by Chris Bunch
The one-sided conversation continued for many more long minutes. Finally, Kraulshavn leaned back. There was some finger wagging, silent quizzing from Sorensen, then more finger wagging.
"What's he saying?” Sten asked."
"It doesn't like its name,” Sorensen said. “He says we should try something else."
"I don't clotting care what we clotting call it,” Sten gritted out.
The big washing machine/wire recorder gaaronked its agreement in the background."Call it anything you like. Call it gaaronk-gaaronk for all I give a clot!"
Sorensen nodded quite seriously. Fingers translated. Kraulshavn responded.
"Well?” Sten finally asked.
"Kraulshavn thinks one Gaaronk will be sufficient,” Sorensen said.
And before Sten could kill someone, the sparking started again. Almost instantly there was a return crackle. It was hesitant at first, and then there was one long stream of crackling. Kraulshavn bent his head to the speaker, listening. Then his fingers flashed at Sorensen. The big farm boy turned his innocent face to Sten.
"It's awake,” he said. “It likes Gaaronk just fine!"
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CHAPTER TWENTY
CRISTATA HAD PASSED the word that he wished to see Big X after the last roll call—which meant after all prisoners were securely locked into their cells.
Sten pulled on the tatters of a dark coverall and picked the lock on his cell. By that time, the lock tumblers were so used to being picked that a sharp smack on the doorjamb probably would have sprung the lock. He ran down the corridors and stairs toward the ground without worrying about guards—the few patrols that the Tahn ran inside Koldyeze's wings at night were large and noisy.
He picked the lock that led out into the courtyard and waited. He was following instructions.
Cristata's emissary had told him to wait until the large search beam—the one that was slightly blue—swept across the courtyard. He was to count six, because there was an amplified light beam behind it. “Then walk—do not run—walk twenty-six paces toward 1430 hours, assuming that the search beam is at twelve."
He paced the requisite number of paces, then stood, slightly hidden behind a ruined column, feeling stupid and waiting for the search beam to pick him up on its next sweep. Instead, the paving stones next to his feet slid away, and Cristata's tendrils probed out.
"If you wish,” he said, “you could jump down beside me."
Sten wished—and jumped.
He found himself in a narrow pit next to the furry being. The paving stones—Sten realized they were a very clever trapdoor—slid noiselessly closed above him.
After a moment there was a spark, and then there was light. The lamp Cristata held was a small pannier with what looked a great deal like one of the prisoners’ standard rations floating in its center, surrounded by liquid.
Cristata explained that the lamp was just what Sten thought it to be—they had boiled extra rationpaks until they yielded fat, then used the fat for fuel and the packs themselves as wicks.
"But that is not what I wished to show you. Come with me."
Cristata, without waiting for a response, dropped down into a narrower pit that Sten had not noticed and disappeared.
Sten followed.
The pit dropped about two meters and then, Sten could see, opened into a tunnel. The tunnel was completely boarded and reinforced, top, bottom, and sides.
Crawling through it was hardly claustrophobic—it was more like moving along a small but perfectly engineered corridor that led slowly but certainly downward.
At what Sten estimated were twenty-five-meter intervals, the passageway opened up into small but equally well built way stations.
It was, Sten thought, something that would take humans five years to engineer—or longer. But there was no one in the tunnel except the flailing fur-covered rump of Cristata moving ahead of him. Then the lay reader's rump wiggled and then vanished.
Sten crawled on and found himself at the lip of a larger, rocky chamber.
In it were Cristata and three humans. Sten vaguely recognized them as fellow prisoners. He levered himself over the edge and settled onto a granite boulder. There was complete silence except for the hissing of the fat lamp.
"Well, sir? What do you think?"
The question was asked by a woman wearing the stripes of a lance bombardier—Markiewicz, Sten remembered. He answered honestly. “I've dug some tunnels,” he said. “But this is the best one I've ever seen. You've done a clot—sorry. An excellent job."
"In the spirit of the Great One,” Cristata intoned. “By his leave only."
"In the spirit of the Great One,” the other three said.
What the hell, Sten thought. So Cristata was converting the masses. If believing in whatever Cristata did could produce a tunnel like that, Sten was ready to be baptized himself.
"I'm impressed, as I said,” Sten went on. “But I've already said that you people can have any help we can give. Why'd you decide to show it to me?"
Cristata's facial tendrils wiggled. “Because,” he said, “we appear to have a problem."
His tendrils indicated. Sten looked: The large rocky chamber, he realized, was composed on three sides of roughly cemented chunks of rock—what must have been the cathedral's foundations. But directly in front was one very large, very solid piece of stone, like unto a wall.
Sten figured out why Cristata had brought him down there. It was not pride. They needed help.
If Sten had not been Big X, he might have been more cooperative. But he had several thousand other people to consider, and so he put on his blandest face.
"You need help in getting through that clotting—beg pardon—rock?"
"We do,” Markewiecz said.
"I could have more diggers come in,” Sten said. “But it'd still take about a thousand years to chisel through that beast. And blasting, I'm thinking, is contraindicated."
The humans slumped. But Cristata had no reaction.
"But I think we might be able to help,” Sten continued.
Cristata's tendrils wriggled once more. “When a more senior reader offered to deliver what might be considered the less interesting—forgive me, Great One—portions of the lesson, portions which were my duty under normal circumstances, normally there were what I have heard called tradesies involved."
"There are,” Sten said.
"We are listening."
We, Sten wondered, far underground. We meaning Cristata and his converts, or we and his Great One? Sten considered the tons of rock, earth, and stone above his head and decided this was not a place to be terribly agnostic.
Sten was not offering a pigless poke.
Kraulshavn and Sorensen's computer had already begun gaaronking through the surveyors’ figures. And yes, indeed, there were big missing spaces between what the measurements produced and what Koldyeze looked like.
Most interesting were the cheapjack echosounds the surveyors had run. Some of Avrenti's supersensitive antitunneling microphones had somehow ended up in the hands of Kilgour's thieves. Those had then been implanted in the stone courtyard, and an impulse had been introduced. The impulse was generally a somewhat unconnected chunk of stone atop the cathedral's battlements. When said chunk of stone came crashing down, of course as a result of natural causes, the crash was recorded at various points and fed through Gaaronk.
The crashes did not match—and showed that, mysteriously, there was a lot of unknown there underneath Koldyeze. Empty unknown there.
Cellars.
That was Sten's oinker in the sack.
"If,” he began, “I can show you a way around or through this rock, your tunnel is no longer going to be exclusive."
The three humans growled.
"Continue,” Cristata said.
"I would like to use the tunnel to take more escapers out."
"How many?"
"I don't know. But you four would be the first. And you would have all the assistance
my organization could provide."
"We have all the aid we need from the Great One,” Cristata said. His converts nodded in agreement.
Sten felt slightly sorry for what he was doing, but as yet there was no other viable escape plan in motion. And Sten remembered once again that warrant officer crying over his parcel.
"We'll give you more diggers. Diggers working under your direction. And nothing will be done without your knowledge and approval."
"Do we have any choice?"
Sten did not bother to answer.
Markiewicz glanced at Cristata and answered for the four of them. “It appears as if the Great One wishes this."
It was unanimous.
Sten sort of hated to give them what looked to be the answer, because it was simple.
Dig down.
Disbelieving—except for Cristata, who reasoned that somehow the Great One was speaking through Sten—they did.
Many days later, they broke through into the cellars of Koldyeze.
And that, for Cristata, created an even larger problem.
Once again Sten went out and down late at night, then shinnied down from that small rocky chamber into caverns. High stone-ceilinged caverns that led on into darkness. Caverns that were flagstone-floored, with pillars stretching up. Caverns that, Cristata pointed out, held all the temptations of Xanadu. Sten took a quick torchlight inventory, whistled, and agreed. Evidently the simple, monotheistic agrarian communards who had originally built Koldyeze had planned for some very rainy days. And they had planned on spending those rainy days in more than ascetic meditation. There were chambers with large barrels. Sten thumped them, and they appeared to still have liquid in them. He ran his finger along the barrel staves and tasted alcohol.
Other chambers held foodpaks; still others, clothing.
"And we have not fully explored these chambers,” Cristata went on gloomily. “But it would appear that whoever stored these substances enjoyed life."
Sten eyed the foodpaks hungrily—and stopped thinking about what a meal composed of real food could do for him. Instead, he made plans.
Cristata—personally—would make a full survey of the cellars. What was in them would be communicated to Colonel Virunga and Mr. Hernandes only. The last thing Sten needed was for that tunnel, which looked to be their only salvation, to get blown because a bunch of tunnelers started looking fat, well dressed, and—worst case—drunk. The assigned tunnelers from the X organization would be conducted into the rocky chamber blindfolded and then taken through the cellars to the working face. Only Cristata and his converts would know what those cellars of plenty held. They would be kept secret for emergency rations and to help the escapers get into shape.
And Sten hoped most sincerely that none of Cristata's true believers would suffer a lapse of faith and a subsequent big mouth.
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CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
SENIOR CAPTAIN LO PREK sat nervously on the edge of his bunk, trying to decipher the radio chatter between the freighter captain and traffic control. The mysteries of naval patter were beyond him, but he could tell from the tone of the captain's voice that all did not bode well.
Prek had wrangled passage on a ship carrying low-priority materials for the Tahn factories. Already the ship's flight had been interrupted or rerouted half a dozen times since he had started his journey many cycles before. And from the captain's whining, he was sure it was about to happen again.
He squirmed impatiently on the bunk, almost welcoming the bite of the metal edge into his skinny haunches. He felt helpless. There was nothing he could do or say to hurry the journey. He had already called in the few favors that were owed him to get the short amount of leave that had been approved. And he had almost begged to get permission to travel on the puny freighter. Permission had been granted grudgingly—possibly out of guilt.
Prek knew that he was not a man anyone liked. He was superefficient. Superobedient. Single-minded at his work. Never asking for any rewards for a job well done. Being non-competitive, he had also never harmed anyone in his life. Still, he was not liked. There was something about him ... and Prek knew and accepted it, just as he accepted the guilt that caused in his fellow officers. For a change, he had used that guilt. Acting completely out of character, he had molded it to his own advantage. Normally, even the thought of something like that would have disgusted Prek.
But not this time. Because this time he was sure he had found Sten—or, at least, where Sten was hiding.
There was a new prisoner-of-war camp. For troublemakers. For survivors. It was on Heath at a place called Koldyeze.
Prek listened to the resignation in the freighter captain's voice. There would be another delay. Another reprieve for his enemy.
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CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
THE PRISONER WORK detail, surrounded by their Tahn guards, clattered back toward Koldyeze. Just in front of them the cobbled street wound upward toward the prison.
"I'm waiting,” Sten said.
"Shut up. You'll see,” St. Clair whispered.
"Deee-tail ... halt,” Chetwynd bellowed.
The prisoners clumped to a stop. On either side of the road rose abandoned slum apartments.
"Five minutes. Rest. Be grateful."
Sten goggled as all the guards, including Chetwynd, ostentatiously turned their backs and the detail dissolved, scampering into the buildings like so many rodents.
"What in the—"
"Come on,” St. Clair urged, nearly dragging Sten into a doorway.
"Didn't I say I had a surprise?” she went on.
"GA, Captain. And quick."
"Don't give me orders. Look. You know how to search a room?"
"I do,” Sten said.
"Okay. We're going upstairs. You look for things. I'll talk."
They went up the rickety stairs, and Sten followed her instructions.
"What am I looking for?"
"Anything we can use. And anything the Tahn can sell. We got ourselves a business going, Big X."
Indeed they did.
The slum quarters had never been that well populated—the apartments were entirely too close to Koldyeze. And the periodic draft sweeps the Tahn made for their military started, of course, in the poor sections of Heath. St. Clair had followed orders—if she was to be the scrounger, she would be a clotting good one. And the way to get things was, of course, on the outside. In spite of her total loathing for anything resembling manual labor, she had volunteered for every work gang going. She did not know exactly what to look for, but she knew there was something out there.
What was out there were the guards. And St. Clair knew that any being who was willing to batten on the miseries of others was corruptible. She had tested her theory—and her teeth—when she had found a jeweled tunic pin in some trash.
She had offered it to the nearest and—by estimate from body weight—greediest guard. He had snatched and examined it.
"Are there others?” he had asked.
"I guess so,” St. Clair said innocently, waving a hand around at the multistory buildings. “It'd be interesting to look.
"Wouldn't it?"
The guard grinned. “Whyn't you an’ the others go have a look?"
Within minutes, Captain St. Clair had the rest of the detail worming through the nearest apartment. That looked as if it could develop into something. Within two days she felt less like a corrupter and more like the corrupted. The “looting break” became an instant ritual for most of the work details on their way back to Koldyeze.
St. Clair stopped her explanation and marveled at Sten. He was listening intently while quartering the room like a bloodhound. He started at the far wall and quartered outward. Each piece of broken furniture was picked up or tapped for hidden compartments. The rags that had been clothes were swiftly patted down, then held up to see if they still could be used. The ripped mattress was kneaded for any interesting lumps. There were two pictures lying o
n the floor in their broken frames. Both of them were torn apart. Then Sten set to work knuckle rapping on the walls.
"I said to look for things,” she said.
"That's what I'm doing."
"Pretty clottin’ thorough, mister. What were you when you were a civilian? Some kind of burglar?"
"No,” Sten said. He certainly had no intention of explaining to anyone, least of all to St. Clair, whom he trusted about as much as a Tahn, that his search was the product of thorough Mantis training. “Here we go,” he said.
St. Clair stared—it looked as if Sten had pulled a sliver of metal from his arm and then knifed through a wall switch. The sliver disappeared, and Sten's fingers emerged with a wad of credits. St. Clair inhaled sharply.
"Money. Tahn money."
"Right. Now, go on out, Captain."
"What are you—"
"That's an order! Move!"
St. Clair found herself outside the broken door. A moment later, Sten stepped out beside her.
"Very good, Captain,” he said. “Now. Here's the drill. Anything the guards want—play-pretties, alk, drugs—give it to them."
"Give?"
"Give. Money goes to me."
"Nice racket,” St. Clair said cynically.
Sten paused. “You know, troop—you got a bad attitude. You keep a log. Report what you bring in to Colonel Virunga. Or don't you trust him, either?"
"I trust him,” St. Clair said grudgingly.
"Fine. I also want civilian clothes. Anything electronic. Wire. Tape. If you find any weapons—” Sten stopped and thought. A prisoner found with a weapon on him would be for the high jump—as would, most likely, the entire work detail. “Weapons—you stash them. Report to me, and we'll arrange to get them in the gate."
"Detail! Reassemble!"
"Let's go."
Sten clattered back down the steps. St. Clair followed, looking at his back and wondering several things.
Chetwynd was waiting in the street outside.
"You!"
Sten snapped to attention. “Sir!"
"What was your name again?"
"Horatio, sir."
"You sure you don't remember me?"