House of Zeor

by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

  Almost before he finished his meal, another group of Runzi escorted a new captive into the camp. It was the young Gen girl who had taken refuge in the cabin with them. She was in a state of such hysterics that she didn’t even recognize them. But it wasn’t the screaming, struggling girl that shocked Valleroy. Nor was it the manner of her demise. It was Klyd’s reaction to it all.

  She was thrust into the arena between the other two captives. Her cloak and jacket were stripped away leaving her skin bare to the cold. Then the chief of the Raiders came forward to examine her, evidently reading her field. Surveying his men, he singled out one obviously in need and thrust the two of them together...a pirate chieftain awarding the spoils.

  Sick with fascination, Valleroy watched, but he also watched Klyd. The expression on the channel’s face paralyzed him. Klyd was a detached scientist observing a demonstration. He was a physician observing a dissection. He was an actor watching a performance, judging its artistic effectiveness but totally immune to emotional involvement. There was no trace of a human being watching a murder.

  It was all over in a few seconds. As the Sime approached, the girl’s hysteria mounted to a peak. Valleroy could see bruises where she’d been beaten. He thought sourly that she’d probably been raped too. As the Sime grabbed her, eagerness written in every muscle, her eyes rolled up. Valleroy thought she’d fainted to cheat the Sime out of his fear-ration. But the junct did something to her head. She began to struggle again, wildly and desperately. In that instant, the predator struck. Her frantic motion kept him from making lip contact. He took his fifth point off her cheek. The result was the same. A moment of bone-snapping rigor followed by instant death.

  The murderer casually scooped up the wilted heap of cloth and flesh, a tiny bundle, and walked off to the common battlefield grave pit that was just being closed.

  The sight of him discarding that unimportant piece of litter was engraved painfully on Valleroy’s memory forever. But the look on the channel’s face was even worse. Klyd’s expression wasn’t something one could exact retribution for. It wasn’t a betrayal for which a court could execute. It was a disillusionment that threw Valleroy’s new-found ideals into chaos.

  His mind churned, throwing up fragments of beauty that had just begun to have meaning for him. A Sime-Gen Union? Impossible. The Householdings joined together under a strengthened Tecton thwarting Zelerod’s Doom? Why bother? A place of pride serving as a channel’s Companion? Repulsive notion. He wanted to cry. He wanted to vomit. He wanted to slit his own throat.

  Instead he walked. He walked chained behind a horse-drawn buckboard. A few feet behind him came another team of horses, another buckboard, and after that, Klyd, also in chains.

  Valleroy’s clothes became caked with dust. He was savagely glad that it covered Zeor’s colors. He wanted to tear off that uniform and bury it. His stiffened ankle paralyzed his leg with pain. He was glad because it took his mind off the itch where he imagined the channel’s eyes on his back.

  He let himself sink into misery, seeking oblivion. He didn’t even try to focus his eyes. When they stopped to eat, he just let the plate sit before him. Eventually, a Sime came to shove the food into his mouth. He chewed and swallowed because he didn’t have the will to fight. He didn’t care if they poisoned him.

  They turned into a logging road that led upward into sweet-scented evergreen forests. The nights became colder, but the lone Gen was always given a place nearest the fire. He didn’t even notice that there hadn’t been any active sadism directed at him. And what they did to the channel didn’t bother him.

  On the third morning, they rounded a bend in the old road that Valleroy thought must be Ancient handiwork. They came out immediately into the main encampment of the Runzi Raiders. To their right and a little to the west of them Valleroy spotted Hanrahan Pass. There was a deep, majestic, evergreen-filled valley between them and the pass, but there was an old winding road that crossed the valley; it was barely visible as an intermittent scar among the dense foliage. To their left, in a large flat clearing at the foot of an enormous cliff, lay the camp.

  It was the first time since the murder of the girl fugitive that Valleroy had clearly noticed anything. He focused his eyes with effort. They entered the camp under an archway with the Runzi symbols inscribed over it. Before them, two rows of temporary buildings stretched all the way back to the granite face. Obviously they were barracks. To their left, stables and an administration complex were also housed in temporary structures. To their right, row after row of close-packed cages stood ominously empty.

  The entire camp looked deserted. As far as Valleroy could see, there were no Gens in the cages and very few horses in the stables. From one of the buildings a curl of fragrant smoke rose, marking the commissary. That was the only visible sign of life. Adding the contingent arriving with them, Valleroy estimated there couldn’t be more than a hundred residents in a camp designed for eight times that many plus captives.

  As they passed through the archway, two security guards counted them and recorded obscure data in crisp notebooks. It took only a few moments for the column to disband, every man knowing his job and doing it with swift efficiency. The two captives were handed over to fresh guards, who processed them into numbered cages as if they were sacks of potatoes for the larder. They were given not the slightest opportunity to attempt an escape.

  Valleroy had to admit that they’d been treated better than Gens treated Sime prisoners. Since the Sime was the most dangerous animal on the face of the earth, Gens took great care to deplete the prisoner’s strength at every opportunity. The Sime prisoners were kept in bonds, which Valleroy now recognized as inhumanly painful, especially to the laterals. They were given nothing to eat or drink. And they were interrogated at close intervals until they died, sometimes of attrition but more often in some frantic escape attempt.

  Gen captives had nothing that could threaten their captors. Nevertheless, the Simes never relaxed their vigilance. No wonder, thought Valleroy, there were no Gen captives returning to tell the story.

  It was the mystery of no return that gave the Raider’s pens their aura of supreme dread. The actuality wasn’t really that bad. And in a way that made sense. These were professionals harvesting a valuable crop. They took care not to spoil their wares before they reached market.

  The cages themselves were rectangular boxes divided into six equal compartments by a triple row of bars down the long axis and two triple rows across the short axis. The outside walls of the cages were double rows of bars, one row six inches inside the other and offset so that there was almost no space between bars.

  The roofs and floors were solid metal. The whole unit was mounted on stubby legs fitted with rollers, and the whole unit looked like nothing so much as a circus wagon.

  Placing a ladder at the head of one cage unit, the guards marched the captives up one at a time. The foremost guard used one of a bunch of jangling keys with numbered tags. Then he pulled open a trap door in the top of the cage. Two of the other guards lowered Valleroy into the hole. Then they let go. He fell three feet onto cold metal plating where he lay stunned, his swollen ankle shooting hot pain all through his body.

  By the time Valleroy recovered his senses, Klyd had been installed in the adjacent cage and all but the last guard had departed after rigging flexible transparent sheets around the sides of the cages. Shortly, vents in the floor began to blow hot air into the cages. Valleroy sat up, massaging his ankle and looking around.

  The interior of the cage was bleak but clean. Dividing his compartment from the adjacent ones, the three staggered rows of bars almost provided privacy of a sort yet without the effect of solitary confinement. There was a full eight inches between the rows of bars. They were set so close together that only a child’s wrist could fit between them. There was no way occupants of adjacent cages could combine resources for an escape.

  “Hugh! Come here.”

  The Sime’s hushed whisper grated on Valleroy’s nerves.
His impulse was to retreat to the farthest corner of his cage. But before he could move, Klyd asked, “Is this Aisha?”

  That drew Valleroy to his feet in spite of himself. He’d forgotten she must be in the camp somewhere. He shuffled to the bars and found the channel peering into the cage to his right. By closing one eye and moving back and forth, Valleroy got a slim view of the cage that shared only one corner with his. However, it was enough. That creamy tan forehead, straight nose, and unmistakable eyebrow were distinctive. Their neighbor was indeed Aisha Rauf.

  But she lay as if unconscious, a boneless heap on the bare floor. They’d finally found her, but it wouldn’t do any good. “She’s dead!” Valleroy blurted despite his reluctance to speak to the channel.

  “No. She lives, but she seems to be drugged. When she wakes, she’ll fear me, and the Raiders will gather to watch the spectacle of a channel’s disgrace.”

  “She’s too smart for that. You can’t get at her, and you’re a prisoner too. If that’s what they’re expecting, they’re in for a disappointment.”

  “I’m not so sure. I’m only human. With you so close, yet beyond reach, I may break before dark.”

  “I may enjoy watching you die the way you enjoyed watching that poor child murdered.”

  “Nobody murdered that girl. She committed suicide.”

  “That’s right. Worm out of it. Twist the words. I don’t care what you call it. I saw the look on your face!”

  “What did you see on my face?”

  “Curiosity. Interest. A cold calculating spectator at a...a...circus!” All the disgust welled up anew, leaving Valleroy shaking with revulsion and self-pity.

  “ ‘Curiosity,’ ‘interest,’ ‘calculation’...I’ll admit to those. But ‘cold’...no. Never. The difference between you and me is that I’m directing a war while you are a refugee from that war. Every general officer accepts that some of his troops must die if all are to achieve victory. However much he may want to, he can’t try to save any given individual in preference to the cause. The refugee lives only for himself and must salvage the fragments of his own survival. Neither role is enviable.” Unutterably weary, the channel slid to the floor, where he sat propped against the bars like a discarded toy.

  Valleroy didn’t say anything. Again his world was coming apart. He’d learned to trust Klyd. Then he’d learned to hate him. Now, he wondered if it wasn’t himself he should hate. He’d been a soldier. He knew what a wartime command was all about. He said, “But she was just a kid....”

  “She was a soldier in the biggest and longest war humanity has ever fought. And when it’s over, she will be remembered in my family and suitably honored by all of us...forever. That I promise.”

  In spite of himself, Valleroy felt Klyd’s idealistic vision gripping him anew. The worst of it was that it brought back the memory of what Klyd’s death would mean to Zelerod’s Doom; it brought back part of Valleroy’s will to live.

  “Hugh, don’t you understand? I couldn’t let her death go to waste. I had to learn as much as possible from it.’

  “Learn? What? That Simes kill Gens?”

  “No. Why Simes ‘kill’ at all. If I knew what it is that so attracts the junct to the kill, perhaps I could learn to simulate that quality for him. Then it would be easier to get Simes to disjunct. Maybe, one day, we might learn the technique so well it would be more pleasant to go to a channel than to kill.”

  Visions again. Valleroy resisted that tug at his imagination. “It wouldn’t matter. You’d still be condemned as perverts.”

  “Perverts are risqué. If perversion is also cheap, profitable, and emotionally satisfying to the majority of normal people, it spreads until it is the norm. Can’t you imagine what this world would be like if the kill were considered perverted?”

  “You could learn to do all that just by watching a kill?”

  “It’s an opportunity I don’t get very often. I could have learned a lot more if I’d been allowed to monitor at close range. But I was in no condition to do that. I’m in worse condition now.”

  Looking at the channel with new eyes, Valleroy saw a gaunt, deeply lined face, eyes sunken in bruised wells of despair. “I didn’t even notice what they’ve been doing to you.”

  Klyd shrugged. “They’ve been treating me pretty well. If they’d driven me to desperation on the trail, I might have done a lot of damage before they could kill me. But they made every conspicuous effort to demonstrate how well they cared for you. By promising repeatedly that I’d have you as soon as we arrived, they subdued that desperation. Standard technique.”

  “They promised we’d....”

  “Oh, yes. But I didn’t really believe. And I was right. Don’t you see what they’re going to do?”

  “By putting us close, but not close enough to touch? My field must be driving you mad.”

  “It is.” The distant gentleness of his voice underscored the intense emotion as no display of anguish could. “And they’ll come to watch the spectacle.”

  “How long until...?”

  “I don’t know. I’m already in hard need, but I have selyn reserves available for a few more days. I will lose control before death. Have you ever seen attrition?”

  “Once or twice. When I was in the Army. Prisoners.”

  “Ordinary Simes. Horrible enough, but quick. This...will not be quick.”

  Valleroy didn’t think the days of agony he’d witnessed had been quick. He’d been busted for shooting the second Sime they’d caught. “Maybe something will happen in our favor. We’re about due for some good luck.”

  “Now who has succumbed to hope?”

  Valleroy laughed but it came out too harsh. “Guilty General, Sir. I’d like to rejoin my outfit, Sir.”

  In spite of the growing burden within him, Klyd smiled. “You’re a commissioned officer in this Army, Naztehr. The Companions are our elite corps and our secret weapon.”

  Valleroy felt his ears turn red at that easy acceptance. It seemed they’d always been willing to take him in, but he kept rejecting the thing he wanted most: to live for something beyond his own small life...something that mattered.

  It wasn’t long until the guard was changed and lunch appeared. Near the center of the outside wall of his cage, a section of the floor slid aside revealing a recessed compartment. Inside this he found a covered chamber pot smelling strongly of disinfectant and a wooden plate heaped with hot food. The cup and spoon were also wooden and slightly sour with disinfectant. But the food was good and the chamber pot was welcome.

  When he’d finished, Valleroy placed the wooden implements back in the compartment and waited. No cage was escapeproof. He was determined to find the weak point in this one. It wasn’t the bars. They were solidly implanted in the floor and ceiling and there was no sign of rust weakening the structure. Valleroy didn’t know how they managed that trick, but it didn’t seem important. If he couldn’t break out, he’d have to think his way out.

  That meant, noticing everything, no matter how trivial. One thing he’d noticed was that they’d given Klyd only broth and water. It wasn’t starvation. They just didn’t see any reason to feed a Sime in need. Neither did Klyd. He barely touched the water and didn’t even sniff the broth. To Valleroy, that meant Klyd would be too weak to run if they could engineer an escape. They’d have to confiscate some horses.

  Patience paid off later in the afternoon. He watched carefully as the guard was changed. The noon relief used a key that somehow closed the sliding section of floor and opened the side of the compartment from which he extracted the wooden implements. Now Valleroy knew how the device worked, but he was no nearer escape. Apparently, it was impossible for both doors to be open at the same time. This he could test by jamming his door open next time around. He resolved to try it.

  He spent the rest of the afternoon studying the ceiling door and the transparent sheets—very like the stuff the kids had used for their hothouses. It was stored on rollers and pulled down like window shades. At th
e bottom. there was an air-strip opening that let fresh air in, and another one along the top. The warm air from the heating vents made the cages healthy enough if not comfortable.

  The cell was large enough to allow exercise. There was no way to climb the bars. They were set too close to allow even a small person to get a leg around one, and they were polished so smooth, hands would slip. If a prisoner did manage to get to the ceiling, though, the trap door was still a good four feet away in the center of the cage.

  There was also a guard stationed up on top of the cages. Any escapee would have to contend with him even on a foggy night. Selyn fields were as good as vision to a Sime. Klyd could deal with the guard when he was in good condition. But the channel had spent the whole day lying in the farthest corner of his cage, eyes open, but breathing with a forced regularity. It was an invisible, motionless battle he was fighting, but it was a crucial one in Valleroy’s war. Escape would be useless to him if he couldn’t deliver Klyd back to Zeor and Aisha back to Stacy.

  Over dinner, Valleroy concluded that the only way he’d ever get out of the cage would be to induce the Raiders to take him out. It seemed to be a very clever idea at the moment it occurred to him, but when he tried to devise a way to implement it, he found there just wasn’t any argument he could use that would convince them.

  If he were sick, they’d probably just let him die. Companions were no good for the kill, and his death would probably create quite a spectacle in Klyd’s cage...so they’d have nothing to lose by letting him die. He couldn’t talk to the guards because he was only an animal or a pervert.

  He was ticking off his inventory of prisoners’ tricks for the fourth time when a piercing scream rent the air and sent him scurrying for the corner he shared with Aisha’s cage. Despite having been in a semitrance all afternoon, Klyd was there first, clutching the bars and staring wide-eyed.