Starfire Saga, page 12
My foot had missed his genitals, but had entered his belly several centimeters above them. My hand had struck true to his nose, driving bone back into his brain. He was dead before he hit the tent floor. I let him lie there bleeding as I dried my foot and wiped off the blood that had spattered on me. I felt no remorse over the death of a Drenalion. Now I needed to find a way to get out of here, for me and for Shefta. My leggings and tunic were shredded and my boots were outside. I took one of the furs and tied it around me with Evesti’s belt. Then I searched the tent for a weapon.
Before I was done, there were sounds of battle and shouting outside, but I didn’t dare look out. There seemed to be many more Ilto than I had seen, and there must have been women among them, for I heard women’s voices. I waited, apprehensive, but unwilling to reveal the fact that I wasn’t presently being raped; I didn’t have enough strength left to face very many of them. My reserves had been seriously depleted by the death stroke.
With abruptness the sounds outside ceased and I heard a shout, “Evesti! This is Jemeret of the Boru! Come out and face me, you meggo-spawn!”
I honestly didn’t know what to do. Perhaps I’d committed some awful intertribal act, and would be punished for it. Perhaps I’d robbed Jemeret of his revenge, and he would be humiliated. I was far more confused than I had been before I had killed Evesti, so I did nothing.
There was a low murmur outside. They were all surprised at the lack of response.
“Evesti!” Jemeret shouted again. “Are you a laba as well as a meggo? Come here!”
It was clear that I couldn’t just sit and do nothing, so I went close to the tent flap and called out, “Uh—he can’t come out right now.”
There was an absolute, utter silence for the space of a breath. Then Jemeret tore the tent flap aside and came in, longsword drawn. Over his shoulder I could see Gundever and Urichen standing outside with drawn swords, and then the tent flap fell closed.
Jemeret bent down over the hulk of Evesti. “What happened?” he asked.
“I killed him,” I said unnecessarily.
He sheathed his longsword with one fluid motion and came to stand very close to me. “Ronica, are you all right?”
I almost laughed. “He didn’t have a chance,” I said wearily. “He was very big, but very stupid. Did I do something wrong?”
“That depends on how ambitious you are,” he said. “If I’m not mistaken about their laws, you are now Chief of the Ilto. I assume the combat was equal?”
“We were both naked, if that’s what you mean.” I was annoyed when he started to laugh softly. “Jemeret, I don’t think this is funny at all.”
He kept laughing, and after a few moments I began to be infected by it, but I fought it back. “Listen, is Shefta all right?”
Again there was that sudden swelling in his eyes, instantly gone. As if he knew he could, he put his arm across my shoulders, and, amazingly, my body did not jerk away from him. “She’s fine,” he said. “Shaken, a little closer to being hurt than any of us would like, but we got here in time for her.”
“I don’t want to be Chief of the Ilto,” I said. “I’m much more ambitious than that. How do I get out of it?”
“Take the belt off.”
I looked down at the belt, realizing it was more than just a belt, then back up at him. “My fur will fall off if I do.”
He stripped off his tunic and handed it to me. “You don’t need anything of his anyway,” he said lightly.
“Least of all, his tribe.” I undid the belt, let the fur drop, and pulled the tunic on. It came nearly to my knees. I didn’t notice that it was the first time I’d been naked in front of him without feeling any awkwardness about it.
He bent and picked up the belt, opened the flap of the tent and cast it out.
A cry went up, joyous from the Boru, enraged from the Ilto. Jemeret gestured to me, and I stepped out of the tent beside him. Until I drew a lungful of the relatively fresh air outside, I hadn’t realized how foul the air had been in the tent.
Someone among the Ilto shouted, “Vengeance! It is my right!”
Jemeret, grim-faced, waved him forward, and a broadchested, ragged-bearded man pushed between a Boru warrior I didn’t know and Urichen and planted his feet in front of Jemeret. I gauged my reserves to be about two-thirds gone from the focused attack, and I gathered a little to feel less weary. A focused kill-strike is the most devastating weapon in the arsenal of the Class C, but you can’t do it more than once without dying yourself.
“I am Ustivet, brother of Evesti. Give me a sword,” the challenger said.
Jemeret nodded at Wendagash, who tossed his longsword onto the ground at the man’s feet. Ustivet grasped it and fell into a fighting crouch. Jemeret reached for his own sword.
“No,” I said more sharply than I’d intended. I had never let anyone fight my battles, and I wasn’t about to start among the repulsive Ilto. “The kill was mine. The challenge should be mine.”
Jemeret glanced briefly away from Ustivet to my face, then back at the barbarian. Ustivet was staring at me in open anger. Jemeret relaxed and let his longsword slide back into the scabbard.
Ustivet sneered. “The Ilto don’t challenge women,” he said with venom. “We master them!”
I sighed and said clearly, “You idiots wear me out.” I gathered, accelerated forward, bent in under his sword guard, broke his arm below the elbow, pushed the upper arm back enough to dislocate the shoulder, and was back in the place I’d been standing before his sword thudded to the ground. It was both a showy and a dangerous move, because it came perilously close to draining my reserves, but I guessed I would only have to do it once, and I was right.
Only Jemeret noticed that I was panting. Everyone else stared down at Ustivet, who had hit the ground with his knees just after the sword and was grunting in pain. Gundever let out a whoop, and from behind him a thin girl wrapped in a cloak propelled herself forward and threw her arms around my waist. It was Shefta. Her hair was a little matted with dried blood, but the cut looked better than I expected, and she had only a fading bruise on her temple. I stroked her a little as she straightened up and hoped that no one had noticed that her onslaught had staggered me.
“Ustivet,” the Lord of the Boru said, “take your life and bring it to Convalee or not. The belt of the Ilto lies in the mud for the taking, and the Boru will recognize its wearer. But be warned. My claim and I will not be satisfied a second time to let meggos get away with their lives.”
He gestured with his head and the Boru moved toward their tivongs, Wendagash bending contemptuously past Ustivet to pick up the fallen sword. Gundever lifted Shefta off her feet and away from me, and Jemeret slid his arm around my waist and said under his breath, “You’ll have to make it as far as the tivongs on your own.”
He was telling me that I couldn’t show weakness in front of the Ilto now, and that meant he knew how drained I was. “I can do it,” I said.
He stepped back. It was the longest walk I’d ever taken, longer even than the one Kray had taken with me on Koldor after I’d killed the Drenalion. Jemeret mounted the tivong first and pulled me up behind him. I sat sideways because riding astride would have hiked his tunic up above my hips, and I clung to his body with my arms around his waist. As we rode, in weariness, I rested my cheek against the smooth muscles of his shoulders. I wanted to doze, but I didn’t, despite the fact that I was, astonishingly, at ease. It was long after dark by the time we reached the tents, but I still saw light as intense as an afternoon under the sun.
IV. Growing
Because Kray was stronger, and because he habitually challenged me, about a year after we arrived on Koldor I seduced Coney. I think we three had always known that someday I would sleep with one of them—maybe ultimately with both—and that it would be at my choice. It was Kray who first used the metaphor of the questa queen for me, and when he did it, I yawned elaborately and made faces at him.
I had known for months before I took Coney that they both desired me—Kray’s a strong and open want, Coney’s a quieter, deeper need. I wanted a man. Self-stimulation had become boring and ultimately dissatisfying. Sex with someone else was a phenomenon I knew objectively, like I knew what a penis was and how it operated.
Neither of the two men remained virgin as long as I, but then neither of them had as much to lose. I had let no one but Jasin Lebec into what I considered my personal space, and that brief invasion of my mind had set me against easily letting someone into my body.
I’m not at all certain why I picked the day I did to tell Coney to come and see me that night. Once again, the reasons for a decision I made elude me. Perhaps it was because Koldor was our last place together. After we completed training, the government would send us on assignments to separate worlds, and it might be years before we saw each other again. I guess I just didn’t want to sleep with a stranger. Like many of my ostensibly intelligent decisions, it was incredibly stupid. But never mind.
Coney came to the courtyard door of my suite about midnight and let himself in. I was playing the nomidar, but I broke off the song and set the instrument aside. Coney had not grown quite as tall as his early promise, and he had a deep tan which seemed to make him all of a color, hair and skin and only slightly darker eyes. He bent and kissed me on the cheek. “What’s so important?”
“Don’t you know?” I asked him in return.
He did. His face changed suddenly, and he was so openly readable that I didn’t even have to scan for his feelings. He was radiating something like joy and something like pain and something like very real disbelief. He was silent for a longer time than I’d expected, and then he asked, “What caused this?”
“What do you want me to say?”
He slowly shook his head. “If you don’t know, I can’t tell you.” Some of the light seemed to go out of his face, and he instantly gathered and controlled it. “Why don’t we just forget it?”
He turned back toward the door into the courtyard, but stopped when I spoke. “You can’t tell me you don’t want to have me.”
Before he could control it, his face paled under the tan. “Yes,” he said, “I want you. I’ve loved you since we were children. But you don’t really want me—you want a body. Use somebody else’s.”
“I do want you,” I said firmly.
“I’m handy,” he shot back.
“That, too.” I hadn’t meant the honesty to hurt him, but it did. I tried to explain it. “Coney, I do want somebody, but I want it to be somebody who cares about me. Not me, the Class A—me. I trust you. I want it to be you. It’s the same thing as loving, really.”
“You fool,” Coney said. It was the harshest thing I’d ever heard him say. “It’s not the same thing at all.”
“Then it’ll be enough,” I said. “I don’t want you to walk out of here.”
“Call Kray!” he said, really forcing control on his voice.
“No, it has to be you.” I reached out and stung him a little bit so that he couldn’t leave. It was easy to bring him back, because he really did want to come back to me. He also really wanted to make love to me, so it took very little sting to take him into my bedroom and persuade him to do what he wanted to do anyway. Naturally, it was a failure, but I’m not sure I noticed it at the time. We both had Class C reflexes, and so orgasm was a given. I thought it was all there needed to be. Unfortunately, he really loved me.
Coney and Kray and I shared a sense of humor; I think that the ability to laugh at the same things means not only some values in common, but a common education. The three of us had laughed together for years, and often. After I started sleeping with Coney, however, the three of us stopped finding things funny. The tension that grew among us reached the point where Mortel John could no longer ignore it, and he stopped in mid-sentence during a political economy lecture to say, “All right, I think one of you better tell me what’s going on.”
Kray looked away, Coney looked down at the floor, and I asked, “Whatever do you mean?”
Mortel John was not very often given to sarcasm, but now he repeated, “Whatever do you mean? I see before me the remnants of a good class of talent! I see three people who look just like the students I used to have, but those other students were at least marginally intelligent, marginally curious about the interactions of planetary markets, marginally creative, and more than marginally interested in one another. These three people, who look like my students, are dull, preoccupied, and greatly uneasy in each other’s company.”
As if he had listened to himself speak and recognized the truth in the words he heard, he snapped his fingers. “Of course. Uneasy in each other’s company,” he said again. “Get out of here and work it out. Don’t come back until you’re ready to learn something.”
We got out—far out into the natural area, each of us alone, to do some thinking. We had discussed going somewhere together, in the polite, civilized voices we had begun to use on each other, but we finally decided to be alone for a while and to meet later.
I chose to practice my free-cliff climbing on a very respectable face in the center of the area. I wanted to be tired, for being tired made thought more difficult, so I gathered and carefully but quickly climbed the face, using some of my reserves but not very much of them. My caution saved me there, as it saved me later among the Ilto.
The wooded plateau at the top of the cliff yielded to a gentle downslope, but I never got as far as the slope’s start. Three of the Drenalion were at the top. To this day, I don’t know what they were doing there—they could have been resting or training or any number of other variations on activities. It didn’t matter, really, for the moment they saw me, they reverted to what they truly were.
The Drenalion were the beasts of the government. They were cloned, sterile, and totally alien to the notion of civilized society. Mothers used the threat of them to keep children in line, just as the government used the threat of them to keep worlds in line. At the time I encountered them on Koldor, they were fifth-generation clones, and the sixth generation would be the last that was controllable. After it, a new strain would have to be begun.
The Drenalion on the plateau began to separate and work on coming at me from different angles, identical grins on their faces. They were big and slow, but they compensated for lack of talent with muscles. They leered and began to close in as soon as they had decided they were in a formation that would keep me from escaping.
I knew from their reputation what they intended, and rage took control of me. The reflexes threw me into an almost uncontrolled acceleration, the like of which I have never experienced again. I stung one as I just about ran up the face of a second, crushing his larynx across his windpipe. I spun to face the third and realized he had drawn an energy whip, but was waiting for me to slow down to use it. I restung the Drenalion who was trying to rise, closed off my hearing, and gathered to pump volume into my voice by stretching my diaphragm and lungs. My scream full at the third Drenalion punctured his eardrums and threw him backward. I decelerated, picked up the whip, and sat down on a rock to wait for the scream to bring other people.
Only one of the three Drenalion was dead, though I would have killed them all if they had attacked me again before help reached me, for my reserves were very low and I would not have been able to hold them off. I turned the whip all the way up to full, so I know I would not have hesitated, but neither the one I had hit nor the one I had screamed at got to his feet. It never occurred to me that there might be more of them.
Kray and five more clones reached me simultaneously. “Can you take those two?” he shouted, pointing. Then he accelerated and flung himself among the other three. I went only partially into acceleration to preserve what I could of my remaining reserves, but the whip served me well.
When I slowed again, staggering, Kray was standing among the three huge corpses of the Drenalion he’d fought. I was breathing so hard I thought my lungs would burst, and my heart was pounding in a sea of loose adrenaline. I dropped the whip, trying to gather enough to shut down my adrenals completely. The light around me was blindingly bright.
Kray still had a good portion of his strength left, and he scooped me off the ground without hesitation. “We’ve got to get out of here,” he said. “I’m sure there are more of them.”
“I’m at my limit.” I was dismayed at how much my voice trembled. My eyes shut as if I were seeking darkness I would not find.
“Just hang on.” He accelerated into a gathered run, carrying me. At some point Coney joined us, but I don’t remember where it was, and he was there to fight off another pair of Drenalion who happened across our path. We had to go the long way down the slope and around the plateau to the face of the cliff to get to my floater, but by that time some of the armed guard from Government House had reached it, and we were in no more danger from the Drenalion.
Kray dumped me in the floater’s riderseat and got behind the controls. “Come on!” I heard him yell, and Coney piled onto the floater’s luggage rack, locking his hands on it and shouting, “Go!”
I heard it all as if through a gentle haze, needing to deep so much that I wasn’t certain if I could keep myself from sliding downward into the shimmering brightness. Both of the men spoke to me from time to time, asking me to look at them or say something in response, and I suppose I did, but I was barely aware of it.
Kray must have radioed ahead, for when the floater jerked to a stop and Coney leaped off, Mortel John was waiting with a pressure ampule, which he broke against the artery in my neck even before he lifted me out of the floater.
I slept for two days after that, most of the time deeping, and I know they gave me massive doses of restorers, because Mortel John told me later how fortunate I’d been. If there was any kind of scandal concerning the deaths of the Drenalion, the government hushed it up.
Coney and Kray came to visit when I was just about ready to get up. They came together, and I hugged them both, but by tacit agreement, we didn’t talk about it. I told them I’d be back in class soon, and we talked about the upcoming election on a world wavering in its commitment to remain in the Com.
