Slave Empire III - The Shrike (11 page)

Tarke explained
the whole story, and the ship absorbed it with rapt fascination. It
found his life, culture and society strange and interesting, and
longed to understand every detail of it. Tarke allowed it rummage
through his memories, overcoming his powerful aversion to anyone
prying into his mind. Nothing was too great a sacrifice, if it
helped to bring Rayne back. The ship’s gentle intrusion filled him
with panic that he quelled, assuring himself that no one would ever
be able to plumb its thoughts. After a few minutes, Scrysalza
declared that it understood him far better. It also found that the
emotion he called love was akin to one the ships had, which
sometimes made them want to mesh wings with a particular friend and
become one, something Envoys never allowed.

Tarke
sympathised, waiting for its next thought. When it remained silent,
he asked it how it would try to heal Rayne. It replied that it
would have to close the portals in her mind, which would require a
great deal of effort and caution. Once the doors were shut, it
would have to find the one that had swallowed her and bring her
back, if possible. Her state, it explained, was the same as the
Envoy had used when he became dormant, something they had perfected
over the millennia to safeguard their sanity.

The boredom of
being anchored within another creature, unable to relate to the
outside world except through his host’s senses, had caused Envoys
to evolve this form of hibernation to escape the years of
inactivity that came with their lifestyle. The only difference was
that Rayne had lost control of it, and it had claimed her utterly.
Tarke made his eagerness for the ship to begin its attempt to bring
her back plain. It told him it might take a long time to undo the
damage, if it could be undone at all. Tarke hoped his openness
would convince the ship to try, sensing its reluctance still.

Scrysalza gave
a mental sigh and withdrew from his mind, which he guessed it did
before it attempted to touch Rayne’s, to spare him the horror of
it. Realising that he still wore his mask, which was growing clammy
in the humidity, he stripped off his gloves and unclipped it,
running a hand through his hair.

He gazed down
at Rayne. “Scrysalza’s going to try to help you. It’s going to
close the doors and bring you back. Come back to me, please.”

A tiny flame of
hope burnt in his heart, sheltered from the bitter winds of doubt
by his determination to keep it alive.

Chapter Five

Tarke waded out
of the lake, stroking water from his hair after a refreshing bath.
A week had passed since he had come aboard the Crystal Ship, a
strange, but not unpleasant existence. He had grown tired of his
clothes’ hot dampness and shed most of them for the sake of
comfort. Now he wore only a pair of grey undershorts that reached
to mid-thigh. The hardest part was providing Rayne’s needs, keeping
her clean and fed. After the first day, he had shown the ship what
he required, and it had provided the necessary nutrition, albeit in
weird shapes and tastes.

Caring for a
comatose person was not easy at the best of times, and here it was
a full-time job. Each day he gathered strange food from the little
garden that had sprung up around them and tackled the unpleasant
task of making her eat it. Scrysalza provided tubes of soft paste
to feed her, but, even so, his dislike for forcing it down her
throat had led to her losing weight, and he tried to do better.

After she ate,
he massaged her arms and legs and stretched her muscles, then
carried her to the lake to bathe her. The daily routine forced him
to overcome most of his aversion for skin to skin contact, and her
comatose state made it easier. When she had fallen into the coma,
his strange longing to hold her had increased, and over the past
five years he had become inured to it. Touching others had never
been a major problem for him, however, although he disliked it. The
real problem would only rear its ugly head if and when she woke
up.

It had taken
Scrysalza three days to close the first door in Rayne’s mind, and
the entity had struggled to do it. Even the alien’s massive mental
powers were barely strong enough to undo the damage the Envoy had
caused, which the drugs had compounded and Rayne’s suicidal plunge
into oblivion had complicated. The second door took another day, a
third door took two, then the task became easier. After a week it
had closed all the doors, which it also described as portals,
holes, pits or spaces. These spaces, it claimed, were the source of
the terrible blankness that had consumed Rayne’s mind, and were the
scars the Envoy’s flaying intellect had left.

Tarke knew the
horror of her mind’s emptiness, which the ship described as
absence. There was a subtle difference between a naturally empty
space and one that was normally occupied. The sensation of howling
vacancy he had experienced was the result of her mind’s lack of
presence, and another’s mind could be pulled into the yawning abyss
that longed to be filled. Tarke found this confusing until
Scrysalza explained that the Envoy’s scars included a heightening
of her natural empathy that sucked in the emotional presence of
another, feeding on it as the Envoy had done.

Envoys,
confined to an existence of sensory and emotional deprivation, had
evolved to enjoy the pain of others, their favourite sensation.
During her battle with the Envoy, Rayne had been forced to mirror
his weapons and turn them against him, reflecting his pleasure at
her pain, which had poisoned him. That had caused her to burn new
pathways in her brain, which she had become lost in when she had
dragged her enemy down with her. Now Scrysalza had to find her
dormant mind and bring it back into the familiar realm of
awareness, a difficult task. It would be like bringing her to the
surface of a black pool at whose bottom she had lain for five
years.

Two days later,
Rayne coughed while Tarke was giving her water, and his heart
leapt. He called her name, but she sank back into her quiet pool.
The next day, she blinked when he lowered her into the lake to
bathe her and flinched when he stroked her cheek, but once again
she slipped away after a few minutes.

Scrysalza
claimed that it was like dragging a reluctant animal from its den.
Rayne’s fear made her long to stay in the dark silence of her
deepest lair, shunning the light of consciousness that held so many
dangers. The following day, she flinched when he spoke her name and
opened her eyes for a moment before sinking back into her coma.
Tarke longed to send his mind in after her, but Scrysalza
admonished him to be patient, for to rush such a delicate matter
could do irreparable harm.

For the next
four days, Rayne had brief episodes of consciousness, each one a
little longer than the last. During the fourth one, she stayed
awake for several minutes, gazing into space, her eyes unfocussed.
She flinched when he spoke and blinked when he stroked her face,
but no awareness entered her eyes. The ship informed him that there
was a distinct possibility that, even once awakened, she might
never be the same again, perhaps damaged or insane. It continued to
nudge her towards the light, however, like a mother whale raising
her new-born calf to the air.

Tarke lay
beside Rayne and stroked her arm, willing her to awaken. He had
lost count of the days now, but he had decided to remain here for
as long as it took.

Rayne opened
her eyes and focussed on him, looking dazed. His heart pounded as a
pang of joy and hope shot through him. He spent many hours each day
either massaging her limbs or stroking her skin, for tactile
sensation was important in the battle to bring her out of her dark
place. He took hold of her arms and called her name, afraid she
would slip away again. She gasped and flinched, her eyes roaming
over his face. He smiled, but her eyes closed, and he patted her
cheek to try to keep her awake, aware of the ship warning him to be
gentle. He wanted to, but the prospect of losing her again, even
for another day, was unbearable.

“Rayne! Come
on, stay with me. Don’t go, please. It’s all right. You’re safe.
I’m safe. Snap out of it now. Rayne...”

Her eyes opened
again, and she swallowed, gazing at him with a puzzled expression.
Tarke cupped her face, stroked her hair and called her name over
and over again to try to hold her attention. Her eyes drifted
closed again, as if she was immensely tired, and he pulled her into
his arms, begging her to stay with him.

Tarke’s
heartfelt pleading confused Rayne, and she turned her head so her
cheek was pressed to his. The last thing she remembered was
confronting the telepath in her mind, and this seemed like a
pleasant dream. It had to be a dream, for Tarke held her as if he
would never let her go.

Rayne did not
want him to; he could do it until Hell froze over. She slipped her
arms around him, and he held her away to study her. She smiled, and
he grinned, revealing the even white teeth she had always suspected
him of owning.

“You’re
awake.”

Rayne nodded,
fighting a creeping lethargy that threatened to wash over her. Her
mouth tasted like she imagined a pigsty floor would, and she
struggled to unglue her tongue from the roof of her mouth. She
longed to ask him why he was so friendly, and why she was so weak.
They appeared to be back on board the Crystal Ship. The gentle
brush of the alien’s mind warmed her heart with a rush of joy.

“Scrysssla,”
she whispered, her tongue refusing to enunciate the difficult
name.

Tarke’s grin
broadened. Dozens of questions crowded her mind, but for the moment
her mouth was not working as it should, and she could only gaze at
him in confusion. He answered her thoughts as if she had
spoken.

“We’re on board
the Crystal Ship. It came back. You’ve been in a coma for five
years, that’s why you’re so weak. Scrysalza brought you back. And
I’m really glad you’re awake at last.”

Rayne blinked,
trying to remember what had happened, and how she had lost five
years. Memories rushed back, filling her with dread as she recalled
the doors opening and her fall into emptiness. The telepath’s
scream as he was swept away into the darkness, then the closing of
the blankness like a black fist. She sobbed as her eyes overflowed.
Tarke murmured her name, begging her to stay while the ship’s mind
soothed her with compassion.

Between them,
they held off the darkness, and she had no wish to return there
when she could stay in her husband’s arms. Her aloof, paranoid
husband, who now held her so tenderly. Eventually the tiredness
claimed her, however, and she sank into its dark folds.

Tarke lowered
Rayne onto the moss, sending a concerned question to the ship.

She
sleeps,
Scrysalza assured him.
She is weak and in need of
much rest now. Her mind will take time to recover, and adjust to
the burdens of wakefulness and thoughts, so you may find her dull
for a while. There is no permanent damage to her mind, and I have
sealed the doors so she cannot slip back again.

Tarke settled
down to wait, watching her sleep.

Rayne woke
again several hours later, and, as the ship had warned him, she was
dull and lethargic, but smiled in a distant, tremulous way. She
drank water from the crystal goblet Scrysalza had grown for him and
ate some of the peculiar food it provided.

Rayne found
Tarke’s attentiveness almost unnerving, and had to remind herself
that this was the same reserved Antian who had frustrated her so.
He hardly spoke, and she wondered at his silence, her questions
multiplying.

Late in the
second day of her recovery, as she lay beside him on the lake
shore, her head pillowed in the crook of his arm, she reached up
and touched the sleek, gleaming black slave collar around his
throat. He looked down at her.

“I’ve been a
fool,” he said. “I thought it was better to keep certain things a
secret, to spare myself the pain of explaining it to you, and you
the horror of hearing it. Now I realise that you have a right to
know everything, no matter how much I dislike talking about it, and
even if it makes you never want to see me again. I won’t blame you
if you do.”

He paused, his
eyes growing distant. “I named myself the Shrike after a small,
fairly vicious flying predator on my world. They had a nasty habit
of impaling their living victims on the thorns of a
charab
tree and eating them at their leisure. It’s the symbol on my ships,
and it represents the ruthlessness I’ve had to use to survive.”

His tone
changed subtly, and he looked away. “Slavers stole me when I was
fourteen. I was lured into the woods on my way home from school by
a spaceship landing there. They targeted me specifically, and I can
only assume they spied on me beforehand. They drugged me. I don’t
remember much until I reached the slave market. I remember them
fitting the collar, and the heat as it welded itself together. At
the time, I didn’t know I would always wear it.”

His expression
was inscrutable, but his voice was full of pain. “I was considered
a valuable slave. A natural, they called me. Physical attraction
can be had from a surgeon’s laser cutter, and many slaves are
enhanced to increase their value. They’re called artificials, and
are considerably less valuable than a natural, although the cost of
their alteration is added to their price.

“Still, they
don’t look natural, and sometimes the surgery goes wrong. Slavers
often go to cheap surgeons, but the occasional failures are worth
it. My captors hid the fact that I was Antian, which actually made
me almost worthless. They claimed I was Mansurian, an Atlantean
Veridian cross.”