Free Watcher's Web by Patty Jansen

furious hand gestures. Invaders have come. We must
kill them. They fell from the sky.
    And then she
was in another place entirely . . .
    *     *     *
    Grey light
filtered through a window, over empty tables and chairs in some
sort of eating house. Not normal tables—the surface was a
crystalline screen with strange characters . . . which
she could read. The menu.
    It was raining
heavily outside, a curtain of water that obscured the view beyond a
grey building on the other side of a street. A man sat by himself
in the corner near the window, his spidery hands—the index and
middle fingers much longer than the others—clutching a cup.
    He looked up;
a smile crinkled the skin around deep-set eyes, the irises yellow
with a black rim. “Daya.”
    Jessica drew
back a chair. Once again she was in the body of the strange
man—that’s why she could read the menu.
    “How are you,
Wonan?” the man asked, and it was strange to have the sound come
from her mouth.
    “You seemed in
a hurry to talk to me.”
    “I am—thank
you.” The last words to the woman who deposited a glass on the
table. It contained a vivid blue drink, a trail of vapour rising
from its surface.
    Daya picked up
the glass. Jessica felt it as he held his breath and took a large
gulp. His mouth burned, and when he swallowed the feeling tracked
all the way into his stomach. Warmth spread through his body. He
sighed; he needed that.
    Wonan blew
steam off his tea. “So, what is the problem?”
    “I’d like to
have your thoughts on something. I’ve tried a lot of other things,
but I keep coming back to the same conclusion.” He twirled his
glass. “Say you wanted to fool the Exchange, how would you do
it?”
    “Fool the
Exchange?” Wonan leant back in his chair, frowning. “To what
end?”
    “To make an
aircraft disappear. A craft that is unaware that it’s being
transferred.”
    Yellow eyes
fixed his. “You’re talking about unilateral translocation.”
    “Yes.” Daya
cringed. Like the fifth dimension and the eighth sense, unilateral
translocation was one of the subjects philosophers liked discussing
but no researcher in the sciences seriously believed existed.
    “That’s
impossible.”
    “I know. Yet
it happened. Something fooled the Network into accepting
reciprocity for a craft that had no ability to do so. A craft that
had no Exchange capacity, no anpar control, and no
communication.”
    Wonan’s frown
had deepened. “You’re sure?”
    “As sure as I
can be.”
    “If you’re
right, why has no one made a big fuss about this?”
    “They have, on
the craft’s home world. But it’s not a Union world and they have no
idea even of the existence of the Exchange.”
    Wonan’s eyes
widened. “Where is the craft now?”
    “If I knew
that, I’d be halfway to answering my questions. I need access to
the translocation records.”
    The web
crackled and shivered.
    Damn, damn,
damn. She couldn’t control it. Just when it was getting
interesting—he was talking about what had happened to her, wasn’t
he?
    *     *     *
    The restaurant
exploded amidst a blur of images that were not Daya’s, but belonged
to the tailed people. A boat bringing in a huge fish. Tailed and
stripy-skinned people carving it up on the beach. A young male
climbing a tree to pick fruit. The images came faster and faster
until they blurred together in a stream of colour.
    Strands of
light flailed and whipped about, until they, too, merged and became
a seething stream of white that flowed through her and eroded the
knot of energy inside her, like a river eats at a sandy bank. When
the light dimmed, all she saw was two large brown eyes that seemed
to swallow her. The blue strands and sparks under her skin were
gone. So was the pain.

Chapter
8
     
    A SNAP BROUGHT
Jessica back from the trance.
    She blinked.
Stared. Blinked again.
    Orange light
gilded Ikay’s face, bringing out gold spots in her huge irises.
Behind her some curious females still