Click ~*~ to follow a thread.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Paula followed him. "Calm down, Clark. My father says we're most horrified by what we know we're about to do."

He drew back and turned on her, as Fuego had on him. "Go ahead. I'm being selfish. I'm keeping my hands out of it because I know you'll do the blood work for me, isn't that what you think? But you need me to object--it's part of the job for you to convince me, right? Process. The process is all mapped out, so we don't matter. Is that it?" His voice was squeaking. "I talked to Efirr Nije before he died. I listened to him--look at them."

The prisoners sat facing one another in their crater, their silence unbroken by even the tiniest sigh. Now and then a tear dropped from the end of a chin or the edge of a lip.

Tiyar slid down from his pillar and joined them.

"Oh, go on," Paula said. "You know if we all blink at once they'll have us dead before our eyes open. So don't worry about what I think you think I think--you're right, OK? But remember what Fuego said. If we let them go, we fail. A subject planet is really an awful creature. It never changes. It rots but it doesn't die. I mean it, it has to be tended and fed to become a monster, and it's the Vars and the Viyatos and the Ketries who keep this one moving." She stopped. "And then there's Sevit. Babygod damn you, Tiyar, why didn't you smash the sender when you found it, instead of running all over with it and practically inviting them to jump you?"

"It was necessary to intercept them, to determine why these agents were here and whom they serve."

Clark scratched his head. "What did you expect to do with them afterwards?"

"I did not know. I had hoped to capture only one or two."

"Great," Paula said. "From the man who brought our wonderful supplies, a foolproof strategy. Never mind. We've got to kill them."

Tiyar said, "I agree. I realize that this decision has been difficult for each of us. I believe you have done very well in facing it. We can do this now or tomorrow, as you prefer."

Clark was looking back at the prisoners.

"Now," Paula said.

Clark did not answer.

"Tomorrow, then," Tiyar said.

Clark said, "But--"

Tiyar grasped his wrists. "Man, you are asleep. Waken! This is the way you chose when you left Reshebora."

Clark said nothing.

Tiyar looked down. So did Clark. He had reversed the grip, so that now he held Tiyar. At last it had become automatic; after all the endless training sessions, the shouting and scolding, he was learning to fight. Both men permitted themselves quick smiles.

"This is the way we chose--murder?" Clark gripped Tiyar's wrists hard. "How will we keep from becoming brigands?" He looked at Ti but saw no answer was coming so finally he turned away.

"I'll watch them tonight," Paula told them.

That night she drugged the prisoners, tied them securely and gagged them, then went to bed. Unable to sleep, she returned at about midnight. Each had been stabbed to the heart.

The blood was soaked into the earth. It made a disgusting mud that clung to them when Clark dragged the bodies onto a funeral pyre of brush and spring grass.

"I'll help if you tell me what to do," Paula offered.

"Just haul them up. I'll arrange them. Look at this. They tried to shut their own eyes with stones on the lids. Kituman--I could have won them all."

"Don't blame him. Please don't. You agreed."

"Don't cry, there's no consolation in it," Clark said. "Have some Sweet Surcease."

Drunk, they burned the corpses without ceremony. Then they went down to the Lir to be out of sight of the flames.

Near morning, Paula said, "When I was thirteen, I saw Holy Huey on the newswaves and I fell in love with him. He was in jail. Well, I read everything I could find about the Outlanders. People said I looked like an Outlander, so I wrote him, under a fake name, telling him I knew him from the Outlands and wanted to visit. The sender's number was a leave-until-called-for. Of course my father heard about it. He was furious. He was enraged. I've never seen him so beside himself. He punched me, he threw things, he hit my mother. He kept shouting: You're trying to kill me! I couldn't understand it. He sat on my chest and said he was going to pull out my hair. My mother was locked in her room then." Paula brushed her hair away from her eyes. Her voice sounded like an echo.

They had been talking all night after a long day afield, but neither she nor Clark were tired. She hastened to finish her story before sunrise.

"He was shouting and yelling and kicking at the floor. It was one of those tension floors that ring when you kick them. He yanked my head around by the hair. After a while he sat up and went quiet, looked at me, tapped on my collarbone. He said he was going to break it. He started feeling all my bones, saying he was going to break them. I sort of wondered whether he could, how long it would take. I wished I were made of Flexon like the Memorial Port--it was a Maxwell Enterprises project--so it wouldn't be so messy. I must have said something about him pulling out my bones and replacing them with Flexon. He hit my mouth. He said, 'You'd give it all to those sniggering desert rats. It's mine.'"

She looked past Clark at the riverbank, and closed her eyes. Her disappointment was so great that she could have wept. No trees there caught fire, her words did not singe the listening ear. The tale would not tell itself, rushing out like a dark jet from its rocky cavern to soak him at once to the skin and through to the marrow. Rather, it drifted away in the night air and left her feeling self-conscious.

She continued. "I thought: He's going to do that again. I didn't know what I meant by "that" at first, but then I remembered him doing it before, a lot of times. Since I was little. I grabbed him around the neck, finally, and stuck my thumbs into his windpipe until he let go."

Clark said nothing. His head floated among the grass at the top of the bank, eyes a little glazed. All night they had sat an arm's reach apart, talking and moving closer and farther away.

Close, they had discussed Tiyar. "He knows the language, but you and I know as much about Paffir Haretz as he does," Clark said. "He doesn't seem to like asking people about history. He's right that we won't get anywhere if we spend all our time studying the situation, but to learn nothing--"

"Greyesar warned me not to let him run the show. But then again, Huey trusts him," Paula said.

"Those two don't agree on much."

"Agree? No, they don't. Greyesar saved Huey's life once. He put him where he is now. Greyesar has never asked him for anything in return, but, you know, Greyesar is the kind who demands continuous gratitude. He doesn't waste it on one or two favors. So Huey kind of hates him."

"He hates him?"

"I think so. Don't you?"

"No. I don't know. He's a little...wants to keep Greyesar at a distance. But they have friends in common. Tiyar, at least. And you."

"I guess saying he hates somebody is like saying the moon hates somebody. He doesn't," Paula said.

Clark glanced automatically at the moon. The large one was just setting. "I wish I could send her a message."

"The librarian?" She guessed that easily.

"Right. When I found out Teresa had drugged me, I was too upset. I was disappointed. Embarrassed. Offended. But I thought about it yesterday night, in pictures, when I'd taken language pills Tiyar gave me. They don't just repress language. They repress a lot of learning, old and new--make you innocent. That's how they facilitate language acquisition."

Paula began to smile, stopped herself, then went ahead.

Clark resumed, "I was thinking about it--it seemed more innocent than it had before. You can't say she took advantage of the drug's effects. Maybe I really was in love, just for a different reason than I thought. And it was a mistake. She thought I would know."

"She thought," Paula repeated. There was no reply to that. Haven't we been through this before, she wondered. It was a familiar pattern. She willed herself to speak and did not. She tried a new approach. "Holy Huey introduced me to Love's Arrow. When I was thirteen. I saw Holy Huey on the newswaves and fell in love with him."

No word proved any easier than any other--even little ones like "I" and "the" came sulking guiltily across her tongue--but she kept talking to prevent her listener from altering the story with questions. Clark made no comment. She thought he looked relieved. Reviewing her speech, she realized that she had neglected to use the word rape. That was important. It was necessary to use the words other people used or there would be confusion. She would say it now. But she said only, "He was feeling my bones."

Too late. She went on with the caveats. "There are things about it that don't make any sense. How did I get my hands free?"

"They might have been free all the time," Clark said.

"Probably. And the other times--I didn't remember the other times until then. Maybe I just made them up. But why would I make up something like that?"

"They can probe your brain and find the memory."

"Yes, I know, and find out when it got there. But I had surgery on my brain as a child and the probes won't work."

"Are you sure?" Clark asked.

"Yes, there's a foreign piece in there and it would--I forget. But they said it would be dangerous. And everybody would hear I'd been probed, anyway, and there'd be a lot of gossip. So--. Maybe I don't want to. What good would it do me to learn that it was true or that it wasn't?" The sky had grown lighter. She could see Clark's eyes. "I really don't worry about it that much. It probably never happened before, and I only made it up that time because I was scared and wanted to believe I'd lived through it the other times. I probably shouldn't have told you." The last slipped out before she could stop it. Failure.

Clark said, "No, I'm glad you did."

"Why?"

"Because it's something I would have wanted to know."

She smiled. That done, it seemed they were too far apart. Talking about things like that makes you feel as though you were drifting separately in the vac, she thought. Probably because you wish you were. "You know something, Akiva says we're starting to wear out our welcome here. We and the Verloringers are sort of a drain on the area." She looked over her shoulder. "He says the Lir Temple will be after us soon--they must be Viyato puppets, you know--when they finish with some other thing, I think it was bandits, in the west. Northwest. That's the newer region, not as heavily settled. You know, the capital is on the other side of a mountain chain from us here, and until maybe eighty years ago they didn't have any settlements on the same side of the mountains as the capital. Which makes sense if you figure they land ships there or even just remat from there. But now they need to cultivate more land."

"Akiva told you all this?"

"No, Tiyar. He comes and tells me things, and then he tells me what he decided--he wants to go to the capital where Lir Temple is--he tells me what he decided and then he waits for me to tell him he's right. It's really unbearable. If he wants to be the leader and make decisions, he should try to get my opinion beforehand or else do without it. I mean, if he really thinks we should go, well--who knows. We'll go. But he should either tell us all or keep his mouth shut. Of course we'll go there. But he should have consulted all of us."

"Bandits?" Clark asked.

"They said a town was destroyed. A provincial captial."

The sun was rising.

River mist shimmered between the pines. Paula stood. For a moment the Lir ran golden to the horizon. Both of them glistened with dew. She looked down at her hands. They were outlined in silver. She walked to the water's edge, noticing, for the first time since they came to the ruin, the scent of fresh earth turned up by her footsteps. She plunged her face and hands in the water with nearly senseless pleasure.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
CONTINUE.....................

Go to Chapter: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21
INDEX