The Touch of the Hook Read online

  «Then collect freely. Come, Ash. You have more important duties.» As Ash turned to go, the snake spoke on the private channel. «What did the peddler take from you, We wonder?»

  Two Standard days passed. The snake seemed uneasy. The slow Obsidian night moved a little closer to dawn. Outside, the sporing bodies spurted white dust into the still air, then collapsed to the ice. Ash began to imagine that the workers were watching him with hostile eyes. The Dag overseer no longer observed even the bare forms of Dag civility.

  Several times he saw the big Dag moving toward the load-in area, where the Green peddler had set up its device. A steady stream of off-shift workers passed in and out, and Ash wondered what experiences they bartered.

  Ash was standing by the outer airgate, looking to the north, when the mutiny began. A red light bloomed suddenly on the horizon, then another.The snake contracted, squeezing the bones of his wrist painfully. Ash jerked, afraid. For a long moment the snake was silent; then a roar filled Ash's head.

  «Betrayal!» it raged. «The rigs are sabotaged, all the beautiful rigs. The Green is an emancipator, a filthy, skulking slave-lover; We see it now. To the lagoon, before it is too late!»

  But as Ash snapped the last closure of his exosuit, a thudding explosion shuddered through the rig. The snake's voice grew too large to bear. Ash staggered and nearly fell. The snake stung him ferociously, and he seized a graser and plunged through the Seagate, arm on fire.

  The snake made an effort to moderate its voice. «The fields hold. It may not be too late yet. Hurry, hurry.»

  Ash was terrified, but he jetted swiftly through the black water toward the insulating-field generators. He saw no workers; they would be hiding in the reefs, awaiting the outcome. He tried not to imagine what would happen should the damaged generators fail while he was in the water. He could not estivate in the ice, like the Dags. The ice would crush his soft human body, a slow, inexorable squeeze.

  As he approached the damaged sector, a sputtering pink glare became visible, where the generators bled power into the water. Ash saw a massive shape outlined against the light; the Dag overseer blocked the ladder that led to the generator pod.

  Then he saw the sharp pry hook the Dag held, and he drifted to a stop, bringing up the graser.

  «Kill him,» the snake ordered, and fed a jolt of pain into his arm.

  «Wait,» Ash gasped. «We should find out why…» He still remembered the female's beseeching eyes.

  «Kill, We said!» The pain increased, and Ash shuddered.

  The Dag overseer pulsed a chime. After a moment, Ash remembered to activate the lexitran, and the Dag spoke again. «Go away, Keeper. I do not want to harm you, though if you get too close, I will cut the Will from your arm.»

  The snake hurt Ash so badly that he blacked out. But he woke almost immediately, before he could drift down toward the sump. «Why will you not obey?» the snake asked.

  When Ash could speak again, he asked the Dag, «Why have you done this?»

  The Dag seemed to expand, and his palps opened to reveal his colors, smoky crimson on dark metallic green. «A friend gave us dreams; not so fine as the ice dreams, perhaps, but still good.»

  The snake made an inarticulate sound of rage, and a thin magenta beam from the snake's head struck through the water to find the Dag's brain. Steam boiled along the track of the beam. Bubbles rose glittering to the surface. The Dag floated limp, a great hole burned through his face.

  «See?» the snake screamed. «See what you have forced Us to? We are not designed to use so much energy; you have made Us weak. But We can still punish you; We can still make you long for death. Up, up, to the generators.»

  Ash climbed the ladder, emerged dripping from the black water, to find the Green peddler standing on the sponson, holding a very large graser.

  «Destroyer!» the snake shrilled. «Kill it! Quickly, there is still time.»

  «I cannot,» Ash sobbed. «It will kill me first.»

  The hum of the generators changed pitch subtly, and the lights flickered. «No time, no time,» the snake said, and seemed to fall into a muttering dialogue with itself. Ash slumped against the sponson wall, looking at the Green.

  Ash whispered, «Who are you?»

  «A free-lance emancipator I am. By the Society to Conserve Sentient Diversity, I contracted am. The Dags… Of the ice dreams they deprived were. Live so, they cannot. Like humans, of sleep deprived. . they die.» The peddler waved one hand at the twisted metal of the generator pod. «An incompetent demolitionist I am. But patience I have.»

  The snake's voice was suddenly loud in Ash's head. «Kill it! Kill it now,» the snake raged. The pain rolled up his arm, a pain that seemed to split open the fibers of his flesh.

  The Green looked at him with shadowed eyes, the wrinkled face impassive, the huge graser never wavering from the center of Ash’s chest.

  «Spare you I would,» Avlsum said. «But treacherous the snake is. Trust you I cannot. Sorry I am.» The Green's thick finger tightened on the trigger.

  Ash did not raise the graser, despite the screams of the snake. It no longer spoke in words. Skull-shattering bursts of static filled Ash. He dropped the graser, and it bounced to the edge of the sponson.

  He fell to his knees, blind with pain and the terrible roaring in his head. He collapsed, almost rolled into the black water, and for a moment the snake released him. He caught himself, pushed away from the edge. The generators paused, began again, then ceased completely, and the lights dropped to the dull amber emergency level.

  The water in the lagoon touched the ice outside.

  With his last strength, Ash thrust the snake down into the water. The water closed sluggishly over the snake and became ice in the next instant.

  He looked up. The Green squatted on the sponson, graser still carefully aimed. Avlsum's wide mouth twitched with sad amusement. «There only one way is,» Avlsum said kindly. «Transportation to the Belt City I will give. If you can.» Avlsum slid the graser within Ash's reach, then steadied its own weapon with all four hands.

  The snake poured out pain, twisting Ash into a knot of agony. «What have you done?» it shrieked, and its voice filled the world. Ash's body flopped and jerked; he felt bones in his arm break where the ice held him. The ice bulged and fumed; a red light flickered as the snake tired to melt its way out.

  He reached out and took the graser; it was as if his free arm had no connection to the rest of his body, as if had a mind of its own. When Ash depressed his firing stud and swept the beam across the ice, shearing through his forearm, he was surprised as the snake must have been.

  Silence rang in his head. Blood burst from the incompletely cauterized arteries, splashing across the hard black ice, freezing instantly into lovely red crystals. He tipped forward, and the ice was soft and warm.

  Just before the darkness took him, he felt the Green lift him gently.

  Ash woke in Avlsum's crawler, swaying in an improvised hammock. The air was heavy with the musty body odor of the Green, and the sharp, oily stench of Green spices. He pulled the thick, warm stuff gratefully into his lungs. After a while he raised his arm and looked at the neatly bandaged stump. The sight brought him a pleasurable pang, more sweet than bitter. He smiled.

  «Awake you are? Good!» The Green turned to look back at him. Avlsum sat in the pilot chair, driving with one hand, holding a small vidbook in one hand, stirring a steaming pot with another hand. «Dinner soon is.»

  Ash ate awkwardly, holding the pot between his knees, steadying it with the stump, but he ate with a good appetite. The Green's stew tasted better than it smelled, fortunately.

  Avlsum cut the throttle, and the crawler coasted to a stop. «Listen,» Avlsum said, rising from the pilot chair. «Somewhere a fine human cyber-arm I have. In the lockers I will look.»

  The Green disappeared back into the cargo bay, and Ash heard rattles and thumps, an occasional crash, muttered Green curses. But finally, Avlsum returned with the cyberarm. It was lovely, a god's arm, of
golden alloy, with a circlet of smoldering green gems at the wrist.

  «From a pirate it came. A very evil man,» Avlsum said, holding it out. «But beautiful work it is.»

  Ash drew away slightly. «It's too fine for me. You’ve already done too much for me.»

  «No, no. Take. Self-grafting it is. Look.» And Avlsum displayed the butt end of the arm, where a ring of tiny stainless teeth protruded. «One problem there is. No human anesthetic aboard is. Trimmed your stump must be. Or one arm longer than the other will be.»

  Ash set his jaw, held out the stump. «All right.»

  Avlsum laughed. «Brave you are. But here a solution is.» The Green pointed to the emotigogue. «No pain, when connected you are.»

  When Avlsum strapped him to a chair with strong webbing, Ash felt a momentary flash of panic. But, he told himself, the Green had already had plenty of opportunity to harm him. He lay back, and the harness tightened around his head.

  Avlsum held up a wafer. «Here. This 'The Touch of the Hook' is.»

  Ash struggled against the bonds. «No, wait. .,» he said, as Avlsum slipped the wafer into the slot.

  And then he floated in the eddy below the cascade. The cool, sweet water caressed his sleek body, and he pumped the rich stuff through his gills, glorying in it. He sensed movement along the bank, and for a moment he became more alert. But no shadows fell across the sun-dappled surface, and he relaxed. He sank to the bottom, finning over the gravel, probing for tasty larvae.

  When the mayfly drifted down the current toward him, he rose to it without hesitation. He sucked it in, expecting the crunchy tang of the spent insect. But instead, his mouth filled with a stale, metallic, artificial taste, and he tried to spit it out. A sharp pain drove into his jaw and jerked his head violently toward the bank.

  Panic filled him. The pain was terrible, but the constraint was worse. The moment seemed to last forever; he was drawn inexorably toward the bank. He angled down, then up, finally leaping high into the harsh air, shaking his head, seeing some great uncouth land monster on the bank.

  At that instant the hook tore loose from the soft tissues of his mouth, and he fell back into the water, free.

  Fear still drove him as he fled away down the riffle, but over the fear, building higher and higher, was a great joy, all the more intense for its unfamiliarity.

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