In the Black, стр. 36
“Not for an entire assignment. For simple things like ‘Proceed to Adrolor for resupply,’ but not for something of this … delicacy.”
“Exactly!” Thuk said, unable to contain himself. “We’re out here perched on top of the most powerful weapon our race has ever conceived of, facing the only mound that has ever fought us to a standstill, and the Dark Ocean Chorus has left us spinning like a felled leaf caught in a river curl. Spinning, no direction.” Thuk moved in for the rhetorical kill. “Even the Seven Sacrifices were trusted enough by their queens to be told their true purpose, but our harmony can’t be? Tell me that doesn’t bother you. I will trust your judgment and say no more of it.”
“Chasm below,” Kivits swore. “That’s not exactly fair.”
“It’s a simple enough question.”
“The hardest questions usually are.” Kivits clicked his mandibles, then grew quiet, contemplative. It stretched long. So long even Thuk felt the ancestral urge to fill the silence with something. Clicking, humming, rubbing the signalers of his midarms together. Anything.
“Yes, it bothers me,” he said at last. “But what are we supposed to do about it? We have their song.”
“It’s enough for now that we’ve given voice to our concerns. I’m glad to know we’re reading from the same scroll on this. As for what we do about it, maybe nothing. Maybe the rest of the assignment goes off free of rain and wind and we never have to speak of this again.”
“And if the rain falls and the wind scours our plates?”
“I don’t know, Kivits,” Thuk said honestly. “But we should be thinking about an answer. This human ship and its … cop-tan are clever and dangerous enough. I’d rather have reassurance that I only need to worry about the enemy in front of me. Maybe request clarification of our instructions from the Chorus?”
Kivits pondered this. “We risk appearing disrespectful, and there’s no assurance we’ll learn anything new. They could just repeat the song, or refuse to answer altogether.”
“That itself would teach us something, wouldn’t it?”
“I suppose so.” Kivits scratched at one of his elbow joints. “All right, we’re in harmony. We’ll send another singing husk back to the Chorus.”
“Good, I’ll return to the mind cavern and get it sent off immediately.”
“I assume I don’t have to tell you not to poison the minds of the rest of the harmony with your paranoia?”
“That you share?”
“Our paranoia,” Kivits corrected. “They’re bearing enough weight already and don’t need two fools adding to the burden.”
“I agree,” Thuk said. “Although I think our recording attendant harbors her own suspicions.”
“Hurg?” Kivits said, imitating the sound one makes before regurgitating. “I don’t care for that one.”
“Her performance appraisals have been exemplary,” Thuk answered back.
“It’s not her competence I dislike. It’s her arrogance. Carrying her wing sheaths between molts, rubbing her nobility in our faces.”
Ah, of course that was it. “Come now, Kivits. How would you react if everyone expected you to walk on your hindlegs and pretend your forelegs were midhands?”
Kivits exhaled, a long, slow sound. “Not well, I expect.”
“Nor I, if you demanded I walk around on my midhands as if I had quadlegs. The queens were deposed centuries ago. Let her be what she is. If she tries to mutiny, I’ll hold the double-door open for you to throw her into the dark ocean.”
“I’ll hold you to that.”
“Something tells me it won’t come to that. Our young royal is eager to gratify and quite a bright spark.”
Kivits ran a hand gently down the wall of the clutching chamber, almost wistfully. A wisp of shame danced over the dulac’s features and it all came into focus. Gently, so as not to raise attention, Thuk grazed a few nearby surfaces with the finger pads of his primehands, sampling the oily residue coating the material as he did so. The pheromones told the story the dulac dared not. Thuk swirled the tips of his finger pads together absently, tasting the past.
Kivits and Hurg had been in this very spot, no more than three or four days ago. And they’d been aroused. So, the dulac had a secret tryst with a royal. Quite the scandal, but hardly unique. After the Fall of the Queens, many among the former laborer caste succumbed to the temptation to, quite literally, stick it to a royal bloodline. As perversions went, it bordered on the mundane, but Thuk tucked the knowledge away in the back of his memory regardless.
You never knew when a little gossip could come in handy.
“I should return to the mind cavern. We’re on the far side of the system by now and the attendants will be trying to get our bearings. Decisions will need to be made.”
“Yes, of course.” Kivits moved aside to open the path out of the clutching chamber. “But don’t forget what we’ve discussed here.”
“Oh, I won’t forget what I’ve learned today,” Thuk said, his meaning deliberately ambiguous as he left Kivits behind.
TWELVE
The bartender poured two fingers of junmai daiginjo sake from a chilled carafe into Tyson’s cup. The clear, floral liquid filled his nose as quickly as it filled the cup. Chilled to a perfect two degrees, the imported sake was a welcome distraction after a brutal day.
The Nakamura family’s craft brewery on the outskirts made an excellent range of sakes from locally cultivated rice, but this wasn’t one of those. Instead, Tyson had come across the intoxicating brew during an extended business trip to Kyoto several years ago and had a case shipped home. It was genuine Japanese sake, brewed by the Asahi Shuzo brewery in the Yamaguchi Prefecture.
It was probably the most embarrassingly expensive liquor on the entire planet. And Tyson was the only person besides the bartenders in Klub Kryptonite that knew it was even here. A fact that at least one of