by Ann Maxwell
Only part of her words made sense, but it was a compelling part. “Daemen’s people don’t feed corpses to their god,” said Kirtn succinctly. “He’s surprised you do.”
Scuvee snorted. “Corpses and criminals and every other damn thing we can lift. Too bad rocks don’t work—enough of them for twenty Gods.”
Daemen shuddered. “How can you eat?”
“Hunger, Little Treat. Works every time.”
From the front of the house came the sounds of people shouting. A short, thick man swept into the room, followed by Scuvee’s angry group. The man stopped and stared at Kirtn.
“Then it’s true,” said the man, shaking his head until his long black hair tumbled down to touch his powerful wrists.
Rheba stared. The man had eight fingers and a very long thumb on each hand. She looked at her own four-fingered hand and wondered how much godfood she could eat before she changed.
The man walked around them like a slave master inspecting newly arrived chattel. Whatever he saw did not please him. “No ropes?” he snapped.
“They’re willing Treats, Ghun,” said Scuvee smugly.
“I’m still Super Scavenger,” he said harshly. “The Hunt isn’t over yet.”
“You’re back. You can’t go out again. You know the rules as well as I do, Super.” The woman’s voice was whiplike.
“My group isn’t back yet. I came in early.”
The red-haired woman smiled nastily. “At sunset we say grace and send in the Treats. I’ll be Super before the second moon rises.” She laughed. “I’ll be Super until I die, Ghun. No one ever brought in Treats like these.”
“No Treats last more than a meal. After the next Hunt, I’ll be Super again.”
“Willing Treats, Ghun. They’ll last forever—longer than either one of us, that’s for sure.”
Ghun looked shrewdly at the faces of the Treats. “You don’t know what she’s talking about, do you?”
Kirtn, knowing an enemy when he saw one, did not answer. Daemen did. “What do you mean?”
“You look a little young to die.” Ghun cocked his head, searching the Treats for any sign of understanding. Kirtn and Rheba controlled their expressions. Daemen did not. Ghun leaned toward the Luck. “'Didn’t she tell you?”
“Tell me what?” said Daemen.
“She’s going to feed you to God.”
“So what?”
“So you’re going to die.”
“That’s not true!” shouted the red-haired woman. “You’re just trying to make them unwilling so I’ll get fewer points!”
Ghun’s smile made Kirtn more uneasy than a snarl would have. Daemen did not notice. He was still caught by the assured tone in which Ghun had pronounced their death sentences.
“It isn’t true, Little Treat,” Scuvee said persuasively. “He’s just trying to scare you. Willing Treats are loved by the God. Nothing bad can happen when God loves you.”
“How willing will they be when they choke on God and drown?” asked Ghun smoothly.
“Pucker your hole!” said Scuvee, turning on Ghun with hands that wanted to strangle his assurance and him with it.
Ghun smiled thinly. “Didn’t you tell them, Scuvee? Didn’t you tell them how they’ll be scourged and driven into God’s House? Didn’t you tell them—”
Scuvee’s knife tip hovered a finger’s length from Ghun’s mouth. Her strong hand was twisted into his hair, holding his head immobile. “If you don’t pucker up,” she said, “I’ll feed your tongue to God.”
Ghun puckered up.
“I found these Treats, and I found them willing. The whole town knows it. If they go all unwilling on me, that would be a crime, wouldn’t it?”
Ghun swallowed and looked as if he were eating bile.
“Wouldn’t it?” pressed Scuvee, drawing a bead of blood out of his thin lower lip.
“Uggg—yes!”
“Right. And you know what we do to criminals, don’t you?” Her knife moved slightly, flicking blood out of his upper lip. “What happens?”
“'They’re fed to God,” said Ghun, his lips barely moving.
“'Right. Now, if you’re through lying to my willing Treats, we’ll just forget you ever opened your hole. Unless maybe you have a yen to visit God?” she asked softly.
Ghun made a strangled sound that Scuvee took as capitulation.
She released him so suddenly he stumbled. He threw a malevolent look over his shoulder as he hurried out.
Kirtn and Rheba looked at each other.
Daemen smiled at nothing in particular. “It’s all right. I’m The Luck.”
Daemen’s litany did not comfort them. Kirtn touched Rheba and sensed the exhaustion beneath her fear. The meal and a few hours of anxious captivity had not helped to restore her strength—or his. They could probably fight their way back to the tunnel, but then what? Without a high-tech present for the Seurs, Daemen and his friends would be sent on another one-way trip by the Seurs. This time, Kirtn suspected the Seurs would overcome their scruples about killing The Luck.
With a growing coldness in his bones, the Bre’n realized that there was nothing to do but to wait until feeding time at God’s House. Once inside the Installation, perhaps Daemen would find something useful. If not, they could always feed Rainbow to the machine and hope that the lights went out as fast as they had at Centrins.
What would Square One’s barbarians do if the Treats proved to be indigestible?
Scuvee looked at her Treats. Their expressions were not reassuring. She smiled and clapped her hands. “Won’t be long now, Treats,” she said with forced lightness. “Don’t look so worried. The shaval pile will take your minds off God’s stomach. You eat a handful of that gold stuff and you won’t care about one damn thing. Besides, willing Treats are loved by God. Believe me,” she said earnestly. “As long as I’ve been alive, God never hurt a willing Treat.”
The Treats said nothing.
Scuvee smiled encouragingly. “You won’t even have to be graced,” she said. “You’re bloody enough already. Except,” she added, looking critically at Daemen, “for Little Treat, here. Might have to break a bit more of his skin. Oh, nothing hurtful,” she reassured them. “Just enough to let God know we care.”
The Treats looked even less comfortable.
“Well!” Scuvee said enthusiastically. “No point waiting around. By the time we get to God’s House, sunset will be all over the place.”
Scuvee gestured to her group. They surrounded the Treats. Despite the barbarians’ friendly smiles, there was no doubt that a reluctant Treat would be dragged to God’s House.
Kirtn saw akhenet lines flicker over Rheba’s arms. “Not yet,” he whistled, his tone urging patience as much as his words. “We came here to get into the Installation. Now we’re going to do just that.”
Rheba heard the irony as well as the wisdom in his whistle. She smiled lopsidedly and took her mentor’s hand. With her other hand she reached out to Daemen. His answering smile was all the more charming for its shyness.
Hand in hand in hand, the three of them followed Scuvee across the barren rock toward God’s multicolored House.
As they walked, Square One’s population gathered. The carmine sky dyed ail people the same shade, disguising their variations under one thick color. The natives stared, murmuring with delight and speculations about the nature and source of the strange Treats.
They approached God’s House from the side. The path hardly looked as though it led to anything more sacred than a garbage dump. On either side, and sometimes across the path itself, was debris that ranged from worn shoes to malodorous lumps.
Rheba made a sound of disgust and scraped the sole of her shoe across a protruding rock. “If this is what they usually feed God, no wonder it rebels,” she muttered.
“It’s a simple recycler,” said Daemen. “Just a machine, not a God.”
“I’m not ready to be recycled,” she snapped.
“Don’t worry,” he soothed. “Nothing bad can hap
pen. You heard Scuvee—in her whole lifetime the recycler never hurt a willing Treat.”
“I’d feel better if I knew that in her whole lifetime the machine had been fed a willing Treat.”
Kirtn sighed. He had hoped Rheba would not spot that flaw in Scuvee’s argument.
Daemen looked startled, then he smiled. “It’s a machine,” he said softly, stroking, the back of her hand. “Machines don’t hurt people.”
God’s House rose ahead of them, massive, multicolored, opaque. With a sound like distant thunder, a door opened in the building’s side. Daemen walked forward, willing if not especially eager to penetrate the Installation’s mechanical mysteries.
Kirtn and Rheba followed more slowly, but they did follow. The alternative was the knives that had suddenly appeared in their captors’ hands.
Daemen looked over his shoulder. His smile was uncanny, beautiful. “Don’t be frightened,” he said. “I’m The Luck.”
“Good for you,” muttered Kirtn, “but not necessarily for us.”
The door closed behind them, throwing the world into darkness.
XVII
Rheba created a sphere of blue-white light. It burned unevenly for a moment, investing the building with flickering shadows. She concentrated until the light steadied and shadows only moved when people did.
Kirtn squeezed her hand, feeling the peculiar warmth that came from her akhenet lines. She was not only tired, she was also afraid. The building stank of garbage and less appetizing organic matter.
“God’s House,” Rheba said with contempt in her voice. “Cherfs live in cleaner burrows.”
Daemen turned back to her. In the akhenet light, his eyes were white, as uncanny as his smile.
Kirtn saw again the younger man’s grace, his unusual beauty. The Bre’n looked away, not blaming his fire dancer for the smile she gave Daemen, but not liking it either.
“They put us in on the garbage conveyor,” said Daemen, laughing.
Kirtn gave a derisive whistle. Being the centerpiece of a garbage dump was not one of his life ambitions. “Where’s the core or whatever they used to control this place?”
Daemen closed his eyes, obviously trying to remember the floor plan of Centrins. “I think . . . yes, there should be a smaller branch off this room. Like a wide, short hall going off to the left somewhere up ahead. At the end of that there should be an access panel.”
Rheba remembered the glittering mound of Zaarain crystals that had somehow controlled Centrins. She remembered the explosion of light when Rainbow had been flung onto the mound, and the darkness that had come without warning. She fingered the chain of crystals that she wore beneath Kirtn’s cape and wondered if Rainbow would find more of itself here . . . and who would pay the price if it did.
“Lead the way,” Kirtn said shortly. If anyone was going to stumble into the stomach of a hungry God, he hoped it would be the all too handsome Luck.
The room shrank on all sides as Daemen walked confidently forward. Rheba sent small light spheres to various points, trying to guess the room’s dimensions.
“It’s a flat-bottomed funnel,” said Kirtn. “We’re going into the narrow gullet.”
“Do you have to put it like that?” she asked plaintively.
He stroked her hair, giving comfort with touch as he could not with words. He was becoming more and more uneasy with each forward step.
Ghun’s words echoed in the Installation’s silences, as though all the people who had been fed to the recycler whispered from darkened corners. The poet in Kirtn sensed eternity and the death of dreams, a death as final as Deva spinning ash-colored against the clean silver of countless stars. He tasted the irony of surviving the extinction of his people only to die in the shell of a building that had been old before his people were even born.
And he laughed, regretting only that he had never known his fire dancer’s love.
Rheba leaned against him, pulling his difficult laughter around her, sensing his emotions like another kind of blood beating in her veins. Her bright, patterned hand rubbed down his arm. Her hair stirred with the pleasure his textures always gave her. Slowly her lines stopped flickering. With a sigh, she relaxed, letting go of discordant energies she had not even realized she had held, letting go for him as well.
Fssa hissed quiet satisfaction, reveling in the sweeping energies his friends created when they touched.
“Here it is!” called Daemen from up ahead.
Rheba sensed Kirtn’s flash of irritation as clearly as though it were her own. “You’re so hard on him,” she whistled. “But you’re so patient with other children, like Lheket.”
“Daemen isn’t a child. Lheket is.”
“Hurry!” called Daemen, excitement making his voice uneven.
Rheba laughed quietly. “Of course he is—listen to him.”
“Keep rubbing up against him,” whistled Kirtn roughly, “and you’ll find he’s man enough underneath all that charm.”
Kirtn’s whistle evoked a coarse sexuality that shocked her. “That’s not fair,” she said hotly. “Next to you, he’s not a man at all!”
Kirtn stopped and looked down at her for a long moment. Then he smiled. “I’d like to lose all my arguments like that.” He hugged her as though it were the last time, which he was afraid might be true.
The cape fell away as her arms came up around his neck. A network of light shimmered out from her as she responded to all the unspoken emotions seething in him. She smiled as she saw herself reflected in his golden eyes. “Share enzymes?” she suggested, half laughing, half serious, knowing only that she did not want to leave his arms.
It took all of his Bre’n discipline to stop at a single kiss. The fire she called was so sweet, burning away everything until only she was left and he was holding her and they were wrapped in blinding veils of light.
When he finally released her he saw Daemen nearby, his eyes bright with reflected fire.
“I found the access panel,” said Daemen wistfully, as though realizing he might have lost something else. “Can I borrow Rainbow again?”
“Why?” said Rheba, but she reached for Rainbow even as she spoke. “It didn’t work too well the last time.”
Daemen made an odd gesture that could have signified despair. “I don’t have any other key to trigger the Installation. Either Rainbow loosens up some crystals for me, or I have to bash the core until I get some. I don’t want to do that. The barbarians aren’t much, but they’re people. Without the Installation, they’ll die. But without new technology, my own people will die.” He made the gesture again, “It’s all a matter of Luck. My Luck.”
Kirtn looked at the young man and for the first time felt compassion. Whether Daemen deserved it or not, he carried the future of his people in his slim hands. The akhenets had carried that weight once . . . and ultimately they had lost, burned by a fire greater than they could call or control. The bitterness of that defeat was part of him now, and of Rheba. It was not a thing he would wish on anyone.
“Good luck,” said the Bre’n softly. And meant it.
Rheba handed Rainbow to The Luck. As he turned to go back to the access panel, she took his arm. “Wait. Fssa, could you tell Rainbow what we want? Maybe that way it could do something . . . ?”
Her tone was more wistful than sure. Kirtn started to veto the idea, then decided if she was willing to endure the communication he should not object.
“What do you mean?” said Daemen, looking from Rheba to the rope of colored crystals dangling from his fingers. “Rainbow is a machine—you can’t talk with it no matter how many languages you know.”
She pulled Fssa from her hair and held him out to The Luck.
When he hesitated, she said, “He doesn’t bite. He doesn’t even have any teeth.” She smiled encouragingly and did not add that Fssa no more needed teeth than a lightgun did. She knew that the Fssireeme made Daemen uneasy enough without telling him what an accomplished predator the snake could be. “Take him.”
/> “What about you?” said Daemen, accepting the snake reluctantly.
“I’m getting as far away from him as I can,” said Rheba fervently.
“Are you going back?” asked Daemen, sounding very lonely.
“No,” said Kirtn. “The funnel would just send all Fssa’s energies back over us. Is there another room where we could wait?”
“Just beyond the access panel there’s a hall. There should be a big room off to the right.”
“What’s in it?” asked Rheba nervously, not wanting to blunder into God’s alimentary canal.
“It would be the hospital at Centrins. I don’t know what it is here.”
“Just as long as it isn’t the dining room,” said Kirtn dryly. “I think we’d be smart to stay away from anything that has to do with food while we’re in here.”
Daemen laughed. “'Don’t worry—it’s the recycler we have to avoid, and that’s on the left side of the hall.”
They followed Daemen to the access panel. He set Fssa on the floor and piled Rainbow nearby. Rheba left a little light with Daemen and sent a much larger light ahead of Kirtn. Despite the Luck’s reassurances, she had no intention of walking blindly out of God’s stinking garbage pit and into an endless gullet.
The room was bigger than she had expected. Kirtn hesitated, not wanting to ask her for more light. The sphere brightened but not enough to overpower the shadows.
“I’m sorry.” She sighed, realizing the extent of her tiredness. A child could have lit the room without noticing the energy it cost. For a moment she considered trying to tap the core power, then rejected it. Zaarain energies were both complex and painful. Even Deva’s master dancers had avoided them.
Kirtn touched her reassuringly. “That’s more than enough light. See? There isn’t any garbage to stumble over here.”
“I suppose the machine would keep the hospital clean as long as it could,” she said, peering into the dense shadows at the far end of the room. She inhaled deeply, glad to breathe air that was not thick with the stench of decay. “What’s that?” He took a few steps forward, staring toward the darkness.
Vague turquoise lights glimmered back at him, shifting with a fluid grace that was fascinating. “I’m not sure.”