HE SETTLED BACK THROUGH THE HOLE IN HIS MIND
1563 4D
“Best stay here,” Grendel said in a low tone. “They like to send guys in to flush people out.” He inspected the door latch that prevented it from being opened from above. “I hate these tight spots.” His rape by the Argaz surged into his mind; nausea rose in his throat. The ceiling seemed to lower on him, and he shuddered.
The two sat down on a low pallet while feet and voices shuffled above their heads. A weak glowtube lit their hiding place, throwing shadows on discarded casks and crates. The walls on either side crept nearer to Grendel. Wrenching his thoughts back, he said, “So? Your woman?”
“She’s gone,” Jeddin said. “She took up with some human guy. When I died, the CIB was coming after them.”
The Cyber Investigations Bureau. “The CIB? You died?” Grendel asked. He picked up a label, stained brown with brew, that read, MUNITIONS. EXPLOSIVE AND NEUROACTIVE. INSPECTION MANDATORY. He sniffed it. His olfactory hypersense untied a polychrome knot in his mind. Some kind of stunner, maybe. The ceiling pressed down at him again. Breathing came hard.
Jeddin nodded. “Yes. Died. It was less fun. Look, I know you don’t like this hole. Let’s skerrish so you can get some space. I’ll fill you in.”
“I don’t do that any more.” Now the crates nearby seemed to loom up in Grendel‘s face, and he choked back some brew that tried to come up. “I gotta get out of here.”
Jeddin grabbed Grendel‘s huge arm with a spidery hand. “You don’t have a choice right now. Shut your eyes and come on. We won’t stay long or go where you don’t want. Innerspace is big enough.”
“Give me a little time.” Grendel closed his eyes and held his breath for a moment. Maybe Jeddin was right. He could always come out again if he found himself in the farm tank again seeing Periliath‘s feet vanish. Innerspace was big. He could stay in the sky.
Grendel had left both innerspace and service behind. For him, being free and on foot in the mountains, dodging the corpos and the law with Ezzar, worked well enough. He never needed innerspace any more. Not until now. Reluctant, he wrenched his mind through a hole inside his head,
—and stuck his head out of a bush into a tree-clad hillside where Jeddin stood waiting in a red and scaly skin. The scales undulated and fluffed into feathers, then smoothed to liquid sleekness again, barely profiled against Jeddin‘s wiry body, becoming at last thick russet fur. Jeddin wore the face of a bush fox, smiling dark-eyed and long-jawed at Grendel in the bushes.
“Come out and show me yourself,” the fox said.
“I’m… not sure what to wear. It’s been a long time.”
“Try something.”
Grendel willed a steely snakeskin, and settled into it, so comfortably that his head turned easily reptilian, his eyes separating, his tongue flickering to seize Jeddin‘s scented words.
The fox smiled. “Very good. Look up, now.” Grendel obeyed, and stared into a black sky lit by a pale-green sun far off. The hillside they stood on tumbled gently off into a distant crevasse from which bluish clouds of tiny objects rose, turned, and darted, schooling in an acidic midday light. A great calm rose in Grendel, a sleepy drone of warmth that urged his arms open to feel the heated air. Jeddin went on, “Feeling better?”
“Yeah, this is okay.” Grendel reached with his eyes out to the school of objects now become threadbirds of gossamer, eeling across a light breeze. It had been years since the last time he had done this. The ease of it drugged him, and he fought to stay aware, drawing his vision back to turn to Jeddin, who played with a leaf, stretching it out into parchment that unreeled row after row of dancing signs on its surface. “It’s too good.”
Jeddin drew the leaf onto his hand like a glove and studied its shimmering symbols. “We can stay here until things quiet down. I’ll check back to make sure we’re safe.”
“Let’s go up,” Grendel said, his long arms spread wide. He had forgotten this placeless place, this haven of wishes and dreams. From beneath his arms, great primary wings shimmered down to join his body, answering his will.
“Yes,” Jeddin said, his own wings unfurling, his fur melting to sleekness again. They reached up and rose into the dark sky. Long ribbons of light wavered past them.
“You lost your woman, and you died?” Grendel asked. “Come on, that’s not much of a story.” Huge transparent pairs of bodiless alae flapped overhead, as broad and many-fingered as the branches of ancient trees.
“She was mine, and then the Hounds came. It was in the City.” The sky above Jeddin, thousands of feet still higher, darkened and flickered sullenly.
“You could have fought them, fought for her.” Grendel swelled into a dragon-form and clacked long claws as they hovered far above the green hills.
“Not in the City. They’d take me apart slowly while she watched. It’s not like it is out here. No room to run.” Jeddin‘s long-muzzled face waggled back and forth. “I tried to hang around, but the CIB sent the Hounds after all of us, because of the virus. They shot holes in me and left me for dead. She’s probably dead too.”
“The virus? Are you talking about the headsmith, like that woman had?” Looking down at the vastness beneath his feet, Grendel turned a slow circle around Jeddin.
Jeddin nodded, his fox-muzzle wrinkling to sniff the high air. “It started with me, when I was in an accident in the vat area. That’s why they tried to catch me and kill me and seal me off. But I came back.”
Jeddin blinked out of sight, and then back. “I just checked the Inn. It’s all okay. We should get back now and get going.”
“Oh, shit, Ezzar‘s gonna be waiting for me. But the virus — do you still have it?” Grendel began to settle back to the green hillside among the steaming trees.
“Of course. Nobody’s come out and handed me a cure. I’m disposable. But I’m not ready for that.” Jeddin‘s feet touched the grass in a clearing. “I’m hanging on as long as I can, like you.”
“Long life to both of us,” Grendel said. He wanted to ask Jeddin what the virus had done to him, and how he’d come back to life, but Ezzar didn’t like him to be late, and he felt even the sweep of innerspace closing in on him. With a last deep breath, he settled back through the hole in his mind into the Engrammatic hiding-place. Relief.
