Lamarchos (32 page)

Cautiously, hand pressed against the wall to steady her, she got back on her feet and tottered around the room to the open wall, intending to make her way down the corridor visible outside and find some answers to make sense out of this mess.

She slammed into a transparent hardness. Her knees gave way and she tumbled in a heap onto the yielding floor. When the dizziness retreated she reached out and explored the opening with a shaking hand. Some substance harder than glass and far more transparent blocked it. With a whimper of frustration she slammed her fist against it. Sucking at the reddened spot along the side of her hand she sank to the floor and stared hopelessly at the unreachable corridor.

Time passed. Perhaps she slept. She wasn't sure.

“Lee!”

She lifted her head. Stavver stood outside. His voice came to her as if there was nothing between them, adding one more facet to her confusion. “Miks!” She jumped up. “Where am I? What happened?” She flattened her hands against the transparency. “What is this that holds me in here? What am I doing here? What.…”

“Hush, Lee. Calm down and listen.”

“Calm down?” She brushed distractedly at the red hair tumbling over her face. “Get me out of here!”

He ran a hand nervously across his face. He looked himself again, tall and thin, a mop of moon-white hair tumbling over pale grey-blue eyes. She could see the blue veins pulsing at his temple, webbing the backs of his thin hands. “Aleytys, shut up and listen.”

She drew in a deep breath and let it trickle out again. “What about a few answers?” As her hands closed into fists behind her back, a headache pain began to beat behind her eyes.

Stavver glanced nervously over his shoulder. “Leyta, I've bought a few minutes with you. Old I!kuk gets the oboloi where he can. Listen. You're in the slave pens of I!kwasset.”

“Slave pens!”

“Don't interrupt. Maissa tricked me. When I was hunting down … never mind names … she drugged you, hauled you here and sold you, claiming you owed her passage money. When I got back the ship was gone.”

Aleytys swallowed, a new fear hollow inside her. She opened her mouth but the words were tangled in a lump blocking her throat. She licked dry lips. “Sharl?”

He rubbed his forehead. “She took him with her,” he mumbled. “I'm sorry, Lee.”

“Miks …”

“He'll be all right. Leyta. He's your son.”

She crossed her arms over her breasts. “Get me out of here.”

“No way, Leyta.”

“You're the best thief.”

“No way. Not out of the slave pens.” He smiled wearily at her. She could see a faint beading of sweat on his forehead, something she'd seldom seen before. “Don't you think I'd have you out of there if I could?”

“Would you?”

He flattened his palms against the transparency. “I have to, Aleytys. You've hooked me hard. Look. I can't get you out of here. Once you're sold, that's different.”

She moved impatiently. “You got in. Can't you bribe someone or something?”

“With what?” He shrugged. “The guards don't take bribes. They'd be skinned alive. And that's no figure of speech, Leyta.”

She shuddered. “What's going to happen to me?”

“You'll be put on the block and sold.”

“Couldn't you.…”

“No way.” He looked over his shoulder again. “My time almost up. I can't steal you out, Leyta. And I can't buy you out. Not at the price you'll bring. No. After you're sold, then I can get you away. No owner will have the kind of security they have here. I'll come for you.”

“No.”

“What?”

“Not right away, anyway. Miks.”

“What is it?” She could hear a chill anger in his voice, an anticipation that she was going to ask something of him he wouldn't want to do.

“Morality. Right. I know it's not fair. But, damn it, I don't have a choice. I hope you're right, Miks, about that thing in me that lays claim on you. I'm going to use you, if I can.” She twisted her hands together. “Oh god, if I can. I have to. Miks, go after Maissa. If you love me, if you want me, by all we've shared, Miks, get Sharl from her.”

He jerked away and took two steps down the corridor, then wheeled and came back his face twisted with a pain that radiated through his body like a cancer. Gasping for breath he banged his head against the transparency. “Stop it!” His voice rose in a tortured shriek.

Her mouth pinched together in a grim line, she waited.

He closed his eyes. She saw the muscles loosen in his face and neck. “All right, Aleytys, you win. I'll go after her and get your son away from her.”

She felt the stiffening go out of her spine. Slumping, stumbling, nearly falling, she put out her hands and pressed them against the transparency near his shoulders. “I'm sorry, Miks.” She sighed. “I suppose you won't want me around after this.”

“Aleytys,” he said slowly. “I'm a selfish man.”

“Am I less selfish, Miks? Using you? But I have to get Sharl away from that horror. I do care for you, but you're a man, Miks. Sharl.… You know Maissa. I wish I didn't have to do this.”

He stroked his hand outside the transparency at the level of her face as if he caressed her. “I could promise you anything, you know. Just to get the compulsion turned off.”

She smiled tiredly. “That's a chance I take.”

“I've a feeling it's not much of a chance. That if I went my own way, the pain would start again.”

“I don't know.”

He snorted self-mocking laughter. “Miks Stavver. Knight Errant. Ridiculous. I swear to you Aleytys, I will find your son.” He frowned. “If I come for you, would you live with me?”

“Yes.”

“Before getting involved in that, I'd better leave the baby somewhere safe. Who's his father and where do I find him?”

“Vajd is his name. You'll find him on Jaydugar in a vadi … a mountain valley called the Kard. Ask for the dream-singer. The blind one.”

A dark-faced guard tapped Stavver on the shoulder and jerked his head toward the exit.

“I know that damn world,” he said hastily. “I'll find you, Lee.”

“Miks, I.…”

He waved a hand and strode nervously away down the corridor, leaving the stolid guard far behind before they passed out of sight. Aleytys stayed pressed against that hard transparency that pinned her in the cell until even the sound of his footsteps were gone. Then she sat down in the middle of the floor, wrapped her arms around her legs and stared dispiritedly at the black wall across the corridor.

The next days moved in and out of a dream. Something in the food … something in the air … she didn't know … didn't care … didn't care about anything … something sapped her will and kept her in a drowsy listlessness that let time slip past unnoticed.

Image … white enamel room accented in stainless steel … pain … jumbled words … hurry … before she comes out of the fog … takes enough????? … the word was meaningless sound … to stun a???? … no referent … the psi damper … silver disc … get it in … a cold touch on her back … blackness … feeling of oppression … women working on her limp uncaring body … oils for the skin … oils for the hair … callouses gently patiently abraded away … massage … pummelling her about … all the while a dullness like a cap over her brain that was terrifying when she came enough out of the fog to feel it there … underlying terror … dulled by the drug.…

She woke, mind clear and alert. She jumped to her feet and paced impatiently about the cell, anger burning in her and a cold fear under all of it. She found it hard to think, images tended to fragment. Bits of memory came flooding back.

When she looked down at herself, she found many rather startling changes. Her hands were soft and supple, the nails buffed to a subtle sheen. She pulled at her hair. It glowed with life and health, more silken and beautiful than it had ever been. The red-gold color shone like fire. Her body felt pampered and soft, the muscles acquired by hard living gone somehow. She touched her face. “Merchandise. Polished to a high gloss.” She laughed suddenly, grimly. “Someone's going to get a surprise.”

Outside her cell an odd little being harrumphed loudly. She came to the open wall.

He sat in a floating dish, filled with a reddish fluid. Huge golden eyes surrounded by busily waving cilia. A parrot's beak. A bulbous pear-shaped body. Four limber tentacles branching from each side of the purple body, a double handspan under the beak. “I am I!kuk.” His beak clacked as he spoke, his voice was shrill and harsh with little inflection to the words.

Aleytys nodded, thinking that if he let her out she could tip the dish over and run like hell.

The golden eyes flickered. He waved a tentacle. A guard with a short black rod in his hand stepped into her field of vision.

“The rod he holds is a neuro-stimulator. It will cause pain so intense you will find it impossible to believe you could live through it. This kind of punishment has the value of not marking you or ruining permanently your value as merchandise.”

“I see.”

The cilia went into a convulsion, marking I!kuk's appreciation of her good sense. “When the force field goes off, step into the corridor and walk ahead of the guards. Don't try escaping. There is no escape from the pens. All you gain from trying will be pain. Much pain. There's another thing. I've had an inhibitor planted in your back to damp out your psi abilities. Pity. But you're too dangerous with them in conscious control. Warning. Don't attempt to use your talents. The inhibitor is not as sensitive as we would like. It not only prevents use of your mind talents but it can interfere with normal thought if it kicks on too strongly.”

“You think of everything.” She fought back her helplessness calling on pride to keep her from crumbling in front of him. Somehow it was important that she handle herself with what dignity she could muster.

“Of course.” The odd creature accepted the irony as a compliment, even preened himself a little. With a faint hum, the dish floated back out of sight. His voice came to her around the edge of the cell. “The field is off. Step into the corridor.”

She put out her hand. The transparent hardness was gone.

When the procession moved out of the labyrinthine tunnels into the sunlight, Aleytys blinked and stared up at the ruby-red sun. It reminded her forcibly of home and red Horli. She swallowed a sharp pang of homesickness.

I!kuk herded her to the center of the open-air market and made her climb onto a cube-shaped block made of what appeared to be glossy black stone, then he thumbed the forcefield on, shutting her into an impenetrable transparent box.

She stared out over the heads of the incredibly varied throng of creatures parading slowly past the line of living merchandise, reminding her strongly of the horsetraders that came to vadi Raqsidan during the spring meetings. She remembered her father … a frisson of cold hatred clutched at her stomach when she thought of him … the Azdar, seeing him feeling the legs of a colt and forcing open his mouth to look at his teeth. Although they couldn't touch her … eyes stared at her … beings circled her, staring … measuring … commenting in a dozen languages on her physical attributes … listened to the recorded sales talk that went on automatically when anyone stopped to look at her … bringing angry blood surging into her face … sometimes she felt as if she couldn't breathe … sometimes she felt like shrinking in on herself … sometimes like breaking through the field and killing them all … the rage in her so great it threatened to blow her apart.…

I!kuk drifted past, turned back and floated, bobbing gently up and down in front of her block. Some kind of favored client beside him, dwarfing him. Over two meters tall … thin narrow body with long, long arms … more than one elbow joint … they hung strangely … long, thin legs that also looked to have more than one joint in them … thin austere face … eyes huge, black … multifaceted … more like an insect's than … short stubby antennas ending in reddish knobs … brilliant crimson tunic of some velvety material.…

A red curtain slid around the forcefield, cutting off view of the market.

Aleytys sank onto her knees, pride no longer supporting her when the others could no longer see her. “Sold,” she muttered. She rested her head on her knees. “Like a piece of meat.”

She heard a sound and jumped to her feet. The back side of the box opened out. I!kuk and the goggle-eyed being watched as she walked down the slanting ramp, feeling uncertain and strange.

“Introduce me, I!kuk.” The being's voice was deep and musical.

The cilia fluttered wildly around the amber eyes, underlining I!kuk's disapproval, but he backed his dish off and said, “Aleytys, I present the kipu Anesh of Irsud.”

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CHAPTER I