«Now, Ash,» the snake said, and stung him. Fire poured into his arm. He gasped and bit his lip. The smaller pain helped him to endure the larger, until he could get his breath back.
He felt a shuddering vibration at his wrist — the snake preparing to punish him again. He went hastily down to the inner Seagate and climbed into his exosuit. As he sealed the faceplate, the vibration faded. He clipped a graser to his free wrist and tipped through the gate into the frigid lagoon.
An implanted fiber carried the snake's voice up his arm to a bone mike behind his ear. «First the generators.»
Boot jets drove Ash slowly through the black water. The generators that maintained the fields and kept back the ice ran smoothly. In the hatcheries, millions of larval cryptopods fed on extruded columns of tank cultured flesh.
He moved down into the artificial reefs, where the larval cryptopods metamorphosed into the precious adult form. Twenty meters ahead the dull red flare of a submerged beacon illuminated the Dag overseer and his gang. A dozen Dags worked at a section of used-up reef, removing bolts, lowering the raddled black slabs to a transport pallet. The big overseer floated above the gang, marking off a waterproof checklist.
Ash coasted to a stop. He activated his external speaker, spoke greetings.
The Dag overseer turned to him and opened his palps briefly. A chime vibrated through the water; the lexitran relayed the meaning. «Keeper. You are well?»
«Yes. The freeze has come.»
«I felt it,» the Dag overseer said. «I felt it.»
«The work goes well?»
«Yes, well.» The Dag overseer turned back to his work, as if to avoid further conversation. The overseer had once been friendlier, had questioned Ash about the faraway pangalac worlds and their teeming peoples. But in the past few Standard months, he had retreated into a curt reserve.
«Your mate came to the outer Seagate,» Ash said.
The overseer whirled in the water and opened his face. Ash looked into eyes burning with some harsh, unclassifiable emotion.
«She was concerned for you. She implied that you were under some sort of strain, but before she could elaborate, the freeze caught her. Will she be safe?»
The overseer's facial palps closed tightly. He looked away. «She will be safe. No harm comes to those who dream in the ice.»
«And you? What did she mean? She also mentioned dreams.»
The overseer shuddered. «I cannot say.»
The snake stirred at Ash's wrist. «We waste time,» it said. «The peddler; that is now the most pressing business.»
Ash replied on the private channel. «Wait. This is important.» In the darkness and cold of the lagoon, Ash retained a measure of autonomy. Should the snake sting him into unconsciousness, Ash would sink to the bottom of the sump. There he would be tom apart by the circulation rotors, leaving the snake without a servant. A tiny advantage, a pathetic advantage, but it was all he had, and he pushed it as much as he dared. The snake waited.
«You really don't know why she was concerned?»
The overseer swung back, pushing close to Ash. The alien eyes glittered between clenched palps. «Do you complain of my work? Have I given cause for dissatisfaction?»
Ash drew back, feeling a touch of fear. «No, no…,» he said.
Ash reached the robotic processing plant, where cryptopods were distilled into valuable pharmaceutical essences.
When he stood in the air of the plant, water freezing on his exosuit, the snake spoke. «To the parking bay.»
In the parking bay, Ash approached the peddler's ice crawler, graser held ready. He knocked gingerly at the battered alloy of the lock. It popped open, to reveal the Green, still wearing its exosuit. «Welcome you are,» said the peddler, in musical Standard patois.
«In,» said the snake on the private channel. «Caution, Ash, caution.»
The peddler's name was Avlsum. While the snake examined the peddler's papers, the Green offered Ash a hot drink in a blue glass bubble, one of the pungent narcotic teas favored by the Greens.
«Not just now,» Ash said.
The peddler shrugged, a complicated serpentine motion of four arms and two sets of shoulders. «As you will. I myself chilled am.» It sipped tea through a silver straw.
Finally, the snake spoke. «Tell Us what you intend to trade.»
Avlsum's broad, flat face, wrinkled as a green prune, displayed a careful humility. «Since you ask, this my merchandise is.» The peddler pointed to a cluttered shelf, where a small cube of silvery alloy and blue plastic sat. Telltales glowed green at one comer; lying atop the device was an induction harness, set to the dimensions of a Dag skull. «Naught to hide I have.»
«Its function?» the snake demanded.
«A simple and harmless one, a human device it is.»
«Explain without further evasion.»
The Green shuffled to the device, opened a small panel, and removed a tray of microwafers. «A teaching device it is; these the lessons are.» He selected one wafer at random, held it delicately between corrugated fingers. «Feelings it teaches. 'Emotional states of being, ' it says.» Avlsum held the wafer closer, squinted. «Here. This one, 'The Pleasure Felt by the Righteous Torturer' is.»
«What purpose could that serve?» The snake spoke with disinterested contempt.
Once again, Ash had become a spectator. He felt a hot flush of rage, too hot for caution. «A human device, it claims. Perhaps I might understand.» He held the snake at eye level, hand clenched. «Presumably, SeedCorp sent me here for some reason. A robot carcass would have served to carry you about.» He had forgotten the Green peddler; the world had narrowed to the ruby eye of the snake.
The snake spoke calmly. «What do you call the device, peddler?»
«A 'Lorendiazzo Emotigogue' it labeled is.»
Ash felt the weight of the snake's full attention. «Yes, there is a purpose to your presence here, and yes, We lack the human perspective. These two facts are not unrelated. Since you wish to demonstrate your usefulness to SeedCorp, you may test this 'Emotigogue.'»
Ash lowered his hand, shaking.
Ash lay on the hard shelf as the Green adjusted the induction harness snugly around his head. The cermet plates were warm where they touched his temples.
«Here nothing to fear is. All perfectly safe is.»
Ash said nothing. The snake quivered at his wrist; Ash wondered if he heard the snake's laughter.
«Ready you are?»
«We are ready,» the snake said.
Ash slid away from himself.
He sat in a deep wing chair, beside a blazing fireplace. He moved and felt the pain of deep injuries; his torso seemed filled with jagged glass. The pain shocked away thought for a moment, and then he was no longer Werrin Ash.
The man he hated sat across the white rug, helpless, bound to a heavy chair with strong rope. The man looked like the monster he was, with a hairless, misshapen skull; a broad, flat face; tiny eyes deep-set behind knobs of fatty muscle. The thick, scarred mouth curved in a contemptuous smile.
He took a painful breath and spoke to the man he hated. «You've hurt me badly. But I will live, and you must die. Before I kill you, tell me where you have hidden my child.»
«Perhaps she is dead,» the man said in a smooth, resonant voice, the voice of a cultured man, a man in control.
«Is she?» He felt his heart stop.
The man laughed. «No. Though I've crushed many a prettier flower.»