Comforted by the seasickness analogy despite Quale’s warning, Elmas Ofka expected to swim undisturbed through that relatively short distance between the artificial gravity of the tub to the artificial gravity of the Warmaster. She was furious when the first convulsions shook her; Quale had forced a sickbag on her, she’d tucked it out of the way behind her belt, now she got it up just in time to catch her first spew. She glared at Karrel Goza who was pulling himself along untroubled.
Contorted with spasms of vomiting, pale with fury, she yanked herself along the travel lines anchored to the tubewall, ignoring the gulps, coughs, groans of her fellow sufferers. In spite of her difficulties, she took less than five minutes to reach the lock area where she surrendered with a relief that didn’t lessen her annoyance to the comfortable grip of a familiar weight. She wrenched off the sickbag, glared around.
Carefully not smiling, Quale slid back the cover on a disposal chute and took the bag from her. He dropped it into the hole, stood back to watch as the rest of the force came swinging out of the transtube, landing on their feet again, their bodies celebrating the return to weight as they looked round the lock, a trapezoidal chamber large enough to accommodate ten times their number. The Hordar who’d succumbed to nausea dumped their bags in the waste chute, took mouthfuls of water from their belt canteens and spat it after the bags. With a minimum of noise and energy expenditure, they gathered into bands and isyas and waited for the order to proceed. Lirrit Ofka drifted over to stand beside Karrel Goza; she was pale and still somewhat shaky, but she managed a wan smile as she touched his arm in a gesture close to a caress. “Absurd,” she murmured, “we’re starting our war like a clutch of colicky babies.” She pinched him, sniffed. “Some of us.”
Elmas Ofka moved to the center of the lock, beckoned Jamber Fausse to her. He went onto one knee, she stepped up onto the other, holding his hand to steady herself. With a two-finger whistle, she called her people to her. “Time is,” she said; her voice filled the chamber with passion and triumph. She watched them as they sorted themselves out, smiled as she saw an alertness and a confidence born out of years of deadly exchanges, even the youngest who’d been an inklin in gul Brindar before he joined Akkin Siddaki’s raiders, a baby-faced thief with legendary fingers. “Drive chamber, go.” She watched the isyas and the bands move off behind Kanlan Gercik, swinging along in a slouching trot that covered ground with a minimum of effort. “Duty stations, rest area, go.” Two more squads left. “Sleepers, go.” She stepped down. “Bridge,” she said. “Let’s go.”
Aslan watched the squads peel off and slide away, the bodies fading curiously into a dimness that wasn’t shadow, the sourceless light cast no shadows, that was more like a thickening and darkening of the air itself.
It seemed to exaggerate every quality, to dramatize each of the individuals left in the lockchamber. Elmas Ofka was an odd combination of wargod and earth-mother; Jamber Fausse was chthonic, earth crumbling off him, about to burst into grass and weed, his men reduced to elemental shadows crouching at his knees; Karrel Goza and Lirrit Ofka were dangerously elfin, dark and unpredictable, unhuman; Churri was like that too, and not like, a coppery sprite redolent of a mix of malice and compassion ordinarily impossible but not here. Kante Xalloor was Dance incarnate with enormous eyes, her body singing a wry amusement at what was happening around her. Swardheld Quale loomed, no other word for it, big, somber, and for the first time, impressive. In spite of herself, she smiled as she thought the words, her lust for his body, she’d seen him as a quiet man, committed to nothing except money and even that seemed to provoke no great interest. No great interest in her either, though she’d been shedding signals around him like a kirpis sheds scales. She sighed, she’d been through this before, these stupid infatuations, she knew exactly how it’d go, whether she slept with him or missed on that, one day she’d look at him and wonder what the fuss was about; until then she was stuck with these palpitations and hot rushes. Parnalee… she looked at him, looked away. Black Beast, evil exaggerated; he terrified her more than any other person male or female she’d ever met. She started to wonder how all of them saw her and almost missed the Rau’s return. Light rolled like water off his short thick fur; he sank into that adhesive dimness, a shadow more solid than the twilight around him but still curiously nebulous, a demon familiar of the pleasanter kind. She smiled. Living up to his legend, she thought.
“The transtube’s operational,” Pels the shadow said, “Adelaar’s punched the command through.”
“Good.” His eyes narrowed to slits, Quale scratched at his short dark beard, pushing his fingers along his jawline. “One last time,” he said. “Let Pels and me go ahead so we can make sure the way’s clear.”
Elmas Ofka’s head went up and back, her eyes glittered. “No,” she said.
Quale shrugged. “Pels, lead off. Soon as the tube decants you, do your thing. Be careful, huh? I’ll be out soon as I can manage. Hush, Hanifa, you saw him work and you got me as hostage.” He looked round, beckoned to Karrel Goza. “Take three of your fighters and follow him.” He waited until that four was formed up, then tapped Elmas Ofka on her shoulder. “Hanifa, you and your isyas and your…” he grinned at Jamber Fausse, “your bodyguard, you’re next. Churri, you and your friend follow them. Parnalee.”
Parnalee shook his head. “Last,” he said.
Quale looked at him a moment, then he shrugged and turned to Aslan. “You’re it then, follow the dancer. I’ll follow you.”
Aslan nodded; she’d have preferred a few more bodies between her and the Proggerdi, but with Quale behind her she felt safe enough.
“All right. Go, Pels.”
The Rau led them through corridors round as wormholes, gray, ashy dead-colored holes, even the air was the color of death, holes thick with gray sound-absorbing dust, dust-heavy cobwebs, rat droppings, the discarded housings of dead insects. Aslan trotted after Churri, watching dust drifting down over him, gradually leaching the color out of his body and his clothing. By the time she’d turned a few bends right and left and switched from one wormhole to another to a third, she was thoroughly lost and a gray ghost herself, in a line of gray ghosts, trotting through dust, age and ugliness, her hand over nose and mouth to keep the worst of the clutter out of her lungs, her brain busy-busy, honey-sipper busy with image and sound.
She ran up on Churri’s heels before she noticed he’d stopped walking.
The door was a squared oval bent to conform to the curve of the wall; it was pulled out and pushed away and weak gray-yellow light struggled out of the opening. Aslan followed Churri over the raised sill into a round chamber like the inside of a tincan. The kind of ships she usually traveled in didn’t use tubes like this; you rode in minicarts or you walked. She peered around Churri’s shoulder and watched Xalloor step through a vaporous throbbing darkness, moving slowly until only the lower part of her left leg was visible on this side; abruptly that was gone, one instant there, then whipped away. Without missing a step Churri went after her. Shivering with excitement and fear, Aslan followed him.
Soft pudgy giant hands seized hold of her and took her instantly elsewhere. She felt no acceleration, only the pillowy gentle hold. She was deaf and effectively blind, all she could see was a red-shot silvery gray shimmer.