by Robert Reed
The elevator was slowing, finally.
Quietly, almost delicately, Porsche pointed out, “You should blame me, if you’re angry for the past.”
“Oh, I forgave you long ago, cousin. Believe me.”
But she didn’t. Not one word.
Locking her legs against the deacceleration, she said, “You and I both know what these scientists mean to the earth. What specialties they bring.”
Amused silence.
“What?” Cornell asked. Then he answered his own question, saying in a too-loud voice, “Weapons.”
“Rip-gun sales alone should earn me a small fortune,” Trinidad conceded.
Then before she could say another word, the elevator had stopped, its inner doors parting, revealing a vaultlike door hanging open. In the distance was a vast chamber, lit by a single gray light and subdivided into thousands of compartments, each compartment armored and rigorously anonymous. And between the open door and the compartments were a company of elite troops, each soldier armed with enough weaponry to flatten a city block, and every last one of them lying on the scrupulously polished floor, on their backs, eyes half-opened in some shared daze.
Latrobe threw an arm around Jey-im, saying, “Now! Here’s where you earn your key to a new world, sir.”
The words sounded practiced, the voice deadly earnest.
“Po-lee-een?” Jey-im called out.
This wasn’t the end, she told herself. And thinking of her family, she kept playing the game, abandoning Cornell and stepping up to Jey-im, managing a hopeful voice when she asked, “Where are these great minds, lover? You can show me.”
The air was thick and old, felt grass and dust combining with the musty odor of thousands of inert bodies, and punctuated with the harsh stink of the dead.
Out of so many, Porsche realized, a few must have died while estivating.
Jey-im was steady, but slow. Walking at the lead, he would pause to examine a numbered post, and sometimes he would turn up one of the countless lanes running between the chambers. Porsche remained at his side. Latrobe shadowed them, impatience camouflaged with an officious attitude and a rigid posture. Porsche saw him glancing at his bare wrist, searching for a nonexistent watch. Then she looked at Jey-im, and for the first time, she asked, “How much farther?”
He stopped moments later, and pointed.
“Here.”
Latrobe hesitated, glancing at Trinidad.
Her cousin squinted, his eavesdroppers able to pierce the EM noise and walls, but only well enough for him to say, “Maybe. Maybe.”
Each chamber resembled a small bland jarrtee house, windowless and thickly built. Their chamber was utterly ordinary. Its doorway was decorated with old gods and the image of a famished sun, and it wore a simple mechanical lock meant to be opened from inside. Latrobe called up two men, then waved back the others. Shaped explosives were planted, then detonated, their energy and noise burrowing into the locking mechanism. Porsche barely heard the pop, and suddenly Latrobe was sprinting past her, trying to move like a human in the doubled gravity.
Porsche took smaller, cleaner strides.
Entering the chamber, she found Latrobe illuminated by a meek yellow lamp, standing over the naked motionless bodies, narrow and desiccated and always facedown. He had already rolled over two of the bodies, and with a breathless anger, he muttered, “Who the fuck are these people?”
The two bodies were tiny.
They were children.
Jey-im stepped into view. Suddenly he was the one who looked composed, in charge. With a quiet smooth voice, he said, “Wait.”
Latrobe wheeled, grabbing him and lifting—
“Wait!” Porsche begged.
Then the man hesitated, perhaps realizing how far he was from home, and like it or not, how much he needed Jey-im’s help.
“It’s a standard precaution,” Jey-im explained. “After I leave them, the Masters will exchange chambers with a neighbor. It’s meant to slow down anyone who learns what I know.”
“Which chamber!”
Then Trinidad appeared, saying, “It’s straight across. I’m counting the right number of bodies…”
Again, they punched out the lock; again, Latrobe did his mad dash into the dust-ladened chamber.
The greatest minds on the planet lay strewn about the floor, clothed in drab bodies that were more old than young—but never elderly—their skin left leathery and wrinkled by the long estivation. It was close enough to dusk that some of the bodies seemed to exhale as they were lifted onto the stretchers. One or two eyes danced behind their lids, navigating their way through dreams. But otherwise, the Masters were indistinguishable from corpses, and they were as manageable as cordwood.
The cordwood was piled five deep on the stretchers, heads and feet alternated, then everyone tied down with purple silk ropes.
Every facet of the operation had the crisp efficiency of a basketball drill.
In a convoy, the stretchers were taken back to the enormous elevator. Porsche and Cornell were given their own stretcher, their own precious cargo.
Latrobe and Trinidad kept close.
In the elevator, Latrobe said, “Just drop them on the floor. Do it.”
And they went back again, everyone moving in a quick jarrtee jog with the stretchers floating between them.
They would make a single trip to the surface and the waiting trucks.
A dozen stretchers; sixty Masters at a time. Which meant half a dozen circuits before they could ascend to the surface again. Porsche made that simple calculation several times, trying to discern the perfect moment to escape. With Cornell. But when she managed to catch his eyes, he acted passive, resigned. In secret, she bristled, wishing she could say to him, “Listen. Trinidad can’t look everywhere at once. If we can slip away, then lose ourselves in this maze, nobody will bother with us. And maybe we can find another way to the surface before the jarrtees regain control.”
“What about Jey-im?” asked an imagined voice. It was Cornell’s human voice; he called him Jim. “Are we planning to abandon Jim?”
She had no intention of abandoning anyone.
“You have no weapons,” a new voice warned. “Not even one Few-made tool.”
It was her father speaking, his tone reasoned and cautious, and insistent.
“What if the jarrtees find you?” he asked his bold daughter. “What good will you accomplish in prison?” None.
“Help us,” he beseeched. “Before you act, Po-lee-een…think.”
Everything seemed to happen so smoothly, she kept thinking. But this was the easiest stretch. Trinidad’s tools and the ally of surprise were giving them every advantage. But what about the return trip into the mountains? Dusk was approaching. Another set of storms were bearing down on them. When the City smelled what was happening, every available resource would be brought to bear on their tiny, body-ladened convoy.
With a chilling clarity, Porsche remembered how difficult it had been to move one family through those mountains, and that was in a time of peace.
And that was with the Few’s cooperation, too.
Smiling in a grim human fashion, she wondered to herself: Do Latrobe and his team realize what kind of chance they’re taking?
And if not, just imagine their surprise!
The final load of scientists was left tied to the stretchers.
The elevator began to rise, accelerating smoothly. Porsche was standing with Cornell, standing beside their stretcher, when Jey-im approached, trying to smile as he spoke with a perishable hope.
“Now we can be on our way.”
She looked at the simple face for a long moment, wrestling for the perfect words.
There weren’t any.
“On our way,” he repeated, mostly to himself. Then he looked into her face and finally noticed something. He saw what he could have always seen, and in response, he straightened his back and glanced at Cornell, breathing audibly, swiftly and deeply, in mortal pain.
“No,” he said, almost too softly to be heard. “No.”
She hadn’t touched Cornell, or spoken to him, or even exchanged the plainest of glances.
They had done nothing.
But Jey-im was surprised, and furious, and utterly at a loss about how to respond to this sudden epiphany. All of his strength was barely enough to turn him again, his eyes finding hers, and with a rising voice, he said, “You don’t intend to take me. From the beginning…you have been manipulating me!”
“It wasn’t me,” she replied, by reflex.
“Oh, Po-lee-een!”
“That isn’t my name anymore.”
“What have I done?” Jey-im whispered. Then the voice lifted, turning hot and frightened. “What am I doing here? What was I thinking?”
Trinidad was approaching.
For an instant, Porsche was almost glad to see him.
“Your lady friend isn’t entirely to blame,” he told Jey-im, his voice nearly cheerful. “She’s used you, yes. But be a little charitable…she had no choice.”
The jarrtee groaned sharply, then with strong quick fists, he began to batter his own face.
A black astonishment held everyone motionless, mute.
Jey-im slumped to the floor, in agony. Scalding, iron-rich blood squirted from his battered flesh, and his screams were dressed in crimson bubbles, and he didn’t stop until Porsche was on her knees, her hands grabbing his wrists as she clung to him, physically forcing him to stop.
She meant to speak, to offer the first helpful words that came to mind.
Nothing occurred to her.
It was Trinidad who spoke first.
“Jey-im,” he said. Then he muttered the English word, “Sleep.”
There was an electric sensation, sudden and delicate, and Jey-im pitched forward, limp and unconscious.
Porsche rolled him onto his back, then with the hem of his own robe, she began to mop up the darkening blood. From a distance, someone asked, “If we leave him here, what does it hurt?”
Latrobe was speaking.
“If the jarrtees find him, can they wake him?”
Trinidad shook his head. “It’s a good Few stun. For several days, earth time, he’ll be as useful as broken furniture.”
Hands took hold of Porsche’s hands. She found herself staring at four hands, recognizing none of them. Then she turned and realized that Cornell was pulling her to her feet again, saying in his quiet, cynical way, “At least it can’t get any worse.”
She said nothing, trying to obey her father’s admonition to think.
Trinidad caught her gaze, something in his expression mesmerizing. His night-colored eyes were light-years deep, and they were utterly simple, suffused with a calm cold joy that made her angry, and determined, and focused.
“An important point lifts its gruesome head,” her cousin sang. “Do you, Po-lee-een, know how fond I am of you?”
She gave a soft, astonished laugh.
“Well, I am. I adore you, and always have.” He paused, then with a whisper of feeling added, “Which makes this especially hard.”
“What’s that?”
“I also know you,” he warned. “I know how stubborn and self-righteous you can be. Which makes me wonder about the future.”
She said nothing, waiting.
“I can defeat the jarrtees, easily, and I can make peace with the Few. But with you, my dear cousin…well, I have to wonder.”
Porsche knew exactly where he was leading, and for an instant, she could almost hear his next words, and the grim, inevitable tone of his voice.
Why feel a powerful, almost crippling sense of shock?
“You won’t let me rest,” said Trinidad. “Will you?”
“Probably not,” she admitted, in a whisper.
“Which leaves us where?”
Huddled together at the opposite end of the elevator, Latrobe and his soldiers were silent and nearly motionless. None seemed particularly surprised, which, if anything, infuriated Porsche even more.
“So you’re going to kill me,” she muttered.
Cornell edged closer, then hesitated.
Trinidad’s eyes were turning milky, turning blind, some flavor of pain finally betraying itself.
“Po-lee-een,” he muttered, “I really wish I had some choice here. But I don’t, which means that all I can do is promise you…that I’ll do everything in my power to see that the rest of your family returns home. Is that fair?”
She glared at him, saying nothing.
“Poor, poor Po-lee-een…” he sang.
She flung herself at him, and threw a fist—
And Trinidad retreated, too slowly, hands lifting and absorbing her first hard blow, then a muttered voice mangling the word, “Sleep,” as he fell backward.
A mammoth surge of energy burrowed through her flesh, into her mind.
But what surprised Porsche was how much it was like a jarrtee’s utter sleep, this sudden endless tumble into blackness!
13
Porsche awoke with a familiar scent in her mouth.
Her eyes opened gradually, first one and then the other, and she discovered that she could see by the soft glow of an infrared lamp. The lamp seemed to float, carried at a slow, stately pace. Straight above, shadows were cast by ornately decorated beams of olivine. She watched the shadows lengthen, then collapse in on themselves. She tried once to turn her head, hunting for the light’s source, but her neck was fused, her body paralyzed for the moment. Or maybe, forever.
Obviously this wasn’t the elevator, which implied that she was lying in her prison cell. And that left her frightened as well as strangely curious: Why would jailers bother to carve such an elegant ceiling?
Was it important to give the doomed a glimpse of beauty?
Again, Porsche inhaled, and again, there was that wonderfully familiar scent. Old stone and ageless humidity, the stink of perfumed fungi and the surviving aroma of a dawn feast combined to make an olfactory signature that meant home.
She blinked, then looked at the ceiling again.
Who would have guessed?
It was the oddest moment to be embarrassed, but Porsche was nothing else. This was the same feast room where she had once celebrated dusks and dawns. How many times had she regarded the ceiling from this odd vantage point? Then she managed to pry open her mouth, emitting a thin white keening sound that eventually, thankfully, got on someone’s nerves.
“Quiet,” she heard, the jarrtee voice furious and oversized, triggering more dusty memories.
Uncle Ka-ceen, she thought, in reflex.
“Relax,” the man growled from somewhere nearby. “We’re bringing you out of the stun now. Just relax.”
Out of the stun; Trinidad could just as easily have killed her.
An unfamiliar voice—a woman’s voice—said with a thinly veiled frustration, “And keep her from talking. Please.”
Again, her uncle told her to relax and be quiet.
“Cornell,” she muttered, the name distorted by her mouth and the effects of the stun. “Where is…Cornell?”
“Just this once,” her uncle pleaded, “behave. Will you, please?”
Closing her mouth was as difficult as opening it.
Her uncle’s face appeared, gazing down at her, smiling in a human fashion. He had the same intelligent and plain jarrtee face that Porsche remembered, but there were the inevitable traces of age, and behind the eyes, a palpable sense of crushing, now public burdens.
“Your friend is here,” he said with a surprising warmth. “With us, and safe.”
Again, Porsche opened her mouth.
“No,” he warned preemptively.
“Cut her muscle activity,” the unseen woman called out. “Make her relax, or let me—”
“Trinidad,” Porsche muttered. Mangled. How could anyone understand her?
Yet her uncle nodded grimly, placing a warm hand over her mouth as he confessed, “I know. All about him.”
Yes?
And to himself, with a nearly inaudible voice, “And probably always did.”
The ceiling had belonged to them, but the feast table had always been another family’s. Slowly sitting up on the slick marble, Porsche began to make out the holo portraits of strangers dangling in space, the chairs and mosaic rugs all wrong, and every other flourish conspiring to steal this space from its rightful if exceedingly absent owners.
Cornell lay at her feet, unconscious, whiskerlike probes piercing his smooth white scalp. Beyond him, unwired and tucked into a tight ball, was Jey-im. Sharing the table, the three of them resembled a cannibal’s dusk feast.
“Who lives here now?” Porsche asked.
No one answered.
Instead, her uncle spoke with a grim pride, telling her, “You don’t know how lucky you are. We just happened to find you and pull you out in time—”
“Thank you.” On this world, and particularly in this house, she couldn’t think of him as being anyone but Uncle Ka-ceen. “It was a good thing, Trinidad stunning us like he did. All things considered.”
“He made a miscalculation,” said the woman’s voice. “Finally.”
Porsche turned her head slowly, stiffly. A large jarrtee woman sat at one end of the table, her face illuminated by an infrared lamp and an autodoc. There was something odd about her, something decidedly familiar.
Porsche asked, “How much time has passed?”
“An eighth of a cycle,” said her uncle.
“Where’s Trinidad?”
He closed his eyes for a moment, blinked, and said, “We can’t be sure. But he should be passing the spaceport now.”
Cornell gave a lazy groan, and his right arm lifted, flexing once, then dropped slowly, as if exceedingly fragile.
“Does the City understand?” asked Porsche.
“People are beginning to comprehend, finally.” With the thinnest trace of pleasure, he told her, “Your cousin has done a marvelous job, considering his resources. The jarrtees are reeling. Most of their day-troops are moving in the wrong directions. And as far as we can tell, the high officials are blaming the Order. No one else.”
The large woman touched the panel with an unnatural delicacy, gradually unscrambling Cornell’s senses. By ignoring the conversation, she was making herself conspicuous.
