Amber Secret

THE AMBER SECRET
A novella by Angelo Niles








PART ONE

“Cold are the depths of Ghaz, yet colder is the void
That swallows those who venture into Terjjah’s abyss.”
—Verse from a Ptyri scholar of Terjjan myths.


.




1.
WANTED IMPORTS ADVISOR
Blue Star Interstellar has a plush condo for its next employee on Ghaz. Good lungs and a keen eye for gems a plus. Amber, coral, orc’s tooth, and Thlag shell abound. NO SMOKERS PLEASE! Must be willing to work with Terjj. All resumes by July 31, 3009.
TRANSFLUXED 7.11.09
EARL AMAJ DAGARTH
HAVE PICKAX, WILL TRAVEL...

Earl Dagarth lay naked, half awake or dreaming. Voices spoke nearby, unintelligible. Sharp heat rolled back and forth over his skin. Flesh twisted, mending. A lightdoc. He blinked, tried to sit up. A hand forced him back.
“Stay still,” something growled. “Or you’ll heal wrong.”
Heal? What do I need healing for? Memory flickered then. Thlag nomads at the pit, a weldgun bashing his guts. Ice gas burning into his skinsuit. Rapid bursts from plasma guns...Terjj! The patrol ships had come, found him like a fish gasping for air. But they hadn’t killed him. For sky’s sake, why? Torture. God, yes, that was it! They had him and now they were going to torment him, experiment on him like a specimen.
“Don’t hurt me, please,” he whimpered.
“Shut up!”
He tried to focus, saw her face. Features unlike anything Earl had ever seen. Her eyes flared pink. Pelt as pale as jackflower, hair an amber nest of snakes. An albino Terjj. The first Earl had seen. Veins webbed from her cheeks and forehead, sensory cords ending in wiry tendons at her temples. Her lips were thick folds of scarlet, sensuously hiding fangs Earl knew were there.
Above him a gyre ball flitted busily. It fed data to some unseen place, which in turn scrolled out Terjjan glyphs just below the ceiling. An infirmary somewhere, he guessed. One he’d been brought to shortly after his encounter with the nomads, after the Terjj patrolmen took his precious amber.
Presently, the albino inserted a talon into his flesh. “Does that hurt you?” she asked, sounding genuinely concerned.
Earl felt nothing. “No,” he said, confused.
He sat up. This time he wasn’t forced back down on the lightdoc. He looked down to his pelvis. The wound made by her claw fizzled shut, leaving no scar. Alien alchemy. If this was some kind of torture, it was a strange one. He tried to reach for a weapon he no longer had, only to realize his hands were bound.
“What have you done to me?”
Her voice was a purr. “Nerve grafting. And a new skin. One that won’t burn so easily.” She ran her long paws over his nakedness. “Yes, Selusa, very nice work. Our Emir Pharsha will be pleased. He will no doubt want you for himself, I suspect.” At that, she turned and opened a small, elongated box lying on the counter beside her. It contained a blade of some kind. An instrument Earl hadn’t known before but suddenly feared very much.
“What are you going to do with that?” he whined.
“A benjar,” she explained, seeming to take pleasure in his trepidation. “It is a mensah healer. For some it gives life. For others, pain.”
His pulse quickened. God’s sky! What was this Terjj about to do to him? As far as he could see, there were no doors in the room. He was in an egg capsule with strange plants dangling from its skin, mist swirling, and writhing tentacle vines. A garden in the infirmary? But why breed plants in such a place? Unless...
Earl suddenly knew what the blade was for. It was an organic scalpel used for cell grafting and such. The Terjj were notoriously curious about genetics, especially human cells. They were going to graft some horrid thing onto his spleen, turn him into a freak of nature. “Fear not,” she told him. “Ozard has asked that I save you. He has other plans for your skin, yes. Albar willing, you’ll see your beloved Lynx soon. And in time, you will get amber for your flimsy pelt.” She fingered the blade’s slender edge. Her eyes glowed strangely. “But first I will have my way with you. Oh yes, my pet. Soon you shall know true pleasure.”
The benjar blade snaked into his skin, hurling his mind through a galaxy of pain.
2.
Days ago, Earl had skulked into a fissure under Ghaz’s swirling plume of red dust and a saffron moon. Its inferno had charred his skin to a near purple black. The patterns in his genes hadn’t adjusted as they should have, on impulse, the day he thawed. But amber would fix that. If he lived long enough to dig it up, that was.
Just beyond the scar of dunes not far from Firjah City there in the Empty Quarter, a flicker woke the wasp’s eye. Earl watched closely, wheezing into his air mask. It could’ve been anything, but if it was Terjjan patrols they were coming slowly. And lightly armed, according to the wasp’s sensors.
As the wasp whined its calculations, the tiny blip veered northward, away from Earl’s hiding place. So he crawled out of the fissure, peering over the terrain for things the wasp could not detect. Convinced it was safe, he leapt into the sandrider and sped toward the fossil deposit he’d sniffed out earlier. His quarry lay below the black coral sands, deep beneath the icy crust that covered most of Ghaz. Its oceans had long ago dried, long before Earl’s race came into existence.
Aeons ago, Ghaz had been a verdant seabed, the last of its gilled species being forced off the planet an epoch ago when the Solstice froze everything. Since that era, Oort miners, explorers from Lynx, Terjj, and countless others made up the cache of bones scattered over the landscape. All fossilized, all entombed in the gaseous subsoil. Ghaz’s only organic plant life, the kedjka, roved in icy pools hidden in the coral nooks.
For Earl it was a hellish cauldron as the rider raced clumsily over jagged coral and bony protuberances. The gears whined awfully. Even so, Earl piloted down to the pit without a stall.
He settled onto terra firma in a swarthy cloud of dust, the engines winding down like tired beasts. Once the dust cleared, he checked nervously in the sky for ships. Surely they’d be looking for the stolen rider by now. He had paid Mrrakh well enough, hadn’t he? Rotten Terjj. “Spit on his gills!” he grumbled. A hundred ruja! But Earl knew he’d get that back in amber. Oh, yes, far more, if everything went as planned. And if the Terjj didn’t kill him before he got it smuggled back to Lynx.
Dispelling the thought, Earl climbed out of the rider. His boots crunched on the coral sand. He was a small thing, but Ghaz’s gravity weighed on his bones. The bulky skinsuit didn’t help, either. Before anything, he pulled the wasp out once again to scan for fauna. The Coral Erg was infested with things he didn’t want crawling nearby. Whips, particularly. He’d heard of Terjj miners getting stung by them. The mercury had worked swiftly into their bloodstream, driving them to a maddening death. A man’s demise would be swifter.
The wasp saw nothing. And the ruddy haze above still gave no sign of patrol ships. So he quickly unloaded his gear, worked deftly at the ropes, and got the thump pegs wedged into the ground at precise points around the dig site. With luck, the seismic thuds would keep away any pests. Once they were set, he hauled down his shovels and began to dig.
3.
Captain Toth Ozard looked pale. His otherwise dark Terjjan eyes were a wide, sickly blue. Soaked paws trembled at his sides. He cursed his gills for the blunder, for his not keeping a closer eye on his unit. “Sjak, sir! I swear it wasn’t my men. No one in my patrol would do a thing like that.”
“Some idiot did.” The Emir gnashed his fangs. He had already beaten two miners into comas. Not only was the ape missing, but reportedly two tectonic maps and a sandrider as well. The Emir was furious. His shouts boomed in the Orbit Shell. “That oaf couldn’t have done it alone. One of you had to help him. By Albar, I’ll rip out his gills when I find out who.”
“M’lord, I grant you he’ll be found.”
“Don’t you realize how valuable these mining operations are? If that maggot pokes in the wrong spot, he could set off a catastrophic meltdown, you fool! Suppose he digs up a relic and gets it past the Porthole?”
“He won’t, sir.”
“It’ll be your hide if he does. Now find him!”
“Yes, M’lord!” Ozard saluted and left.
Outside the Orbit Shell, Toth Ozard gasped in relief. His bulk of a body still shook, though his pallor slowly deepened back to violet. Back on Terjjah his pelt would’ve been as dark as punfyr in autumn, his eyes even darker. But this cursed cold on Ghaz, and the ice gas he was sure to be poisoned with by now, had all added to his poor complexion. And now this!
Ozard gathered himself. He hurried down the walkbelt beyond the Palace Shell, past the guard post and out to the landing field. His pilot awaited in a flyer. Its massive hull hovered just above the pad, murmuring with power. The hatch opened and he hopped in.
The flyer then bounded above Firjah City and into the rosy heavens. Ozard tried to relax, gather his wits, as he looked out at the fading city. A mirage, he thought, gazing at the graceful domes, causeways, ports, and the egg-shaped palaces. To the west a new moon rose over a haze of pyramids, a glittery specter licking the remnants of Ghaz’s past.
His gills fluttered tiredly. Things were not well. He had to revise his plans now. Curse that ape, Earl Dagarth! The Emir was right; the man-thing couldn’t have gotten his hands on all that gear without Terjj help. But who? And what would an ape be doing out there with tectonic maps?
Ozard would find out. And if there was profit in it, he’d be sure to have it. Sjak grhh, surely as he was a Toth. With time he’d soon have a gift for his lovely Chiryah as well. Ahead of the flyer swirled the Porthole Eye. The craft joined the tiny flicker of ships passing through its mouth, destined for Terjjan territories.
4.
Ghaz’s moon burned as brightly as its sapphire sun. As one fire hung low on the boiling horizon, a new one glared from the west. The shadows fell long, fast waning from a hellish red to a pale, wavering blue. Everything looked flat. The valley rippled out from Earl like a sea of onyx, the lime and coral swirling in ghostly eddies for as far as the eye could see. He had cut his way past the coral bed and was now working into the brittle ice—a thick layer of pulp gas trapped since Ghaz’s dawn, when its poles were in chaos. There was maybe a meter of it. Deftly he carved away the ice, hurling chunks from the pit as he worked. Sweat beaded his brow beneath the mask.
Blue sunlight stabbed into the hole and at last a glint of his efforts peeked up from the pit. Earl could just make out the skeletal jewels below the frozen crust. What looked like bits of amber glittered from the lucent outline of bones. His pulse soared. He dug carefully now, not wanting to chip the gems. Soon he held one of the oval stones in his grimy hand. It looked more like a sculptured egg than amber deposit. He held it to the sunlight. Its translucent shell held a tiny shape of some kind. On closer examination, Earl decided it had to be an embryo. A prehistoric life-form long ago entombed in the ice. Ambri, yes. The purest amber.
Earl stuffed the relic into his pouch. It was sure to bring its weight in good skin. Once he got the lode off Ghaz, anyway. The sandrider could carry a crate of it, he felt sure, and more if he left the tools.
Suddenly the tectonic maps began an ear-piercing relay. He barely felt the first tremor. But the second sent black rock tumbling back into the pit, and he nearly lost his footing. “What on Earth’s hell?” he spat as the ice began to crack. He had to get out quickly before its toxins choked off his air.
Before he could, the quake ceased and there was something new. A low, rattling noise. One he distinctly knew and had hoped never to hear again. He saw the whip then, its segmented body writhing silvery and lethal. It had fallen into the pit with the rock and dirt. A long scorpionlike tail lashed just inches from Earl’s feet. With a single flick of its stinger, it could easily penetrate his boots.
He swallowed painfully.
If he moved, the whip would strike. If he stayed still he might die. But not here, he wasn’t. Not in this pit only inches from his ticket home. Blasted no!
The whip slithered closer. Earl dared not breathe. The thought of its venom seeping into his bloodstream...veins bursting...his body being found by Terjj patrols, then left in this hole to fossilize. He had to escape. If only he had a weapon, dear God.
“Do not move,” a voice hissed from behind. Earl was hardly about to move, nor was he about to take his eye off the whip to see who it was. “It won’t sting you. But I will shoot if you move.” The accent was thick, grainy. It didn’t sound like anything with lungs. A stillbreather, perhaps.
“What are you doing here?” it demanded, still unseen behind Earl.
“Digging,” said Earl dryly.
“For what?”
“Ice. What else?”
A blast ripped into the pit. Fortunately, it was for the whip and not Earl. He breathed harshly, relieved. He then glanced up to see a long weldgun aimed at him. The face was veiled like a Tuareg of Earth, the ugly head hooded. “Out of the pit!” the Ghazan nomad ordered.
Earl did as told.
Perhaps for the whip and his fear, Earl hadn’t noticed the stench until now. The magwogs they rode smelled like puke. Their hairy bulks towered, tusks spearing from massive skulls. On each beast sat a Ghazan, guns trained on Earl, eyes like embers beneath their hoods. Six Ghazans, out here in the middle of Terjjan mine flats. Rebels, no doubt.
The nomad pushed his weldgun at Earl’s temple “Tell me again, devil. Why are you here?”
“Digging for ice,” he lied again.
“Is that so?” The Thlag kicked a chunk of the excavated ice at him. “It doesn’t stay frozen long above ground. Now, the truth, animal!”
Earl licked his lips. He knew of the Ghazan superstitions, and if they knew he had come to dig up their sacred bones—the amber—they might shoot him anyway. But what else could he be digging for?
“Air,” Earl gasped. “I was going to melt it for lung gas. My tank is low. See?” He indicated the oxygen level on his air unit, hoping they wouldn’t know how to read it. “You see? It’s almost empty.”
“Dtsarq!” The Thlag bashed Earl’s gut with its weapon. He fell to his knees, gasping.
A thud of explosions ensued, and Earl felt the hot sting of pulp gas burning into his skin...air seeping out of his mask. The roar of Terjjan patrol ships.
5.
Back at the port shell in Firjah City, Mrrakh paced in front of a vidodeck, rubbing his paws and cursing. “Gthai hell!” he spat. “What in Albar’s black sky is that ape doing out there? He should’ve returned by now.” The stupid human had probably gotten lost. Or perhaps died of exposure in the sun. Whatever it was, it sure wasn’t going to be Mrrakh’s hide. Karst, no!
Third Patrol was quiet tonight. The mining crews hadn’t been dispatched yet. Crawlers and ice rigs were hunkered down till moonrise; another hour still. But surely the patrols had made their rounds by now. And Earl was still out there digging.
The terrascan whirred softly. Its bluish glow filled the shell’s hull, washing over the plethora of screens in the room. Mrrakh thumbed over channels hoping to spot Earl. Images flickered by. Mine flats...sunlit ridges and desert valleys...a few nomads on magwogs...camps...cities... But no Earl Dagarth.
“I knew it,” he grumbled, pulling at his gray hair cords. “He’s gone off with my tools, that dirty thief.”
The rider he didn’t care about. Many had vanished before. But the missing excavating tools would be noticed sooner or later. Toth Ozard had already come asking questions. So rude of him, too. To imply that he’d betray Terjjan honor. “For the likes of a man-thing?” Mrrakh had protested. “Dare not I, sjak, sir. Why on Terjjah would anyone pull such a stunt?”
“Money,” Ozard had said, scowling.
The interrogation hadn’t lasted long, though. The lmah Terjj seemed to be in a hurry, so Mrrakh had escaped a beating this time. One might be inflicted upon him later on, however, if the Emir so wished. “By the way,” Ozard had said, bearing down into his flinching eyes. “How long since your last mensah, eh?”
There was no need to answer. Mrrakh knew well what he meant. Terjjan had no word for torture. If he was innocent, the mensah would keep him pure. And if not, well, that’s why there was mensah, Albar help him.
6.
Firjah City glittered under the crimson dawn of a new moon. A rare mistfall cascaded over the domed palaces, each hewn in the flowing egg shapes of Terjjan architecture. Ozard smiled, baring ivory fangs. He felt proud of the conquest of Ghaz. It had taken many lifetimes to refine this barren glacial hole, but they had made the best of it. Yes, a Ghazan could never envisage such a mirage of beauty. Nor any human. Sjak, that was for sure.
“Shall I rub your pelt, my love?” asked Oba demurely.
Ozard winced, having last the mood. He turned to see his maiden at his side, dressed in a gauzy robe, its front left open. Her supple curves were invitingly close, her body scented with enfyrrah, her dark eyes large and lustrous. “No,” he grunted, shrugging her off. “I have things to do. Where is Chiryah?”
Oba swallowed a dejected look and closed her covering. “Out in the garden, M’lord. She has a new herb in breeding, I think. Am I to summon her for you?”
“Leave her be.” For a moment, Ozard considered joining Oba, for she did arouse his mood. Her slender limbs were firm, her dark lips enticing. She hesitated, then bowed and left shyly.
In the quiet of his loft, Ozard pondered his day. Things had gone well so far. The emir had been pleased to hear that the rider was found, along with the tectonic maps and stolen tools. In his report earlier, he stated that His Excellency’s humble servant, Toth Ozard, had made a terrible blunder. To have let a lowly ape get hold of secrets as he had. To have failed his honor by not reporting the theft at once. To have willingly violated nearly every security protocol by not beating to death any suspects on sight, whether guilty or not...
And so on, until he felt the Emir would be satisfied. The report told how Earl Dagarth, a company imports advisor from Lynx, had bribed a patrolman into lending him a sandrider and tools to “excavate some kind of worthless rock.” The maps, he stated, were bought from an unnamed officer for a few raja. Fortunately, no harm was done to the maps, and no real damage to Terjjan mining secrets. As for the ape, Ozard put lastly, he was shot in his attempts to escape. His body was to be shipped on the next liner out.
End of that.
He grinned. Yes, sjak. All had gone well today. The albino, Selusa, had made sure of that, indeed. Now that the relics were safely tucked away he could get on with his plans.
Standing tiredly, Ozard stretched, then stepped out onto the balcony. Down in the garden, Chiryah busied herself with her herbs. There was a sadness in seeing her so calm, not concerned with the fact that she was dying on Ghaz. Blood like hers belonged on Terjjah. There in the boiling tides, her mensah would surely have come by now. A Terjjan male would have had the mensah induced. But no herb was pungent enough for Chiryah’s delicate body. So she remained without offspring.
Soon he would have a remedy for her, though. “On my gills,” he whispered. “In time you’ll have your gift.”
Chiryah smiled up at him, momentarily pausing in her snips and pruning. Even from the balcony he could make out her thin lips, the waning fire of her eyes. They were moth eyes, Ozard thought, like those found on Ijnar, sister planet of Terjjah. Chiryah returned to her herbs, and to the sad thoughts of a faraway dream, as did Ozard. He gazed out at the moonrise. Oh, how he longed for Terjjah’s feral oceans. For her warm eventides, the fragrant moss, blossoming fungi, her moist air.
“In time,” he purred. “As soon as the relics are smuggled through the Porthole, my lovely.”
By dusk tomorrow the cargo would be ready. And with Albar’s grace, they’d soon be far away from Ghaz.
7.
The skinshaper’s talons raked Earl’s skin. “Ghaz. Do you know its meaning?” Selusa asked, her voice throbbing beyond his cerebral cortex. “Winter. Because Terjjan blood cannot boil here. The nights have no fire.” Through the haze of some dream, Earl fluttered his eyelids. Her face loomed inches from his. Eyes pink, hair like writhing snakes. “Ah, but for me it’s home. On Terjjah I would burn easily. An albino’s skin is not made for that hell. That’s why I came to Ghaz—for the cold. And you?”
What?
He felt disembodied. Was she talking to his corpse? Blasted, it was cold. He tried to flex his muscles, make a fist, but couldn’t. No gyre ball flitted above him. No sharp heat of a lightdoc. A casket, then?
“Just as well, my pet. Ghaz will be a passing dream by dusk. Our flesh will taste life then. Soon, yes.”
Glass. He was encased in a kind of coffin, ice packed against his skin. She closed the lid over him. Locks hissed shut. She walked away out of view. God, she had killed him, Earl panicked. But what were they keeping his body for? Words, trickling sounds. Memory. A benjar blade snaked into his flesh, twisting, delving deeply into his soul. Some kind of surgery. Yes, dear God Almighty. She had put objects inside him. Stones shaped like eggs. The relics he’d dug up at the pit. The fossilized embryos.
“He’s ready for shipment.”
“Good. Will he remember anything?”
“No,” the albino said, hovering beside the big Terjj. “His brain is in hypersleep. I’ve set it for autothaw. Nerves might stir once the embryos hatch, but he won’t wake fully.”
“Well done, Selusa.” The darker Terjj came closer to the coffin’s glass. His face was an ugly black mass. He inspected Earl with sickly blue eyes. “The wounds are fine. Customs officials should ask no questions. Just a stupid ape killed after stealing Terjjan machinery. Sjak, yes. Good work.”
The two Terjj left then, leaving Earl Dagarth to the gelid night of his cryotube.
8.
The Thlag nomads had spiny faces and chitinous skin. They stank like magwog puke, every last one of them. Ghaz had no flowing water of its own; there was only the ice deposits below its crust. So naturally the Thlag had never come in contact with anything resembling a bath.
Ozard held his gills shut. “By Albar! How do you stand it?” Fyouk, the huge Thlag beside him, gave Ozard a puzzled stare. “Never mind,” said Ozard. “Just be careful with those relics. They’re fragile.”
The Thlag’s scarlet eyes faded, a mood gland. “Dtsarq! I know what they are better than you, Terjj. Our people were builders long before your race knew life. Gill waggers, what?” He hissed in Thlagan to the others, who ho then stacked the crates more carefully. In the dimly lit cavern it was hard to make out more than glowing eyes and weldgun flares. The tomb was vast. Farther in the karst’s deep a stream bubbled with gaseous poisons—the ice.
Ozard kept to one wall, eyeing the crates as they were lifted from the pit below. Fyouk stood nearby, his burly form just taller than Ozard. He wore a hooded jilabah that hid a scaly face and body. He lifted one of the relics and rasped, “Rubbish. For this my people die. Spoils of a dead age. “
“And maps,” Ozard reminded him.
“Aaarghh! For a Ghaz without Terjj, yes. And your noisy machines, what?” He eyed the relic closely, looking into the translucent shell which held a tiny embryo. “I have yet to grasp what value this has to a Terjj. Foolish magic of the ancients. It doesn’t matter,” he said, placing the relic back in its crate. “So long as you pay, you’re welcome to dig up all the worthless relics you want.”
Ozard knew well their value. The egg stones, kept perfectly intact for thousands of years, would bring a fortune on Terjjah. Even more if the embryos could be hatched. It had been sheer luck finding the tombs. One of the miners in his unit had stumbled upon one of the strange-looking stones, and Ozard had kept it for closer examination. It had proven to be an astonishing find, too, as the stones were part of a vast tomb built by the Ambri: a race long perished from Ghaz. Ozard had gained access to the tomb after many clandestine bargains with the Ghazans.
“Don’t worry,” Ozard told the Thlag. “You’ll have the maps at moonrise. As soon as the relics are in Firjah City.”
“And the devil?”
“He’s being kept on ice. A friend has found a use for him. One that will keep him out of trouble for a while.” Ozard shivered at a draft. His gills fluttered in the stilling tank that allowed him to breathe. “Albar Almighty, it’s cold down here. Let’s hurry with those crates. It’ll be dusk soon and I dare not be out here when the miners are digging.”
“Shar figh,” Fyouk ordered the others. “Slaves do not lose their zeal for sweat. We knew only toil when the Ambri ruled us. We built their cities and pyramids. Vast palaces the likes of which had never been raised. And we bled for the devils when they came. Now you Terjj make waste of our world and leave us to fight for worthless bits of magic. What do you trade for it? Maps only.”
Yes, Ozard thought. That and independence for your precious Ghaz.
9.
Gthai ja karst nirhi! Hell is a cold pit.
Mrrakh knew that as well as any Terjj on Ghaz. He knew that cold things spawned other cold, venomous things. He knew that ice and hellish planets like Ghaz had erupted from a hole that was far older, more insidious, and far more void of life.
Eyes like the albino’s must have been spawned in such a hell. Their pink fire peered at him, barely slits in a pale face.
“The ape is dead.” Selusa ran her talons over the tablet she held. “Yes, a capillary rupture, I believe one shot to the temple here. And another to the lower femur. The burns were made by ice gas. Skin was too damaged for a graft, so we saw no need to save him. He’ll be shipped tonight. Unless, of course, the Emir requests an autopsy.”
Mrrakh shivered. He tried desperately to conceal his edginess. “Were there...any, uh, tools with him?”
“Pardon me?”
“Eh, I mean, wasn’t he found in the mine flats?”
“Yes. But, to my knowledge, tools were not found.” She slid the tube out which held Earl Dagarth’s body. He was packed in ice, his black skin marred with scars. “He was completely naked when I received him. I suspect whatever he had was impounded by the patrol unit who found him. Do you need a tissue sample, perhaps?”
“No, please. “
Mrrakh watched as she shrugged and slid the cryotube back into its niche in the wall. The morgue was full of tubes, each holding the bodies of Terjj miners and the few foreigners who perished in the flats.
Drat, that Imah Terjj! Ozard had gotten to Earl, and he’d kept it a cleverly disguised affair; getting into the flats without detection, meeting with Thlag nomads shortly afterward, and writing his own report for the Emir. Ah, yes. Mrrakh had seen everything from his shell at the port. What a prize the intrigue would bring, too, should the Emir hear of it. Mrrakh would profit one way or another from the information. But he had to be careful, for Ozard was a ruthless Terjj.
As for Earl, it was far too late to save him.
10.
A cold, slimy tentacle slid around Earl’s waist, startling him awake. He’d not felt the cryotube’s soft thrum, hadn’t known whether he was alive or dead. Only dark, still repose. Then memory glared sharply. Pale flesh. The fierce pink eyes. An albino Terjj, dear God, fondling him like a mere specimen, a benjar blade snaking into his torso...the hellish cries of pain.
Air exploded from his lungs. Breathe, my pet...that’s it, let it out. Earl panted, wet pleas raking his throat, coughing out in lusty gulps. They were entwined like two copulating octopuses, her hair cords sprawled about his shoulders, his own tightly curled crop sweaty, muscles strained, a squidlike kelp, the kedjka, constricting tightly, tugging at his spinal cord as it excreted its inky fear amidst Earl’s throes.
That’s good, darling human. Don’t fight, let it happen.
Earl didn’t comprehend what was happening at first, why the kedjka felt as if it were fused to his nervous system, a symbiotic appendage of some kind, or why the albino’s legs, those long scaly legs, were clasping his buttocks, why her claws dug so tenderly into his back, or why he felt the kelp’s nerve endings being aroused by her thoughts...her very mind.
Ah yes, for Terjjah, my pet.
Dark, copious tides spilled into Earl’s cerebrum. Gushed over him like a living skin, drawing out his life force, melding with his consciousness. He saw it all so clearly. He saw the morgue, the cryotube. Mrrakh inquiring about his status, then leaving him, that dirty crook. The relics. Ambri eggs tucked inside his gut. A blanket of stars drawing overhead, light yawning over a galaxy of distance, infinite black space, then a boiling lava planet, Terjjah’s fiery cauldron, peaks, red gorges, cities, a sea of Terjj all flapping their gills in their own sulfurous Eden. Why bring him to such a place? Was he some kind of incubator for the embryos?
Selusa’s thrusts were eager now, nearly vicious as she pressed her lips wetly to Earl’s brow, her breath hot and raspy. Cripes Almighty, what an unthinkable act! Sex with a Terjj! Grimly he recalled that their anatomy was quite unlike any human. Two reproductive glands on the inner thighs. Soft, fleshy folds. The kelp’s spindly limbs a perfect fit, yes, with its polyps spilling milky seedlings into the Terjj’s genitalia. Suddenly she flung him aside, done with her rite. Spent and confused, Earl lay nakedly with the kedjka writhing over his loins, the world very cold.
11.
Ozard’s plans had nearly fallen apart when the ape wandered into the mining flats, poking the ground for things he shouldn’t have. Sjak karst, that fool. The tomb had nearly been exposed but for Ozard’s foresight. Only a few nights before, the Emir had granted his request to patrol that area himself. And luckily for Ozard, he had led the fly-by that day when his sensors detected activity at the pit. The Ghazans had fled, and the ape was detained.
It had caused him a small delay. A few more days in the tomb, and a few adjustments to his plans. Now the Thlags had their maps, and the relics were off to Terjjah on the next liner out.
As for the ape, he was safely asleep. Each lunar cycle, a morgue freighter was launched at the Emir’s behest, to and from territories beyond the Porthole—cargo like the two Oorts who were comatose. Terjj who got too sick, and, of course, careless humans who didn’t belong on Ghaz anyway. Ah, but soon the ape would bring Ozard the ruja he needed for Chiryah’s cure. By Albar’s grace, tonight would be their last night on this awful planet.
Presently, Ozard eased into a rider. Its cockpit was far too small for his bulk, but he nevertheless jabbed deftly at controls and was off over the Ghazan desert, heading for the haze of pyramids and Firjah City.
12.
In a fissure not far from the tomb, Mrrakh slid out of his hiding with a tool bag left behind by a careless miner. He crept into the abandoned hollow alone, skulking in the darkness with only a gas lamp. When he came upon the pocket where only a while ago Ozard and the Thlags had worked, Mrrakh gasped in awe, his entire being full of sudden appreciation for the depth of the Terjj’s plot here in the tomb.
Glory to Albar, it was vast. At least, from what he could see, the relics were not of Thlag origin, and certainly not of Terjj archeology. Only a few of the elites had ever whispered their name. But Mrrakh knew well who the builders of the tomb were.
They were Ambri. An ancient race whose origins were long draped in myth.
13.
“Amber!” the Emir bellowed after inspecting the stone once more. “You miserable worm, why didn’t you report this before? What else have you failed to tell me?”
“I just realized it, M’lord.”
Mrrakh sat before the dais, trembling. His decision to come to the Palace was risky, but he didn’t see another way to save his skin. That Selusa knew what Ozard was up to, and she was privy to his plans for Earl Dagarth. At the morgue, he had kept up his own ruse, pretending to inquire about a dead thief. The tools, after all, had come from his depot, so no one would suspect anything if he asked after them. So he hoped. But Mrrakh knew the albino was hiding something. Afterward he’d gone right to the flats to see for himself what that Toth Ozard was up to, and why Earl’s body had been so quietly whisked into Selusa’s hands.
Presently, he perked his gills. “My eyes aren’t what they used to be, beg your pardon, sir. But I came as soon as I realized my error.”
“Save your excuses. These relics will cost us our mines if they get beyond the Porthole.” The Emir lifted a gyre ball, scrutinizing the recordings. Its bluish glow washed over his pudgy face, over the veins that were blackened by anger. His thick hair cords snaked around a corpulent, naked body. “That liar!” he raged. “I want Toth Ozard found at once. And the skinshaper, Selusa—see to it that her pelt is hung before me by dusk. Now, go.”
“At once, Your Excellency!” The waiting soldiers sped off.
“As for you,” the Emir breathed down at Mrrakh. “Pray that they are found before it’s too late. Or you’ll wish your mother never spawned you.”
“I beg your grace, M’lord,” he pleaded weakly. With a bark from the Emir, Mrrakh was led away in the midst of his groveling. That night, deep in a purity tank below the Palace, his screams echoed the truths and fears and pleasures of a mensah. And his curses upon Earl Dagarth.
14.
Far away on a vast lunar freighter, Chiryah clipped a bud from a dangling punfyr. She held one of the tentacles, stroking the eye cords and whispering, “So very beautiful, my darlings. At long last, yes.”
In the quiet of the garden Ozard had arranged for her, she groomed the plants. She daydreamed about a time when she’d no longer have to breed her herbs in secrecy. On Terjjah punfyr grew wild in the darkness of its sea. The nights were so pleasant there. She longed for a time when her pelt would no longer be confined to the climate of planets like Ghaz. For now she would enjoy her new gift that slept quietly nearby.
The air in the biosphere was misted just right, so sweet upon her gills. The ape, poor, poor thing, lay in his glass case, resting like an herb, packed in ice, naked and waiting for their arrival on Terjjah. Oba had not accompanied them from Ghaz, much to Chiryah’s dismay. It would’ve been nice to have a maiden to tend to Ozard while she cultivated her garden. Ah, but that was the life of a smuggler’s wife, ever leaping from one star to another, ever in search of a cure, an elixir to curb her lingering pain.
Selusa’s alchemy had proven extraordinary indeed, if not highly risky, even for a Terjj. The grafting had gone well. A snip here—and oh, what a lovely appendage the human had grown into. With the embryos incubating quietly in his gut, the ape would bring more than his weight in punfyr. He would soon awaken to a whole new world, one with sights no Earthling had ever known.
With a sigh, she touched the cryotube’s glass. “Soon, yes, my dear, I shall be home on Terjjah. And you’ll have your amber for dying skin.”
A trickle of sound seeped into the casket, tingled Earl’s auditory nerves, and roused him, just briefly, from his cold dark repose. A flash of images flooded his cerebral cortex, thrusting him back to the scarred valleys of Ghaz, back to the fissure, the pit. He held the strange-looking egg up to the moonlight, eyed its translucent wonder within. An embryo. An ancient life-form now tucked within his gut, smuggled along with the ape who had dug too deeply into the mystery and magic of a cold, cold, cold world far away from his beloved Lynx.
God’s sky, yes.
All for a fistful of amber and dust, Earl Dagarth.