Alien Skies, page 40
part #3 of Wakanreo Series
“Is anything wrong, Lieutenant?” Jared asked.
Kamuhi shook his head. “No, sir. It’s just that this next part is a little strange, and I still have trouble believing it myself.”
“Go ahead and tell it.”
Kamuhi described Inchauro tying him to the post and his threat with the knife. When he mentioned Baou’s appearance and his use of the stun gun, Jared stopped him again. “Baou was the one who had brought Grazau the modified stun gun and the chair?” he asked.
“Yes, sir,” confirmed Kamuhi. “Short, middle aged, medium brown fur and crest. I thought he was a qatorglynai. Even after he stunned Perduay, I assumed he was simply following Grazau’s orders to keep me alive a little longer.”
“Did something happen to make you change your mind?”
“Yes, sir. After he dropped Perduay, Baou left him on the floor, but he turned him over so he was on his back. Then he went to the door and he let in another Wakanrean, an old woman. It was Umphauron Diow, sir, the woman who came to see my daughter back at Headquarters, the one we heard later was the leader of the Guinahai sect.”
“What?” Jared seemed almost to have forgotten the recorder. “What the hell was she doing there?”
“She was the one who killed Perduay, sir. She walked over to him without saying a word. She took out a jaquhan, stood over him, and shot him. It was at very close range, and it made a real mess of his chest. He was very dead very quickly. I saw it all because he was lying only a meter away from me.”
Jared was amazed. “The old woman killed him? Not Baou?”
“Yes, sir,” Kamuhi said emphatically. “Baou was taking orders from her; she was in charge. It was like an execution.”
“What happened next?”
“She sent Baou away. I couldn’t understand their dialect, but he came back with some blankets and something for me to drink. Then she came over and checked me out. She refused to untie me when I asked her to, but she made me as comfortable as she could otherwise. When Baou came back with the blankets, she covered me up and gave me some water mixed with wine. She sent him away again and then she told me she had killed Perduay because he threatened the Trishenhai. Then she did something really strange, sir.”
“What did she do?”
“She took Inchauro’s knife and used it to reopen the cut he had made on my chest. It had hurt a lot when he cut me, but it wasn’t very deep, so it wasn’t bleeding badly. It scared me when she took the knife to me, but all she did was make the cut bleed a little more. Then, she dipped her finger in my blood and drew the mark of Paruian on my forehead. And she said ‘The blood of the fijazhai will be the blood of the Trishenhai.’ Then when Baou came back with five other Wakanreans, she did the same thing to each of them, except I’m not positive she said the same phrae because it wasn’t in Wisutan dialect.”
“What happened after that?”
“They all just got up and walked out, sir. They left me sitting there and went out the door. The next thing I knew, Captain Drushachh was shaking me awake.”
Jared switched off the recorder.
“My god, Kam, the old woman executes Perduay without a blink, and then she conducts a religious ceremony—with your blood—with his body still lying right there?”
Kamuhi nodded. “I was a little freaked out. I had been quite sure that I was going to die. Perduay made it clear that he was going to kill me after he got through inflicting enough pain, and I couldn’t think of a way to stop him. And then Umphauron Diow came in. By the time she got to the part where she was marking me with my own blood, it all seemed sort of unreal.”
“I should think it would. They were all dead in the house, all three of them, including the one called Grazau. They were garroted while they slept; someone used either a thin cord or a wire. Nothing was taken, nothing disturbed—just three bodies lying in their beds.”
Kamuhi shivered. “She’s very efficient for someone who’s a hundred and fifty years old.”
Jared nodded. “The Guinahai turned off the dampener before they left. I assume Baou must have known how to do it, since he seemed to have infiltrated their group. They took your uniform tunic and staked it out on the roof, too. I guess that was insurance that we would find you. Baou would have had no way of knowing whether we really had a transponder on you or not. We had narrowed the search down to a small area, but it was slow going because all we could do was search for the dampener itself. Once your transponder signal popped up on the monitors, we went right to those coordinates. We saw your tunic on the roof and knew that we were in the right place. I’m sorry we couldn’t get to you sooner, Kam. If it hadn’t been for Baou and the old woman, we would have eventually found your body.”
“It’s okay, Jared. It was my own fault in the first place. I took an autocab because I didn’t want to ask for official transport for a visit to my mother-in-law. It was a stupid thing to do.”
“I sent you there, if you remember,” Jared pointed out.
Kamuhi smiled. “You said talk to Dina. You never told me I should leave the base in the most vulnerable way possible and not even look at the damn autocab before I stepped into it.”
“Well, you’ll know better next time.”
“Yes.”
The medtech came back, frowning. She seemed annoyed. “How much longer are you going to be, sir? The doctor wants him to sleep now, and he needs to be under the healing accelerator. The cut on his face is going to take a while. It’s the deepest.” She looked at Kamuhi critically and frowned again. “We’ll have to put him in the tube. He’s cut in too many places for one accelerator.”
“Do what you have to do,” Jared said. “If the doctor wants him asleep, go ahead and put him to sleep. I’m through with him for now, and I can tell you, he’s not a very cooperative patient.”
“Jared!” protested Kamuhi, sitting up in bed and forgetting to call him Commander. “You said I could see Yulayan!”
“You need to sleep, Lieutenant,” said the medtech, preparing a hypospray. “Besides, it’ll be a lot easier to treat you if you’re not conscious. Most people get a little claustrophobic in the tube.”
“I don’t want to go to sleep,” Kamuhi said. “I want to see my wife!”
“Later, Kam,” Jared said. “Lie down and take your medicine. You need the rest even if you don’t know it.”
Before Kamuhi could argue anymore, the medtech reached over and pressed the hypospray against his arm. Kamuhi barely had a chance to lie down before his eyes closed.
When he woke up, Yulayan was standing next to his bed. “Hello, Kam.”
“Hello, sweetheart,” he said, smiling up at her. “Should you be up?”
She nodded. “It turns out that taking the implant out is a less complicated procedure than putting it in. I’m fine.”
“How do you feel?”
“I’m fine, Kam,” she said again, reassuringly. “He’s dead now, and I don’t feel anything for him anymore.”
Kamuhi looked at the wall chronometer. It was late afternoon. He had been asleep for several hours.
He tried sitting up and found that he felt much better. There was no pain and no dizziness. When he looked down, he could see that the cuts on his chest and the gash on his arm had healed. Yulayan reached out a hand and traced a line on his face from his cheekbone to his chin.
“You’re going to have a bad scar there, unless you let the doctor fix it. Did Inchauro do that?”
Kamuhi shook his head. “No, it was the other one. His name was Grazau.” He took her hand and kissed it. Yulayan moved closer and threw her arms around him.
“I’m glad you’re back, Kam,” she said, almost sobbing. “I was so afraid of what they might do to you.”
Kamuhi hugged her back. “I was pretty scared myself, guisha, for you and for me and for Malia.”
Yulayan pulled away and sat next to him on the bed. “Did they hurt you a lot? Jared wouldn’t tell me anything except that you were all right.”
Kamuhi shrugged. “They cut me up a little, but I’m fine now. I just want to get out of here.”
Yulayan nodded at a bag on the floor. “I brought you a clean uniform. They told me you can come home, so long as you take it easy, but Jared wants to see you for a few minutes first.”
“That’s great!” Kamuhi dressed quickly and pulled on his boots. They were the only part of his uniform that had survived qatorglynai mistreatment.
Yulayan held out her hand. “Here. I thought you’d want these back. The qatorglynai sent them to me with the letter.”
Kamuhi saw his lieutenant’s insignia in her palm. He took them and pinned them on his collar. “Thanks. You must have been pretty upset when you saw them.”
“I was frantic.” She smiled at him. “I’ve had some time to really think about it, Kam, and I realize I’ve been foolish. I was worried that you were still interested in other women because I wasn’t a Terran. I wasn’t trusting you to love me as much as I trusted myself to love you.”
Kamuhi shook his head. “It’s harder for us, sweetheart. It’ll always be harder because we’re so different. That doesn’t mean we can’t stay together. We just have to work at it more.”
She hugged him again. “Go to see Jared so you can come home.”
He bent over and kissed her, gently at first, and then harder. Yulayan sighed. “We have to wait three days before we can make love. I asked the doctor.”
Kamuhi just laughed. “I can wait three days, sweetheart. I’m not sure I’ll be in any shape for it until then, anyway.”
Yulayan left to fetch Malia from Jared’s house, where she had been since Jared decided to move her from the childcare center. Kamuhi went to Jared’s office and asked to see him.
The Shuratanian woman who guarded Jared’s office smiled at him and pressed a key on her terminal to open the door. “He’s expecting you, Lieutenant,” she said.
Jared looked up from his terminal when Kamuhi walked in. “Sit down, Kam. Glad to see you looking so much better.”
“Thanks, Jared,” said Kamuhi. “What’s up?”
“Two things,” Jared said, leaning back in his chair. “One is that Da Gama is eager to get a word for word transcription in case it gives him a line on any more qatorglynai. Can you go to his office this evening?”
Kamuhi nodded. “I think so. I’ll call him if it’s a problem. I don’t think he’ll get anything new, but it’s better to do it soon. I forget little bits of it after a few days.”
“Good. I’ll tell him to expect you.”
“What’s the other thing?”
“Umphauron Diow. I thought you’d want to know—she’s dead.”
“What?” Kamuhi was surprised. “Did you go after her? I’m almost sorry I told you about her. She saved my life.”
Jared shook his head. “We didn’t make any moves against her. We got a report that she had appeared in front of the main house of the Disciples of Paruian. Apparently it’s common practice for people who wish to appeal to the Disciples to make their case by simply sitting in the square in front of the entrance to the temple. Sooner or later, a Disciple will come out and ask what the supplicant wants. Umphauron Diow did that. When a Disciple came out and spoke to her, she looked up and said ‘The Trishenhai has come. Tell them.’ Then she closed her eyes, bowed her head, and died.”
Kamuhi stared at Jared. “She was dead? Just like that?”
“Just like that,” Jared repeated. “Kind of gives you the willies, doesn’t it?”
“It sure does. Pretty much everything about her gave me the willies, though. She said she didn’t have long to live when she came to the gate that time. I guess she was right.”
“I guess she was.”
“What about Baou and the others? Are you going after them?”
“They didn’t hurt you, Kam; they killed qatorglynai. That’s not a ThreeCon crime. We don’t really have any direct evidence against anyone except the old woman. You didn’t see anyone get killed except Perduay, and she did that. We’ve passed the information on to the proper Wakanrean authorities. It’s up to them to decide what to do with it.”
Jared leaned across his desk and looked at Kamuhi critically. “You look better but you had a rough time. Do you want to take a few days’ medical leave?”
Kamuhi shook his head. “I feel fine, really. It looked worse than it was.”
“I’m glad to hear it, because you looked awful. Well, I won’t order you to take time off but Drushachh might. You work for her, remember?”
Kamuhi grinned. “She makes sure I remember.”
When he left Jared’s office, Kamuhi went straight home. He found Yulayan and Malia in the kitchen fixing dinner. The little girl ran to give her father a hug.
“Hello, Daddy! Guess what I did? I got to stay at Commander Harlengin’s house while you and Mommy were away. He has a guisha. He’s black and brown and his name is Barney. Audra named him. She’s Jared’s daughter. He said I could call him Jared, Daddy. Or I can call him Uncle Jared if I want to, even though he’s not my uncle at all.”
“Whoa, Malia, slow down,” Kamuhi said. “How am I supposed to remember all of that if you say it so fast?”
“Oh, Daddy,” Malia laughed. “You remember everything. Mommy said so.”
“Did she?” Kamuhi asked.
“What happened to your face, Daddy? Did you cut yourself?”
“Not exactly, sweetie. Why don’t you go ahead and set the table?”
Malia ran to put out the plates and utensils and Kamuhi went into the kitchen. He came up behind Yulayan and put his arms around her. She stopped what she was doing and turned around to embrace him. After a few minutes she chuckled.
“I thought you said you wouldn’t be ready for three days? You seem ready right now.”
Kamuhi sighed. “I don’t know, guisha. The spirit is more than willing, but I’m not sure the flesh could follow up on the commitment.”
“Well it doesn’t matter anyway since we have to wait. Dinner’s almost ready. Do you want to change?”
He shook his head. “It’s not worth it, sweetheart. Unless you’re going out, I have to go see Da Gama right after dinner and give him a word for word account of my adventure with the qatorglynai.”
“When do I get to hear what happened?”
“I don’t know. No one has said I can’t tell you. Why don’t you wait up for me?”
“All right. I want to talk to you about something anyway.”
Malia came skipping back into the kitchen to tell them she had set the table. Kamuhi went out to move everything to its proper place and discovered she had learned how to do it right.
WHEN Kamuhi walked over to the Intelligence Desk after dinner, Da Gama was waiting for him with a recorder ready.
“Before we start,” the Intelligence Chief said, “I want to do something a little different.”
“What’s that, sir?” Kamuhi asked.
“I want to give you a drug that’ll help you remember details. You’ve got a great memory for words, but I need descriptions of what people looked like, exactly what they did, every detail.”
“What drug is it, sir?” Kamuhi said uneasily.
“It’s called nempathenol,” Da Gama said. “It’s perfectly safe. We use it all the time.”
“Isn’t that a truth serum? I thought it broke down resistance and made the person unable to lie or refuse to answer questions?”
“That’s one use for it,” Da Gama agreed. “In fact, one theory is that we all see every detail of what happens around us, but we don’t let ourselves remember it. A drug like nempathenol allows an interrogator to force the person to remember.”
“Are you ordering me to take it, sir?” Kamuhi didn’t like the idea at all.
“No,” said Da Gama. “I happen to think the debriefing would be more valuable with it, but the decision is up to you. The more you can remember, the better. Let’s take an example. Can you tell me what kind of camera Grazau used to take the picture of you?”
Kamuhi thought about it and shook his head. “No, sir. I’m afraid I wasn’t in very good shape at the time. I remember them taking it, but I’m not even sure it was Grazau who did it.”
“You see my point, then?”
Kamuhi wavered. It certainly sounded plausible enough. “All right, sir,” he finally said reluctantly.
Da Gama pulled out a hypospray and directed Kamuhi to roll up his sleeve. When he was ready, Da Gama pressed the hypospray against his forearm and Kamuhi felt the pressure as the drug was infused under his skin. Da Gama had Kamuhi count to ten, and then he turned on the recorder.
“State your name, please,” he said.
“Kamuhi Illka Hailoaka.”
“What is your current rank and position?”
“I’m a Lieutenant in ThreeCon, second in command of the Security Office at ThreeCon Headquarters on Wakanreo.”
“Describe for me what happened to you yesterday morning after you left the home of your wife’s parents.”
Kamuhi could hear his own voice droning on and on, relating exactly what had happened. It was almost like listening to another person. He could hear himself talk but he didn’t know what he was going to say until after he said it. He described the autocab precisely, down to a broken latch on the outside of the door and a crack in the window. He hadn’t even known that he had seen them.
It went on and on. Da Gama prompted him frequently, asking specific questions and guiding his answers. Kamuhi related all the efforts by Grazau to make him talk about his reason for being in the bar. He told about Inchauro’s threats against Malia and what Grazau had said. When he got to the part where Baou had saved his life by stunning Inchauro, Da Gama seemed to get more interested. When Kamuhi described Umphauron Diow’s entrance and her conversations with Baou, Kamuhi was amazed to hear himself repeat every syllable the two Wakanreans had said, even though he had no idea what they were saying.
Finally, Kamuhi described the ritual where Umphauron Diow had marked them all with Kamuhi’s blood. After he had reported on the Wakanreans’ departure and his subsequent awakening by Drushachh, Da Gama told him to stop and then switched off the recorder. The Intelligence Chief picked up a second hypospray and went over to Kamuhi’s chair. He held the hypo above Kamuhi’s arm and then he hesitated a second.
