The Exile Waiting, page 25
When she turned back, Subtwo was facing the small group, blocking the corridor. ‘How do I know our bargain has not already been broken? How do I know he is not dead?’
‘He’s alive! If we don’t hurry, he’ll be here.’
Subtwo did not move except to lower his head, glaring; he would renege if he was not sure his pseudosib was alive.
‘Call him, then,’ Mischa said. ‘He’s near, he must be around antenna leads.’
Subtwo scowled more deeply, suspicious, but unable to find deceit in her suggestion. He led the way to his quarters: through the long, carpeted halls, past a residence wing, in which the raiders were locked, disarmed but with access to food and medicine. They did not even protest. In the foyer, the light-fountain sparkled brilliant white. The underground people followed, into the paneled corridor that led directly to Subtwo’s rooms, touching strange things gently; they seemed to have no need or desire to take or destroy. In Subtwo’s workroom, they stood in a tight group, like small creatures who had blundered into the interior of a machine.
Subtwo sat down at the console, slowly, almost reluctantly. ‘If I cannot reach him, our agreement is void.’
‘I never lied to you,’ Mischa said.
He turned on his equipment. They heard static, scrambled Family chatter, channels of sensory input, as Subtwo scanned the frequencies for a clear calling band.
He called, paused, called, paused, and the response returned. ‘Is that you? Where are you?’ Subone’s voice: he sounded surprised.
‘I am in our quarters.’
‘At the Palace! But—’
‘Where are you?’
‘Coming home. But you—’
‘You were to wait for my return.’
‘I felt stronger—we decided—never mind me. Did you—?’
‘I found them.’
There was a hesitation, as of surprise. ‘Good!’ Subone exclaimed. ‘Excellent! I knew you would avenge me, brother.’ The tone was not one of satisfaction in revenge, but of gloating in power. Mischa heard it; everyone in the room heard it: even Subtwo. He raised his hand as though to smash it down on the controls, wavered, and slowly closed his fingers into a great fist.
‘We are no longer brothers.’
As Subone’s voice, in confused protest, spilled from the receiver, Subtwo turned it off, very, very carefully. He faced the people in his quarters as though they all were honored guests. ‘He will return soon. We must hurry.’
He seemed, to Mischa, as afraid as she was that Subone still could influence him, but now, at least, he was certain of the motives.
‘Then let’s go.’
That infuriating, tolerant expression slipped over his face. ‘In a moment. Is there nothing you want?’ He let his gaze wander over the room; he walked to his desk and touched bits of equipment.
‘No, nothing. Nothing at all. Except to leave.’ She was becoming exasperated with him, and dreading that he would, in the end, delay until Subone arrived. Her fingertips brushed the sculpted handle of the lance. Jan turned her a little. ‘Give him a minute,’ he said. ‘I want to get a few things too, if they’re still in my room.’
She acceded, reluctantly, not really wanting to let him go alone, he looked so tired, but afraid to trust Subtwo, afraid everything would fall apart again. She sat on the floor and put her arms around Crab, telling him slowly, gently, that she was leaving, right now, not in his indeterminate and unimaginable personal future. He had seen—and understood, for an infinitesimal bit of time—what she was doing and why, and though the understanding had faded, he retained the memory of it. He did not try to convince her to stay.
Val padded over to them. ‘Is Crab going with you?’
‘He’s going wherever you and Simon go,’ Mischa said. ‘But I don’t know what to tell him.’
‘We haven’t changed our minds. We’re staying here.’
‘Will you be all right without Subtwo as a hostage?’
‘We’ll be all right. Don’t worry.’ Her eyes smiled; her aura sparkled with excitement.
Mischa leaned down to Crab again. He was, after all, very young, and preferred events to go as he pleased. In the end, she told him she would try, someday, to come and see him again. When she looked up, the underground people stood around her. ‘Now it’s time to say goodbye,’ Val said.
Mischa stood up. ‘Good-bye, then.’ She hugged Val and Simon. ‘Good-bye, Simon.’
‘Good-bye, Mischa.’ He gripped her hands hard, claws retracted.
‘Be careful.’ She embraced each of the others, wishing them well.
‘When you get to the Sphere,’ Val said, ‘tell them we are still alive. Tell them not to send their renegades here anymore. Tell them our children should not have to be born crippled.’
‘I will. I promise.’
Silent and strange, they left her alone with Subtwo.
Still naked, and of all his possessions only a microcomputer and two library input banks neatly stacked behind him, he was sitting at his console, moving his hands among the controls of his links to the Palace intercom, flipping the image from camera to camera.
‘What are you doing?’ Mischa cried it out; guiltily, startled, he pushed himself away from the console. Mischa needed no more proof for her suspicions. She smashed her fist against the master power control and fused the panel with the laser lance.
‘I was only trying to … contact someone.’
‘I’ll bet.’
‘Not to call for help—’
‘Come on. I want to get Jan.’
‘But I must—’
‘No!’
He gazed down at the ruined console, at the blank, gray, depthless screens. ‘But she will think I did not care …’
‘Hurry up!’ Mischa did not listen to him; she had no patience for his petty intrigues and affaires, and the despair she felt from him would have to wait for any sympathy: she believed it to be because he was leaving Subone.
Shoulders slumped, Subtwo crossed the room, found one of his blue-gray coveralls, and put it on while Mischa fumed impatiently.
Chapter 16
From her childhood, when Stone Palace had been a busier place, Val remembered the ways from one level to the next, and led her people through halls and alice tubes. She was glad she had left the children behind, safe, for they would be frightened and there was no time for reassurance or explanations. Simon stalked beside her, wary of the differences between this and what he was used to: light everywhere, passages more regular than any watercourse, the vast overuse of fabric, and finally the internal distortions of the alice tube as it drifted them slowly upward. Only Gemmi liked the feeling.
Val expected guards when they reached the main level, and her people were ready, but no one and nothing awaited them. She posted guards of her own, at the tube, at the silent barracks wing. The Palace had never used electronic surveillance fifteen years before, but that was during the old Lord’s time; Blaisse, his son, had always been much more suspicious and frightened of threats from the city. But everyone behind her knew the danger; everyone had agreed to what they were doing. She led them deeper into ornate corridors.
***
The ancient, senile old Lord used to wander through these halls, never very far from his living suite, and the children would fall silent in their playing when he passed. Val could almost see his ghost, drifting among the jewels and metallic embroidery, where he had never seemed quite comfortable.
Val sent her people around the suites. Here, she knew, there would be guards, but perhaps not many, since it was winter. She had to drag all this information back from years of trying to forget it.
The first guard was dozing in a comfortable chair; Val remembered that it was night, though the dim illumination of Center’s darkness had been, to her, like day.
She and Simon crept up on the young man. Simon held him by the throat, ignoring the fingernails clawing at his hands, until the man collapsed unconscious. They tied him with gold ropes.
The room beyond the small foyer was dark. Val pushed the curtain aside, letting in a shaft of light; the trim of baubles clinked and jangled.
‘Who’s there?’
Somehow, Val’s biggest surprise of all was that she remembered her cousin’s voice perfectly. She had to fumble a bit for the light control: it was no longer at shoulder height. Even with the inadequate diet of the underground, Val had grown taller. The lights came on slowly, automatically set so they would not dazzle any royal person’s delicate eyes.
‘Hello, cousin,’ Val said.
Clarissa sat up in the wide, low bed, sleepily. She was still beautiful and elegant, but now in a slovenly sort of way. She had changed, as much as Val or more; she had been sent to Stone Palace by bad luck of being firstborn of her Family. It was much too easy to do nothing here. When they were children, all of them knew what their work would be, except Blaisse and his younger brother, who knew they would have no work.
‘ … Val?’ Next to her, the pretty sleeping boy reacted to Clarissa’s voice. Beginning to wake, he shifted, and Val could see the marks of Clarissa’s fingernails and her whip on his back. Clarissa glanced at him and snatched a crop from her bedside. ‘Wake up!’
‘Don’t’—Val shouted as Clarissa raised her arm—’do that,’ she finished in a normal tone as her cousin jerked back the short whip. The boy cringed behind his arm.
‘You never used to be so solicitous of slaves.’
‘I never used to know any better.’ Val was impressed by her cousin’s composure, though she had not known what reaction to expect.
‘So you’re alive.’
‘That was the whole point, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes, I suppose it was, on the surface. But they really wanted you to die, you know. They just couldn’t do it themselves.’
‘I know. Get up, Clarissa.’
***
Blaisse’s guard was awake, but could not oppose them without endangering the Lady. Val held her tightly by the arm, and it was not until the guard’s laser lance hit the floor that Clarissa’s taut muscles relaxed. Her laugh held an edge of fear. ‘Blaisse won’t thank you for that.’ Leaving the guard well bound, they moved through the library, down the stairs. ‘I didn’t know,’ Clarissa said, ‘what he might have told them to do if this ever happened.’ It seemed to Val quite characteristic of Blaisse that he would never have told them anything. The subject of an attempted coup was not one he would wish to contemplate.
They found him sleeping peacefully, like a child, his head pillowed on the breast of his slave.
***
‘What do you intend to do with me?’ Blaisse had tried to run away and Simon had caught and hit him; now the Lord nursed a bruised cheek and would look only at Val.
‘Perhaps—exile you? Drive you to the deep underground?’
‘I had nothing to do with what happened to you.’
‘No,’ Val said. ‘Of course not. You stood up and said, ‘She’s a human being like the rest of us, how can we do this to her?’’
He had the grace, at least, to flush. ‘Well, what could I do?’
‘Never mind, Blaisse. You can make up for it now. You can go to the Families and tell them that the underground people hold the Palace, and that I am with them and of them.’
‘You want me … to go … out there?’
‘You’re mad!’ Clarissa said. ‘They’ll come and tear you all to bits.’
‘Cousin, you know better. They couldn’t assassinate me even when I was a child. And if my Family could allow the others to kill me, would yours allow your death?’
‘You expect me to stay here?’
‘What do you care if you’re my hostage, or Blaisse’s?’
‘They’ll cut off the electricity—they’ll turn out the lights—’
‘You helped send me into darkness! Do you think we need their light to survive?’
‘Val,’ Clarissa said more reasonably, ‘the Palace and the Families are balanced very carefully against each other. If you disturb the balance …’ She let her explanation trail off meaningfully.
‘I remember all the plans our Families had. But they won’t work against anyone who doesn’t need all this.’ She glanced around Blaisse’s bedroom. It no longer looked as grand as it had when she was a child, only overly ornate, and here and there a bit shabby.
‘They’ll fight you.’
‘At Blaisse’s request? I think not, cousin.’
Clarissa folded her arms and looked at the floor, sulking.
Val turned her attention to Blaisse. ‘Get ready, my Lord. You have a mission.’
Blaisse stood up unwillingly and walked as though still asleep toward his dressing rooms. ‘Saita!’ The strange young silver-blue girl moved quickly to hold the curtain aside for him.
‘Wait,’ Val said. Blaisse turned back. ‘Are you still able to dress yourself, Blaisse?’
‘Of course,’ he said bitterly.
‘Then do it.’
He glared at her, looked away, flung aside the curtain, and stormed out.
Val drew the two slaves aside. ‘You’re free,’ she said. ‘You don’t have to do what Blaisse and Clarissa tell you anymore. Do you understand?’
They both looked at her, not yet responding. She remembered how she had felt, when what she was used to had crumbled around her.
‘They know nothing of freedom.’ Clarissa’s tone was derisive. ‘None of them do. They’re incapable of caring for themselves.’
‘So was I, cousin.’
The young boy suddenly burst into despairing tears.
***
The settled order of Stone Palace had turned to chaos. Madame walked through it, untouched by it, still deferred to by those who passed: they stepped aside for her, but they did not wait for orders. She did not give any. She still would not dare to believe that she was free.
She remembered invaders, and she was afraid, but she heard no sounds of death or destruction. Clarissa’s suite was deserted, so she went to Blaisse’s.
Inside, strange wild people, underground people, outcasts, stared at her. Seeing them in the Palace allowed Madame to hope, at least, that the rumors might be true. The underground people returned to sampling bits of food and making faces not altogether disgusted. With the ease and intuition of long experience, Madame picked out their leader. The slender red-haired woman was sitting on one of Clarissa’s velvet cushions. Saita sat near her, head down, as the slender woman spoke to her gently and gravely. Clarissa’s attendant, the new boy, hunched in a corner and shuddered when anyone approached.
Madame spoke, hardly able to believe what she saw. ‘My Lady … Valdrienne?’
Madame remembered when Val had been driven out: a skinny little awkward child, bright, her arrogance shattered by the discovery that she was different from her siblings and cousins, different, and therefore less than human. She looked up, and their recognition was mutual.
‘There aren’t any masters anymore. Will you call me Val?’
‘Are we free?’
‘Yes.’
Madame saw that Saita was crying, silently and stilly. ‘The child …’ She did not know what to say about Saita, who had been forbidden knowledge of anything and everything but obedience, self-effacement, and the giving of sexual pleasure. ‘Her family had no future but poverty before they sold her. All her pride is based on that … She is a child.’
‘I know,’ Val said. ‘But only because they forced her to be. She can still grow, with the rest of us.’
‘I do not wish to be discourteous …’ Using titles was such an ingrained habit that she found it difficult to stop. ‘May I leave?’
‘It isn’t necessary to ask.’
Madame stood another moment; for so many years she had asked, and asked if other services were necessary, and bowed, and feared those she served. She looked down at her hands: her own hands, now, the third finger of the left hand a little crooked from her twisting the slave ring off as she grew. But it slid off easily now, leaving a mark. She held the ring out. ‘Will you … give this to Blaisse?’
Val smiled. ‘Of course.’
Madame threw down her whip. ‘I never used that.’
‘I know. I remember.’
Madame lifted her head. ‘Good-bye.’ She turned and left Blaisse’s palace. I am not ‘Madame’ anymore, she thought, and the knowledge was the sunlight she had not seen since she was eight years old.
***
She entered Subtwo’s quarters and found them empty. Suddenly she doubted what she had done: Subtwo had gone to the underground, but the underground people were here. She imagined him dead, bloody and broken at the foot of some cliff, lost, gone. She touched the arm of his chair, and knew no way to turn.
His suite was not as he had left it. A bit of furniture displaced, a closet door ajar, a few of his favorite things missing, not clumsily stolen by one of the invaders, but carefully chosen. He must have been here, and gone.
Why shouldn’t he leave? she wondered. I never responded to him … but he seemed to understand why I could not, though I wanted him …
She moved through the rooms until she reached the communications console and saw the destruction: the fused controls, the melted screen. She was afraid again, for a moment, but the only odor was of vaporized plastic: no seared-meat death-smell. Someone had wrecked the device as a precaution, or as a warning. Perhaps he had tried to contact her …
She heard footsteps and raised her head, hoping.
‘Where are you—?’ Subone stopped just inside the doorway. ‘Where—?’
‘He is not here.’
Subone groaned. ‘Hikaru, that barbaric child, the freaks—they forced him!’ he cried. ‘They— Has the ship taken off?’
‘The ship … ?’ She fell silent, clear in her understanding of what had happened. Subtwo was escaping from Subone, as much as Jan Hikaru and Mischa were escaping from earth. And if Subone caught them before they got away, he would be able to stop Subtwo, she had almost no doubt of that. If Subone caught them, he could return Subtwo to a kind of slavery as profound as her own had been. She faced Subone quietly, waiting for a minuscule vibration, a trembling of the city’s matrix that would build and climb and quite abruptly cease, as a ship fought free of gravity. But no sound came, and no vibration: Subone’s quarry still were earthbound, vulnerable.
