When they got there, he saw that one of the outer walls had crumbled half away—the result of Rahatan’s efforts, no doubt. Stepping over the rubble, Erid and Denara went inside and waded through the dust-ridden air.
There were barred cells on either side of a long corridor. Three of the ones on the left displayed ruined masonry and twisted bars. No doubt, they had held Rahatan, Denara, and Leyden.
The cells on the right, however, seemed perfectly intact, despite the tremors to which Rahatan had subjected the entire fortress. If Mollic was inside one of those those cells, as Denara had indicated, he might well have gone unscathed.
Before Erid could find out one way or the other, he heard a bizarre croaking sound. It repeated itself over and over. Turning to Denara, he noticed her lack of surprise.
“What is that?” he asked.
She grunted. “That’s the man we’re looking for.” Then she pointed to the last cell on the right.
Erid followed her gesture. There was something about the croaking that made his skin crawl. Nonetheless, Rahatan had given him a job, and he meant to see it through.
As he walked the length of the corridor, the croaking grew louder and louder, echoing from wall to wall. Erid took the opportunity to glance to his right and left. All the other barred compartments were empty, he noticed. Only Mollic’s was occupied.
Finally, he came to the cell he was looking for. All at once, the croaking seem to diminish in intensity, signifying Mollic’s awareness of him. Clenching his jaw, Erid peered inside the compartment.
Mollic was in there, all right. But the fellow was naked, his garments shoved into a corner of his cell as if he no longer had any need of them. His skin was covered with razor-thin black stripes, and there were sacs on either side of his neck that inflated and deflated as he breathed.
“Are you all right?” Erid asked him.
For a moment, Mollic just stared at him. Then he smiled slyly and created a flash of fire in the space between them.
Instinctively, Erid flinched. That made the transformed in the cell smile even more. He made another flash, and another.
“Mollic,” he said in a reedy voice. “Mollic Mollic.”
It was the sound Erid had heard before—but now, he knew it wasn’t just a croak. It was the poor man’s name.
“Mollic Mollic,” said the prisoner.
Erid wanted to free him—but in this case, at least, he had to agree with Osan’s approach. It would be better if they left Mollic where he was.
He turned back to Denara. “He seems all right. But if we take him with us, he’s likely to hurt someone. Himself, maybe.”
She nodded. “We’ll have to get him some food, though. He may be here for a while before the government finds him.”
Erid agreed.
As he and Denara went to find sustenance for the only transformed who would be left behind, he vowed never to curse his fate again. Ugly and afflicted as he was, he was still a lot better off than some people.
Chapter Ten
IT HAD BEEN a long day.
Weary and begrimed like all the other transformed alongside him, Erid stood silently, almost reverently, amid the rubble of the fortress’s eastern wall and considered the not-so-distant city of Verdeen.
It sprawled in the foothills, a scattering of bright lights that housed more than a hundred thousand people. The place looked calm, peaceful … unaware of the momentous event that had occurred in the ancient structure above it.
Erid had a hard time grasping it himself. Minutes earlier, he had been a prisoner of the worldwide government. Now he and all the other transformed—with the exception of Mollic, of course—were prisoners no longer.
They were free.
“We did it!” Leyden thundered all of a sudden.
As if a dam had broken, a cheer went up from the throats of the transformed—all thirty-seven of them. Fists were pumped into the air. There was a sense of triumph, of invincibility, as if they had proven conclusively that there was nothing that could stand against them.
Nor could it have happened without Rahatan. Erid knew that and he was sure the others did, too.
Without Rahatan’s spirit, none of the transformed would have found the courage to defy Osan. Without Rahatan’s leadership, they would have been ensconced in their respective quarters at that very moment, staring into the darkness without hope or the prospect of any.
“Rahatan!” cried Denara.
“Rahatan!” sang the youth with the luminous eyes, which seemed even more radiant in the dying, orange light of dusk.
“Rahatan!” Leyden roared.
The earth-mover didn’t say anything. He just basked in the glow of their admiration, looking almost humble.
“What now?” asked Corba.
“Where should we go?” another of the transformed asked Rahatan.
He pointed to Verdeen, in all its splendor. “That’s where we’ll go,” he told them.
“Into the city?” asked Denara.
He nodded. “We’ll take the place over. It’ll become our city.”
Seevyn cursed. “Are you insane?”
Rahatan’s eyes slid slowly in her direction. “You have a problem with that plan?” he asked.
“I certainly do,” said the illusion-maker. “If we stay in one place, it’ll be too easy for the government to find us. They’ll have us dug out of Verdeen before the sun comes up.”
What she said made sense to Erid.
Corba seemed interested as well. “Whatwouldyoudo?” she asked Seevyn.
“We need to split up,” the illusion-maker told her. “Put as much distance between ourselves and this fortress as we can. Then we’ll have a chance to blend into society again.”
“We can’t all blend in,” Leyden objected. “I can’t.”
“Yes, you can,” Seevyn insisted. “At first, you can stay with me if you want. My illusions will keep people from seeing you as you are. Then, in time, you can find a way to disguise yourself.”
“And live like a hermit,” Rahatan noted, “alone and apart.” He turned to the other transformed. “I’m offering you a chance to live with your own kind. A chance to stay together and remain strong.”
“A chance to be imprisoned again,” Seevyn argued.
Rahatan rounded on her, eyes blazing. “Hold your tongue,” he rasped.
Erid had never heard the earth-mover take that tone of voice—not even with Osan and his guards. To hear him use it with one of his fellow transformed …
Seevyn laughed derisively. “Who are you to order me around?”
He pointed to the broken wall of the fortress. “I’m the one who freed you from your prison,” he reminded her.
The illusion-maker’s eyes narrowed. “Why? So I could exchange Osan’s tyranny for yours?” She scanned the faces of the others. “If you value your freedom, now’s the time to do something about it. Get as far away from here as you can.”
Then she turned her back on them and started down the barren slope—headed in the opposite direction from Verdeen. The wind plastered her garments to her, as if giving her a helping hand.
At first, no one responded to Seevyn’s speech. All they did was cast uncertain glances at one another. Then two of the transformed—the four-armed man and a woman who could draw energy from things around her—separated themselves from the group. As the sunset painted a wash of fire across the sky, they followed the illusion-maker down the mountain.
It seemed to Erid that others might leave as well. In fact, he was beginning to wonder if it might not be a bad idea himself … when he saw Rahatan point a finger at Seevyn and the others.
“Where do you think you’re going?” he demanded.
Seevyn and her companions stopped and looked back at him. “Wherever we want,” she called back, the wind snatching at her words. “We’re free, aren’t we? Isn’t that what our escape was all about?”
“You’re fools, all three of you!” Rahatan bellowed, his voice echoing savagely down th
e mountainside.
The illusion-maker didn’t answer him. Neither did the other two. She just turned again and kept going, and her companions went with her.
“Fools!” the earth-mover roared at the top of his lungs.
Then, without warning, his hands clenched into fists—and the ground seemed to open like a hungry maw under Seevyn’s feet. She screamed and looked back over her shoulder, and Erid saw something big and dark and fearful come flying at Rahatan.
But the thing shivered into nothingness before it could reach him, as if it had never existed in the first place—as if it were only an illusion. And when Erid looked back to see what had happened to Seevyn, he couldn’t find her. All he could see was the ground coming together again.
The sight made Erid want to retch. The illusion-maker had been swallowed whole by the mountainside. For the love of the ancients, Rahatan had buried her alive.
The two transformed who had followed Seevyn scrambled away frantically from her burial place. Their eyes were wide with horror at what they had seen—and with fear that Rahatan might not be done yet.
But their fears were unfounded. Slowly, Rahatan let his fists fall to his sides. Then he turned to Erid and the other transformed, a guilty expression on his face.
“Seevyn was a cancer among us,” he explained in a strangely reasonable voice. “She had to be removed, before it was too late.”
No one replied. With Paldul one of Rahatan’s staunchest supporters, no one even dared to think.
“You all understand that, don’t you?” asked the earthmover.
“Ofcourse,” said Corba, though she sounded less than certain.
“You had no choice,” added the youth with the luminous eyes.
Rahatan smiled a haunting smile. “I’m glad you see it the way I do,” he said. “Now let’s go. Verdeen is waiting for us.”
As if nothing had happened, as if Seevyn’s death had never taken place, he made his way down the slope. And with what seemed like little choice in the matter, the others followed—Erid among them.
Numbly, he wondered if the story about Seevyn concealing her ugliness was true, or if she was really as beautiful as she appeared to be. At that point, it shouldn’t have mattered anymore.
But somehow, it mattered a lot.
* * *
Lt. Sovar stopped outside his friend’s door and pressed the pad set into the bulkhead beside it. A moment later, the duranium panel slid aside, revealing Robinson’s neatly furnished quarters.
Unfortunately, Robinson herself wasn’t anywhere in sight. “I’ll be just a minute,” she called from the next room.
Sovar nodded. “Take your time,” he said, depositing himself on the transporter operator’s couch.
He looked around at the artwork displayed on the walls. One piece in particular caught his eye.
“This is new,” he observed out loud.
His friend poked her head in from the next room. “What is?”
Sovar pointed to a striking montage of welded metals hanging above Robinson’s workstation. “It’s a Richard Serra, isn’t it?”
“Very good. But then, as I’ve always said, that Relda Sovar knows his twentieth-century artists.”
The montage was merely a copy, of course. An authentic Serra would have cost more than any Starfleet officer could afford. Sovar sat back and admired the piece nonetheless.
Robinson withdrew her head again and finished dressing. “So … is everything all right?” she asked after a moment.
Sovar turned and considered the wall his friend was standing behind. “What do you mean?” he asked.
“Come on, Relda, it’s me. I can tell when something’s got you down. Besides, you don’t often visit the lounge in the middle of the day.”
He marveled at how well Robinson knew him. “Well,” the Xhaldian said, “maybe I am a little out of sorts. A little …” He was reluctant to finish the statement. “Homesick, I guess.”
His friend emerged from the next room with her dark hair freshly combed. “Homesick?” she echoed. “A big, bad security officer like you?”
Sovar frowned at her. “You’re making fun of me.”
“Just a little,” Robinson assured him. “Now, tell me, why would you be homesick? Didn’t you get anything from Xhaldia in the last subspace packet?”
He nodded. “I got something, all right. But it didn’t exactly give me reason to smile. My parents told me my brother Erid had left on his adulthood quest.”
His friend looked at him. “And that’s bad?”
“Not normally, no. But he didn’t leave a farewell message for me.” Sovar shook his head. “By the ancients … me, his older brother!”
Robinson considered the information. “I’m sure he didn’t mean to insult you,” she said optimistically.
“No,” he told her. “That’s exactly what he meant to do.”
The transporter operator sat down on a chair opposite him. “Was there some kind of trouble between you and your brother?”
Sovar frowned. “I never told you about it, but … yes, there was trouble. It’s been there for some time. You see, Erid didn’t like the idea of my leaving Xhaldia and becoming the first of our people to join Starfleet. He wanted me to stay and pursue a more traditional existence.”
“Maybe he just liked having you around,” Robinson suggested.
“Maybe,” he echoed. “In any case, he took my leaving hard. He refused to see me off as my parents did. But I thought when he got older, he would see my side of it.” He made a sound of bitterness deep in his throat. “Erid is twenty-two now. And by not leaving me a message, he’s showing me he still hasn’t forgiven me for leaving.”
Robinson’s eyes narrowed. “But the packet came almost a week ago. You haven’t been in a funk all that time. At least, not as far as I’ve been able to tell.”
The security officer sighed. “It was Commander Worf who rubbed … what is the expression you humans have? Salt in my wound?”
His friend looked at him. “Worf? How?”
Sovar shook his head. “I know it sounds foolish, but … I envy him. He seems so at home here on the Enterprise, as if the captain and the other officers were his family.”
Robinson considered what he was saying. “He really does seem at home here,” she commented at last. “But then, he spent seven or eight years as an officer on the Enterprise-D. When you work alongside someone for that long, they do become as close as family.”
He became wistful at the thought of it. “My brother hates me. And my parents are far away. What family do I have?”
“Hey,” his friend told him, “I think of you as family.”
“Do you?” Sovar asked.
She nodded.
He smiled. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me so quickly,” Robinson replied. “I don’t particularly like my family.”
Sovar’s mouth fell open.
His friend giggled. “Just kidding.”
The Xhaldian scowled. “Now you’re really making fun of me.”
“Guilty as charged,” she said, taking his arm and leading him to the door. Clearly, she was trying to take his mind off his troubles. “Now let’s get over to the lounge before all the drinks are gone.”
“That’s hard to imagine,” said Sovar. “But then, in the last several months, I’ve seen a lot of things I once found hard to imagine.”
The door to Robinson’s quarters slid open as they approached it. Suddenly, they heard the sound of laughter. Coarse, harsh laughter.
Robinson looked at the security officer. He shrugged. Together, they went out into the corridor and looked to see where the sound was coming from.
What Sovar saw was a pair of battered-looking figures—Worf and the X-man called Wolverine—negotiating the hallway with a tired air about them. The black exercise clothes they wore were ripped and stained, and Worf had big, purple bruises on his face.
Wolverine elbowed the Klingon in the ribs. “That was a good workout.”
Wolverine pointed a finger at his companion. “Never can tell who you’re gonna have to fight next.”
The Klingon broke into a savage grin.
As the two of them walked by Sovar and Robinson, they appeared to realize what a sight they must have been. The mutant stopped to look at Worf. Worf looked at the mutant. Then they shrugged and started down the corridor again.
“Carry on,” the Klingon told Sovar and Robinson. Then he followed his companion around a bend in the passageway.
The security officer turned to his friend. “That Worf … he finds family everywhere, I think.”
Robinson didn’t say anything. She just rolled her eyes, took Sovar’s arm, and led him in the direction of the ship’s lounge.
Chapter Eleven
IT WAS AFTER midnight when Erid and the others reached the outskirts of the city. Despite Rahatan’s boasts about making Verdeen their place, the earth-mover opted for a more conservative course of action.
He asked a transformed named Cudarris, who had lived in Verdeen until he was almost fifteen, where they might find an area with some condemned buildings. Cudarris described a district called the Old Quarter, where a whole block’s worth of residential structures was gradually being razed and replaced with new housing.
Rahatan said that sounded good to him. He asked Cudarris to lead the way, but to take the least-traveled route possible.
The transformed didn’t travel all together, either. They would have been too easy to spot that way. They walked in groups of three and four, keeping the group ahead of them in sight and avoiding illuminated windows wherever they could. Luckily, they didn’t run into any inquisitive hovercar drivers, and they never saw even a sign of the city guards.
At last, they came to a series of half a dozen likely tenements. None of them were big enough to hold all the transformed, but together they would do the trick.
As they gathered in an alley near the buildings, Rahatan called for a transformed named Inarh, who turned out to be the man with the luminous eyes. Inarh came to the front of the group.
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