Ankar Moor and Polna had already collected their team and stood now on the outside of the main door to the cell area, their blasters at the ready. They were dressed in all-encasing black rubber body suits, with matching masks, the whole picture making them look like the old archive video pictures of men exploring under the sea. They were able to communicate through microphones in their masks. They waited patiently, then Ankar Moor said at last:
“The gas will have done its work. We will enter, Polna, switch off the shield.”
Polna moved over to the outer control board and obeyed the order.
“Blaster shield removed.”
Ankar Moor nodded and moved forward to the door-locking panel. Any emergency within automatically changed the combination and he tapped out the new one now. After a moment the huge door swung open. Already the vents had gone into reverse and were sucking out the gas to release it through ducts to wilderness areas far away from the City. The atmosphere outside was polluted enough by the Flash Winds and if any Mutants were nearby when it reached the outside air, so much the better. They were particularly vulnerable to this kind of gassing. Even with this efficient service, great clouds of the gas still hung in the air in the main area, corridor and cells.
Ankar Moor entered at the head of his men, a position, Polna reflected, that might have been given to him had there been a danger of anyone waiting for them. He knew Ankar Moor would not have done this out of cowardice—only because he regarded himself as too valuable to lose.
The only sound inside the area came from the slap of the rubber against the metal floor and the strange sound of the masked men’s breathing, like a man sucking water through a straw.
Leaving Polna to relock the men who were already in the cells, Ankar Moor strode down to the end of the corridor. He came back quickly and beckoned Polna to follow him.
“I have found them.”
He led his assistant to the end of the corridor where the Guides lay with Doctor Karl and Marcus. They looked with admiration at the determined job the Guides had made of the end wall, then turned their attention back to the bodies. Ankar Moor pointed down to where Kaz lay on his back, Deneer sprawled across him.
“He’s the one. He was the leader. I am sure.”
Polna looked at him.
“Do you want him killed?”
Ankar Moor was still for a moment, then shook his head. He was obviously uncomfortable with his leather mask under the mask of the body suit.
“No, he is the one for punishment.”
“Just him.”
Ankar Moor shrugged:
“I would like to do the same for the girl, but she might not survive. He will still be in the Death Sport tomorrow. Just him for punishment.”
Polna beckoned two of the guards forward to take Kaz pulling him out from under Deneer and taking him through the main hall and out of the cell area to the punishment block of the prison level.
Ankar Moor pointed at the wall.
“They nearly got through.”
“But it was you who stopped them.” Polna always knew the right thing to say. He had been with Ankar Moor for a long time.
Ankar Moor pointed at Deneer and the Karls:
“Put them in the empty cell. We will let the man join them when he has been punished.” He began to move away, then pointed at Ikar and Varros almost as an afterthought.
“Those two can be destroyed. We will not need them now.”
He walked back down the corridor, leaving Polna and his men to get on with their grisly work. Behind him two shots from the anti-blaster gun told him that his orders were being carried out. A moment later the last cell door was shut and locked. Deneer and the Karls were safely locked away.
He smiled inside his mask. The attempted escape had been a futile one. His pre-planning and precautions had proved too much, even for the Guides. His power was proven, theirs was vanquished. Now he would enjoy the punishment of Kaz Oshay—the first part of his revenge for the destruction of his face by the Guide’s mother.
On the way out, he stopped at the console to enter his report for the Lord Zirpola, then he walked through towards the punishment section.
CHAPTER SIX
The punishment block of the prison level of the City of Helix had been specially designed by the Lord Zirpola and Ankar Moor to suit their own special tastes. It would better have been described as a torture chamber. When the Lord Zirpola had become the ruler of Helix, there had been no such place. His forebears might, in their way, have been cruel hard tyrants, but they were men who held a certain balance of fairness in their cruelty and were not much given to the more sadistic amusements of punishment. The Death Sport each year had provided them with the sight of quite enough death and maiming.
Both Zirpola and Ankar Moor had particular tastes in this respect and they had set about creating a torture chamber that would strike terror into any Stateman who fell foul of them. To help them do so, they had dived into the video bank archives on such matters before the great devastation and, as a result, they had come up with a design plan that was a cross between a mediaeval dungeon and space-age sophistication. While it boasted the latest electronic equipment, it also had a wall hung with chains, and employed Enforcers who were stripped to the waists and wore black masks, to add to the authenticity when they prepared their long whips for a beating.
After the others had been locked in their cells, Polna and two men had carried the still-unconscious Kaz Oshay through to the torture chamber where Ankar Moor, already divested of his anti-gas costume, was waiting.
The masked man said: “Leave him to me.”
Polna was only too happy to go off and change. He did not find such torture displays to his taste. He preferred the disorientation chambers, with their torture of the mind, any day.
As soon as Polna was gone, Ankar Moor turned to the torturers:
“Strip him.”
Hastily, the guards stripped Kaz of his clothing, revealing the smooth skin, with a singular lack of scarring and the tight musculature of his torso.
Ankar Moor bent close to inspect the helpless body. He chuckled cruelly. It would be a pleasure to put a body like this to the whip.
“I want him chained so that he cannot move.”
The torturers lifted the inert form of the naked Guide and quickly and expertly chained him to the wall. Ankar Moor gave them a lot of practice at this task. His wrists and ankles were spread-eagled against the hard, cold metal and clamped into place, holding him rigid, his back muscles stretched as far as they would go, ready for the lash, his body completely helpless, unable to twist or resist the coming lash.
Ankar Moor inspected the job and expressed himself pleased:
“Now bring him round.”
One of the men hurried away to a medical chest that stood in the corner of the room. For torture it is necessary that the subject be conscious and all specialised equipment for this purpose was kept there. The man got the tiny pot of salve that was the antidote to the nerve gas and went over to the chained man, rubbing a little over his lips and the ends of the nostrils. As his shallow breathing took the substance into his system, he slowly swam back into a consciousness in which he was as helpless as the gas had made him—and also aware of a greater danger. He was shamed as much by his helplessness as by his nakedness.
Ankar Moor stepped forward, close to Kaz Oshay. His huge hand grabbed a handful of the mane of hair and he jerked the imprisoned man’s head back so that he almost choked and felt that his neck would break.
“Now, Guide, Kaz Oshay, son of Oshay, you will feel my wrath and my vengeance. I will have you beaten to within an inch of your life. I will flay your flesh and destroy it as your mother destroyed mine.”
He pushed the man’s head forward so it hit the wall and let go of the hair. He was only sorry that he could not mark the Guide’s face the way his had been marked. But it was important that he look a perfect and complete Guide in the arena the next day.
In spite of the blow
, Kaz managed to turn his head and his eyes looked into those of his captor for a moment, blazing with a hatred that put new fear into the other man, in spite of his position of advantage.
Ankar Moor stood back and one of the swarthy torturers stepped forward, a long whip in his hand. Ankar Moor barked:
“Wait.”
He snatched the whip from the man’s hand and inspected the end of the lash. What he saw did not please him:
“Get me a knife.”
His order was obeyed with alacrity and he split the end of the leather with the sharp knife he was handed, before tying two small, tight knots in it. They would inflict as much damage as the lash itself, bringing out that extra flash of pain with each cut that would make Ankar Moor’s enjoyment of the occasion all the deeper. Only when he had finished these preparations did he hand the whip back and step aside, giving a nod that was an order for the punishment to commence.
The man stepped forward and pulled back his arm, before bringing it forward in a wide sweep. The end of the whip lashed out, making a singing noise through the air as it went, as if boasting of its power to hurt and maim, before finding its mark and making the first red bruise across the pure, unmarked skin of the helpless Guide.
Kaz Oshay felt the pain rush through him and gritted his teeth, determined that he would make no sound that would show his torturer he was having an effect. Again and again, as the lash fell on his unprotected back and buttocks, each searing pain became more difficult to fight than the last, the end of the lash burning through his body like fire, almost forcing the sound out of him. Even through his clenched teeth he was forced at last to give out a scream of pain.
Behind his leather mask, Ankar Moor smiled as he heard the sound. It was a sign that he was winning, that he was humiliating the Range Guide and beginning to feel the sweetness of the revenge he was taking for Oshay’s deeds.
It was not long before the whipping began to draw blood and, as stroke after stroke fell, the flesh underneath the ruined skin was exposed and mangled by its touch.
By this time even the comforts of the code had fled from Kaz Oshay’s brain and he was crying out in sheer pain, not hearing the sound of his own screams in his ears as his heart seemed pounding in them towards bursting point.
The blood ran in rivulets over his buttocks and down his legs to the floor. For a while the torturer rested and the only sounds were the steady drip of the blood and the strange bubbling in Kaz Oshay’s throat, as he gasped for breath, fighting against a feeling that death would soon overcome him.
Ankar Moor had watched all this in silence and, as the torturer got into position again and curled the lash back, he grabbed at the end of it, still wet with Kaz Oshay’s blood and jerked it out of the man’s hand.
“Enough. I do not want him dead just yet.”
He let the whip fall to the ground and moved forward to inspect the helpless prisoner. Once more his huge hand grasped a handful of Kaz Oshay’s hair, now matted with the sweat of his struggle against pain, and yanked his head back as far as the bonds would allow, causing the Guide to choke and cough in his blinding pain. But the eyes of Kaz Oshay were still clear enough to see, still blazing with a concentrated anger that he projected at the man who had ordered this humiliation and torment on him. He opened his cracked lips and managed to gasp:
“Ankar Moor. You are an animal.”
The Chief of the Obedience Enforcers threw back his head and laughed aloud.
“You call me an animal—after all I have done to try to make you feel at peace, Kaz Oshay?”
Kaz kept together all the determination that he could muster in his battered, torn body, calling upon all the strength of the consciousness to make him firm in his hatred and resolve.
“You must fight me.”
This amused Ankar Moor even more:
“I fight you? But I have already won. You belong to me, both your body and your soul.”
He emphasised this by jerking Kaz’s head back still further until the chained man thought his neck might snap like a dry twig. Nevertheless, his resolve was firm.
“You must fight me, and you must fight me alone. I call on the backing of the code. You must fight.”
Ankar Moor was contemptuous of the ravings and bleatings of his torn prisoner. Didn’t the man before him realise that he was beaten? All he gasped now were merely words, formulae, outmoded symbols of an age that the plans he had with Zirpola were sweeping aside:
“You call upon your code. What code? Not mine. I live by my own, which is to have no code at all. You are nothing more than a broken reed, a helpless prisoner. By your code, truly, I am my only master.”
Kaz Oshay tried to ignore the sneering with which Ankar Moor was attempting to discredit the code of the consciousness.
“Fight me, you animal.”
Ankar Moor found that his sense of triumph was draining away. His patience with this man, who refused to break, was wearing thin. He glared at the prisoner and his tone was filled with venom.
“No, Kaz Oshay, son of Oshay. I will not fight you. I will not allow you to die in privilege. I could kill you now and I would enjoy the act. I will enjoy the morrow even more, for then I can just watch as you are destroyed in the Death Sport.”
All the time they spoke, Kaz found that hatred was helping his strength to return. He desperately wanted to keep Ankar Moor talking, talk would undermine his feeling of superiority. He feigned ignorance:
“The Death Sport?”
Yes, in Helix, as they will throughout the world, the laws of the Death Sport have replaced the laws of the code. You cannot win, you must break. If you do not believe me, just remember the words of your own code: Every tear of patience builds the value.”
This time, even Kaz Oshay could find no reply. Talking was finished. He felt an infinite weariness in which pain was the blanket of peace that would comfort him. He allowed himself to slip slowly into the pain, so that his eyes glazed over and he slipped into a trance-like state of unconsciousness that freed a Guide from the pain of his earthly body.
Ankar Moor held the head back for another moment, rage building as he realised the way in which Kaz Oshay had withdrawn from him. Then he pushed the man’s head forward against the cold metal of the wall to which he was chained and turned away to walk abruptly from the torture chamber, his triumph evaporated.
Polna was hurrying down the corridor outside to join his master, having changed back into his normal uniform, the three flashes of silver on the black sleeve. Ankar Moor walked past him, pausing only to snap:
“Return him to the cell with his fellow Guide.”
Yes, Lord,” But Ankar Moor had already charged on.
Polna beckoned the two guards who stood at the entrance to the torture chamber to holster their weapons and follow him. As he entered the torture chamber, he had to use all his control to stop from gagging at the sight of the destroyed back of the chained prisoner, raw and bleeding in the light. He had the opportunity to turn his head away to give the order to the guards:
“Take him down and return him to the cell that contains the other Guide, the woman.”
He went back to the door, to glance down the corridor as if waiting for somebody, as the men went about their business. It would not do any good, either for him or for them, if they were to see how close to sickness he had been brought by the sight of the injured, chained man.
He felt a deep, black fear in his heart. He was too close to Ankar Moor. Too many times he had deflected the heat of his superior’s anger when it fell on him, knowing that one day the other man’s patience would be exhausted and he, just an ordinary Stateman, would feel more than the lash of his tongue and the burning contempt of his eyes. One day, perhaps, he would give mortal offence, and then it would be his turn for the torture chamber, his skin lacerated, his spirit broken.
Deneer had been locked with Doctor Karl and his son in an otherwise unoccupied cell. While the two Statemen lay slumped on the floor, trying to recover not only from t
he nerve gas attack, but also from the unaccustomed ordeals that they had faced during the day, they found that they were filled with a burning anger that would not allow sleep to come to them, but sent a debilitating nervous energy coursing through their veins.
On her own recovery from the gas attack, Deneer had risen and now stared out through the slit in the cell door, her eyes mirrors, unseeing, as she prayed to the consciousness for the soul and body of Kaz Oshay and begged that he might return to her in safety. Even in close confinement, her mind could not be so imprisoned and she allowed it to relax and expand, to roam free over the wasteland that had been her home for all her life. She remembered the feel of the wind in her hair as she had galloped her beloved steed forward across open plains and through narrow gullies. That was the only life for a Guide, free and alone. And yet there was now one corner of her mind that doubted this proposition, a corner that saw her not alone, but with Kaz Oshay. True, it was still connected with the roaming of the wastelands, but she was not alone any more, felt that she no longer wished to be just her own master. In these thoughts she felt a strange guilt of betrayal of her adherence to the code, as her mind fought with thoughts of tasting freedom just once more, but with Kaz Oshay as her companion, always by her side.
It was in this strange conflict of thought that love came to Deneer, the way it had come to many of the Guides before.
Marcus sat silent, fighting off his anger and frustration, trying to calm himself down so that he might slip into a healing sleep. But it was not yet to be. He turned to his father:
“I am shamed by failure. But why are you here, what happened?”
Doctor Karl gave him a smile of reassurance.
“Your attempt was compliment enough—for me. As for myself, I ran a diagnostic test on Lord Zirpola and was foolish enough to give him the true results.”
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