The Margarets (19 page)

“Outshippers, attention. If you speak any Omniont or Mercan languages, please report to your dormitory office at once.”

I heard it perfectly well. I sat up, stood up, paused, looking at my bags for a moment, then collected them and trudged down the long aisle toward the distant office. The sleepy-looking officer inside looked up when I entered.

“I speak some of the Omniont and Mercan languages,” I said.

“I’m sure that’s a great comfort to you,” snorted the officer. “Why tell me about it?”

Angrily, I snarled, “Because there’s a loudspeaker announcement that anyone who speaks those languages is supposed to report to the dormitory office. Is that here, or somewhere else?”

He sat up, shook himself, and went to his com, where he spoke in muted tones for some little time. “Come with me,” he said over his shoulder as he headed out the door. “They’re sending transport to take you to the elevators. Oh, by the way, what’s your number?”

“All I have is my bed number?”

“That’ll do. Give me your bed ticket. We can cross-check it to your identity. A Mercan ship was delayed here when their cargo translator for the voyage took sick. They can’t wait any longer to leave.”

“A Mercan ship?” I whispered. “Their cargo translator?”

“Mercan, right. When they say cargo translator, they mean the person who translates commands to the cargo, the bondslaves, the outshipped.”

I could not reply. Seemingly, all the fates in the universe were stacked against me, and I was absolutely incapable of making a beneficial decision about anything at all. The choices that had seemed best to me, possibilities that had shone with hope and encouragement, if only slightly, always turned to shit. Perhaps it would be better simply to take what came, refuse to choose anything, leave the choosing to others who were not damned as I was to do the wrong thing at every opportunity.

I, Ongamar the spy, was kneeling between the left feet of a K’Famir pleasure-female, pinning up her skirt so the gold-plated graspers above the pads would show seductively, when I realized I could hear the chatter from an adjacent fitting booth through the floor-level ventilation duct. The pleasure-female had been drinking xshum all morning, provided by House Mouselline. She was barely able to stand and would not have heard an earthquake, so I had no need to ask many loud questions about the fitting to disguise the fact I had heard what was going on. Human hearing was far better than that of the K’Famir. To normal human ears, they always sounded as though they were shouting.

“Tonight there will be a midnight sacrifice on Beelshi,” squealed the customer in the next booth. “I asked Wonbar to take me, but he said no females. I think they sacrifice females, that’s why they don’t want females watching.”

“Surely not,” said Lady Ephedra in a conciliatory tone. “We would hear of such a thing. People would disappear.”

“Pocomfis disappear all the time,” said the first voice. “They have no place to live, they work at ugly things, who cares if they disappear.”

“What God would accept the sacrifice of a pocomfis?”
asked Lady Ephedra chidingly. “Sacrifices must be worthy, which means expensive. Half a flibit would buy a pocomfis. There now, move your upper arms, now the lower. Ah, it doesn’t bind, does it. Good. If you’ll take it off, I’ll have it ready for you by closing time tonight.”

Pocomfis were the maimed ones, those who had lost an arm, a leg, an eye, a sexual organ. If the lack could not be effectively disguised with a prosthesis, then one was an outcast. Being maimed was shameful, for it meant the gods had decided one was unnecessary, disposable, unimportant. What Lady Ephedra had said was quite true: pocomfis were cheap as dirt; cheap things were not a worthy sacrifice. A worthy sacrifice had to be expensive, very expensive: both vulnerable and without a family that would retaliate.

Beelshi was a low hill just outside the town, its slopes covered with the large earthenware jars in which the K’Famir dead were interred. Adille had attended a funerary ceremony there and described the place to me, her pet: a hilltop crowned by an ancient plaza, somewhat cracked and weedy, surrounded by temples and mausolea. A huge rounded boulder stood at its center and was stained, so Adille thought, with blood offerings people had made to Whirling Cloud of Darkness-Eater of the Dead, chief god of the K’Famir pantheon.

If true, such sacrifice would feed the thing for me! I could arrive at Beelshi early enough to hide among the funerary jars. Likely the sight would be enough to please
it
for some time. Though
it
had become too heavy for me to carry,
it
still insisted that I find something new every day, even as the number of unexplored sites and events grew smaller. I would go in the guise of a Hrass. I had the lengthened nose, a wrinkled protrusion that was almost hoselike. I could emulate the squinted eyes of a creature that avoided the light, the gray skin, the slightly scaly long-fingered hands. Add to this the voluminous dirty robes usually worn by Hrass, and I would be Hrass so far as the K’Famir were concerned.

Early that evening, I left my place through the alley gate, scurrying tight against the wall, the way Hrass usually moved. When they ate, walked, talked, bargained in the market, they always tried to have
a solid wall behind them, and when they crossed open space, they moved as fast as possible. In general, the K’Famir disregarded them, for most of the Hrass on Cantardene were crew members of those disreputable ships that carried necessary but disgusting cargo: uncured flemp hides, for the making of slave whips; bathrop manure for the mushroom farms; dried charbic root to be ground into powder as a poison for vermin. The robes I had procured were authentic, both in fabric and in odor, thereby guaranteeing I would be overlooked and ignored.

I went through alleys, as Hrass would go; I muttered to myself, as Hrass invariably did. I gained the foot of Beelshi before it was totally dark and found, as I had hoped, that it was as yet unguarded. I climbed the hill, not by one of the main paths or the stairs, but by edging slowly among the jars until I reached one of the smaller mausolea surrounding the hilltop plaza. The building had a decorative lattice around it, one easy to climb, even burdened as I was by my garments, and the roof of the place was above the head level of any K’Famir.

Once atop the roof, I found it had a massive parapet penetrated in several places by rain spouts, wide metal troughs, the outer ends shaped into gape-jawed monsters. The troughs were large; one of them emptied into the plaza; the parapet was half my height thick, certainly wide enough to hide me from above. If I crawled into the trough, I could remain there, invisible to those below but able to see the altar area through the downsloping jaws of the spout.

When I had hidden myself, I examined the surroundings carefully while there was still enough light to do so. Many of the temples and mausolea shared common walls, and those that did not had only narrow spaces between them. They made a complete wall around the plaza, broken only by the wide flight of stairs that extended down the hill to my left. The plaza itself was made of large slabs of flat stone, cracked by age, with small, dusty plants growing in the cracks. At the center was the great stone Adille had spoken of, equipped with metal eyes around the upper surface, and beside it, another stone Adille had not mentioned: an irregular pillar, buried for part of its length in the soil. The pillar seemed to be uncut, and
yet I had the strong impression that the upper end of it had a face. Perhaps it was only that the side nearest me was slightly hunched, like a shoulder, making the upper part appear headlike. A broken line of jaw. Two hollows that might be eyes. Altogether, a sinister-looking thing.

I turned my eyes back to the flight of stairs. At the very bottom, a company of guards was being posted around the hill. Within the next hour, two other rows of guards were posted, one midway up, one just outside the buildings that edged the plaza. If I had delayed my arrival, it would have been impossible. I curled into the smallest possible compass, cushioned my head on one arm, and actually dozed off, pillowed and warmed by the many folds of the heavy, malodorous robes.

I was wakened by the shriek of metal, the boom of a drum, the growling chant of many voices. Below me, lit by cressets, the metal door to the mausoleum shrieked against the stone of the threshold as it was drawn open. Peeking over the edge, I saw several K’Famir as they went in and returned carrying cages that were set at the edge of the plaza. In the flickering light, I could see they had small creatures in them, the size, so I thought, of a rat, perhaps. I had never seen a rat, but they had figured in the stories I had read as a child. Small enough to be held in two hands, large enough to be frightening if a lot of them came at you. These creatures were not coming at anyone. They were crouching in the cage, their large ears flared, their large noses quivering. No tails, I told myself. Not rats, because they have no tails. They looked like frog dolls, except for the ears. I concentrated on the chant, recognizing many of the words but not all. A hymn to their god, Whirling Cloud of Darkness-Eater of the Dead. The chant mentioned an offer of sacrifice, something, some quality that was to be…credited? The words fell into place. An offering would be made that was to be credited to the account of those who made it. This struck me as funny, and I almost forgot myself enough to laugh. What a strange mixture of worship and accounting. I amused myself with the idea until the first small creature was laid upon the round stone, tied to the metal eyes, and selected members of the group began applying blades and heated irons to its body. The creature screamed. Oh, by all that was holy, I heard words. It spoke words.
Not understandably, but unmistakably! I buried my head in my arms, pulling my robes over my ears, but nothing prevented the shrill screaming from going on, and on, and on…

When the torture ended at last, I looked up. A netted cage was being placed over the mutilated body. The chanting resumed, urgently. The tall pillar of stone wavered before me, actually seeming to look downward at the circling fog that had materialized inside the cage. The stone spoke. I heard it, not with my ears but with some deeper sense of recognition. The fog swirled. Solidified. I could not see what had materialized inside the cage, but whatever it was touched a deep well of revulsion. A knife was thrust into the small creature, which emitted one final shriek, then the cage was removed from over the corpse and carried away, down the hill while another victim was selected to receive the attentions of another group of K’Famir. After that, another, and another after that, and another. Each time the torture, each time the death, each time the stone looked down, something solidified inside a cage and was carried away. I lost count. I stayed curled tightly, head buried, until at last a silence came and dragged on and was finally broken by a familiar voice, someone I knew, someone I had met. I looked up, listened. It was Progzo. Adille’s father!

“This was the last of the sacrifices we bought from the supplier who trades with us through the death-house. Some time gone the supplier warned us these sacrifices were becoming few; the place that bred them was empty of them. The supplier sent us a sample of another sacrifice, one that could be provided in unlimited numbers. Then that supplier ceased dealing with us.

“These new ones will work very well,” he trumpeted. “We have found a new vendor to provide them through the death-house. We have the original sample here. Others will soon arrive from the new vendor. Bring it!”

From the temple beneath me a K’Famir emerged bearing a child in its arms, a human child of perhaps nine or ten. At the altar, the child was asked his name.

“Fessol,” he said, shyly. “I am Fessol.”

They were the last words the child uttered, but they were not the last sounds he made. He was larger than the small creatures, and the
torture was done carefully. It went on until dawn. The cage was set in place, a larger thing materialized within. The tall pillar almost seemed to bend above it.

“Too much light to carry it into the city,” Progzo said. “It might be seen. Put it into the place and lock the door.”

The cage was put in the mausoleum below me. The K’Famir and their guards departed. Only Progzo and two other K’Famir lingered on the step.

“Will this kind work as well on humans as the others do?” one asked.

Progzo answered. “Our supplier sent me a few of these a long time ago. They were much more expensive than the other kind, the little ones, so I tested one myself. I arranged for it to fasten on my daughter’s pet, a human. It was my daughter it fastened on, but she did not live long. Her pain was amusing.”

“I, too, find females’ pain most amusing,” the other answered.

“Adille’s pain was not worthy. She was sterile. A mere plaything. Of no value. The ghyrm feeds on the human pet now.”

Some time after they had gone, when the plaza was completely empty, I struggled down from the temple roof and went into the plaza itself. A few torches still burned. The bodies of the victims were nowhere to be seen. Had they been taken away? Perhaps eaten by the K’Famir? Perhaps by Progzo, who had arranged for the death of his daughter, and for my continuing pain. Progzo, who had spoken of a human child as a new form of sacrifice?

I had thought I was past any anger, but what burned in me at that moment was too hot to be anything but rage. A torch burned beside the door of the mausoleum, which had been locked with a length of chain threaded loosely between the door handles, loosely enough that I could push one door open to make a sizable crack for the torchlight to fall through. The cage was just inside, and in the cage was a creature I knew all too well.

“Come,” it whispered. “Come here. Feed me.”

The crack was too small, and the cage that held it was of too small a mesh for it to escape. I was about to turn away when something behind the cage caught my eye. A pool of light held between the mas
sive, uncut stones of the far wall. And not far from it, a pool of dark among the boulders of the adjoining wall. Between them, a machine of some sort. A very strange machine. I stared, stared, almost too long, for the thing had extended a tentacle and was feeling its way toward me through the crack. Only its little gasp of anticipation alerted me. I turned and struggled witlessly down the hill, through the alleys. I had seen nothing during the night that I had not seen the K’Famir do before. All male K’Famir seemed to be experts in torture; perhaps it was something they learned in their malehood school, but this was the first time I had seen it used against an absolutely helpless victim instead of against an adversary, or against a female consort or daughter they wished to be rid of.

I dreaded the fact that
it
was waiting for me, eager to make me relive it all, to drain me of everything I had seen, felt, heard, smelled. Well,
it
must not learn what I had heard!
It
must not know that I knew how its kind were made! Without at all understanding why, I knew without any reservation that the thing must not know of it.

Past experience helped. I had learned that if I concentrated on the pain and the blood,
it
would pass over the specifics of surroundings and torturers. Particularly…yes, particularly when
it
was very hungry. I delayed feeding
it,
therefore, until after I had eaten and had arranged my thoughts carefully. Then I fed
it,
concentrating on the little creatures, on how they had writhed and cried out and screamed, playing the scene over and over in an endless loop, until the thing drew away, satisfied.

As I dressed for work, my mind was busy sorting out what I had seen, putting together all the clues and sayings gathered during my time on Cantardene. On my walk to work, I fit everything into a scenario that was consistent with what I had learned and observed, not only last night, but all during my enslavement.