LINKS
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The Christa Affair
Chapter Forty-Seven
Jashi grinned broadly as he emerged from the transporter with Tad in tow. "It worked, guys!" he exclaimed exuberantly. "They fell for it! We're dead all right... I just attended our funeral, if that's what you want to call it." He glanced at the chronometer -- nearly ten am, planet time -- they'd spent better than three hours inside the village.
"I guess that trick with the meat was a better idea than I thought," admitted Toko a bit sheepishly. "I didn't think it would fool them. You have to admit that three Zolith fighting over a twenty-pound lambchop don't leave the same spoor as three Zolith fighting over a staked-out Human."
Jashi grinned again as he remembered the look on Toko's face when he and Tad had caught up to the rescue team the night before -- each carrying a sack of raw meat that weighed over a hundred pounds. Jashi wondered how they'd managed to squeeze thru the transport booth with such a large bundle.
Lito had quickly located Roi, about a hundred yards from where Jashi had found Tad earlier, but a thorough search had turned up no sign of Tabor. Jashi hadn't expected to find him; they'd been forced to cut it short when the storm at last rained itself out. In spite of their caution, there'd been a couple of close calls with Ah Sit'chu as they scurried for the safety of the transport booths. At each place where one of them had been staked out, they had left behind chucks of meat, tied to the same ropes that had held them prisoner.
"We checked two of the sites," said Jashi. "There were plenty of tracks around, and with all the mud, you couldn't tell the difference. No sign of Tabor anywhere. How's Karli?" He'd tried to contact her; she was asleep.
"She'll be fine, Jashi. All she needs is rest," Suu assured him. "Ordinarily, the bite she received would only have made her mildly ill, but the toxin from the dart was still in her system; the two combined to produce some rather nasty effects. She'll have to stay in bed for a couple of days, at least. If you hadn't found her when you did, it might have been a different story."
Jashi looked at his soiled clothes. He and Tad had transported straight back to the jungle as soon as they had Roi safely aboard the \Klondike\, watching from the safety of the transport booths until daylight chased away the night predators, then from closer, at the edge of the jungle, when the natives came to collect the Zoliths' leftovers. There hadn't been time to change, and he was covered with mud and dried vomit. Ruefully, he realized he smelled almost as bad as he looked.
The others were looking at him expectantly, full of questions. There'd been no time to explain -- their only knowledge of the events of the night had come from Roi. "Sorry, guys," he apologized. "I gotta get cleaned up." Ignoring their protests, he strode from the recreation room and down the hall toward his quarters. A few hours rest and he'd call a meeting; he hoped Karli would be awake by then.
*********
"Where'd you find him, Jashi?" asked Karli, shifting the creature to her other arm. Coal black, it looked for all the world like a Terran domestic feline -- except for the extra pair of legs. Max looked at her adoringly, then curled up contentedly in the crook of her arm; Jashi could hear it purring.
"He was sitting on my chest when I came to," replied Jashi. "He and about ten others; I thought I had them all chased out before I transported. They seem to be irresistibly attracted to Human scent -- the other four booths were full of em too -- that's why they showed occupied."
"Sorry about leaving the doors open, Captain," said Tad. "If that was included in your instructions, I forgot."
They'd already been over this, twice; maybe he \hadn't\ told him. "Maybe I didn't tell him," Jashi responded, for the benefit of the others. "If not, it was careless of me; if I did, it was careless of him. Either way, it almost cost us our lives. Gods know there are enough things to go wrong without stupid mistakes!"
"Are we really going back, Captain?" asked Tad. His enthusiasm seemed completely undaunted by their brush with death.
They were in the infirmary, gathered around Karli's bed; her long sleep had worked wonders. All hands were present; Korlana occupied the bed next to Karli's. In the forty or so hours since the anti-toxin hypo, most of the terrible swelling had left Karli, but her face was still quite puffed and some of the blisters on her body had opened and drained, rather than reabsorbing into the tissue. From head to foot she was covered with ugly black and blue splotches. "Suu says I'll be up from here by tomorrow Jashi. Do I get to go?"
"Yes, Karli," he answered, "but it'll wait till Suu says you're ready." She'd \have\ to go, and so would Tad -- the plan wouldn't work without them.
She grinned at him, showing almost as much anticipation as Tad. Of course she already knew what he had in mind -- it sounded like \fun\. Max had crawled from her arms and was laying on her shoulder, affectionately nuzzling her ear; she reached up and scratched the top of his head. "Can we pick up a couple more of these while we're down there?" she asked. "I wanna keep him, Jashi, and he'll get awfully lonely."
"Why would you want to go back?" inquired Lito a bit harshly. "Tabor's friendly natives just tried to kill you, and you can't get into the castle without them."
"I doubt we could have gotten in \with\ them," said Roi. "The whole thing was a setup. Wish I could get my hands on Tabor!"
"Let's just take our chances and try to blast the castle," suggested Lito as she began clearing away the leftovers of their lavish breakfast. "I want to get out of here!"
Jashi held up his hand for silence. "Look guys, I want this to be finished as much as anyone, maybe more, but there's a lot of innocent people in that place. If I have to sacrifice them to get Licti I will, but only as a last resort. There's a better way; let me tell you what we saw in the village. I'm convinced Tabor told the truth about the natives." He paused a moment to let it sink in; no one said a word.
"As soon as daylight sent the Zolith scurrying for shelter, Tad and I activated our invisibility devices and watched from the edge of the clearing. The natives came out immediately, inspected the site where Karli was tied -- that was the only one we could see from where we were, but I'm sure they checked the others too -- and carried off the ropes and the stakes. We just followed them back to the village. We prowled around for a while, found places to hide two transport cases, then ducked into the temple with the last of the crowd. The whole damn village went -- every last person, right down to the tiniest baby!
"It got a bit harried in the crowd," Jashi continued. "The place was packed, and we both had to use our PRDs to pop out to one of the hidden booths a couple of times to keep from bumping into people, then we said to hell with it, and just started shoving them aside till we found a corner to hide in. You should've seen the look on their faces!
"Your hunch about Tad was right, Karli. He remembered the language perfectly; all I had to do was follow his thoughts -- to me they were in Basic. It was a purification ceremony. Somehow, we defiled the village. I don't know if Tabor set it up -- we didn't see any sign of him, nor was there reference to him in the ceremony -- or if we made some stupid blunder, like walking over somebody's grave or something, but the ceremony was to purge the village of our evil Karma. I strongly suspect it was Tabor's doings." Offworlders were generally reverenced by the natives -- they came from the sky and were thus accorded divine status.
"It was the weirdest thing I ever saw. There were three vats of red liquid on a huge altar that stood about eight feet above the floor. The village Holy Man took each item of our clothing, one at a time, and dipped it three times in each vat, all the while chanting the same three lines over and over in a language that neither of us understood. After it was dipped, it was put into a carved wooden box; then they did the same thing with our gear and the precious stones we took along... Then the stakes and the ropes we were tied with."
"They believe the liquid absorbs the evil Karma we left behind," put in Tad; he'd remembered only one such ceremony during the year he had lived in the village -- even an outcast had been required to attend.
"When the last contaminated item was dipped, the box was closed and placed into a cavity beneath the altar. The Holy Man danced around some more, and chanted some more, then one by one the whole village filed to the front of the temple, climbed the stairs to the altar, and washed three times in each vat -- they dunked the babies and small children. When they were done, the Holy Man opened the chamber beneath the altar, and the box of all our stuff was gone."
Jashi paused for a moment and a little murmur ran through the group. Let em get used to that -- the bombshell was yet to come; they quickly became silent. He produced a book and laid it on the foot of Karli's bed. "Take a look at that," he said. "I stole it from the Temple."
There was a moment of silence. Rang picked it up and opened it. "Holy Shit!" he exploded. "It's L'sa'rian!" The room got very noisy.
*********
The book was indeed L'sa'rian -- an operations manual for a single-cavity four-person transport booth -- and from the prominence accorded it by its placement in the temple, the Holy Book of the Native Religion, even though no one could read it. "Proof the People were here, long ago," said Jashi when they had quieted. "Pre-disaster or Post-Magellanic Clouds I don't know, but it's for sure they were here, and probably put the natives here." He handed another document to Rang -- one page -- the computer printout of data gathered by his video scanner in the temple. The picture was of a carving -- one of many similar ones that adorned the walls of the temple. It showed a great silvery globe resting atop the rocky spire that was now occupied by Licti's castle. "I'd stake my life that whatever goes in under that altar comes out on top of Licti's mountain," he said.
For the first time in weeks, it was like old times aboard the \Klondike\ -- they were all excitedly talking at once; Jashi let them talk. Tabor's contact among the natives had said the Holy Man knew a way to the "Place of the Gods" -- it would be simple to prove. He'd transport a comm transponder from the altar -- if the signal came back from atop the spire it would be proof enough. He could transport thru and see \where\ atop the spire the other facility was located. If he went thru invisible, he could always pop back to the ship with his PRD if he found himself suddenly among Licti's henchmen. He carefully shielded the thought from Karli.
At last Jashi called for silence. "Toko, rig a couple of the light pressure suits for underwater operation," he instructed. "I'm gonna take Tad and go back to the village. I want to do a bit more exploring before we put in an appearance, and hide at least two more T-cases. You and Rang rig a couple more of the big wands outboard -- one forward, one aft -- we may need em when we make our getaway."
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
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