Joseph sat on the outer ring of seats, at the far side from the entry doors. When she saw him, she almost ran to him but contained herself, not wanting to make a scene. She walked up to where he was sitting.
‘Hello,’ she said. She was feeling exhausted and wanted to sit down, but she was scared that if she did take a seat she wouldn’t want to move for a while after.
Joseph looked around at the voice and was more than a little bit surprised to see her standing there. ‘What are you doing here, mate? I thought you had plans of your own!’
‘I do,’ she replied, catching her breath and coughing a few times before continuing, ‘but then I overheard something that I thought I should warn you about.’ She paused briefly, trying to gulp down air. ‘A couple of women were discussing something of personal interest.’ She looked around, scared of being overheard, especially considering how close others in the waiting room were. ‘You need to call your friends quickly and tell them to get out of the room while they still can.’
‘Get out of the…’ Joseph started parroting.
‘I heard s-sirens,’ Starlight added, still panting and stuttering a little. ‘Police sirens. They were heading in large numbers towards the hotel. It’s possible I’m wrong, but we can’t take that chance. I think someone saw your pictures on the newspaper and sold you out.’
Joseph didn’t need to be told twice. He pulled the portable link from his coat pocket and dialed the number of the room in which he had been staying. Then he waited and waited. Soon he found himself hissing, ‘Come on, pick up,’ into the mouthpiece.
‘No luck?’ Starlight asked. She was beginning to recover her breath, though her feet had started to complain to her. If there was ever a time in her life she might have desired the amputation of parts of her body, it was now.
Joseph put the link away and stood up. ‘They’re not answering. Come on, we’ll have to go in person and pray we aren’t too late.’
‘Or that I’m wrong,’ Starlight offered hopefully.
He strode quickly towards the door, but at no time did he break into a run until he was beyond the doors and the gazes of the others waiting there.
Starlight nodded and followed close on his heels. She found it hard to keep up, but somehow she managed. Fortunately he hadn’t parked too far from the emergency room doors, and Starlight took to the passenger seat of Joseph’s car with more than a little relief.
Day Nine
Eschiff
The Martian Colony was finished in the year 2822 A.D. Even now some of the vehicles used in the construction of the place can still be found on the planet’s surface, although they have been strategically placed away from any external windows.
The Martian Colony isn’t the only structure on the surface of the planet, but most of the others are either government or business owned and are not open to the general public.
35
A Death In The Family
Starlight hadn’t been wrong. The police were all over the forecourt of the hotel, and most likely there were others around the rear to prevent any possible escape that way. The hotel itself was illuminated with large floodlights that the police had brought with them. The curtains of virtually every room twitched as the occupants watched the proceedings with interest. To many this was probably the most exciting thing to ever happen to them. There was even a camera team from Triple ‘N’ filming the whole thing. Occasionally they even got in the way of the police in order to get the shots they wanted. Two suspects had been brought out and were even now being questioned by the side of a large van with their hands held behind their backs with manacles.
Jhosatl and Starlight had been too late. They had probably been too late when Jhosatl had tried to warn them with the link, which would explain why they hadn’t been answering.
They sat in the car at the edge of the hotel grounds, trying to keep in the shadows so they wouldn’t be noticed while they watched what was going on. As he sat in the driver’s seat, Jhosatl shook both with rage and fear, rage for his friends and fear for his wife.
‘I don’t see her,’ he commented. He knew it was unlikely they would bother to care for her once they found her; what was another dead cat to them? But perhaps they wouldn’t find her. Maybe he could go in and retrieve her after the police had left the area.
But then two men came out of the hotel, a stretcher between them and the figure on the stretcher covered from head to foot by a large white sheet. Jhosatl didn’t have to lift the sheet to know his worst fears had been realized.
Neither Judith nor Sult had been carrying a weapon. They would have given up without a fight. When the police had found Amba, they wouldn’t have cared that she was ill and unable to defend herself. They may not even have bothered to check if she was ill. She was a cat on the run, and that was all that mattered to them.
‘I’ve failed her,’ he cried.
Starlight did her best to comfort him. ‘What will you do now?’
‘What is there to do?’ he asked her. ‘She was my world, and now that she is gone there is nothing else.’
‘Life must go on,’ Starlight insisted, still trying to comfort him. ‘She wouldn’t want you to spend the rest of your life in mourning.’
Jhosatl ignored her. There were tears in his eyes as he started the car and drove them away from the area. Perhaps he ought to be thinking about finding a way to rescue Sult and Judith from the clutches of the police and the soldiers, but all he could think about was how much he loved his wife and how life was meaningless now that she was gone.
36
Strangers In The Cellar
The cellar was dark and damp. From somewhere towards his left and behind him he could hear the sound of a tap as it dripped into a nearby sink. There was a strong smell of alcohol mixed in with something he couldn’t think of the name of. There were also the unmistakable scents of three people he recognized and trusted like no others and yet couldn’t put a name to any of them.
Occasionally he could hear a buzz in the back of his mind; it was like a voice and even spoke complete coherent sentences, and yet anything it said seemed to make no sense at all. Myajes decided to ignore it as best he could.
‘Can he hear us?’ the buzz asked in a vaguely male voice.
‘Yes,’ the buzz replied to itself, this time using a female voice, ‘His world will make total sense regardless of what we tell him. If we want to change a detail, we simply tell him how the world is and his perceptions will accept it as if it had always been that way. He currently thinks he’s in the cellar of a house in Sou’nd. He thinks he’s tied to a chair and about to be questioned by three cats he knows well. I’ve no doubt that his mind perceives some sort of cliché interrogation setup, such as a bright light in his face.’
Myajes noticed that he was tied to a small wooden chair, his arms and legs bound by thick tight ropes. He tried the ropes experimentally, but there was no give in them. A bright light had been situated a few feet in front of him and aimed directly at his face, making the rest of the cellar virtually invisible to him even with his superior night vision. He wondered why they would bother to do that. After all, his sense of smell was more than enough to identify the three, if only he could put a name to them.
‘Are you sure this will work?’ the male part of the buzz commented in its nonsensical way.
The female buzz replied, spewing other nonsense, ‘If you would prefer, we can put him back in his cell, and when he’s recovered you can use the truth drug on him. A least this way we know he’ll stay alive.’
Whoever these people were, they hadn’t bothered to dress him. He was wearing no more than the rags that he had been dressed in when he had been a prisoner of the Elite Guard.
He remembered himself as a prisoner in the Cattery. They had been scared of him and had kept him drugged for virtually his entire time there. It was no wonder he couldn’t remember his escape. It was a bit of a miracle that with all the drugs they had pumped into his system while he had been a guest of the go
vernment that he’d managed to even stay alive.
‘What exactly is the drug you’re using?’ the male buzz inquired.
‘It’s a hallucinogen,’ the female buzz replied, still making no sense, ‘with about a ten percent dose of a truth drug, just enough to give his mind a bit of a nudge in the direction we want him to go. It might cause him to hallucinate in the future, but since his days are numbered anyway…’
‘We’ll try it your way first,’ the male buzz commented, ‘but if we don’t get the information we want then I’ll have to use the truth drug anyway.’
‘The drug should be working enough by now,’ the female buzz explained. ‘Myajes, the next time you hear my voice you will understand it as clearly as if someone in the room with you had just spoken to you.’
Myajes was a little irritated by the buzzing voices in his head. He hoped it didn’t mean he was going to have to seek psychiatric help. At least they hadn’t claimed to be voices from the Goddess, but that could easily come next.
‘Myajes Conjah, isn’t it?’ It was a woman’s voice. It came from somewhere behind the bright light, making it impossible for him to see who had spoken, but there was something very familiar about the voice, as if he had heard it recently.
‘Yes,’ Myajes replied unhesitatingly. The sooner this questioning was over, the sooner he could get back to the Matriarch and his duties, assuming the Lesser Matriarch would have him back after his failure to rescue Lara. He hoped Lara was all right, but he feared the worst. It was unlikely she could survive stuck in that tiny cell in the Cattery.
‘The little wires that are attached to various parts of your body lead to a lie detector,’ the voice told him simply.
Myajes looked down at the wires on his arms, seeing them for the first time. Well, it was a dark cellar and he felt them more than saw them. Likewise, he felt the wires on his legs, which he couldn’t actually see at all because he couldn’t move enough to look, even though he could feel that they were there. There was even an electrode attached to his chest. Funny too how he hadn’t noticed these little wires earlier, and yet he knew without a doubt that they had been there long before the voice had spoken to him.
‘Please understand, you’ve been a prisoner of the Elite Guard for over a week, and there’s no telling what they have done to you in that time. This is why you are bound. For all we know, you have been brainwashed, and we need to be sure before we can release you back amongst our people. We’re going to ask you a few questions, and we want you to answer truthfully. So long as you’re truthful with us, you will be allowed to return to your duties. If you lie at all, you will be dumped back outside the gates of the Cattery to fend for yourself. Is that understood?’
‘Yes,’ Myajes replied weakly.
‘Good,’ replied the voice calmly. ‘The first thing we are going to do is ask a couple of control questions to make sure that we have the lie detector calibrated correctly for your metabolism.’
‘Okay,’ Myajes commented.
‘Are you ready?’ she asked.
‘Ready,’ Myajes replied.
The male buzz seemed to sigh with impatient irritation.
‘First calibration question, are you male or female?’ the voice asked brusquely.
‘Male, last time I looked,’ Myajes replied with a smirk.
‘It’s working.’ This was from the male buzz, and as such Myajes ignored it.
‘Good,’ the woman commented. ‘Second calibration question, how about, what is the current address of the woman known as the Lesser Matriarch?’
‘That’s not something I can impart to just anybody,’ Myajes complained.
‘I’m not asking you something that we both don’t already know?’ the woman asked him calmly.
‘I knew it was too good to be true,’ scoffed the male buzz.
‘You already know that?’ Myajes seemed surprised.
‘Of course I do,’ the woman replied. ‘I am the Lesser Matriarch, after all. Don’t you think I’d know my own address?’
Myajes almost kicked himself with how stupid he had been. Of course that was who it was. He had recognized the scent and the voice immediately when he had heard it, and yet he just hadn’t been able to put a name to it until she had told him herself. Besides, who else amongst his kind would have the authority to question him like this? ‘I’m sorry,’ he told her, embarrassed. ‘You must think me a real idiot.’
‘So the answer to the question, please,’ the Matriarch asked, adding, ‘so we can calibrate our machine properly.’
‘Well,’ Myajes replied, happy now that he was with the people he trusted the most in the world, ‘when I last visited you, you were living in a large detached bungalow in Fobbing, not too far from the main road that takes you to Benfleet and Sou’nd. Is that enough?’
‘No,’ replied the woman’s voice, ‘I need you to tell me the number or the name of the house.’
‘I don’t remember,’ Myajes replied anxiously. ‘It was pink; that’s all I remember. A pink house situated on the final ‘S’ bend of Fobbing Road, in Fobbing, not too far from the main road. Surely that’s enough? As you know, that bend isn’t very big; there are only two or three houses on it.’
‘Okay,’ interjected the male buzz again, ‘take him back to his cell. And inform the authorities to check out the address he’s just given us. If he was lying then I may have to try the truth drug on him after all.’
‘I don’t think he was lying,’ the woman replied simply.
‘I’m not lying,’ Myajes commented, confused. ‘Surely your machine told you that!’
‘Hopefully not, you were very convincing,’ the male buzz continued its tittering on insensibly. ‘Good work, Doctor Jones.’
Myajes was lifted out of the chair by one of the two male figures that had been in the room. He was confused for a moment. Didn’t the Matriarch have questions she wanted to ask him about his time in the Cattery? Or had he answered those? He had a vague recollection that if they were helping him out of the cellar then they must already have asked all the questions that they were going to. He was also a little confused with the way that the ropes binding his limbs seemed to just melt away as he was aided from the chair, and the way the wires connecting him to the lie detector had just vanished. But then he remembered that the man helping him had undone them before lifting him. What a stupid thing to have forgotten.
The man helped Myajes out of the cellar into a lit hallway and then through two plastic, pseudo-wood doors into a fairly fresh-smelling and wonderfully decorated bedroom. There were flower designs on the curtains and toys scattered haphazardly about the room. It was vaguely reminiscent of Lara’s bedroom, back when she was no more than twelve years old. The Matriarch had moved since then, but Lara’s room had been on the upper story of their previous home. And yet Myajes didn’t remember being brought up any stairs to get here, nor could he remember being carried up stairs just to get out of the cellar. He was sure it would all make sense in the morning. Maybe the man that had helped him had carried him up the stairs.
When Myajes woke, he was in the small cell on Mars. His head was throbbing with the pain of yet another headache. Headaches seemed to have been a constant thing ever since his arrival on Mars. He had little doubt that it was due to all the drugs they had kept pumping into him. Drugged to the eyeballs in the Cattery and now drugged constantly here. He chose to see it as a sign that everyone was scared of him.
He looked around the small cell, wondering what time it was. There weren’t any windows in his cell to help him judge it, not that that would have made a lot of difference, as each section of the Martian Colony kept its own time regardless of where the sun was in the sky. He remembered he had turned down the offer of a clock; he hadn’t seen the need for one at the time.
He blinked a couple of times in the illumination of the cell, the lights that always stayed on even when he wanted to sleep. Slowly he began to remember the dream he had had. There was something about it that worried him more t
han just a little, and there was a surreal aspect to the whole thing that bothered him.
Doctor Foster’s image appeared on the main screen almost immediately after Myajes sat up. The Doctor had probably been monitoring his prisoner most of the night, waiting for him to come round. ‘You cats do sleep for a long time.’
‘No more than you herd,’ Myajes countered aggressively.
‘Maybe, maybe not,’ Doctor Foster replied, ‘though since you got here—how long has it been, three days now?—you do seem to have spent more time asleep than awake.’
‘I’ve been here three days?’ Myajes blurted out. Suddenly he was both alert and more than a little bit shocked.
‘Well,’ the doctor offered, his voice calm by comparison and perhaps even a little bit aloof, ‘today is your third day in that comfortable cell. Did you sleep well?’
‘No too bad,’ Myajes told him.
‘You had some funny dreams, though?’ the Doctor asked, genuinely interested.
‘I dreamt I’d escaped from the Cattery,’ Myajes replied.
‘And you were answering questions to prove that the Matriarch could trust you?’ Doctor Foster asked simply.
‘Yes,’ Myajes commented. Then he paused and asked, ‘But how could you know?’
Doctor Foster gave him an almost sickly smile and pressed a button on a console in front of him.
A moment later a voice that Myajes recognized as his own was piped into the little cell and he heard himself as he surrendered the address of the Lesser Matriarch. ‘My dream!’ he exclaimed suddenly, and he sat bolt upright on the bed.
‘I told you we would get the information out of you, even though we did have to drug you again to get it,’ the Doctor explained, ‘but I thought you might like to know that that part of your job here is over and we can get on with my experiments. We have already sent a copy of it to our soldiers on the ground. I expect we’ll hear all about it on the news tonight. I might even have the story piped through to you so you can enjoy it as well.’
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