“A membrane,” Bloodmark said. “It holds in air.”
I later learned a molecular airlock is a modified lipid bilayer. Nano-bots dope the membrane, each an enzyme plus a picochip.
Applying an electric potential causes the enzymes to alter shape and lock onto receptor molecules in the membrane, changing its permeability. One setting makes it impermeable to gasses, air and water vapor in particular. When we walked through it, our bodies became part of the interface. Its cross-linked structure and picochips remembered its previous form, so it could regain its shape after we passed through.
Bloodmark spoke quietly. “If it makes a difference to you, I am glad you are going with Althor. If Iquar lets you see him, that may make it easier on Althor.”
I clenched my fists. “I don’t see how you live with yourself.”
“There are times when we must do what seems cruel to avoid a greater evil.”
“Who gave you the right to decide?”
His voice hardened. “Who had the right to condemn us to centuries of war?”
“Don’t you know what you meant to him?” I wanted to hit him. “Is this how you would treat your son?”
“My son is dead.” Bloodmark spoke numbly, lost in the memory. “He was ten. About the same age as when Althor started to live a normal life. A task force of Eubian agents infiltrated a base near a city where he lived with my Elder Wife. The Traders meant to be in and out within a matter of hours. They were discovered. Near a park. My son was playing there. He was caught in the cross fire. Shot by our own people.” His voice had a deadened quality. “An accident. A tragic accident.”
Softly I said, “And now you’re going to make Althor the sacrifice for that accident?”
He stiffened. “My son has no connection to Althor.”
Ahead of us, the waroids reached the ship. As they took Althor inside, we came up to them. The leader spoke to Bloodmark. “You’ll hear the results on the news broadcasts.”
“Very good,” Bloodmark said.
“You’re not coming with us?” I asked.
“Of course not,” Bloodmark said. “When the exchange takes place I will be seated at the Assembly. I have an invitation to dine with Althor’s parents afterward.” He paused. “I imagine I will be with them when the news comes over the broadcasts. I will do my best to console the shocked and grieving parents.”
I gritted my teeth. “You bastard.”
“Whatever you may think of me, I am doing what I believe best for my people.”
A waroid pulled me toward the ship. I looked back to see Bloodmark standing with his bodyguard, alone on the field, hands clasped behind his back, silver hair gleaming in the black landscape.
The mercenaries tied us into our seats again and lowered the visored helmets on both of us. I didn’t know what Althor’s did, perhaps began dosing him with biomech suppressants. In mine, the mist curled around my face and I drifted into a fitful sleep.
I woke when something poked my lips. Opening my eyes, I saw a waroid pushing a tube from the framework around my head into my mouth. The mercenary had pushed back my visor and was floating in front of me.
“Drink,” she'said. “Come on, girl. It’s just water.”
I opened my mouth and the tube clicked into place. Liquid ran cool and sweet down my throat. Someone asked a question in another language and the waroid said, “Her dehydration wasn’t critical. Otherwise it would have activated an alarm.” When I finished drinking, I opened my mouth and the tube-clicked back into the framework. The waroid still floated above me, watching. Maybe she didn’t have enough to do. More likely she was making sure the merchandise remained in good shape. Didn’t want to deliver dehydrated goods. Freeze-dried. Instant Tina. I tried to laugh, but it came out as a sob.
“What’s the problem?” someone said.
“Damned if I know,” the waroid watching me said. “None of her monitors show anything.”
Someone said, “She’s crying, idiot,” and someone else muttered, “Sometimes I hate this job.”
The woman in front of me snorted. “You won’t hate it when pay time comes. We’ll be some of the wealthiest people alive. Hell, we’ll be fucking richer than some planetary governments.” As a murmur of agreement washed over the others, the pilot said, “Approaching reinversion. Prepare for transfer.”
Movement rustled through the cabin as the mercenaries settled into their seats. The exoskeleton on mine closed and a holomap appeared above it. The map showed the stars blueshift-ing in discontinuous jumps, converging to a point. Holographic hieroglyphs scrolled under the display, my first indication that Skolian languages are three-dimensional, one dimension containing most of the information, the other two adding subtleties and complexities.
We reinverted smoothly. After the stars redshifted to normal a tiny bar appeared in a corner of the holomap. Gradually it swelled in size, revealing itself as a rotating station, what I later learned was called, simply, the Cylinder. It had an extended torus, making it a double-walled cylinder. Instead of a hub, a nonrotating tube extended down its hollow center, flaring out into a pod at each end to give it a fluted appearance. A massive ring of thrusters circled the neck of each pod.
The Cylinder grew to fill the holomap. Lights scintillated on it, either fixed or racing in necklaces of green, gold, silver, blue, and violet. Glitter drifted around the fluted tube. We came in closer, until the holomap could no longer show the whole station; closer still, and structures on its surface resolved, cranes, spires, and towers; even closer, and structures within the structures resolved, like fractals repeating their pattern at higher magnifications. Closer yet, and only a pod on the closest end of the fluted tube was visible. The glitter had grown into specks—
With a mental lurch, I realized the “glitter” was ships. Huge ships, with multiple sections, brisding with turrets and antennae. Finally I absorbed the station’s magnitude: it was thousands of times larger than Epsilani. The pod before us was opening, like a massive flower with sharpened petals. As we passed under those petals, I realized the pod could hold a hundred ships our size.
New voices came over the com, speaking yet another tongue, one with a harsh sound. Input for the holomap switched to a site outside the Cylinder, allowing us to see our ship inside the open pod, like an insect in a Venus’s-flytrap. A robot arm unfolded from the pod’s inner surface; when fully extended, it stretched the length of the mercenary ship and more. As it opened its skeletal fingers, a cargo door on the ship rolled open. With no atmosphere to carry sound, the whole process was eerily silent. The claw entered the cargo bay—and came out with the Jag in its skeletal grasp. A huge door in the surface of the pod slid upward and the crane withdrew inside with its captive starfighter. The massive door closed, leaving a smooth section of hull.
Althor spoke, his voice groggy, as if he had just Woken up. The pilot answered, something about the Jag being transferred to Iquar.
The ship docked, entering a chute in the neck of the pod. My holomap shut off once we were inside. A shudder vibrated through the ship, a sense of something huge clamping onto it. When the vibration stopped, someone said, “We’re secure.”
I stirred, and my hair drifted in lazy coils, swirling into my face. The waroid on my right climbed out of her seat and stood up, her magnetized boots planted on the deck. She freed me from the seat, then pulled me up and held onto my arm to keep me from drifting away. My limbs felt numb, the sensation returning in pins and needles.
At the front of the cabin, several waroids were holding Althor while another locked his hands behind his back. He stood watching me, his face creased with fatigue. Despite my deadened brain, I sensed traces of his fear.
We disembarked into a large chamber. After decontamination, we floated out into a huge bay with swinging catwalks and decks made from crisscrossing strips of red metal. A rail ran through the area, terminating at the decon chamber. Two transport cars waited on it like bullets molded from bronze, their noses pointed away from the ship.
The mercenaries split us up, taking Althor in the first transport and me in the second. The car had no frills, just a seamless metal interior with four seats and a web console. Two mercenaries sat in the front and one in the back with me. As a low hum started, mild acceleration pushed us into our seats.
I can’t say how long the ride lasted; maybe twenty minutes, maybe an hour. It felt interminable. I sat shivering in my seat, wishing I had a coat. Concentrating on the cold kept me from thinking about whatever waited at the end of our ride.
The car finally slowed to a stop, and a clank vibrated through the metal. The door opened and a woman stared in at us. Large and angular, with a jutting jaw and broad shoulders, she looked as strong as an ox. Her gray hair was pulled back in a twist, with wisps curling around her face. The brown jumpsuit she wore had no patches on it, nothing to indicate she had an identity.
Behind her, I glimpsed an open area the size of a three-car garage with a high roof. Rows of consoles filled it, running perpendicular to the rail. As we stepped out of the car, gravity pulled at us, almost as much as on Earth. Tiles covered the deck, black metal diamonds edged with silver. No windows showed anywhere, just a ceiling and walls the deep blue color of the sky right after the sunset cools. The area looked like a minor control center: operators sat encased in exoskeletons, lights glimmered on consoles, and holomaps rotated in the air, three-dimensional views of equipment, the Cylinder, and hieroglyphics.
People moved about the consoles, some dressed in blue or gray uniforms, but most in brown jumpsuits like our guide. After Althor disembarked from the other car with three of the mercenaries, the Trader woman led us through the control center. Everyone stared at us. More accurately, they stared at Althor. I later learned that Kryx Iquar, the Eubian Trader Minister, had made no secret of his triumph. He had achieved the coveted grail, capturing a member of the' Rhon, a prince who was both a psibernet Key and the ultimate provider.
A man waited for us at the back of the control center. He wore the uniform of an officer in the Eubian navy: gray tunic with red braid circling the cuffs, gray pants with a blue stripe down each leg, black boots. The insignia on his left shoulder showed a black puma leaping out of a red circle, clawed forelegs extended, teeth bared. Althor glanced at the patch, then grimaced and turned away.
At the officer’s command, an oval section of the wall shimmered. It was a modified molecular airlock: when opaque and stiff, they served as solid barriers; when soap-bubble thin, they allowed entrance while guarding against air loss. We walked through the shimmer—into a forest glade.
The emerald-lit clearing was a few yards wide, surrounded by trees with branches that met overhead. Distant bird calls trilled. Purple flowers hung in the foliage like gaudy tiger lilies and a downy green carpet curled around my feet. A carpet. In a jungle.
I looked around. The oval doorway behind us had vanished, replaced by trees. I saw what looked like several large rocks within the trees, but on closer inspection they resolved into control seats with exoskeletons. We were inside a holoart creation, similar to the pictures in Ming’s room on Epsilani but far more elaborate.
The naval officer was staring at Althor. When Althor glanced at him, the Trader dropped his gaze, either awed or intimidated, perhaps both. He seemed a normal person, with graying hair and blue eyes. Age lines showed around his eyes and creased his forehead.
On the other side of the glade, the trees vanished, revealing another oval doorway. Three people stood there, two men and a woman. As they entered the chamber, the forest reappeared behind them. The woman and one of the men had brown hair and blue eyes, but the second man’s hair was darker, almost black. His eyes were the color of rust. I later realized he was a taskmaster, a member of the highest caste among the Trader slaves, probably the illegitimate child of an Aristo with one of his or her providers.
Althor watched the rust-eyed man and the Trader stared back in unabashed fascination. Then the Trader seemed to mentally shake himself. After conferring with the naval officer, he came over to me and spoke in the harsh Eubian tongue.
I swallowed. “I don’t understand you.”
Glancing at the mercenary holding my arm, he repeated his words. The waroid tilted his helmeted head down to me and said, “This is Lieutenant Azez. He requires your identification. Your name.”
I looked up at Azez. “Tina.”
“Tain-ya.” Azez nodded. He walked back toward Althor, staring again, as if Althor were a magnet he couldn’t escape.
In fact, Althor mesmerized all of them. If he cared, he showed no sign of it. He stood between his guards, his face impassive. Azez spoke to him in Eubian and he answered in the same, the harsh syllables incongruous on his lips. /
Then Azez walked “through” the trees. It was bizarre, as if he passed through a ghost forest. Looking more closely, I was able to make out a console disguised within the holos. Azez leaned over it and spoke in a tongue I hadn’t heard before, one" with an elegant sound, smooth and lilting, what I now know is Highton, the language of the Aristos, the Trader ruling caste. After a moment Azez returned to the glade and motioned Althor toward a seat, apparently offering to let him relax. Althor just shook his head. Beads of sweat were running down his temple.
We waited. And waited. Several times a Trader or mercenary made a comment, but other than that we all just stood there.
Finally the oval across the room reappeared, this time revealing a man and woman. Everyone in the chamber bowed, except for Althor and me. I had no idea I was expected to do it, and Althor clearly had no intention of bowing to the newcomers.
Seeing them made my skin crawl, though I didn’t understand why at the time. They had the kind of perfection that comes from being able to afford any features, any physique, any life you want. They were tall even for Althor’s universe, the woman long-legged and well curved, with a sultry beauty; the man broad-shouldered and narrow-hipped, so handsome it seemed unnatural. What struck me most, though, was their coloring: black hair with a crystalline glitter and red eyes, like rubies.
The woman walked to Althor, gazing at him as if he were a prize she coveted, one she would have killed for if she thought she could get away with it. She spoke in Highton, her voice rumbling. Despite the elegant words, she still sounded threatening, as if she were promising him a velvet-draped bedroom in hell. The man in the doorway watched the exchange with a detached fascination, smiling slightly when unease flickered over Althor’s face.
The woman turned to her companion and bowed. He walked forward, relaxed and confident, arrogance in his every move. Everyone else in the room bowed, but he paid no attention; he and Althor stared at each other, fixedly, as if they were carrying out some ritual, vying for control. Their appearances heightened the effect; both men had the same height and build, one gold, the other red and black, like two opposed aspects of a supernatural being. Despite the handicaps Althor brought to the contest—a prisoner, half-dressed, hands locked behind his back—the Trader still couldn’t dominate their interaction.
The woman spoke again, formally, a phrase ending with “Kryx Iquar.”
So. This was Kryx Iquar. The Eubian Trader Minister. The man who had bought us.
Althor and Iquar watched each other, caught in silent combat. Except something was wrong. Althor was falling, falling….
The floor came up and hit my body. I heard a flurry of words and realized the floor hadn’t moved; I had fallen. Althor spoke in Eubian, his voice intense, urgent. I lifted my head to see him fighting in the grip of several mercenaries, struggling to reach me, his face for the first time revealing his fear.
Iquar knelt in front of me. Looking into his red eyes, I shuddered, remembering the gruesome sense of falling. Mercifully it had receded, muffled by whatever deadened the rest of my Kyle senses. I sat up, pushing my hair away from my face, my hand shaking.
“They tell me you speak English,” Iquar said.
I closed my eyes, so relieved to hear a language I understood that a chill
ran up my spine.
“Look at me,” Iquar said.
I opened my eyes in time to see a frown flash across his too-perfect face. He stood up. “She is in shock.” He spoke in Highton and people answered, voices tempered with the fear of those who knew they had angered someone they must always please. Althor watched from across the chamber, still held back by the waroids, his face strained.
As the gray-haired woman helped me to my feet, the other Trader woman came over, murmuring in their harsh language. The waroid next to me took hold of my arm and pulled me toward the wall where we had entered the chamber.
“No!” I tried to pull away. They were taking me away from Althor, my only anchor in this confusing, terrifying universe.
Althor was fighting as well now, trying to yank away from the mercenaries holding him. “Let me go to her!”
The glistening oval appeared in the holo-trees and the mercenary pulled me toward it. As I struggled, I screamed Althor’s name. I could hear him fighting behind me.
“Let her go!” he shouted.
The waroid dragged me forward, my heels scraping through the cloud-carpet. Then we were through the oval and the chamber closed behind us, leaving me outside and Althor with Kryx Iquar, both of us caught in a nightmare.
16
Lord of Pain
I once dreamed a dream, centuries ago in LA. It mas simple, really: I went to Cal State Los Angeles and earned a BA in accounting. I made friends who carried books instead of guns. That was my dream. That was all I asked for.
I got a lot more.
The room lights were low. I lay on a bed, dimly aware of the gray-haired woman moving about.
Some time later I pushed up on my elbows. My head swam and everything blurred, as if I had been drugged. The room was circular, carpeted in blue, with colors swirling on the walls. Someone had taken off my dress and covered me with a blanket, one deeply blue, as soft as a dream. Across the room, the Trader woman dozed in a reclining chair.
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