The Golden Torc

by Julian May

  Oh, God, Bryan thought. He tried to keep his own mind as blank as possible. What had Elizabeth told them back at the auberge? Count! Onetwothreefour onetwothreefour onetwothreefour...

  But Gomnol was not attempting to read the panicked anthropologist's thoughts. He was fully occupied with his own inner vision. "Many years ago, during the time of the Rebellion, a small number of other operants came through the time-gate. I wasn't ready. My position was still unconsolidated and the Tanu culture was in such a state of flux that matters were taken out of my hands before I could act. But I'm ready now! There are people working with me who share my views. With a new generation of operants standing with us, we'll prevail."

  Onetwothreefour onetwothreefour. "It's a remarkable ambition, Lord Gomnol. Given the cooperation of Elizabeth, I don't see how it can fail." Onetwothreefour.

  The psychobiologist seemed to relax. He blew a smoke ring, then gave Bryan a hearty clap on the shoulder. "Keep an objective eye, Grenfell. That's all I ask."

  They moved into another area, where the crystal modules for the mental-assay machines were being assembled. "Care to have your soul microanalyzed?" Now Gomnol was jovial. "We can do a much better job here than at Castle Gateway. Prototype of an improved model coming up. I could furnish you with your complete psychosocial profile as well as a latency analysis. It would take only a few hours."

  Onetwothreefour. "It wouldn't be too useful to you, I'm afraid. Lady Epone wasn't impressed when she tested me back at the castle."

  An expression of wariness clouded the Lord Coercer's smile. "Yes. It was Epone who checked your Group out, wasn't it." He fell silent, and after a perfunctory stroll through research and testing facilities, where Gomnol was evasive about the exact nature of the work being done, they went down a long ramp that led from the factory to an atrium open to the sky and cooled by the jets of a spectacular fountain. They sat at a shaded table and rama servants in blue-and-gold livery brought a drink resembling iced sangria.

  "One of your Group was a young woman named Felice," Gomnol said. "She's been involved in a serious accident. Can you tell me anything about her background?"

  On etwoth reefour.

  Bryan recapitulated all that he could remember of the girl's career as a ring-hockey player, her attack on the auberge counselor, her great physical strength and obvious deviation from the psychosocial norm. "I never saw her profile. But her ability to control animals is certainly suggestive of latency. I'm rather surprised that she didn't rate a silver torc. Was she badly injured in the accident?"

  "She wasn't hurt at all." Gomnol's tone was studiously neutral. "The travelers in her caravan staged a revolt on the way to Finiah. The Lady Epone, a powerful coercer, was killed, together with the entire escort of gray-torc troops. The prisoners escaped, but most of them were later recaptured. They agreed under interrogation that your friend Felice had been the ringleader of the affair."

  Onetwothreefour! "That's incredible. And did she—did you recapture Felice?"

  "No. She and three other members of your Group are still at large. Most of the Tanu Great Ones are inclined to think that the affair was a fluke. There have been other minor uprisings from time to time, sometimes abetted by the Firvulag. But never before this have bareneck humans been able to kill a Tanu. If Felice engineered it, I must find out how."

  Onetwothreefour onetwothreefour. "I don't think there's much more I can tell you about her that would be useful. She struck me as a peculiar and dangerous child. She's only about eighteen, you know."

  Gomnol sighed. "The children are always the most dangerous ... Finish your drink, Bryan. I think we just have time to visit the classrooms of the apprentice coercers before the end of the afternoon. You'll enjoy meeting my youngsters. I have the highest hopes for them. The very highest."

  Puffing his cigar, Eusebio Gomez-Nolan took Bryan off to view fresh marvels.

  6

  SUKEY'S FEAR had lessened now but there was still the underlying sense of terror at being separated from Stein. But she no longer worried that he might be in danger; Aiken Drum, that inexplicable jester, would take care of him.

  But what would become of her?

  Creyn had come for her—friendly, familiar Creyn, the only person besides Elizabeth that she would have willingly followed. (And how had they known?) She rode now with the exotic healer in a hellad-drawn calèche to the College of Redactors, which was situated high above the city on a road that led up the forested Mount of Heroes. Olive trees heavy with plum-sized fruit grew along the verge and in the walled compounds of handsome white villas. She saw groves of citrus and almond; and, higher up the slope, rows of grapevines were being dressed by ramas. To the west the land of Aven stretched in a crazy quilt of greens and golds to the Dragon Range dimly visible on the horizon. Most of the region seemed under intensive cultivation, a striking contrast to the salt flats and pale bluish lagoons of the surrounding Mediterranean Basin.

  As the carriage climbed higher, Sukey was able to see the peculiar topography of the ancient seabed south of Balearis. A scarp nearly 100 meters high fell off sharply on that side of the peninsula. Below lay an undulant slope of snow-white dunes, broken here and there by buttes and eroded pillars of what seemed to be pastel-colored salt. A small river coming off the peninsula slightly west of Muriah had carved a canyon through sparkling sediments. The watercourse wandered over the barren bed of this gorge, whose walls showed pale strips of color, and eventually reached the southern arm of the lagoon. East of the river channel and extending below the tip of Aven were flats that reflected the sunlight with a mirror dazzle.

  "The White Silver Plain," Creyn told her. "We hold the Grand Combat down there, setting up cities of tents on either side of the Well of the Sea. Nearly ten thousand Tanu and human fighters come to the Combat from all parts of the Many-Colored Land, together with five times that number of noncombatants. And the Firvulag come as well, all tricked out in their bright and fearsome illusions with the black armor hidden beneath, carrying monstrous effigy standards hung with dyed scalps and festoons of gilded skulls."

  Her mind's eye gaped at the picture he conjured up—first of the preliminaries, where the Firvulag played their uncouth games while the Tanu contended in splendid tournaments and races with chalikos and chariots. And then the manifestation of powers when the battle-leaders were chosen, and finally the High Mêlée itself, with Tanu and human and Firvulag thundering toward one another, shining hero versus hideous demon in battles pitting arm against arm, mind against mind, for three days—with the seizing of banners or standards and the taking of heads, the whirl of glass and bronze and leather and sweating flesh, the victors howling and glowing in the dark like torches, while the losers lay silent, spilling their blood black on the salt...

  "No!" Sukey cried. "No—not Stein!" But he would love it—

  Peace flooded through her.

  Be at ease littleSistermind. It is a ways away and things may happen and not allTanu revel in its bloodshed O no not all.

  "I don't understand," she said, searching Creyn's shuttered face. "What are you trying to tell me?"

  "You're going to have to be strong. Bide your time until the proper moment and take a long view of matters. Keep hope high even when ... distressing things happen to you. Stein and Aiken Drum have a hard way ahead of them, but yours may be harder."

  She tried to probe him, to discover what lay behind that walled and kindly gaze, but it defeated her. She fell back into the simpler comfort that he offered, hardly caring any more what happened to her so long as there was a chance it might come right in the end.

  "There is a chance, Sukey. Remember. And be brave."

  Walls and turrets of silver and scarlet loomed over their carriage. They passed beneath an arch of marble filigree and halted before a white structure with pillars of red marble. A Tanu woman gowned in filmy white came out and took Sukey's hand.

  Creyn introduced her. "The Lady Zealatrix Olar, who will be your teacher here in the House of Healing."
>
  Welcome Daughterdear. What is your name?

  Sue-Gwen.

  "A goodly name," said the woman aloud. "We will give you the honorific Minivel, and you will rejoice to know that the lady who bore it last lived for two thousand years. Come with me, Gwen-Minivel!"

  Sukey turned to Creyn, lips trembling.

  "I leave you in the best of hands," he said. "Courage."

  And then Creyn was gone, and Sukey followed Olar into the headquarters of the Guild of Redactors. It was quiet and cool, the décor mostly a chaste white and silver with only occasional accents of the heraldic red. Only a few people were to be seen; there were no guards.

  "May—may I question you, Lady?" Sukey asked.

  "Certainly. Later there will be the testing and the discipline. But now, at the beginning, I will show you the work that we do and answer your queries as fully as possible." And correct and guide and light.

  "Persons like me—with silver torcs, or gold. How long may we live in this world? Is it as you imply—"

  Smile. Come see. Anticipate!

  They descended into arched catacombs within the rock of the mountain, lit with ruby and white lamps. Olar opened a thick door and they entered a circular room, quite dark, where a lone Tanu redactor sat on a central stool with his eyes closed in meditation. Slowly, Sukey's vision accommodated itself to the dimness. What she had mistaken for white statues ranged around the wall proved to be people, their naked bodies completely shrouded in transparent, clinging cauls that resembled some plastic membrane.

  May I examine?

  Freely.

  She moved around the room, looking at the standing figures. Here was a gold-torc human male, reduced to a virtual skeleton by cachexia.

  Beside him was a Tanu woman, apparently lost in serene sleep, one pendulous breast distorted by a tumor. A Tanu child, motionless, her eyes wide open, had one arm severed below the elbow. A robust goldenbeard, smiling as he dreamed inside the artificial amnion, displayed the slashes and punctures of a hundred wounds. Another warrior type had both hands burned away. Next to him stood a human woman in late middle age, her body sagging but unmarked.

  "The more severe cases are dealt with on an individual basis," said Olar. "But these our Healing Brother may minister to en masse. The membrane is a psychoactive substance we call Skin. Through a combination of psychokinesis and redaction, the practitioner is able to muster healing energies from the patient's own mind and body. Injuries, disease, cancers, the debilities of age—all respond to treatment if the patient's mind is strong enough to cooperate with the healer."

  Limitations?

  "We cannot restore brain injuries. And it is against our ethic to restore those who are decapitated in combat or ritual observances. If a person is not brought to treatment before full brain-death, we cannot help. Nor can we restore the aged whose minds have been allowed to deteriorate beyond a critical point. Given these limitations, we are not as advanced as the science of your Galactic Milieu, which could regenerate an entire cerebral cortex if only a gram of tissue remained, or rejuvenate even the most decrepit if their will was strong."

  "Still—this is marvelous," Sukey breathed. "May I hope to do this kind of work some day?"

  Olar took her hand and led her from the room. "Perhaps, child. But there are other tasks. Come and see."

  They looked through one-way windows into rooms where the mentally deranged were undergoing deep-redact. A large percentage of the patients were young people, and Olar explained that these were mostly Tanu-human hybrids experiencing difficulties adapting to the torc.

  "We treat human golds and silvers as well. However, some human brains are fundamentally incompatible to the long-term effects of the torc's amplification. Bringing such patients to full sanity may be impossible. Lord Gomnol has provided us with devices that indicate feasibility. We may not waste the time of our talented redactors on hopeless cases."

  "I don't suppose you waste time on gray-torcs, either," Sukey said in a low voice, Elizabethstyle barrier firmly in place.

  "No, dear. Ordinarily not. Valuable as our grays are to us, they are ephemerides—here and gone in a brief flash of vitality. The healing is a difficult and time-consuming process. It is not for them ... Now, come and see our babies growing!"

  They ascended to the upper reaches of the huge building and came to sunny rooms full of bright-colored play equipment. Beautifully groomed female ramapithecines romped and lolled under the benevolent eyes of human and Tanu keepers. In adjoining rooms, ramas were eating or sleeping or submitting to various kinds of care. Every one of the little apes was pregnant.

  "You may know," Olar said in an offhanded manner, "that we Tanu women have experienced difficulty reproducing on this world. Early in our Exile, we utilized ramas as nurturers of the zygote. Ova fertilized in vitro are implanted within these animals and nourished. The ramas are too small to carry the fetuses to term, of course. But when development has progressed as far as possible, the infant is delivered by caesarian section. The mortality is nearly eighty percent, but we feel that the precious survivors are well worth the struggle. In the earliest days, these surrogate mothers seemed to be our only hope of racial survival. Fortunately, that situation no longer applies."

  They left the ramas and tiptoed through a darkened ward where premature infants slept in sheltering glass creches. Sukey was amazed to see Firvulag as well as Tanu babies receiving devoted care.

  "They are our shadow-brethren," Olar told her. "We are obliged by the most ancient precepts of our way to rear them to term and subsequently turn them over to their own folk."

  And then hunt and kill them?

  You will understand one day littleSistermind. It is our way. If you would survive it must become your way.

  "And now," Olar spoke out loud, "we will visit the Lady Tasha-Bybar."

  Behind her mental screen, Sukey cried out.

  "The procedure is very brief, but it is usually some weeks before the menstrual cycle reasserts itself normally. We will take care of this small matter before beginning your apprenticeship so that there will be a minimum of delay in your initiation."

  Keeping a firm grip on herself, Sukey said, "I—I protest. To be used in this fashion—"

  Peacecalmsolace. "It is your lot. Accept it. There is so much joy to be gleaned in compensation! And the Lady Bybar is very skilled. You will feel no pain."

  Olar stood still for a moment, fingers resting on her golden torc. She nodded, smiled, and took Sukey up a winding stairway into one of the high turrets. The room at the top was fully thirty meters in diameter, commanding a fantastic view of the surrounding countryside and the misted, glaring salt.

  In the middle of the polished black floor was a long golden table surrounded by small trolleys with jewel-bright objects gleaming on their open shelves. The reflector dish of a huge lamp, unlit, hung above the equipment.

  "The Lady Bybar will first dance for you, Gwen-Minivel. She does you great honor. Wait here now until she comes, and comport yourself with a dignity befitting your silver torc."

  With that, Olar left her alone.

  Hesitating and fearful, Sukey approached the central table. It was! There were clamps and stirrups. And the jewel-bladed things were just what she had suspected.

  Tears blinded her and she stumbled away from the apparatus. She cried out secretly: Stein I would for you.

  Or she could still run...

  Olar's mind-grip caught her. She was forced to stop, to turn around, to watch in stunned incredulity as Tasha-Bybar entered and began her dance.

  The human body was as pale and as lush as that of an houri—and so exaggerated in its sexuality that Sukey's instinct told her it must have been artificially enhanced. There was hair only upon the woman's head, and this flared like a blue-black cloak when she spun and leaped, and rippled almost to her knees when she was momentarily still.

  All that she wore was bells, and the golden torc. The bells were small and round, fastened to her living flesh in graceful t
wisting patterns. They had differing notes; and as the dancer's muscles flexed and extended, an elfin melody born of the movement itself sounded in the huge, nearly empty room. The rhythm was that of Sukey's pulse. She stood frozen and helpless as the dancer approached in great fluid leaps, arms beckoning as they wove their eerie song, feet stamping with an accelerating insistence that compelled Sukey's heart to beat faster and faster.

  The dancer's sunken eyes were as black as her hair. Nearly colorless lips drew back in a rictus above her teeth. Around and around Sukey the dancer spun, increasing the tempo of the music until Sukey was dizzy, nauseated, trying in vain to close her eyes and ears and mind to the flashing chiming gyrating thing that seized her and whirled her into oblivion.

  7

  "YOU'VE FIXED IT! You're a bonny boy, my Shining One."

  Mayvar the Hag watched in delight as the tiny figures on the timepiece came sliding out on their tracks and circled one another. The turquoise-and-jet dragon flapped golden wings and lunged, clashing its jeweled fangs. The knight in opal armor fended off the little monster, then raised his glittering sword and struck; once ... twice ... three times. The clock told the hour. The dragon expired, chopped into three sections revealing ruby entrails. The entire turntable at the front of the timepiece revolved, carrying the tableau back inside golden doors.

  Aiken Drum stowed tools back into pockets. "It wasn't that hard to fix. Crud in the drivetrain, a worn tooth on one of the little gears. You ought to have a glassblower make a dome to cover it, sweets. Preventive maintenance."

  "I will," the old woman promised. She lifted the elaborate toy from the table where Aiken had been working on it to a safe place on a high shelf. Then she turned to him and held out both hands, grinning.

  "Again?" he protested. "Insatiable old bag, aren't you?"

  "All we Tanu women are," she cackled, pulling him toward the bedroom, "but there's few that can rise up to Mayvar and live, my Shining One, as you should know by now. So when I find such as you I must test and prove him. And if he lasts—ah, then!"