by Janet Morris
“If anything happens to her, none of us are safe!” said Dellin loudly, leaning forward upon the burnished table. His short sword clanked.
“That Khys really put a scare into you, didn’t he?” said M’tras, stretching out his legs. One hand played, below Dellin’s line of sight, upon his wakened belt.
“Look at me, M’tras,” said Dellin. M’tras did so, as if bestowing great favor.
“I am telling you, it’s all real! They do affect probability. According to their skills, they do control the future. I’m not crazy. You are. Send her back to him. He is inestimably dangerous. Look at her, if you don’t believe me!”
M’tras looked at me raised an eyebrow. Then he shrugged and turned back to Dellin. “I see her. I’ve got her. He doesn’t. Now, if you’d stayed down there, you might have been able to help. You wanted, you said, out. Well, you’re out. When the ride is over, you’re going to have to face your uncle. You’re confined to three deck until that time.”
“You can’t ...” Dellin scowled, straight brows drawn.
“I could confine your uncle on this ship, I have a personal override. I just wanted to see some Silistran discipline. I’m not going to see it, and I’m not interested in anything you’ve got to say. File a report, if you must. You have an A-systems input in your cabin. Make it to my attention. Maybe I’ll read it. Now, get out!”
Dellin, his face as pale as the hand strangling his hilt, rose wordless and limped to the door. His slap upon the palm lock was loud in the silence. M’tras sat with lowered head until the door slid again across the entrance. Then he touched his belt, and the palm-lock turned from red to amber. We would not, while it glowed that color, be disturbed. I moved to rise off the metal floor. M’tras, with a sharp signal, stilled me. I sank back upon my heels, my face raised to him, as he removed his belt, stretched it upon his lap.
Thinking he had forgotten me, I again made to rise. “No!” he snapped. I shrugged, sitting back. The burnished metal was warm. It seemed to vibrate.
Something in his face as he played with his machine gave warning. I wondered what his world might be like, what place would spawn such a man.
“On my world,” he said, as if he had read me, “we don’t put that much store by females. I still don’t see what’s so special about you, except that fancy brand.”
“I had gathered that much,” I said to him, making a hollow for my silked rump between my heels. I could feel the rough callus snag the silk.
“You’ll gather more,” he promised, eyes heavy-lidded. “But its time for me to gather what I can. Dellin believes everything he said.” He tapped the readout of his belt, as if the machine upheld him. “I’m going to try to be open-minded about this. Do something uncanny. Show me you’re more than King What’s-his-name’s favorite slave.”
“I cannot. You know it. I wear Khys’s band of restraint.”
“How do I know it’s not just another fancy collar?”
“Try and remove it,” I suggested.
He shrugged. “It’s bad manners to take a collar off a woman if you aren’t going to keep her.” His gaze, openly hostile, stripped me. I found I clutched my arms about my waist. “He’s trained you well,” he remarked, supercilious, warning. I straightened up, my plams on my thigh. “What did Dellin say to you?” So abruptly did he snap his question, I flinched, my throat gone dry.
I told him, all but the meaning of the sign, lest I embroil Dellin in my troubles. As was his custom, he asked the same things of me repeatedly, comparing the results. I considered what he had said of women, and etiquette as regards to collars, and the fact that he still held me kneeling before him.
“Please,” I petitioned him, “let me rise.” My knees ached, my calves were run through with hot needles.
He snorted softly through his nose. “You stay there. I’m not that raw that I don’t know the difference between free women and whatever they call it on your planet.” His belt let out a audible beep. He attended it, his mood lightening perceptibly. “And confirmed,” he grunted, grinning. “We now have”—he smiled unkindly—“a tentative fix on every underground depository on Silistra. Look at me!”
Uncomprehending, I raised my head. My back ached intolerably. “Why tell me?”
M’tras leaned forward, buckling the belt again around him. “Because,” he said, upon a cadence, “if your master is monitoring you, I want him to know. If we don’t get some response from him fast, we’re going to blast a few holes in your planet’s precious crust. And some of those underground installations seem to be right below heavily populated areas.” His threat was potent. I though of Well Arlet, beneath which lay hide bast. And the Well Astria, which lay less than seventy neras from hide diet. Intently did M’tras’ pale eyes study me. “You seem a little taken aback. Perchance you don’t believe all you aver. Doubtful, are you, that the dharen will get my message?”
“I cannot know it.” I reverted, in my perplexity, to Silistran. His hand darted out to encircle my throat. By that grip he pulled me to him, until I knelt between his spread legs, my shoulders pinned by his thighs.
“But you believe it,” he accused. He reached under the table. When his hand returned, it cupped the red-eyed death cube. The whole time Dellin had been present, M’tras had not moved from the table. I had thought him brave, indolent. He had been, actually, cautious. “I have your readout. Something is affecting the electrolytic balance of your body fluids. Possibly that band, which even A system can’t analyze. “ His knees pressed my shoulders. In his hand, lightly juggled, was the death cube.
“I do not take your meaning,” I said.
“Anything”—he sighed—“that affects such electrolytic balances affects the stimulus response times of sensory receptors. Within you is a complex set of electrochemical rectifiction and negative resistance devices, the carriers of which are ions—sodium and potassium. The band seems to be interfering with the permeability of certain membranes, membranes that are the junctions of these devices, those that separate fluid-bearing tissues. Your sensory receptors, unable to function normally, cannot sufficiently stress these membranes—change their permeability. Thus the positive ion flow from one fluid to another, which should result in a specifically ranging change of charge in fluid, has been drastically and specifically impaired.”
“I am lost. What means this?”
“I’m not sure yet. Receptor cells in sensory neurals and their associated membranes—differential membranes, through which ions flow more readily in one direction than another—are remarkably similar for all senses, and should, when functioning normally, produce similarity in the characteristic stimulus times. The intensity of stimulus is a function of the number of pulses in the pulse train carried along nerve fibers to the brain. The imput pulse to the circuit is the result of some change in a sensor. In the case of, say, hearing, it’s a change in stress upon the hairs along the basilar membrane in the cochlea. If this selective masking of imput were affecting your hearing you’d be tone deaf, as well as intensity-impaired. But the effect, obtusely selective, is not impairing your hearing. What it is affecting, I don’t know, unless it’s the transduction of energy ... Wait a minute.” He barked a laugh, and consulted his belt.
When he looked up, his eyes were very bright.
“Do you know anything about the kinetics of a photoreaction cycle?”
“No.”
“Well, A systems says the band is acting as an uncoupler, selectively deprotonating. An uncoupler allows electron transport to proceed, but in effect disconnects it from phosphorylation. In a sense, you’re photosynthesizing, or were before they put the band on you. More specifically, that melaninlike pigment that causes your skin to glow is photoreactive under the aegis of a chromoprotein that absorbs at much longer wavelengths than those of the visual spectrum. It’s not phototaxic, but powers a metabolic function that we call proton-plumping. Your skin can convert light energy into an electrochemical gradient—or could if that uncoupler weren’t around your nec
k. We’ve long known that an organism lacking chlorophyll can capture and convert light energy and use it to drive metabolic processes; the Coryf-dennen do it exclusively, using a chromoprotein closely related to visual pigment in animals.”
I nodded; I had met one Coryf-denne. They do not eat, neither do they sleep, and their rough skin glows so bright that one cannot look upon them without discomfort.
“We have also long been aware that light can power the uptake of energy by envelopes of sodium and potassium ions and of amino acids independent of the high-energy bonds of adenosine triphosphate, by some thought to be the primary energy carrier of living cells.”
I shook my head, but it did not help. The dizziness that oft assails me when faced with making sense out of such concepts danced all around me.
“So,” he said, triumphant, “you are being physiologically constrained by this all-sense blanketing. But from what?”
“My hearing is fine,” I said.
“That’s the point. Where is this energy you aren’t receiving supposed to go? What I know is that the band is impairing the conversion into free energy of an electrochemical protein gradient of the chemical free energy of light or of some oxidizable substrate; that the band disconnects you, so to speak, from photoreaction and energy-bond conversion, deprotonates this light-driven proton pump in a sort of attenuation of the energy-transducing mechanism itself. And it’s not directed at any one system I’m set up to scan. It impinges upon all senses, in a consonance that is most distressing, without any effect on your five senses. They are functioning exquisitely, acutely, despite the field effect, or whatever it is, of the band.” He stopped, clicking, exasperated by what he did not see upon my face.
“I think I understand,” I said. And I did. “It is as I have told you. Those skills with which you will not credit me are those you have found impaired. Sensing is no separate organ, but an all-pervasive network, the primal receptors.” I spoke it softly that he might not strike me for speaking of what he would not hear.
He shifted. His left knee ceased its pressure upon me. One eyebrow descended to meet the frost of his gaze. I would have scrambled from him. I dared not.
“What,” he demanded cautiously, “exactly, could you do, without such constraint?”
“Move my flesh from this place to anywhere I chose. Hear and see within my mind. Marshal what forces I chose from the energies about me. Often are such bands used upon wayward forereaders and dhareners; they keep the wearer reduced to five senses, incapable of escape in time or space. The worst of it is the silence.” I heard the thickness in my voice. Fearful, from between his thighs I peered up at him. He had asked, but he had struck me before at such answers.
“But you could exit this ship, in the same manner as Khys entered Dellin’s complex, if you didn’t wear it?”
“Long since, I would have done so,” I affirmed.
M’tras, nodding, made entry into his belt once again. So close, I could see the whirling layers of prenumbers at their deciding. I watched it think, blink, glow with its chosen wisdom. He leaned down, neck craned, and considered it. Shaking his head, he laughed low. As he sat back, his body was fight-tense.
Mine, shoulders entrapped by his thighs, went tight also. For in the telling, I had seen a thing—that Khys could not just drag my flesh to him, as he might have, through the plane worlds, had I not borne the obdurante, warm band at my throat. My fingers twitched, found their way between his clamping thighs to run its vibrating curve. Alone I was, in space, hurtling upon sails of gold. Where?
“Estri,” he said, slurring his tone a half-step, his hand under my chin. I liked not those storm-morn eyes, cold as Opirian nights. I tried to turn my head. His thumb pressed down upon my chin, three fingers up into the soft tenderness behind and beneath. “You just might be right.” His hand toyed again with the incinerating cube.
I shivered before him. “How long,” I asked faintly, “have we been off Silistra?”
“Six hours, fifteen minutes,” he said, of his own knowledge.
An hour is about twenty-one twenty-seconds of an enth, the Silistran twenty-eight-enth day being only forty minutes shy the B.F. Standard day of thirty hours. It was near moon’s meal upon Silistra. The moon would be up, over the Lake of Horns. I wondered what had come to pass this day, Brinar second sixth. Of Chayin I thought, tasting his pain, and Sereth, with whom he had lain whilst this strange creature abducted me. And Khys? Had they come and told him, in his meeting while he was yet filling the vacancy of the southeast corner? Whom had he chosen for these lands, to oversee Dritira, Stra, and Galesh?
“Why?” he asked me, shaking my shoulder.
I only regarded him. Could he not see what loss I mourned, what loss my world was to me? His fingers fell to the dharen’s mark, swirled upon it.
“Why did you ask the time?” he demanded in a voice that scraped bone. How, I wondered, would he have treated me, were he not planning to return me to Khys? His hand slid about my throat, longing. I saw him restrain himself, whatever violence crossed his mind. He shook my head about savagely.
“I am only hungry,” I choked.
“I have no intention of feeding you until we’ve finished our little talk. How and why was the band put upon you in the first place?” I marked him disquieted. He believed the artifactual evidence upon me. His machine had spoken for my truth. M’tras clicked, shifted. I took comfort in his unease.
“Did not he from whom you obtained aid explain that to you?” I dared.
“Don’t push me.” His fingertips played a syncopated pattern upon my throat.
“It is rather complex, what you ask.” I sighed. “As to how it is done—it is simply done. When Khys had me brought before him, I was much wounded. He merely put me in flesh lock and slipped it about my neck. He made me hold up my hair while he did it.”
“What’s flesh lock?” he rejoined, eyes narrowed.
“You would surely be angered if I tried to explain it. The band is fastened about the neck of the victim by he to whom it is keyed. It must be removed by that same hand. Not even the high chalder, who has charge of the bands until they are keyed, can remove them.” My eyes begged his, that I might be silent.
“Where do they come from?”
“Normally they are produced by the dharen’s council. One puts a band of restraint upon a highly skilled person only, one who may not be bound otherwise. They are little used. I had never heard of them upon Silistra until I was taken to the Lake of Horns.”
“You have not told me why you wear it,” he prodded, implacable. I shifted upon icy limbs between his legs. I did not want to speak to him of my diminishment, my shame. I did not want to think of what I had been—so highly skilled, so arrogant, so foolish. His hand twisted in my hair. By it he pulled me closer.
“I abrogated, in hauteur, my chaldra. I became couch-mate of a chaldless outlaw. We caused a great deal of bloodshed, hearkening to the law within. Khys did not deal harshly with us. He left us our lives. He wanted a child from me. I would not give it. He stripped me of my memories, that I might not object. When it was done, I did not object, but asked for his seed.” Blinking back tears, I regarded him. His face was emotionless. His grip upon my hair relaxed. I sank back, resting on my heels.
“How did he get you to put the band on you, if you were, as you put it, so highly skilled?” I thought him further disquieted. His brows had both descended. I had been reminded, relating what had occurred, of the damage done to me. Could I ever, I wailed silently, be again what I had been before Amarsa, ’695, what I had been with Sereth, upon Mount Opir? Even might I regain such skills as I had been pleased to employ when I found myself in the Parset Desert? I doubted it. I dropped my eyes to M’tras’ belt. Doubtless I, too, would need such a machine to think for me, to direct me as to what owkahen had in store, and how to meet it. He cuffed my head to one side, against his thigh. I let it lie there, slumping against him.
“How did he acquire me? He hested it. He brought his will into
the time. He waited, and when the moment matched his sensing, he sent men to fetch us. I had fallen unconscious. I awoke in the hands of his minions.” Without my power, and without most of my sensing, I recalled. “We were brought before him. He tried and sentenced us as suited him. He, as I just told you, put the band upon me. The rest also I have told you.” From my slanted viewpoint, his face seemed gray, alien, forbidding. I raised my head, held it straight. His hand freed my hair, touched his eyes, rubbed there.
“Sit as you wish,” he said, releasing me totally. I did not try to rise. I would not have been able. By my arms I pushed myself backward and slid my legs out and around. I could not feel them. In a few moments, I knew, I would long for this state. They were clumsy, as if another owned them.
“What are you thinking?” he demanded, rising. He stretched, his hands at the small of his black-clothed back. His boot heels thudded on the metal as he went and stood before the real-seeming Western Forest, truly upon far M’ksakka. We were not going, I knew, to M’ksakka. “If you want to eat, you had better be responsive,” he warned, turning to face me, arms crossed above his wakened belt.
“That we are not going to M’ksakka. I wondered where we were bound. Then how long that might take. Then I took thought of you, and your machine-symbiote. Does it speak to the ship’s computer?” I rubbed my calves, slapped them. The pain was begining.
“This ship has an A-systems unit, yes. I couldn’t wait for relay. M’ksakkan devices are nowhere as sophisticated. The brain that runs this ship is M’ksakkan. The A-systems unit we carry is as advanced in comparison as I am to my cave-dwelling ancestors.” Looking at him, I wondered if he knew how close he was to those of whom he spoke. The burn-tingle had reached my ankles. Water-rush presaged it in my calves. My knees were still frozen. I recollected what Khys’s Estri, without comprehension, had read of the dharen’s new writings. He had brought forth a volume containing odd references and analogies to computers, accompanied by charts. In it he had put forward the belief that hesting is a survival characteristic in all races, that to some degree, oft under the control of the deeper conscious, all men hest. How these hests are experienced, Khys postulated, is greatly affected by conditioning and conception. Furthermore, he affirmed, and I do believe him, that in a mechanistic culture where survival is removed from the individual’s control, the hesting skills may turn and prey upon the experiential reality of the conscious mind—may become a tool of the powerful and divided selves, the inimical, fragmented, constrained remnants of the law within so doggedly supressed by such as M’ksakkans. He had called it Hesting: The Primal Perogative, and in it he had adjured the reader to study will and responsibility, and take thought as to the get of one’s actions. The gift of owkahen did Khys offer in such language as might appeal to a man like M’tras. I lowered my head, fastening my gaze upon my quivering thigh. Perhaps Khys would spend me, if the gain were high enough.