Warp World

by Kristene Perron

  As long as Gressam was alert and ready, she didn’t stand a chance against him. And the longer he deprived her of sleep and food, the more weak and confused she would become. She had to make a decision now, while she still could. Trust Seg and wait this out? Or try to escape?

  Absently, she fidgeted with the metal collar that sat just below her dathe, just as she once had fidgeted with her leather nove. The day she had cut off that symbol of Kenda repression she had experienced a surge of pride, and relief. Freedom. She had vowed never to hide her dathe again, never to bow down for tyrants. Seg loved her dathe and her independent nature. He had sworn she would never be registered, processed, or grafted on his world.

  One out of three, she thought, one corner of her mouth jerking up into an angry smirk.

  Escape.

  She traced her fingers along the wall of her cell, stared up at the ceiling and down at the thinly padded floor that was her bed. Her flight suit had been replaced by a clingy piece of fabric that fit her body like a second skin. No weapons here, not even a sheet or a belt.

  Her only hope was surprise. She thought back to her capture on her world. Manacled and chained, escape had seemed impossible but she had feigned defeat and used that to throw her captors off guard long enough for a single charge. She could do the same here. In fact, it would be easy, now that she considered the circumstances.

  Gressam conducted all of Ama’s training, but it was Flurianne who acted as her guard. Gressam’s docile and flawless assistant carried out the duty with devotion, if not outright enthusiasm. Despite the processor’s cruelty, Ama suspected the young woman enjoyed her position at his side, and the small degree of power he allowed her.

  The flaw in this arrangement was that Flurianne’s only advantage over Ama was the controller for her collar. Take that away and the fragile beauty—unarmed and lacking Ama’s strength or fighting skill—would be helpless.

  Each time Flurianne had come to escort Ama from this cell, she had been curled up on the floor, hands shielding her eyes, struggling for sleep. And that was how Flurianne would expect to find her this time.

  Heart pounding at the prospect of liberty, Ama took two steps to the door and pressed her back against the wall directly to one side of it.

  She waited there, blood surging in her ears, for what felt like hours. Her cell was sealed from the outside world; she would get no warning before the door slid open.

  Fatigue nipped at her muscles until her legs shook. She sunk to her knees, determined to stay there only long enough to regain her strength, but strength did not return. Exhaustion and doubt took over. No one was coming.

  Just for a moment. I’ll just lie down for a moment, she thought. She reached a hand for the floor.

  A muted whoosh signaled Flurianne’s arrival. Ama nearly screamed with the sudden release of tension. She spread both arms wide and sprang, biting her lip at the same time and tasting blood. The caj screamed, but Ama slapped a hand over her mouth and squeezed. Her other hand went for the controller, pulled at it, but Flurianne was surprisingly strong and would not release it. Ama felt the biting pain of the collar surging with current. She screamed, did not realize the sound was only in her mind and, letting go of the controller, she tightened her hand into a fist and hit the caj girl in the face.

  For a moment, Flurianne’s eyes widened in shock and she dropped the controller. Ama fell to the floor and snatched up the device, surged to her feet and held it like a weapon, threatening the caj with it. “Stay here, be quiet. I don’t want to hurt you,” she said, so softly she hardly heard it herself. But the caj nodded, fear in her eyes.

  The girl stepped back as Ama slid out of the cell. Then she was sprinting down the silent corridor, hoping that Flurianne would stay silent, refusing to feel sorry for the girl, though part of her wanted to sympathize. She tasted the blood on her tongue and felt ready for battle—but she was a long way from freedom.

  She sprinted down the silent corridor, hoping that Flurianne would stay down.

  Just as they had been on her first arrival, the stone walkways were empty. Ama thanked Nen for her good fortune. She had memorized the path as best she could while she had walked behind Flurianne that day. Doors that had been open then were now closed and locked, forcing her to change directions, but no one was following and no one had sent up an alarm.

  The twists and turns led her to a stairway; she looked from side to side. Her cell was on the same floor as the exit but perhaps there was another way out? She had to gamble, the only other option was to turn back.

  Scrambling down the stairs, Ama kept an ear open for footfalls or voices and cast frequent looks over her shoulder. There was another door at the end but this one slid open at her touch and she exited into a wide, U-shaped area bordered on one side by low walls and railings. She was alone—but there was a noise, a kind of hum, a vibration almost, from below. With cautious steps, she moved to the railing and peered over.

  At first, she thought it must have been some kind of machine—Seg’s world had so many—but when her eyes focused she saw that the slow moving mass was actually a group of people.

  Their clothes were torn and ratty, their heads were shaved and hung down, eyes on the floor. The group moved as one, like a river of flesh. From the way they staggered and moaned, it was obvious they were exhausted. It was impossible to count the total number—they came in through a door on one side, went out through another next to it, and the same pattern repeated at the other end of the room. They were walking in some wide loop, but Ama could only see a few dozen at one time.

  Walking? More like they were being herded. Humans treated as cattle, like the greshers on her world, used for labor. “Then slaughtered.” Her mouth went dry.

  A voice said, “Labor.”

  Ama turned to see Flurianne enter the chamber.

  “Commons,” the girl continued. “For the recycler, the ponds, manufactuaries, hydroponicoms, wherever they’re needed.”

  Drying blood stained her face and clothing, blood she had made no effort to clean away.

  Flurianne looked down at the mass, her face impassive. “I was there, once.”

  The scene had taken away Ama’s focus but not her goal. She raised her fists and stepped forward. The moment she lashed out, Flurianne sidestepped, caught her arm, and carried the motion forward. With a simple twist of her hips, she flipped Ama to the stone floor and knocked the breath out of her body.

  Ama gasped for air. Flurianne’s slender fingers plucked the controller out of her hand. She stumbled to one side, arms flailing, but the element of surprise was long gone and she found one arm twisted behind her back before she could speak. The lithe caj pushed her to the rail with no effort at all.

  “How can you help him?” Ama asked, her eyes once more cast down to the shuffling mob.

  Flurianne did not answer. For a moment the only sounds were Ama’s gasps and the shuffling of the feet below. Then came the sound of measured boot steps, one after the other. Flurianne twisted Ama’s arm and pressed her downward, lowering her head below the rail, leaving her hanging forward slightly, nothing between her and the floor below. Her grasp on Ama’s arm was firm, painful, but controlled.

  Gressam stepped up alongside the two women and looked down at the endless line of marching caj. “Flurianne came from here, as she said.”

  For all the noise and commotion above, not a single caj had looked up.

  “And you freed her out of the goodness of your heart,” Ama said, with some effort. The position robbed her of air. “I’m sure you’re both very happy together.”

  Gressam crouched down and steadied himself with one hand on the rail. “Flurianne is no freer than them. No freer than you. She has simply accepted her place, as you will. As they will.”

  He held out his free hand and accepted Ama’s controller from Flurianne. He slid it into his pocke
t before reaching into another pocket and pulling out another, much larger, controller. “Do you really think we only have one controller for you, Amadahy?”

  He rose up again and gave a small nod to Flurianne, who tugged Ama’s arm back to pivot her toward Gressam.

  “Do you really think you can escape here? Do you think you are the first to try? The first to assault Flurianne? The first to run to this room?”

  Ama stared up at him, realization dawning. She had never felt so gullible, so naive. Had her arm not been pinned so thoroughly, she would have struck him.

  “You herded me down here. You wanted me to see them suffering.”

  “I wanted you to understand your actions have consequences that extend far beyond you. The longer you refuse to accept your new place in life, the worse these consequences can become.”

  He lifted the controller and pressed a sequence of buttons. He looked at Ama once more with a deep, serious frown, then turned away from the rail and stabbed his finger down on the controller. From below, a series of agonized wails erupted. Bodies thumped against the floor in thrashing convulsions as he caught Flurianne’s gaze and jerked his head. Once more the vice-like grip on Ama’s arm forced her around beneath the rail, forced her to look down into the room.

  “Please—” Ama caught herself before she begged Gressam to stop. “I won’t do it again.”

  “You would not be allowed to do it again.” Gressam kept his back to the vision of suffering beneath them. “You were shown this for a reason.”

  He let the wails drag on for another long moment before he released the button. The caj rolled around before slowly dragging themselves back to their feet. As they stood, none dared look above. The march resumed its slow, painful slog.

  “Flurianne, which arm did she strike you with?”

  “The right, Processor Gressam,” Flurianne said.

  “Break it.”

  Ama’s eyes flew open. “Wait—”

  Flurianne sprang into motion, lifted Ama’s arm, and smashed her forearm against the rail with savage precision. The bone snapped with a sickening wet sound. Gressam pivoted on his heel and looked down at Ama.

  “Retyel.”

  Howling, Ama staggered to the ground. She couldn’t assume the position perfectly with the broken limb but she managed a reasonable attempt. Her arm burned and she was instantly soaked with sweat. She wanted to scream and cry and run, but all she could do was wait for Gressam’s foot on her head and the worst of the nightmare to end.

  Flickering images moved across Jarin’s wallscreen—the ongoing adventures of Senior Theorist Horice and her erstwhile though often forgetful assistant Pinbrook. The unlikely duo solved scientific and cultural puzzles across the worlds of other dimensions. This vis-ent, like all the others, was thinly disguised propaganda. But it was at least clever and well-written propaganda, which made it the one guilty pleasure Jarin and Maryel shared during their rare private evenings together.

  Though her A Block residence was larger, detached, and significantly more luxurious, Maryel always came to Jarin’s cluttered little nook in the C Block of the Guild compound for these meetings. The Aimaz family was iconic within the Guild, and Maryel’s father had raised her in absolute orthodoxy. She would no more consider a life without her serving caj than she would consider cutting off her own hands. Jarin had long known this about her and accepted the fact. After all, his upbringing had been not much different. Had his career unfolded as expected, he would have had a residence full of his own servants. Maryel was a stern perfectionist with everyone, caj included, but she was not cruel. Not to caj, and not to her lover. Which was why she came here, where there was no one to fetch her drinks, or tidy the mess of office work always left scattered about, where the bed sagged slightly and she could never listen to the music she enjoyed because it had been produced by slaves.

  And, for this, Jarin adored her.

  This evening, however, he was hardly aware of her presence. Until her voice snapped out an order to the screen.

  “Mute program.” She sat upright in the small bed.

  “Forgive me. I am abysmal company at the moment,” Jarin said.

  She turned to him, her hair hanging in a loose gray frame around her face. “Ordinarily I would be delighted to make it through half the program without you spoiling the ending but—”

  “Deconstruction of mysteries is my work,” he said, with a gentle smile. “You’ve often said it was my intellect and doggedness that attracted you.”

  Maryel let out a frustrated sigh and slapped her hands down on the bed. “I have spent several weeks dealing with your former pupil’s evasiveness; I won’t tolerate it from you. If you will not—”

  He put his hand on the back of hers. “My apologies, love.”

  “Are we going to speak about this situation or have we ceased with honesty altogether?”

  “The situation is under control.”

  “Your grand hope for the People’s salvation went on a verbal rampage in the Question chamber, then collapsed in a stimulant-induced fit. Is that your idea of under control?”

  Jarin took a deep breath in, used the time to calm himself and compose his thoughts, a technique he had once taught his prized pupil. “Segkel exceeded his limitations. A lesson he won’t soon forget, I am certain. He will be confined to observation until the stimulants are cleared from his system and the medicals are confident he may resume with the Question. The official report will state that his condition is entirely physical in nature and that his behavior in the Question chamber was merely the unforeseen result of injuries sustained during his mission.”

  “And you believe this solves the problem?” Maryel asked.

  Looking in her eyes, he understood with a sudden unexpected clarity why others were so often ill at ease with Theorists. We study them.

  “I believe, given the circumstances—”

  “He’s failing, Jarin.” Maryel delivered the news as if she were informing a parent of the death of a child.

  A heavy silence smothered the small room. The muted characters on the wallscreen heightened the sense that sound had left the World and might never return.

  “Then I have failed.” Jarin felt memories pushing up through cracks in his consciousness. “Again.”

  Maryel folded her lips inward and turned her face back to the wallscreen where Horice and Pinbrook hunted for clues in silence.

  She knew as much about the tragedy of his past as anyone—the Outer he had loved, who had been taken from him and destroyed—but she did not know the entire story. Only one other had shared that blackest moment of his history. There were some secrets Jarin would carry with him to his death, which some days he felt he deserved and other days he felt would be getting off lightly.

  After another lengthy pause, Maryel said, “As much as I believe Eraranat created his own mess—as always—I am not entirely without sympathy.”

  He could not suppress a frown at the comment. The mess Segkel had gotten into was falling in love with an Outer.

  “Was Fi Costk behind the legal troubles?” Maryel’s mouth puckered at the man’s name.

  “Not directly. He likely has operatives investigating methods to discredit and damage Segkel, but torturing the boy’s companion for sport is too petty a business for him. No, he is too busy managing the affairs of the World, in that high office of his, to obsess over the details of the lives of insects.”

  “Too petty? It’s not like you to underestimate your enemies.”

  “Fi Costk hates the Guild, without question, and because Segkel disrupted his plans—”

  “Fi Costk hates you, Jarin. You.” She didn’t shout the words but the frustration behind them rang through. “The CWA will always seek to undermine the Guild but when Fi Costk does so it is because, for him, you are the Guild. For five years, you lied to h
im. He believed, despite your opposing alliances, that you were friends.”

  “I was an agent, Maryel, it was my job. In my position, he would have done the same.”

  “But that neither alters history nor lessens the sting of that perceived betrayal. Where you are concerned, nothing is too petty for Fi Costk. Whatever you love, he will seek to destroy.”

  “He already has!” Jarin looked down quickly, surprised to see his hand curled into a fist, the sheet twisted in its grasp.

  For several minutes, the only sound in the room was breathing.

  “Forgive me.”

  “There is no need.” Maryel moved her hand to his. “If it was not Fi Costk that went after Eraranat, then it was that wretched woman.”

  “Akbas? Excellent conclusion, Pinbrook.” Jarin delivered the line in the affected speech of their vis-ent’s hero and Maryel rewarded him with a fleeting smile. “Efectuary Akbas has been diverted to a dead-end position in the PIS and, from my assessment of her and her file, is entirely capable of such detailed and petty vengeance. Perhaps I should have taken Gelad up on his offer to de-pop her.”

  Maryel snickered and leaned in to whisper in his ear, “My lurkiya.”

  At the use of her pet name, for the first time that evening, Jarin smiled. She had long ago compared him to the stealthy wasteland predator—which hid just below the surface and ambushed its unsuspecting prey—and the name had stuck.

  Maryel’s rigid body relaxed a fraction. “I do worry about you, though. You have grown too attached to that boy. Twice now you have come running to his aide. Fi Costk may be busy ruling over his empire but he isn’t blind. He will use Eraranat as a tool to hurt you, especially since you helped to thwart his takeover of House Haffset. Which is precisely the reason your original grand plan was to groom several Eraranats instead of only one. What happened to that?”

  “Time,” Jarin said. The muscles in the small of his back pulsed and ached as if to punctuate the word. “Time has come quietly, and without a great deal of fanfare, but we are now living in the midst of the worst crisis the Guild has experienced since the invasion of Cathind eight hundred years ago. We need this one, we need him to survive and succeed and set the template for the Eraranats who will follow. If he fails, the Guild will retrench yet again, and this time the CWA will finish what they started after Lannit. Not only will the Guild be consumed but also—” He sucked in a breath. “—with the continual growth of the Storm and our inability to keep pace with it at current vita inputs, we are facing extinction within the century, if not sooner. The dynamic must be reversed. Now. And he is our greatest hope for that.”