to the term, a bloody old pirate called
Aghir Tarn. Less than a light-year apart in a heavy drift area, each with a minimum of three planets, each
of those rich in heavy metals. Not good for the health and long life of anyone unfortunate enough to live
unprotected on the surface on any of those worlds though they have oxygen atmospheres and near
one-normal gravity. The present Aghir tejed are sixth-generation survivors. Suspicious, careful, almost
prescient in their ability to sniff out danger. Vindictive grudge-holders. Makes them chancy guests.” Her
blue eyes fixed on Aleytys. A silver-grey brow rose and her mouth curled into a tight smile. “They use
contract labor,” she said and nodded at the disgusted hiss from Aleytys. “Morally scabby, but there’s
nothing you can do about it, Lee. Out of every batch imported there were a number who couldn’t take
the mines and ran away into the wild. Most of them died in. a few days but some lived, not only lived but
took women from the villages and bred. In five hundred years that could add up to a lot of people in spite
of the appalling conditions they lived in and the constant threat from the hired guards of the tej. These
people have started fighting back. Within the past ten years they’ve gotten organized somehow, all five
worlds. Looks like one of the tejed imported a leader. The rebels have taken to raiding the metal
shipments and supply shipments. They’ve gotten translight transmitters somewhere, energy weapons,
other things, apparently have managed to get in touch with an enterprising smuggler.”
Head chuckled. “No, Lee, I’m not going to ask you to hunt the smuggler. Point of all this is, the tejed
have tried dealing with their local problems themselves, but there’s just too much land to patrol, not
enough ships to set up a search for the smuggler. About three years ago, one of the tejed, Kalyen-tej of
Liros, started pressing for a conference to set up a joint force since they were obviously getting nowhere
on their own. Took a lot of shuttling about before he got an agreement to meet, but he did get it. One
year ago. Then he had to find a place they’d agree on; they were far too suspicious of each other to meet
on any of the Aghir worlds. He found that too. Cazarit.” Head broke off and tapped another sequence
on the plate. A new star system appeared on the screen. The focus swooped inward past a pair of gas
giants and hovered over a world that was water except for a band of large islands circling it like a linked
belt. “Cazarit. Where company execs play their favorite games served by programmed people and
androids, whose minds are wiped when the exec departs. One island set aside for common folk who
come to pretend they’re seeing the depths of depravity, or spend a little time skiing or hunting or lying
about in the sun. Everyone tagged who sets foot on soil, visitors get a medallion, employees a bit of metal
screwed to a shoulderblade. Cazar brags about the security they provide their favored customers.”
“Blackmail?”
“They guarantee privacy and mean it.”
The focus changed again, hovered over one of the islands. “Battue. Whoever named the islands had
to’ve had a literal sort of mind.” The point of view passed over grazing herds, a few prowling predators.
Head was silent as the flying eye circled a large structure, a lodge built like a fortress. The screen
flickered as if some of the record had been cut out, then the eye circled a mountain whose peak had been
lopped off. A squat massive structure occupied the center of the man-made mesa, tall bronze
double-doors in each of the five walls, a landing stage beside each of the doors. “The Conference Hall,”
Head said. “The other was a specially built lodge where one of the tejed will be housed; there are four
more scattered about. In about three weeks the tejed with their guards, women, whatever, will be settling
into those lodges.”
“How long from here to Cazarit?”
“One day short of two weeks,” Head said, her face carefully expressionless.
“They waited a long time to panic.” Aleytys blinked slowly. “It occurs to me I still haven’t got much
idea why they’re in a panic. The Aghir tejed are coming to Cazarit. So?”
Head touched the sensor plate. The screen flickered and split into three sections, two men and a
Yaln-tie pair. “This is what has its teeth sunk in Cazar. Three snatches in the past year. Each time they
tightened security, each time the ghost didn’t wiggle a needle but got his man or, in the last case, tie-pair.
After the ransom was collected in the same ... um ... unobtrusive way, those—” she nodded at the
screen— “were picked up wandering about in a haze on some world a long, long way from Cazarit with
no idea how they got there. Cazar would like to cancel the Aghir conference, but stirred up such an
uproar when they tried it, they had to back off. With this ghost slipping through their security as if it didn’t
exist and with the Aghir. tejed refusing to let the Cazarit people put any men on Battue, refusing to wear
the medallion tags, refusing to let Cazarit security check out anyone in their entourage, the Governors of
Cazar Company are about to jitter out of their skins. They want you to find their ghost and turn it over to
them before the Aghir arrive.”
“They don’t want much. One week? Madar!” Aleytys grimaced. “Am I also supposed to guarantee
nothing happens to the tejed at the Conference? I don’t see how. One determined suicidal rebel could
take them all out and me with them.”
“Cazar wanted that.” Head chuckled. “Even Hagan wouldn’t go along with that It’s impossible. After
some haggling I got the Hunt limited to the ghost. Get him before the snatch if you can, no, be quiet a
minute, get him after the snatch if you have to, but get him.”
“Head, what in the world ... before the snatch? He could be anywhere, anyone, he could be she,
who the hell knows? Their security must have spent hundreds and hundreds of hours, days, months on
trying to locate him, to get some kind of clue to who or what he was. I’m supposed to stick my finger in
that pie and tease him out? Tell me how, I swear I haven’t the faintest idea how to start.”
Head grinned, her eyes twinkling. “They’ve promised complete cooperation. Which means whatever
you can make it mean.”
“Hah! There’s another thing. I have to give him up to them if I catch him?” Aleytys moved her
shoulders, grimaced. “I won’t do it, I wouldn’t give a slime mold into the hands of Company security.”
She shook her head. “It’s not my kind of Hunt. I’m no analyst. How does he pick his targets? How does
he take them? How does he slide through alarm systems and past the eyes of guards ...” Her voice trailed
off; she blinked again. “I knew once ... no, too strained a coincidence. Never mind. What makes them
think he’s still operating? If he’s smart enough to fool them three times, he’s smart enough to stop when
he’s ahead. Luck is bound to turn sour sooner or later.”
Head tapped her fingers on the top of the desk waiting for Aleytys to run down. “You finished?
Good. They’re snatching at straws. Ever heard of a scarecrow? Yes? Well then, that’s you. The power
of the word. Exaggerated stories about you that get more grandiose the farther they spread. The hearings
on the Haestavadda Hunt took six months. You saw how many visitors trailed through the hearing rooms.
That was over a year ago, word’s had time to travel far. Your name alone ...” Head smiled, “nowadays
your name alone lets us double and sometimes triple our fee.” She sobered. “Doesn’t make my job any
easier. Bruised egos for my Hunters and disgruntled clients when they can’t boast of hiring you.”
“I take it I’m still on probation.” When Head nodded, Aleytys pressed her lips tightly together and
stared past her at the wall. After a minute, she said quietly, “I have to thank you for the ship, my friend.
I’ll take this Hunt. I don’t want to but I will. It’s the last I’ll take under these circumstances. Either I
belong here or I get out. You can put that to them more tactfully if you want, but I mean it.”
“I know.”
“Damn, I hate this kind of thing. By the way, when Grey and I were out testing the new ship, we had
a long-distance escort. RMoahl hounds.”
Head nodded again. “They’re still sending periodic demands that you be turned over to them. They
want their property.”
“So I can expect to be followed whenever I venture out of Wolff space.”
“Did they crowd you?”
“No, not really. Just hung on and followed.”
“They won’t. Not after what you did to those tikh’asfour ships. The chief arbiter turned pale when
you got to that part and offered to demonstrate if they didn’t believe you. Very naughty for you, Lee.” A
corner of Head’s mouth twitched up into a half-smile. “But effective. Well, now, back to the business at
hand. On Cazarit you’ll be dealing with people who got where they are by the ruthless use of power. To
cap this, the kind of people they deal with have accumulated enormous wealth and power also, usually by
means that won’t stand light. Cazar Governors can promise all they want, it will be Cazar local execs
who have to do the performing. They’ll give you just as much as you can force from them, even if, in the
end, that undercuts their own positions. The nature of the beast, get it now, tomorrow I may be dead.
Use whatever means you have to pry what you need out of them, your reputation gives you a bit of
added leverage. Our fee, by the way, has been set on an ascending scale according to what you
accomplish. We get paid something if you just show up and sit around. More, if you pick up information
but nothing happens. Most, if you actually catch the ghost.”
Aleytys sighed. “This whole thing stinks. The sooner the rebels kick the tejed out of their holds, the
better, far as I’m concerned. And any being clever enough to bleed the Companies has me cheering for
him. I know I said I’d take the Hunt, but, dammit Head, I can’t turn the ghost over to them if I luck out
and catch him, her or it. Couldn’t live with myself after. Do this for me, will you? Screw out of Cazar
Governors an agreement that says I decide what to do with the ghost.” She smiled, her lips trembling a
little. “At least you got me a ship, my friend, thanks for that, whatever happens.” She stood, tapped the
side of her shoulder bag.. “I’ll read these. And I’d like to talk to Tamris, send her to my house when
you’ve got the agreement—or not got it as the case may be. If I think we can get along, I’ll take her with
me. If I go.” She passed her hand back over her hair, sighed. “Might as well have one friendly face
around.”
Head walked with her to the door. “Don’t count too much on friendly, I’m afraid she’s going to
resent Mother manipulating her again.”
Aleytys laughed, touched Head’s shoulder. “Why wasn’t I born to a quiet life?”
“Because you’d die of boredom before the year was out.”
Lilit
In a little over two weeks I am going to kill my father.
Ink like black velvet, thin lines, forceful strokes, a powerful contrast to the delicate ivory of the
paper. Lilit smiled at what she’d written, liking the dramatic flow of the script, the drama of the words.
She brushed her hair out of her eyes, nipped the mass of it back off her shoulders, dipped the ancient pen
into the ink Acthon had made for her of gum and lampblack.
I can’t remember when I started to hate my father. Not fear him, no. That I sucked in with my
mother’s milk. Milk. That was all I ever got from her and that grudged since I was her seventh
daughter when she desperately needed a son. She was not quite twenty-five when I was born and
making heroic efforts to hold my father’s interest, or so I was told much later. In her
disappointment she came close to killing me. My sisters made sure I learned that once I was old
enough to understand what it meant. I think they were as angry at me as she was—because I
turned out to be a girl, I mean. A brother would have given them status. I never really knew my
mother, can’t remember much about her though I was nearly two when she died trying to have
another baby. The child died too, but no one mourned it—another daughter.
Tapping the end of the pen against her chin, Lilit gazed at what she’d written. She laid the pen down
in the tight crease between the pages of the book, pushed her chair back and walked across the room,
the fur on the bottom of her long black gown brushing softly against her ankles, the silk of the gown
sliding agreeably across her bare skin. Feeling a little like one of the ghosts that haunted her as her
unshod feet moved over the thick rug with not a whisper of sound, she crossed to the window and
pushed the gauzy drape aside. Holding back her thigh-length sweep of black hair, she settled herself on
the windowseat and pressed her face against the glass looking out hungrily past the flicker of the force
dome that protected the Hold from the dangerous free air of Liros II. The sun hung low in the west, its
light nearly swallowed by the heavy clouds. Colors were more subdued than usual, the rough red firebush
lying like velour on rolling hills that swept to the jagged bleak line of the Draghastils, crossed by lines of
chalouri that were black in the distance and a rich deep purple up closer, their fleshy stalks and hair-fine
foliage hanging limp. The air out there seemed to hang still. Nothing moved—even inside the Hold she
could feel the stillness, the sense of waiting became almost unbearable, though that perhaps drew
something from her mood.
She looked past the outer wall at the settlement across the sluggish river. Children were running
about, in and out of the squat houses built of crumbling mud bricks and the lamina of dirt-lily pads, a dark
grey-brown, darker and drabber than ever in the half-light. Some women were gathered at the well. They
stood talking, their water jars held on the well coping with one hand while the other gestured with
staccato impatience. What was the point, her father had said when she asked him why he didn’t give the
village folk a pump and water in their homes. The water in the well was limited, he said, but it was less
contaminated with poisons than that in the river. A pump and plumbing would have made them careless,
they’d soon exhaust the well and have to turn to the river. This way, having to carry every drop, they
were forced to conserve. It made sense in an unhuman sort of way, like much of what her father said and
did. A few old men sat on benches outside the houses, some of them bent over chessboards set between
them, others were talking or staring out toward the mountains. She counted them. Nine. Two gone, sick
or dead, since she’d counted them last. In the distance she could see a line of men trudging back from the
small cleared fields where they fought the poisonous vegetation and the stingy soil to wring from it the
crops they needed to supplement the basic provided by her father. At the well, one woman dragged a bit
of cloth across her face; she glared up at the Hold, picked up her jar and stalked off, the others watching
her a moment then closing in again and talking intensely.
Lilit passed the back of her hand across her forehead, the medallion on a thin gold chain about her
wrist tickling her face. She fingered the smooth oval, feeling the indentations of the incised crest. Tagged
and ready for sale, she thought. She made a fist. Enjoy the bride gift I bring you, toad, she thought. The
world outside the Hold stretched to the horizon, plum and magenta, garnet and vermilion, a mosaic of
bands, stripes and spots. Lightning danced through the clouds and the mountains were beginning to glow
as the sun sank away, shining an eerie blue-white in the almost-night. This isn’t a place made for man, she
thought. She’d never, not once, been outside the Hold; her life had been spent in the halls and walls of
the Hold, in a small patch of lush roof garden filled with off-world plants that died after a year or two no
matter how carefully they were tended. Nineteen years, she thought. She laughed, a harsh, bitter sound
that pleased her as she stood aside and listened to herself. “To protect my breeding capacity. No
malformed grandsons or granddaughters to embarrass Kalyen-tej.”
She watched the storm roll closer for a few minutes then slipped from the seat and stood with bare
feet sunk ankle deep in the moss-green rug. Her lips pressed together, she contemplated the contrast the
room made with the settlement. Lacy curtains, heavy dark furniture. A wide comfortable bed with clean
sheets changed every second day. A bathroom through a hand-rubbed wooden door in the wall by the
head of the bed, clean towels, all the hot or cold water she wanted at the touch of her finger. And this
was only a room in the woman-side, high up in the womantower, isolated, a place where she could
brood and be forgotten. “Until he needs a bait to catch a sly toad,” she murmured. Though the room was
cool and supplied with air purified and kept fresh by the great conditioners in the ground beneath the
Hold, she felt stifled. She lifted the hair off the nape of her neck, closed her eyes. Abruptly she pulled her
hands down, went swiftly back to the writing table. She stared at the pages, smoothed them slowly while
she stared into the shadows gathering in the corners of the room. She dipped the pen in the ink and
wrote:
It’s foolish to be writing these things down. I know that. Insanity. Dangerous to myself and the
people I’m going to be naming. From what I’ve read in the books I stole from Father’s library,
most murderers seem to want people to understand why they did what they did. It seems I share
that compulsion. I want someone to understand why my father has to die—no, that’s not honest.
At least let me have that luxury here—being honest with myself and with whoever reads this.
Luxury, yes it is. I can remember being honest, really honest, only tiny bits of time before
this—when I was alone or with Metis—and not even much of the time with her—so—so I’m going
to kill my father and the rest of them, the Aghir tejed. This won’t come again, this chance that
brings them under one roof. Why?
You who read this don’t need telling why the tejed need killing-Why me?
Because I’m the one who can make sure it goes right. Because—
Acthon came to see me one night last year, the way I showed him, through the walls—
She stretched, set the pen down beside the book and stared at the flickers of lightning outside the
force dome.
She felt a tug. In her dream it was a tiktik running along her arm, six six-toed feet cool and pattering
on her flesh. Another tug. It was Jantig, her next older sister, hissing at her, pulling her arm. Dimly she
knew this was wrong. Jantig had been married off two years before to a merchant of the Cladin Group.
More hissing, an urgency in it, her name, a slap on her cheek. She came groaning from uneasy sleep to
see Acthon bending over her. She felt to make sure the narrow straps of her nightgown were where they
should be, pushed the quilts back and sat up. She rubbed her eyes, tried to get her weary, aching head in
some kind of order. “What is it?”
Acthon sat on the bed facing her. “You know that conference he’s trying to set up?” He never spoke
Kalyen-tej’s name unless he was forced into it.
She let her hands drop to rest on her thighs. “Well?” His face, a younger version of Kalyen’s, held a
brooding angry look. Sometimes she wondered why she didn’t hate him for his face, but there was no
question of that, behind the face he was utterly different from her father. He was Gyoll’s son far more
than he was Kalyen’s.
“He was talking to Aretas tonight. Got him to agree.”
“So? You knew he would, one way or another.” Her hands closed slowly into fists. She leaned
toward him. “Why are you here now?”
“Lanten-tej wants a sweetener. His last wife killed herself a few months ago.”
“Me?”
“You got it. Lanten wants the wedding held before the conference opens; he held out for after, he
doesn’t trust Aretas farther than he could throw him, but had to give in finally, Aretas wouldn’t be
budged.”
She sat silent so cold inside she couldn’t move, couldn’t think.
“You want out?” He bent toward her, tapped her silk-covered knee. “I can take you to Elf in the
Wild.”
She sucked in a long unsteady breath, exploded it out. “Let me think.” She pulled her knuckles
across her forehead. “I can’t think. What’s Aretas like? You went with Father when he was shuttling
about on the first round of talks.”
“You remember Grandfather?”
“No. I’ve heard things.”
“Magnify what you heard, add a body like a bloated toad.”
“My bridegroom. Go away for now, brother, I have to think and I can’t with you here.” She pushed
her hair back, smiled at Acthon, who slid off the bed and stood beside it looking gravely down at her.
“Come back tomorrow night if you can.” He nodded and turned to go. “And thanks, brother,” she called
softly.
She set down quickly what her brother had told her. A year ago, that night a night when she paced
the room struggling with impossible choices until the sky outside began to pale. She pressed a new page
down and began writing more slowly, dipping deep into the past.
Hate—yes—I don’t know when it was born in me, but I know when it began to burn me. That
came when he took Metis. My Metis. I’ve loved one person in my nineteen years. One. When my
mother died, my father left orders I was to have a nursegirl from the village. He named her. Metis.
Aiela’s daughter. And Gyoll’s daughter. Someone brought her to the Hold and left her in the
nursery. She was, I think, about seven at the time, Acthon’s half-sister. Her youngest sister was
two, exactly as old as I was, born the same day, almost the same hour. Metis was greatly fond of
her, it was this perhaps that caught at her imagination and broke through her bitter resentment
and let her see me as the miserable little rat I was instead of the pampered daughter of the family
that oppressed her people.
Men are cheaper and easier to replace than machines and at times self-replicating. And
trapped here. Most of Liros II vegetation and animal life is poisonous so we keep a rope about
their necks, or so Father thinks; the others too. I suppose. Or they’d do more about it than they
have. Metis told me that her people have found out how to cook muddogs and some other things
so they can eat them. It’s enough to let them live in the Wild—I’m getting away from what I
meant to say. It’s easier, I think, to go on about things that don’t really matter.
Metis. Her heart always betrayed her. She came to me intending to do the job—that and only
that—but I was a scrawny, sad little thing, nothing like she expected though she was simmering
with resentment when she measured the difference between her home and the Hold nursery.
The first things I remember for myself are soft arms and a husky voice that comforted me
when demons came at night wearing my father’s face. I trotted around after her, she told me, like
a tiktik after its dam, all black hair and black eyes and skinny arms and legs like sticks. I knew
she was my friend not just my nursegirl the day she smuggled me in a tiktik baby when she came
back from her freeday. Not because she gave me something but because of what she risked to
bring it to me. It was a tiny thing with prickly black fur and beady black eyes, a pointed black
nose that was cold and wet, a nose that sniffed nervously about and poked into everything. And it
had long skinny legs like mine, but (not like mine) covered with a fine red fur, six legs, each paw
with six delicate fingers. When it ran about, it used all the legs, but it could sit up and use its front
paws with formidable dexterity. I was entranced by it from the moment it wrapped its tiny red
fingers about one of mine. Metis made me take care of it by myself, clean up after it, I think she
was trying to teach me how to love something other than myself. When it was especially content it
made a tiny cooing and its whole body vibrated with the sound. When it bit off bites of something,
its small square teeth made the sound that gave it its name. In the wild it lived in large herds and
the tiktik of their feeding, Metis said, could fill an afternoon.
For some time we managed to keep the tiktik a secret, but one day I was careless. I’d been
playing with it in the unused storeroom where we kept it. In the hall outside, just down a bit, two
of my older sisters got into a hair-pulling fight. I ran to watch the fun, forgetting to make sure the
latch clicked home. Of course the tiktik got out, and, of course, another of my sisters found it,
started tormenting it—that being her nature—and got herself bitten. Her screams brought the
attendants and me—in time to see the tiktik’s terror as it raced about, in time to see an attendant
snatch it up and dash its brains out against the wall.
What followed might not have happened if Metis had been with me but that was her freeday
and she was home. I started crying over the tiktik’s body. That was a mistake, but what did I
know, a four-year-old baby? I should have known, I’d had all too many lessons in the need to
keep quiet, to keep my feelings hidden from the others, but I’d never really loved anything before,
never had anything that was mine alone. It was mine and it was dead, that’s all I knew. Mine and
dead.
My stepmother heard the furor and came. She was a quiet woman, a rather nice woman, I
know that now, though I hated and feared her then. She’d already given my father the son my
own mother had died trying to produce. At that time she was newly pregnant with my second
half-brother (legitimate, that is) and suffering with him. She might have tried easing her misery by
passing it on to those around her, but she didn’t. My sisters and I knew, all of us, that we lived
here on sufferance, worthless, unwanted. You’d think we’d draw together, make common cause
against our father and the system that made us worthless, but that didn’t happen. I’m digressing
again, this is harder than I thought.
My stepmother discovered easily enough how the tiktik had got into the Hold. I told her. I had
a strong sense that what I was doing was wrong, was a betrayal, but at four-going-on-five, one
oftimes does not really understand all the consequences of one’s acts and adults are formidable
adversaries.
The attendants brought Metis to the nursery. My stepmother sent my sisters away, her ice-blue
gaze silencing their protests, but she kept me there to watch. In her stern way she was being kind.
She was teaching me my place and she was protecting both Metis and me. Something had to be
done, something fairly drastic, or word of this escapade might have reached my father. Metis
could have been whipped bloody with the spansir and taken from me, might have been killed for
endangering a tej’s daughter—even a worthless daughter was worth more than the child of a
contract laborer, that was what my father called them always though others of the tejed weren’t
so delicate in their pronouncements.
My stepmother forced me to stand in front of her. Her long slender hands were firm on my
shoulders. Metis was cuffed to the wall and her blouse war torn away. A serviteur was instructed
and given the clisor. Her neck and shoulders were rigid. I couldn’t see her face. I didn’t want to.
My stepmother spoke, holding me tight against her legs. “Girl, you brought an animal of the Wild
into this house. Your life would be forfeit if I thought you’d done this with malice, but I believe it
was only thoughtlessness, a misguided attempt to amuse your charge. You will receive fifteen
strokes of the clisor and be sent to your family in disgrace for one week. At the end of that time
present yourself at the postern gate to resume your duties here. Do you understand what I am
saying?”
With my stepmother’s hands so tight on my shoulders they hurt, I waited in agony for my
friend’s answer, for it seemed to me that Metis could be lost forever in the space of a word not
spoken. For what seemed an eternity Metis’s back and shoulders held rigid, then she sighed and
said, “Yes, Taejin, I understand.”
Though some of the ice melted within me, I still had bad enough ahead of me. My stepmother
held me, would not let me turn away. I think I felt on my own body every blow of that whip. The
clisor. Its five broad soft strips of leather hurt but they wouldn’t tear flesh. Again, in her way, my
stepmother was being kind. The spansir had five tails also, but these were braided, knotted about
small spurs, with metal points on the tips. Fifteen strokes of the spansir would have killed my
friend.
Metis was stubbornly silent for the first few strokes, but in the end she screamed as the leather
beat again and again in the same place. My body jerked with hers. I tried to turn away and bury
my face in my stepmother’s long skirt, stop up my ears with my fists, but she wouldn’t let me, she
made me watch. I learned a lot more than the simple lesson of obedience she intended to teach
me. I learned in a way I have never forgotten that a single thoughtless act could have terrible
consequences and that—bad as it is to endure punishment yourself—it is infinitely more terrible to
be the careless cause of suffering for someone you love.
The attendants took Metis down and led her away. My stepmother marched me back to the
nursery and left me there—left me to the attention of my sisters. Well—let that pass. I can
understand them better now, though to understand it not to forgive. I will not speak of forgiving
my stepmother, she deserves better than that, but the system that forced her to act as she
did—that I can neither forgive nor forget.
Metis came back and life went along much as usual. She sat in on my lessons, learned more
than I did. She could already read and write, her father taught her, and her mind was quick and
sure. She had a terrible hunger for knowledge, more than I ever had or ever will have. The first
books I sneaked out of my father’s library, I took for her though I was soon fetching them for
myself as well, so powerful was her influence over me. Neither of us found much meat in the
things females were allowed to learn.
When I was six and Metis was eleven, we moved away from the nursery into the tower room.
Stepmother worked that for us, it made the nursery that much more peaceful. Selas, her youngest
son, was sickly and Metis and I were at the center of most of the noisier fusses. It was better when
we were alone, easier for her when we were gone.
I had a lot more in common with the tiktik than the way I looked. I poked my long nose into
everything. Many nights I couldn’t sleep and went roaming through the halls. I found my way to
my father’s library, as I mentioned before, and spent long hours looking through it. I even found a
way into the walls. Those walls that looked so massive were fake, honeycombed with passages
that must have been bored by one or more of my ancestors. They went everywhere with plenty of
peepholes. I loved the dark silence between the walls and spent as much time as I could there,
though Metis didn’t like it and was afraid I’d get lost and starve. Yes, I spent as much time as I
could there, locating all the exits, mapping the maze in my head. I don’t think my father knew
about the passages, I never saw any sign he did.
I loved spying on people, watching them when they didn’t know they were being watched. It
was a kind of power and gave me intense satisfaction. This is one of the things I never spoke
about to Metis. I know without having to think it that this would disgust her. I was very careful in
my explorations, having learned my lesson most thoroughly. I could not take chances with the
skin of my friend; she certainly would have been blamed for my mischief. For the same reason I
became a model girlchild, modest and quiet, industrious and obedient. I wanted no one to think
that Metis was bad for me. Actually, she should have been sent home when I reached my eighth
year, because I was starting my serious schooling—not books, but the arts of pleasing a man and
running a home for whatever husband my father would select for me. Because my father said
nothing, she stayed. I despised those lessons, but I have my share of vanity, more than my share
Metis used to say. I have good bones. I’m not pretty, but I like my face. I can be elegant. I like my
skin to be smooth and fair. I like the sliding feel of silk against bare skin. I like the gold chains
that call attention to the delicacy of my wrist and ankle. I like having hair that is a night-black fall
so long I can sit on it.
And I hate the thought of dying.
And I hate the thought of lying under that toad of a man and letting him do what he wants
with me.
Though my father is more intent on crushing the rebellion than on seeing me wed, he is a
devious man and never so pleased as when he can make one act serve many ends. He is pleased
enough with my looks and with the docility I’ve exhibited these many years. All my other sisters
are married now, Jantig was the last. I’ve been holding my breath the past three years, but with
Stepmother dead and not around to remind him he’d got an unwed daughter stuck in the attic, he
just forgot about me until this conference began obsessing him. Still, I don’t really care what he’s
planning for me, I have my own plans. In a way I have to keep talking myself into this, reminding
myself how little power I have for changing my life, how much my death would mean if I took the
tejed with me.
Lilit read the last words over then put the pen down, stroked burning eyes, smoothed the tip of her
forefinger over the cool surface of the ivory paper. She shut the book and began tracing the patterns
stamped in the soft leather binding. She’d found the book years ago behind some others in the library.
Lilit the child had been fascinated by a book with no printing in it, only blank pages. She’d left it where it
was with reluctance; for over a month she fingered it every day but left it behind when she left. In the end
she couldn’t resist ft, took it from the library, hid it away in the walls with her other treasures—and
waited with sweaty anxiety to see if her father missed it. He never said anything. And the book was
obviously old, the heavy paper yellowed at the edges. For a long while she forgot it and only now found
a reason for using it.
Outside, the rain struck the force bubble and slid in a grey, wavery curtain to the ground beyond the
walls, lending an eerie unreality to the view; she kept the curtain draped back from the window because
she liked the effect of moonlight on the vista, because in a way it seemed to widen the strangling
narrowness of the world she lived in, the room in the tower, the holes in the walls, the garden on the roof
of the tower, the dining room where she now and then acted as hostess for her father, a round she knew
as well as she knew the lines in her palms. She no longer took light with her into the walls, her feet read
the stones for her, she seldom needed to think where she was or where she wanted to go, she ran
through the holes, a peeping ghost in the walls. The peepholes were like the window in her tower room,
giving her a fleeting contact with a world she’d never touch.
She yawned, finally tired, hoping to sleep, though that was always a chancy thing for her. It was late,
very late, and there were many things she had to do in the morning. She picked up the book, held it a
moment. A prickle at the back of her eyes made her shake her head impatiently. There was no one to
talk to now, not since her father took Metis from her, not since Metis died bearing his child—only these
smooth silent pages. She pushed the chair back and stood, stretching a little to work out the cramps from
sitting so long. At the wall she pressed on a section of carving. A small panel clicked open. She set the
book in the cavity revealed, pushed the panel shut her hands trembling on the wood. She was never sure
how much her father knew about the hidden places in the Hold, but she did count on his unexpressed but
evident contempt for the female members of his family. What she’d already written was enough to
warrant the strangler’s cord for her and death by spansir beating for those she named in the book. That
was what bothered her most, betraying the others involved in her plans, yes she needed the book and this
talking out of her life, she was saying things she absolutely had to say, things she could tell to no one else.
Not even to Acthon. She clicked the panel shut slipped out of her dressing gown, hung it neatly in a
closet and slid into bed, the sheets whispering crisply about her. The bed was empty and cold, the other
body that once shared it with her was gone three years now and she still was not used to sleeping alone.
At the beginning of each night she stretched out on the right side of the bed, not in the middle, though her
restless turning carried her into the middle most nights.
For the past month Father has been insisting I come down to dine every night with the family.
I know why he’s doing it, he wants to be sure I’m really calm about the proposed marriage, to be
sure I’m in good health, to be sure I’m properly submissive. Somewhere he has picked up the
notion that I’ve gone strange, living alone in my tower room. He can’t believe that even a woman
could be content spending her days embroidering her wedding robes. I think he’s decided I’m a
little stupid. And he’s satisfied with that. Though he still calls me down, he ignores me and spends
much of the time lecturing to my brothers on how they are to conduct themselves when he’s gone
and quizzing them. I learn a lot to pass on to Acthon and Gyoll so it’s worth the boredom and the
wear and tear on my stomach.
At the table my father confirmed finally the date of our departure then spent much of the meal
questioning Ekeser about handling every possible difficulty that could come up in his absence. He
ignored Selas, anyway Selas was off somewhere in the dreamworld where he spent most of his
time. Weak of body, weak of mind—though I don’t know about that last, it was hard to tell, he
seldom said anything, but I’ve seen him, time after time, defeat Ekeser’s malice without speaking
a word, simply by seeming not to notice what was being done to him. I wonder about him
whenever I think of him, but that’s not often, he escapes me as easily as he does the others.
At the table she watched the play in front of her with little interest; most of what she heard, she’d
heard before and passed on. She was long over her first amazement at seeing that her father despised his
sons almost as much as he did his daughters, though he valued them considerably higher. Not Acthon, he
didn’t despise him. Sometimes she’d thought he might go against custom and law—he was after all the
ultimate law in the Liros system—and acknowledge Acthon, make him the heir, but lately she understood
that he couldn’t do that. He believed in tradition and law; no matter how much he might stray beyond
their borders in his private life, in matters concerning the rule of the Liros system, he kept strictly to the
precedent of his forebears. The legitimate line must be preserved, power must be conserved in the hands
摘要：

GhosthuntDiadem,Book7JoClayton1983  ALEYTYS...hatedCompanyworlds...planetsownedandruledsolelybytheinbredelitedescendantsofthosewhohadfirstfoundandexploitedthem.Companyworldswerelikeslaveplantationsintoomanyways.Everythingfortheownersandcrumbsforeveryoneelse.Butononesuchsetoflinkedworlds,theownerswer...

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