Sliding Scales

  Its purpose became self-evident when a lean, scaled figure dressed in a similar though more intricately scribed robe entered through one of the chamber's two doors. A similarly tailored and hemmed slit in the rear of the newcomer's garment allowed a svelte, whip-like tail to emerge and move freely. Intricate inlays of silver and gold thread were embedded in the scales of its head, beautifying it on top and sides.

  “Ssst-ssta, you are awake. Good.”

  His visitor was an AAnn, he knew with a sudden start. There was no telling, no predicting, when a fragment of his fractured memory would unexpectedly fall into place. One more piece of knowledge to dump back into the still largely empty hopper of his mind.

  The visitor briefly turned her head sideways in a reflexive gesture of greeting before meeting his gaze. “You were sserioussly dehydrated, even for a human who iss esspecially ssenssitive to ssuch thingss. The organss that comprisse your digesstive ssysstem were empty. Though we of the Tier of Ssaiinn know very little about humanss, it wass not difficult to ressearch ssuch detailss. As a conssequence, and after much conssideration of the necessary nutrientss, you have been provided with intravenouss nourisshment.” The scaly, stiff face and snout could not manage a smile, but he effortlessly perceived the reptiloid's attitude. It was full of compassion and concern. Something about that did not seem right, but he lacked both the inclination and the memory to examine it further.

  “Thank you,” he murmured through still-dry lips. “For saving me.”

  “Chisst ssalee na,” his visitor responded. “We could do no less, even for a human. Unlike the Ssaiinn, there are many otherss who would have left you for the prekalez to feed on. You were fortunate to be found by memberss of the Tier.” She looked him up and down. “Your height required the making of a cusstom garment. I hope you find it ssuitable. We have ssaved the attire in which you were found, but I fear it iss in a deplorable condition.”

  Cool and durable, the robe rested in caressing folds against his body. They had washed and cleaned him, too, he noted. That must have provided food for comment among those who carried out the sanitizing.

  “It's fine,” he told her, feeling a fold of the material. Spiraling down from the ceiling, Pip settled familiarly on his shoulders. “I'm very comfortable.”

  “With many thingss, it would appear. In the dayss of delirium while you lay recuperating here in the north contemplation room, you sshouted out your unconscious disstress in tonguess we varioussly identified as terranglo, ssymbosspeech, and sseveral unknown languagess as well as our own. Whoever you are, it iss evident that you are well educated.”

  Approaching him, she reached swiftly toward his neck. Noting that her claws remained sheathed, he held his ground while she grabbed his throat. Almost automatically, he clutched at hers.

  Now where did I learn how to do that? he found himself wondering.

  “I am Chraluuc,” she told him. “It hass been given over to me to watch over you.”

  Or just watch me? he mused. “I am Flinx,” he told her without thinking. “You flourish no subjunctives?” He seemed to know a great deal about these creatures, he reflected.

  She dipped her head slightly. “We of the Tier do not desscribe our sstatuss or family possitioning by meanss of ssuch antiquated frivolitiess. We believe that there are better wayss of judging an individual.” Her attentive, reptilian gaze rose again to meet his. “ ‘Flinx’ will work very well among uss. Unlike many human namingss, it iss not difficult to pronounce.” From the depths of her robe she withdrew a small, tapered flask. Like the ceiling and his robe, it too was lavishly decorated with embroidered swirls and ornamenting motifs.

  Taking the flask, he sniffed of it hesitantly. His caution was misplaced, he decided promptly. If these people had meant to do him ill, they could simply have left him where he had passed out next to the creek that had been rife with expectant predators. The bouquet emanating from the bottle was piquant and inviting. Raising it to his lips, he started to sip.

  Hissing the AAnn version of laughter, Chraluuc rushed to grab his wrist. “No, no. Tuyy iss not for drinking.” Stepping back, she mimicked turning the bottle sideways against herself and urged him to do likewise. Imitating her example, he inhaled the resultant fragrance as a few drops of the liquid emerged from the stylish container to spread against his skin. Clearly, while he knew a great deal about his saviors, there was much he didn't know.

  He had nearly taken a hearty swallow from a perfume applicator.

  He had the grace not to ask whether it was being offered as a gift or a perceived necessity. With his mammalian odor suitably masked by the bottle's contents, she led him through the rear doorway and out of the glass-walled chamber.

  They emerged into an open courtyard flush with local flora and fauna. In a trio of cages, what appeared to be long, colored tubes rose and fell according to the amount of air contained in their lifting sacs. Peering closer, he was able to make out tiny eyes. What at first glance looked like paper-thin, membranous wings were in fact ears. As they passed the gauzy cages, the delicate captives within began to sing. Their dulcet trills lingered in his ears as he followed close on the heels of his long-striding guide.

  Grouped around the central courtyard were several clusters of whitewashed buildings. None rose higher than two stories above the surrounding desert terrain. Occasionally they would encounter other AAnn similarly clad in free-flowing robes such as the one he now wore. While their expressions as they glanced in his direction were usually neutral, their emotions often were not. Reaching out with his talent, he sensed curiosity, anger, hunger, contempt, repressed fury, and a host of other sentiments directed his way. The overriding feeling he received was one of guarded curiosity.

  That was hardly surprising, he thought. No one was less curious about himself than he.

  While his own background remained a dark, shadowy, shifting place lost in the deep recesses of his mind, more and more data about his reptiloid hosts came rushing unbidden to the fore. These were enemies, he felt. Yet their reactions to him were confusing. Instead of leaving him to die, they had rescued him. Instead of subjecting him to starvation, he had been given nourishment, fluids, and even freshening scent. In place of harsh interrogation he had been offered a kind of formal welcome not unlike what would have been offered to any visitor of their own kind.

  Plainly, these were not the AAnn of his reviving memories. If not that, then what were they?

  He tried to draw some conclusions not only from how he had thus far been treated, but from his surroundings. These were AAnn: he knew there should be weapons in evidence, if only as a sign of tradition. Yet he saw nothing of the kind. Chraluuc certainly was not armed, and unless their artfully adorned robes masked concealed arsenals, neither were any of the nye she and he encountered as they crossed the courtyard. He saw not so much as a ceremonial knife.

  It could be his devastated memory playing tricks, he knew. Perhaps the AAnn were not, after all, the hostile weapons carriers he seemed to be recalling. But no matter how hard he tried to rationalize it away, that much of what he was remembering struck him as conclusive and irrefutable. It was puzzling. No less puzzling than their treatment of him.

  Were there different kinds of AAnn? From what he could recall, knowledge of them was fairly extensive but by no means absolute. They were aggressive competitors for power and influence everywhere throughout the Orion Arm. They hated the thranx, disliked humans, and held many other sentient species in casual contempt—none of which fit with how he was being treated.

  Unless it was all a ploy of some kind, he decided. But to what end? To get information from him? If that was their ultimate aim, they were going to be gravely disappointed. It was hard to imagine any enterprise more futile than trying to pump an amnesiac for information. Meanwhile, he would observe and learn, and try to remember more and more while building up his strength.

  “The Ssemilionn has been made aware that you are awake and well, and that your knowledge of a proper language is
s ssatissfactory.” Chraluuc directed him to a doorway. He had to duck slightly to clear the lintel. Even it was decorated, garlanded with floating simulacra of Jastian flowers and plants.

  As she entered, she moved quickly to stand to one side and with her back to him: standard AAnn posturing to show that she remained personally vulnerable and therefore intended him no harm. He found himself in another room. This one had opaque walls but large windows. The far wall was sharply curved and offered a fine view through a single, sweeping, gold-tinted transparency of the boulder-strewn ridge beyond. He squinted. The boulders, some of them quite large, appeared to have been deliberately repositioned according to a planned but unnatural schematic. The room's domed ceiling was dominated by a similarly golden-hued translucency.

  The floor of the front half of the room where he was standing was tiled. The other half that backed up against the curving window was paved with smooth sand, ocher daubed with yellow in swirling patterns. Seated on high, backless cushions on this half were three elderly AAnn: two males and one female. With the exception of one male, time had robbed their scales of youthful luster. The younger one peered back at him out of artificial eyes. The female sported a tail that was half prosthetic, as if the original had been damaged in a fight or lost in an accident.

  Their naked emotions washed over him. In large part it was the same mix he had encountered while crossing the courtyard, but tempered. The antagonism was not as sharp, the curiosity more pronounced.

  Introductions were made. He filed the names for future reference and was pleased that he could recall them. His memory facilities were not permanently damaged, then. Only drained.

  “You are a human,” the older male Naalakot declared. Flinx saw no especial reason to dispute this, having more or less reached the same conclusion himself. “What iss a human doing out here, alone, on the unpopulated reachess of the Ssmuldaar Plateau?”

  “It's not unpopulated,” Flinx countered immediately. “You're here.”

  Hisses of amusement emerged from the mouths of the Elder's companions while Chraluuc discreetly clamped her snout shut with one hand. Unoffended, Naalakot responded with a gesture of polite concession as his synthetic eyes focused more closely on the visitor.

  “Your point iss granted, but failss to enlighten. What happened to you? Ceerani the physician reported that when found you were near death.”

  “I was—I am …,” Flinx struggled to remember. “I was just looking around.”

  “ ‘Jusst looking around,’ ” repeated the elderly female Xeerelu. “That iss not ussually a fatal passion. Nor doess it explain what happened to you, and why you were found in ssuch a dire sstate.”

  “I was …” On his shoulders, Pip peered anxiously at her master as he fought with himself. “I—I don't know what happened to me. I don't remember. All I recall is passing out and then waking up to see”—he indicated the patiently watching Chraluuc—“her coming toward me.”

  The triumvirate of the Ssemilionn exchanged gestures of agreement. “Sso you inssisst you were ‘jusst looking around.’ How doess that relate to you individually? Where are you come from? What iss it that you do when you are not ‘looking around’?”

  They were interested, he felt, not only out of natural AAnn caution, but because they were genuinely curious about him as a person. If he was interpreting their emotions correctly, that was reassuring. He hoped his response, the only response he could give, would not change that.

  “I don't know. I don't know much of anything. Little things keep coming back to me, unexpected and unaskedfor bits of information. But very little about myself. I don't”—he was surprised to find that his eyes were filling with moisture—“I don't remember who I am, much less where I come from or how I ended up the way you found me, where you found me.”

  “Interessting.” The second male, Viinpou, gestured with a claw. “Obsserve the creature'ss generation of ssoothing eye fluid in ressponsse to the obviouss emotional disstress it iss pressently feeling.”

  Xeerelu chastened him with a sharp gesture Flinx did not recognize. “Be less analytical, Viinpou. The ssoftsskin iss plainly ssuffering.”

  “Memory loss,” hissed the male softly. “That iss not helpful.”

  “Believe me,” Flinx told him as he wiped angrily at his moist eyes, “nobody wishes the situation was otherwise more than I do.” Reaching up with one hand, he absently stroked Pip behind her head.

  Naalakot had continued to watch him closely. Now the senior AAnn pressed his fingertips against one another, claws extended so that the points met. It was an AAnn gesture, Flinx knew, that could mean many different things.

  “The quesstion before uss, ssoftsskin, iss not even sso much who you are, where you have come from, or what the nature of your true purposse in being in thiss place iss—but what are we of the Tier to do with you?”

  Standing before them in golden-hued surroundings that bordered on the serene but nonetheless remained fraught with uncertainty, an uneasy Flinx felt he could share their concern. After all, he was not at all sure what to do with him, either.

  7

  There were six individuals in the elite strike force that was evenly divided between AAnn and Vssey. They turned quietly and with caution into the dark backstreet. Though shadowed by the high mounded structures it cut through, it was wide enough to allow access to small vehicles and personal transporters. While their Vsseyan counterparts made use of the latter, the AAnn members of the strike force disdained them. The more machinery one employed, the bigger the target it made and the more it reduced a soldier's maneuverability. So while the Vsseyan police formed a short column of transporters down the center of the secondary avenue, the heavily armed AAnn clung to the fronts of shops and apartment structures, keeping to the shadows and to whatever cover was available while advancing in fits and starts.

  With their eyes mounted on stalks, the Vsseyan officers were able to look in almost every direction at once. This allowed them to sustain their stately progression down the middle of the street in comparative confidence. Meanwhile, the AAnn went from shop front to alcove, covering one another with long weapons clutched securely in clawed hands. While the Vssey were far from technologically illiterate, it was the AAnn who brought with them the latest in military search-and-discover gear. Among other things, each soldier was equipped with instrumentation that could detect and identify, at a distance, the great majority of potentially explosive compounds. It would also warn them in advance of the presence in their vicinity of advanced weaponry.

  It was a bit of technoverkill, but after Morotuuver, the always suspicious, ever-vigilant AAnn were in no mood to take chances. One bomb, one unpleasant incident, was enough. With the concurrence of the Vsseyan government, the hitherto unsuspected violent opposition to their kindly presence on Jast was to be snuffed out forthwith. The soldiers relaxed only slightly when, after their equipment detected the presence of potentially volatile compounds, they smashed their way into a closed shop with opaqued windows only to find themselves in the midst of a group of startled Vssey who were busily engaged in trying out new combinations of body stain to be used in personal adornment. It took the three accompanying Vsseyan police a good part of the morning to calm the consequent panic.

  Miffed, the patrolling officers and soldiers resumed their rounds only slightly chastened. Better, the subofficer in charge of the three AAnn felt, to inconvenience a thousand of the miserable lumpish locals than for one more innocent AAnn to suffer so much as a broken tail-tip at the hands (or rather, tentacles) of the as-yet-unidentified dissenting faction. Peering over the ridge of his neuronic rifle, he longed for one of the nameless ones to make itself known so that he could personally put a charge into its trunk-like body and watch while it slowly asphyxiated, its neural system paralyzed, its organs fibrillating uncontrollably.

  Even with the Vsseyan police making use of their silent individual transports, the patrol was progressing at a speed that for an AAnn bordered on the terminal. Time and agai
n the subofficer had to hiss a loud command to one of his two subordinates to slow down, back off, and wait for the others. Sympathizing with their impatience to get on with it, he did not admonish them. He felt exactly the same.

  Gurra, who was striding point, abruptly paused and beckoned for his companions to hurry and join him. The subofficer gratefully lengthened his stride while the trio of Vssey used tentacle tips to nudge the accelerators of their transports. Ever wary, the other members of the patrol coalesced around the trooper.

  “Ssee here, honored ssubofficer.” Gurra was pointing to a spot on an old stone foundation that supported a more modern structure.

  Subofficer Jyiivad and the others looked down. There was no question but that several of the large underpinning stones had recently been moved. Perhaps, Jyiivad thought, moved and replaced. His own gear was confirming what had initially attracted Gurra.

  There were dangerous composites behind the stones. Not volatile chemical compounds such as they had encountered earlier at the unlucky group ornamentation session, but seriously explosive materials, concentrated and ready to be detonated. He turned to Nuwaabaw, the senior of the three Vssey.

  “What building iss thiss, only whosse back we can ssee from here?”

  The Vssey consulted his own instrumentation. The hearing frill that encircled his upper body rippled with realization. “We are directly behin' the Aulauwohly City Offices for offworl' Export Control!” Almost reflexively, he began to back his transporter away from the unmistakably shifted stones.

  Such a department would have AAnn on its staff and work closely with those portions of the Vsseyan government and public that favored increased contact with the Empire, Jyiivad realized. An obvious target. As such, in the wake of the Morotuuver incident, it would have extra security stationed inside and out front—additional targets. There would be commendations for the discovery Gurra had just made.