it, the thing gave a whimper and lay silent, dark fluid oozing from beneath it into the dust atop the paving blocks. Pneumoplastic wheels rolled down the cx)rridor, one of them staining the floor behind it with a series of successively lighter, dryer spots.
For some unidentifiable reason Morven began to feel better, more aware of his surroundings. As his chair passed crossing corridors, screaming came to his ears of Islay servants being tortured. Nothing at all delicate was there in this rough, pragmatic procedure. It was quite unlike his careful, artful, pleasurable experiments at home, but motivated by a practical desire upon his part to gain as much information he could, with whatever alacrity was possible, as to the most likely destination of the three escaping Islay sons.
He was annoyed. What a pity he might not attend to that old man himself, who had killed his officer, making the escape possible. Morven resolved not to let his regret over a messy detail spoil his overwhelming triumph. He had accomplished what he had set out to do. Be pleased with that a while.
He must speak to his commanders, however, and soon— unless it was too late already—about sparing sufficient servants to maintain his comfort in this place. Damage or kill too many (the officers were fond of seeing how much they could remove, yet leave the remainder living, a crude sort of art, but one even he, a patron of hi^er aesthetics, could appreciate) and they would have the nuisance of enslaving or importing more to do their work.
Also that tidbit—what was her name?—the bride, Lia Woodgate. Not to his personal taste. He had enjoyed scant appetite of that sort the last three decades, although of late he had contrived adequate arrangement against the likelihood of increasing interest. But she would make a decorative gift. That was, unless Alysabeth, who had expressed some interest in her, desired her as a playtoy. Judging from Alysabeth's more creative childhood experiments, the Woodgate girl would not be of much use to anyone else, afterward.
Upon second thought, once his brilliant aesthetists and surgeons had arrived ... At last his musings brought him to the end of the corridor, to a broad, thick, stout-barred door
which Opened for him without his having to command it. That was real power, he thought. He was in charge here, and no one to doubt it. A slender feminine figure standing at the door beside the Oplyte guard who had opened it reminded him that satisfactions remained yet to be wrung from the prisoner within. Morven nodded to his daughter. Smiling, Alysabeth nodded back.
Across the chamber, Robret Islay stood with his hands in the air, although he had no need to exert himself to keep them aloft. Titanium staples had been thrust through the bones of each wrist—any bleeding, swelling, or pain this might have engendered having been suppressed in a manner neat and humane—fastening him to the blocks of which the walls were constructed. Without help and proper tools, the man would stand there, hang there, in the end, for as long as he continued to draw the breath of life. And for a long time afterward, were it the whim of his captors.
Morven opened his mouth, but it was Islay who had the first word. "Black Usurper, you will be ruined when the Ceo hears what you have done!"
Morven's laugh, he knew, was not the most attractive of sounds, but it continued a long time while Islay hung before him helpless, just as he had visualized for so many years. It was obvious that the staples through his limbs, the grinding ends of broken bones in his wrist, were beginning to pain him as the treatment afforded earlier wore off. At last, Morven*s laughter tapered away like the drugs in Islay's body. Servomotors reacting more from thirty years of habit than from any remaining necessity, the mechanisms within his chair wiped tears of laughter from his eyes.
"The Ceo?" he demanded with a mirthful, choking noise. "The august and terrible Leupould IX, you mean to say? We speak of the same man?" Exhausted of laughter, at least for the moment, he shook his head in mockery of sadness. "You know better, Robbie. I beg you dear fellow, do not compound disingenuous innocence with your manifold other failings." Even to someone who knew him as Morven did, Islay's expression was a peculiar one. Morven paused, puzzled, peering into his victim's face as if he could determine in this manner whether the man meant what he said. "Do you fail to understand even yet? This is too good for belief!
1 14 HENRY MARTYN
Even I do not deserve such a round, rich reward for my labors!" Of a sudden, Morven*s tone changed from one of disbelieving amusement to something colder. "You utter fool! You stupid, hapless dolt! The Ceo is my sponsor! Yes, even in this insignificant and personal affair of Skye! I cannot believe —but I see it is true. As he ever has, our Sovereign continues to underwrite all my undertakings—an appropriate word, I think me—for the most ancient and obvious of reasons. Like any other sane being, he desires power and profit above all things.**
Morven awaited further reaction from the Islay, perhaps indicating soul-breaking disillusionment. He did not receive it, although within his own soul he believed it was only a matter of time. The Shandeen sat a moment musing, an expression of irony painted across his features.
"And, too, I suppose in his sagacity the Ceo deems it prudent to keep an eye"—here, the chairbound figure lifted a hand, in modest gesture of self-indication—"upon what he perhaps conceives an overly ambitious young—for this, believe it or not, dear Robbie, is what I am in politics, which has always been an old man's game—upon an overly ambitious young protege." Morven's face twisted into a grin. "It is a delicate matter of protocol, you understand—perhaps I should say *etiquette'—in which timing is everything. Leupould would never object should I aspire to his position after he had enjoyed it to the fullest and passed away in his natural time. Indeed, a responsible ruler always gives considerable thought to his successor."
Still neither fury nor despair. Perhaps Alysabeth's presence —although Islay did not seem to notice she was here.
"I am certain the question in the Ceo's mind is whether I possess patience enough to wait him out, or would imprudently cut short whatever time he has remaining. I believe this affair, which you will admit required a certain superhuman patience, served a number of purposes for a number of individuals at one and the same time. From the Ceo's point of view, it was a kind of examination, which I believe I have passed." Morven nodded at the sensors. His chair backed him away from Islay. He continued speaking, but it was almost as if he spoke, now, to himself. "And patience,
Robbie, was only one—albeit admittedly the most potent— of my many weapons. I needed to acquire others along the long, tortuous way. For example—insofar as maintaining your interest in our relationship was concerned—a beautiful, talented, intelligent daughter—"
"Fully evil as yourself." For the first time Islay acknowledged his treacherous bride. She oflfered no verbal response, but stepped forward and stroked him where it would produce the most humiliating reaction.
Her father shrugged, "As you will—fully as evil as myself —whom I could train and use as ... how shall I put it?"
"As bait!" Islay spat this in more than a figurative sense. Alysabeth again said nothing, but her contemplative expression—how might she most painfully return her husband's discourtesy?—was more terrifying than any words she might have spoken.
"Indeed," her father answered for her. "See you how agreeable I become when I have my own way in everything? Where were we? Oh, yes. We mentioned my lovely daughter. As you may well appreciate, my plan required certain connections, as well." Morven paused, thinking again how it had rankled to be a second son, deprived by merest chance of the power and prestige he deserved. Perhaps this was a fate he had been bom to. He shook his head. "Eventually I came to be in overall charge of the imperium-conglomerate's efforts to increase wartime manpower, being granted the title 'Military Procuror.'"
Even in his pain and indignation, Islay managed a small, cynical chuckle. "Procuror you say? Morven, if what you have told me of the Monopolity's part in this illegal outrage be correct, you deserve what you are called everywhere within it—everywhere, until now, excepting here, where courtesy of lifel
ong friendship moved me to forbid it—the Ceo's pimp!"
It was Morven's turn to chuckle. As a man in his position could afford, he otherwise ignored the epithet. "Naturally my duty to Ceo and imperium-conglomerate included overseeing contracts with, shall we say, manufacturers of Oplytes. Where others were too fastidious, I made manifest a willingness to engage myself intimately in the sordid business, winning the
esteem of more pragmatic power wielders. Yet it may surprise you to learn that, as far as my personal plans were concerned, my most valuable—and secretest—alliances were with thieves, pressgangers, and freebooters, the very dregs I have accused you of dealing with. Does this not especially rankle?"
Islay disdained to reply. Morven turned to an attending Oplyte. "I desire an answer. You may strike him."
The Oplyte's first crushing blow fell backfisted upon Islay's cheekbone. At the sound of it Alysabeth inhaled, licked her lush, full lips, and made a noise, a whimper or a sigh, as if she were being caressed by a lover. Into the stoic silence which the man, stapled to the wail and helpless though he was, had somehow managed to maintain, came again the sound of breaking bones. His face colored and began to swell where it had been struck.
"Have a care!" Morven hissed at the slave, his eyes ecstatic with the long-awaited sight which filled them. "Do not end this before Robbie and I have had time fully to enjoy it!" Morven turned to address his daughter. "Islay shall endure a series of severe but essentially futile beatings," he observed, as if discussing a recipe or dramathille, "in service to the Ceo somewhat extreme, yet, this being a case of treason, understandable, excusable by everyone, and ostensibly meant to extract a confession."
Alysabeth smiled an odd, crooked, eager smile and nodded agreement. "In point of fact, they shall serve no more than ceremony's sake, ceremony I have anticipated longer, my dear, than you have been alive. He shall expire before anything useful can be learned, a conviction upon all counts brought in against him posthumously. Much the safest way for all concerned." Morven appeared to start of a sudden, although the gesture was dramatic and artificial. "But what can I be thinking?" he asked his victim. "What sort of host have I become, to omit your guests from the primary event to which they were invited, to deprive you of the many pleasures which I myself so eagerly anticipate?" He turned to his daughter. "Kindly advise the guards to begin admitting those witnesses I have summoned and who, by this time, ought to be gathering outside in the passageway."
Alysabeth obeyed, returning with three individuals Islay
recognized through a haze of pain. "The Drector and Lady Witsable Nasai-Ulness you know, Robbie. I brought them, not as the wedding guests you believed, but to observe and testify that you cannot keep peace upon the planet with which you were entrusted. Either this, or, as may prove consistent with necessity, that you engaged in an alliance with the forces of disorder, conspiring with them to assassinate certain members of the Hanoverian elite upon the greenway."
Nasai-Ulness offered a polite nod to Islay, as if the latter were not stapled to a wall. The Lady Nasai-Ulness curtsied. Alysabeth clapped her hands with delighted laughter.
"More than a hundred other such," her father continued, "known to you, can be called upon to swear to whatever they are told they saw. Likewise, no need to introduce Captain Ballygrant Bowmore, master-murchan and owner-in-command of the selfsame vessel by which we came to this unhappy world, at present still in orbit. For today's purpose he is a self-confessed Deep-rover, testifying under perpetual and imlimited grant of amnesty that you have had frequent dealings with him over the years, a capital offense. Should corroboration prove desirable, three of his officers—whom you may consider present in spirit—will be shown by thille to have been here in the flesh."
Bowmore was a short, broad, swarthy individual, wearing a pair of thrustibles like an Oplyte, arrayed in the outlandish getup affected by those following his trade. As a passenger aboard the man's carrack, even the egalitarian Robret Islay had thought him uncouth and avoided his company. All this was to the Deep-captain no more than a business transaction, for he gave Morven an impatient look and turned his back.
"We are somewhat hurried. The captain has schedules to keep. Finally, I, Tarbert Morven, shall not only be your judge, but another witness against you. My corroboration shall be the testimony of your own wife. Against us will stand none but the mute corpse you are soon to become!" Morven addressed the Oplyte. "Now hit him again—and do it correctly this time!"
The Oplyte gave its master a sidewise ^ance which, in a human, might have meant reproach. It said nothing. Being
what it was, it was no longer capable of speech. Instead, it tucked its elbow into its side and unleashed its fist again, which sank deep into Islay's solar plexus. This time, Islay made a noise, involuntary exhalation as his body imploded. He gasped afterward for breath. Before he could recover, another blow took him in the midsection and he vomited upon the floor.
Morven backed his chair away from the stinking mess while his guests made comments upon the Oplyte's technique with the expertise of interested amateurs. And his daughter shrieked with laughter.
Chapter XV: Three Brothers in Hiding
Arran*s knees were wet. Again. Here in the deep, untenanted forest, the ground was carpeted, as everywhere within a hundred klommes of this man-forsaken place, with a thick, moist, springy covering of moss. Nowhere could naked soil be seen except among the upturned roots of an occasional windfallen tree, and that would not last long.
Without a doubt, the warm yellow sun of Skye shone bright somewhere overhead. Between the eternal overcast which dragged drizzling skirt hems over the forest, and the lichen-encrusted trunks and black-needled foliage of the close-spaced everblues themselves, it seemed to Arran, where he crouched in the miserable shelter afforded by those upturned roots, as twilit as a sickroom in which thick curtains had been drawn.
For the tenth time that misty morning, Arran exhaled, expecting to see the pale vapor of his breath hanging cloudlike before his frozen face. That he did not continued to surprise him. It felt cold enough. For the hundredth time he wished he and his brothers could risk lighting a fire. The dense, damp forest, the rain (if one could dignify it thus) tormenting him, the thickness of gravel-studded clay lining the underside
of the fallen forest giant which made a half cave about him, all of these together ought to provide ample shielding against the instruments by means of which, the three of them believed, they were being searched for.
Still, Arran decided with a shrug which, despite his firmest intention, transmuted itself into a shiver, he was warm enough. If truth were told, he suffered no real peril of freezing to death, no matter how it felt. That his hands were stiff and awkward, his nose red and sore, were trials he could endure because, at the moment, no likely alternative presented itself
Behind him, huddled into the rearmost comer of the shallow cavity beneath the roots, Donol emitted the first syllable of a snore and was awakened by it. In the few days which had passed—less than a week, Arran realized with astonishment (it seemed like much longer to him)— changes had swept through their lives like the winds of a great storm.
For the first time in his brief memory, Arran had failed to get a single decent night's sleep. This deprivation had by now begun manifesting itself as a peculiar, tranquil, detached feeling, engendering clumsiness, forgetfulness, sudden temper, nervous tics, odd aches and itches, brief visual hallucinations, chills and hot flashes. It was much like suffering a mild viral infection, something he feared inevitable in any case.
Yet another change, somehow even less welcome, was that he had discovered he could fall asleep anytime, anywhere, in any contortion of the body, as fatigue-tortured flesh attempted to make up in brief, unsatisfying snatches at oblivion what it could no longer depend upon receiving in unbroken intervals at night. The border between reality and unreality had blurred. Like Donol, like their eldest brother Robret, at present foraging for food not far away, the slightest sound, even the cess
ation of normal noise, could snap him out of deep sleep into terrified alertness. Arran was ungrateful for the education.
These and many other things learned hard in recent days were skills he had never thought to acquire. The edification was worth far less to him than what he had given up for it. The trouble with trouble, he was beginning to realize, noting the redundancy without humor, was that it sought you out
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whatever you preferred, and never asked you for your feelings or opinions.
Arran shifted where he sat to a less uncomfortable position, and balanced his antique pistol across his knee. Since he had used it to buy their escape, neither of his older brothers had ventured to take it from him nor so much as dispute his possession of it. Of the ten small cartridges in the magazine, he had used five upon the Oplyte—he had killed a man, he thought with wonder again, or at least a sort of man— pumping every one of the lead projectiles into the creature's eye-socket which had funneled them to its brain. With one more in the chamber, this left six, until he took precaution of changing over to the spare. Its half-depleted counterpart now rested in a left trouser pocket of his tattered wedding finery— this thought led him to one which, at last, he did find humorous. If fugitives they were, his brothers and he, homeless, friendless, futureless, they were the best-dressed fugitives he had ever heard of.
Rustling in the nearby undergrowth brought the blade-sight of his pistol up without a conscious thou^t upon his part, while his index finger, living its own life, rested light upon the fine-grooved curve of the trigger-face.
"Peace!" came a harsh whisper. "Do not thrust, little brother!" Robret emerged from between a pair of greenberry bushes, head-high and regrettably out-of-season, arms laden with what he had found deeper in the forest.
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