"You could send Sonchai—or anyone they do know—with me, to tell them to trust me, that my own family is in the convoy," Chulayen argued with a growing sense of helplessness.
"You would be no help there," Madee said. "If they can be freed in that way, so much the better. But you should know that very few escape in the mountains. Your best chance is to find the outlanders and lead them to the Jurgan Caves. When they see what is being done there, they will call down their sky-fires to destroy the Bashir."
"What, because the pretty crystals are being ruined by saltpeter miners?" Chulayen laughed. "I do not think the outlanders consider those caves a holy spot as you Inner Light cultists do."
Madee looked so sad that his laughter died. "Chulen, Chulen. Do you still believe the Bashir meant to use those caves for mining saltpeter? You yourself proved that would make no sense."
"Then what does he use them for?"
"There are molds and slimes growing in the sea caves that the outlanders value for their magics," Madee said. "The outlander Vhana Vekhatan, may his light be extinguished for all time, has found a way to cultivate the same things in our mountain caves."
It took Chulayen a moment to recognize the Kalapriyanized name of Lorum van Vechten, the Barents Resident in Udara.
"They will hardly object to that—he is doing them a favor!"
"They will object to the way he farms the mold," Madee said grimly. "You have not been told about that yet; we feared it would upset you too much for you to serve us."
"Nothing will upset me too much to try and save my family!"
"I hope that is true," Madee said. And she explained the brainfarms to him.
Chapter Twelve
Thamboon on Kalapriya
On good days—or rather, in good hours, for there was neither day nor night in this glittering prison—he knew who he was and how he had come to be here, but without any of the fear and revulsion that had led him to strike out against his jailers when they brought him here and he saw what he was to become. Perhaps, he speculated in those lucid times, the part of him that felt emotions had been excised by the saw that cut through the top of his skull. Or perhaps there were drugs in the food to keep them all calm. There would certainly have been much more wastage if the prisoners flailed in their chains and flung themselves about in fear and agony. Even the ignoramuses who kept watch over the caves could understand that much, though they had no idea of how to keep a sterile environment that would delay infections and subsequent deaths. If van Vechten had troubled himself to oversee the caves he would probably have been much more efficient, but the Resident never showed himself in the brainfarms and the guards were so ignorant that most prisoners died after only a few days of being farmed and harvested.
Which was, probably, a mercy—except that it meant the Bashir's need for fresh, living bodies was never sated, and so there must be more wars and more of his own people taken by the Ministry for Loyalty and more suffering. When would it end? When he ran out of bodies to use? And when would that be? After he had enslaved all Kalapriya save for the coastal enclaves? Somewhere, sometime, this insane expansion must halt. The growing realm of Greater Udara would come up against the borders of those lands which were under the protection of the Barents Trading Society and their private army, and then it would be impossible to keep the Bashir's use of outlander weapons a secret, and somebody must stop him.
He had hoped to bring observers from Rezerval to witness the prohibited technology being more and more openly flaunted in the Bashir's army, observers with the power to enforce the Federation's rules about cultural contamination even against a world as rich and powerful as Barents. Now he despaired of that ever happening. Possibly the Bashir had intercepted the coded letters he sent out with a trader. More likely the letters had come into the hands of whoever was supplying the Bashir with weapons, and had been destroyed in Valentin. Or if they'd reached Rezerval, the bureaucrats there had dismissed his concerns as they had so many times before. No culturally protected community was wholly free from contamination where it came into contact with outlanders, and he had always reported even the most minor breaches of Federation rules, and usually the best response he got was a bland form letter thanking him for his concern. They probably would not see that this was different, this was important.
He hadn't realized, himself, just how bad this case was; because he couldn't figure out how the Bashir was paying whoever supplied him, what was the benefit for the Barentsians who had to be involved in smuggling the weapons upcountry.
Now he himself was part of the payment, and he knew that supplying prohibited technology to an Indigenous Tribal Territory was the smallest part of the whole monstrous scheme, and that the profits were incalculable. It might even be that Rezerval was involved, that everybody who knew deliberately turned a blind eye to the flouting of regulations and destruction of a culture. There was enough profit here—and enough benefit, even to people who'd never even heard of Kalapriya—to make that entirely plausible.
He shifted restlessly until the chains that held him sitting upright, back to the wall, clanked and drew a suspicious glance from the bored guard. At least he could see the guard today. Some days the man's figure was haloed with red and orange flames; some days the entire cave disappeared behind waves of pulsating color. That, like the days of merciful confusion when he did not know who and where he was, was probably a sign that the inevitable infections were at last taking hold. He'd heard the guards speculating on why he'd lasted so much longer than most prisoners; they thought he might be protected by powerful outlander demons. It was as close as their primitive worldview could come to what he himself thought the more reasonable hypothesis: that the bacteria which caused infections in this world were not quite accustomed to his outlander blood, found him a less tasty snack than the native Kalapriyans.
He wondered, vaguely, if the same thing was true of the slime being carefully nurtured on parts of himself that he could not see. Probably not. There'd never been any trouble getting the 'mats to mimic any patient's brain function; whatever they did worked quite as well on outlanders as it did on Kalapriyans. And the technician, when he visited, seemed pleased enough with what he harvested. At least the stuff would go to somebody who really needed it. Probably at a hugely inflated black-market price, to someone who would never qualify for a 'mat transplant under Rezerval's stringent rationing system; that was a logical consequence of the whole scheme; but nobody took a transplant who didn't need it. It should be some comfort to reflect that there was a good outcome to this diabolical scheme.
The part of his mind that was capable of feeling comfort seemed as dead as that which should have felt fear. All that was left him, now, was this oddly dispassionate reasoning; and waiting for the infections in his open head to gain ground and give him release at last. He could tell that his brain was not functioning as well as earlier. Some days he forgot how to speak; other times were filled with the flickering red-and-yellow fire of visual hallucinations, or discordant music grating on his auditory nerves. But how could you measure the failure of your own brain? The progression itself interfered with your ability to measure it. Reminded him of some scientific paradox he'd learned in school, something about the act of measuring something influencing the thing you measured. Only this wasn't the same, he didn't think. That was the trouble, he didn't think anymore, not properly. Moments of clarity floating like islands in the fog. And now the auditory hallucinations were starting again, screams and wails of lost spirits and something eerily like the crying of a child.
Not hallucinations. He blinked, thankful that he retained that much control out of his eyes, and concentrated on the dimness at the far end of the cave as if by sheer will he could make the indistinct figures emerging from the tunnel shine out bright and clear. Brown faces, short slender forms clothed in colorless rags, limping and clinging to one another. But indisputably real; his hallucinations never showed such details as the livid scar on that young man's face, the dirty hair tumbling
in elf-locks around the old woman's face, the long black braids of the little girls who clung to her knees. As they moved forward, stumbling, into the dim intersecting spheres of light cast by the oil lamps on the walls, the woman stood straighter and he saw that she was not old at all; just exhausted and in despair. She was taller than the other prisoners, and the sharp slant of her cheekbones marked a lineage of pure Rudhrani blood. Must be a political, then; most of those brought here were Rohini "criminals" or prisoners of war from the recent conquest of Thamboon.
"A hard journey, Udaka?" the cavern guard remarked to the man in MinLoy uniform who held the end of the chain binding the prisoners one to another.
"Hard enough." The MinLoy man spat into the shadows at his feet. "Got ambushed by a bunch of raggedy-ass Rohini bandits, first night out. They grabbed two before we cut them down. Had to kill the prisoners too. Damned waste. I'd hoped to bring the bandits here alive to add to your little 'farm,' but those Rohini fools never know when to stop fighting." He jerked his head at the tall woman who stood at the head of the line, her face a mask of death. "Her baby got killed in the fight."
The cavern guard shrugged. "Not much loss there. Kids never live long. Whose are these brats, then?" He indicated the shrinking girl-children.
"Oh, they're hers too. Picked the lot of them up at their home. Seems the father'd been making trouble, but he's got powerful protectors; so instead of taking him, we took the family and let him know he wouldn't see them again unless he behaved himself." Udaka grinned. "Not that he'll want to see them, once we cut them and start farming their heads . . . but there's no need to go into those little details."
"You brought rations for them, I hope?"
"Some. It's the devil of a chore, hauling food up here, and for what? They all die in a few days anyway."
"Not all." The guard turned so that he could see his whole face. "That one there—" he jerked his chin "—he's lasted two weeks since we started using him for a breeder. And that was after a spell in your palatial underground residence! Anyway, we're supposed to keep feeding them as long as they can swallow. Less wastage that way."
Udaka shrugged. "Well, it won't take much to feed this lot. We had some bad weather after the bandit attack—early storms—and the way some of them are coughing, frankly, I'm surprised they made it up the trails this far. I'll lay a dozen tulai that half of them don't survive the cutting."
"Make it two dozen," said the cavern guard, "enough to pay for a good night's drinking when I go off duty, and you're on. We've had a lot of practice setting them up by now. All you have to do is make sure they can't move when you're going through the skull—that's the part that hurts, see—and then once the head's open, you can cut a little bit in the right place and they don't move much. That outlander showed us the way of it."
So that was why everybody was so still! The traitor had showed them how to injure the motor cortex in just the right place to inhibit all voluntary movement below the neck. The chains were only to hold them upright, not to stop people thrashing around. Orlando Montoyasana blinked furiously, trying to hold that moment of understanding in his mind, feeling with sick despair that he had learned this much before, and forgotten it, and learned and forgotten again. Probably he had. Everything went away in the foggy periods. Why did he even try? He was a dead man; there was no escape from this place, and the infections that claimed the other prisoners would eventually kill him too.
Because my understanding is all I have left. He clutched it as a starving man would clutch a crust of bread, knowing it wasn't enough, but still feeling it as infinitely precious. As the MinLoy guard completed the paperwork and other formalities of handing over his prisoners, Orlando Montoyasana had a glimmer of something else he might be able to save, at least for a few days.
"Mind you give me a fair count of living bodies after the cut!" Udaka called as he left. "We'll settle up when I bring the next lot in. Devils take you, I'll double it again if you keep them all alive till then! I'll even say, all but the children—even you won't be able to make them last!" He laughed heartily, clearly not thinking he risked much by the promise.
"Bhalini!" Montoyasana whispered as soon as the sounds of the departing convoy had died away. The cavern guard couldn't hear him over the wails of the new prisoners. He tried again, with all the strength left in his wasted throat. "Bhalini!"
"Hush up, you lot, or I'll give you something to whine about!" Bhalini commanded, striking out at random with the short white cane he carried as a sign of authority. The new prisoners cried, cringed away from the blows, and fell silent. Only the tall Rudhrani woman did not shrink, even when the cane landed on her. She seemed totally indifferent to all that went on around her, even to the two little girls trying to hide behind her.
"Ma, it's talking!" one of the girls whispered, pointing in Montoyasana's direction. "It's alive."
A low moaning began as first one, then another of the bodies chained to the wall began to register the stares of the new captives. Montoyasana cursed the incoherent babble of his fellow prisoners and tried to speak clearly enough to be heard through the noise. "Bhalini, I can help you win that wager. I have—" outlander science, he was about to say, but changed in time to something that the guard would be more likely to believe. "I have strong magics. See how long I've lived here! Would you have all these new bodies last as long, and get your drinking money twice over from Udaka?" Perhaps he could cast van Vechten's instructions about sterilizing instruments and keeping the caves clean in terms of rites to cast out demons with fire and boiling water.
Bhalini struck out with his cane at the prisoners along the wall until they quieted, then squatted in front of Montoyasana. "Aye, share thy magic, then, outlander demon!"
"At a price—nothing good comes without a price."
"What can you use, dead man? A little more dozy-juice to help you sleep away the hours?"
"Nothing for me. But keep the little ones back from the cutting."
"It's as much as my life is worth, if the Arm of the Bashir should hear of it."
"You said yourself, children hardly last long enough to be worth the work of preparing them. And these are girls—weaker, to begin with, and they look sickly." Actually they looked no worse than one would expect of terrified children who had just been dragged away from everything they knew. And weren't girl-children constitutionally stronger than boys? But it didn't matter; Bhalini looked half convinced already. "It's not as if they were even part of your wager," Montoyasana pointed out. "Keep the rest alive longer, and . . . and . . ." His mind wandered, and a momentary numbness assailed his tongue. What had he been talking about? A child cried, and the mother stooped and gathered it into her arms, and he remembered. "Keep the rest alive longer, win your wager and get the Bashir's praise for serving him well. Or cut them all now and kill half of them for lack of the—the strong magics I know. It's all one to me."
"Aye, that it likely is, to a dead man talking," the guard agreed, without malice. "But two is overmuch risk. They'd be playing and quarreling and get themselves noticed. Tell me your charms, and I'll keep one child with me—for a time."
"As long as you can?" There might yet be a miracle. Rezerval might find them and intercede. In all probability he was buying the one girl only a few days of life in terrified misery. But if she were old enough to understand, she would take any chance of life, however slender.
"As long as I can," Bhalini agreed. "Gods know she'll eat little enough, a scrawny little thing like that."
"Which?"
"How should I care? Let the mother decide." And before Montoyasana could gather his wandering wits enough to protest this casual cruelty, Bhalini stood up and called, "You! Rudhrani traitor woman, one of your girls goes with you now, and the other stays with me. Which do you keep?"
The girl already in the woman's arms redoubled her wailing and clung with the force of hysteria to her mother's shoulders. "There, there, Neeta," the woman said. "I'll not leave you."
"I'll stay with
the ugly man," said the other girl distinctly, squaring her thin shoulders. "I'm not afraid." Her voice quavered on the last word.
Bhalini grinned down at Montoyasana. "See there? They choose for themselves. All right, all of you!" He raised his voice. "Traitor scum, down this passage. I'll see to you in a minute. You, girl, stay with me." He grasped the child's wrist to keep her with him. Montoyasana closed his eyes against the heartbreak of the mother's face.
"Now, outlander," Bhalini muttered, "tell me your charms!"
Chapter Thirteen
Rezerval
Annemari didn't bother to look up and down the hall before trying the door of the Cassilis Clinic's business center. Whether anybody was there to see her going in was really beside the point; it went without saying that the organizers of this satin-smooth operation would have spycams installed in any place they wanted to watch. Her only hope was to act like somebody with nothing to hide and hope that they assumed her to be an arrogant rich lady who thought she was entitled to go anywhere she wanted. Such behavior shouldn't draw too much attention; from what she'd seen of the clinic's clientele, most if not all of them were rich assholes.
The door was unlocked; that was the good news. The bad news was that it was unlocked because somebody was working late. A slim girl with a really excellent strand job of alternating silver and black hair, tapping a deskvid and muttering imprecations under her breath, looked around at the sound of the door opening.
"We're not really open right now, Honored Fru," she said, with a stiff artificial smile that clashed with her frowning brows.
"Oh, don't let me disturb you," Annemari said brightly. "I just wanted to use one of your screens for a moment. Would you believe it, I was in such a frazzle about getting my darling boy here that I absolutely forgot to pick up any supplies from my personal colorist. If I don't have him send some toner out immediately I'll be an absolute fright before the week's out; this color has to be refreshed almost daily." She passed a hand through her silver-blond locks and thanked the gods that had given her a young-looking face and prematurely greying hair. The silvery tint was so becoming against her smooth, creamy skin that Nunzia Hirvonen was always accusing her of having had it done on purpose to make herself look younger by contrast.
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