by Sharon Lee
You will stand! The tutor's thought slashed at her. Explain what you have just done and your reasons for doing so! The order rang in her head, and no sooner had it formed than she was yanked upward and released. She staggered, got her feet under her, and bowed to the tutor, where they stood on the dais, the dominant allowing her anger to be seen; the submissive staring over her head, to the farthest corner of the room—and beyond.
I have—
Speak against the air, the dominant snapped, and her thought burned.
She cooled the burn site, bowed once more, and straightened, her hands flat against her thighs.
"I returned the protolife to its quiescent state," she said, her voice thin and one dimensional. They seldom communicated so, amongst themselves. Lower forms spoke against the air, and by placing this demand upon her the tutor illustrated that she—a student and unpaired—was lower—weaker—than a full dramliza unit.
As if that point required illustration.
Upon what order did you undertake this action? Her tutor's thought fairly crackled, throwing out sparks of yellow and orange.
She bowed. "Upon my own initiative," she said steadily.
It is your LEARNED opinion that the remainder of the lesson was of no benefit to you?
The rest of the lesson? The thought took shape before she could prevent it. She bent forward in a bow—and found herself gripped in a vise of energy, unable to straighten, unable to continue the bow, unable to move her legs, or her arms, scarcely able to breathe.
So, you were unaware that there was more? the dominant purred, her thought now showing gleams and glimmers of pleased violet.
"I was," she whispered against the air, staring perforce at the tile floor.
Then you will stand in place of your construct, and finish the lesson out, the dominant stated. Anjo.
Abruptly, she was released. She gasped in a great lungful of air as she collapsed, tile gritting against her cheek, her limbs weak and tingling unpleasantly with the renewed flow of blood.
She set her hands against the tile, pushed herself up—and fell flat on her face as her left arm dissolved in a blare of pain so encompassing she scarcely felt it.
Panting, she rocked back to her knees, to her feet—and down again, cracking her head against the floor, the place where her right leg had been an agony beyond belief.
Grimly, she got up onto her remaining knee and hand, pain warring with horror as she understood that the tutor meant to—
One eye was gone, its empty socket a cup of fire burning into her skull. She screamed, then, the sound high and wild—and cut off abruptly as her ears were taken.
Observe closely, the tutor was addressing the rest of her cohort, the pattern of her thought weaving like a violet ribbon through the pain. Lesser beings may be governed by a system of punishment and reward.
Acid ate her right arm.
Judicious reward and implacable punishment ...
Her left leg evaporated in a sheet of fire.
...will win unfailing service...
The biology lab vanished as her remaining eye was plucked out.
...and will enforce both your dominion and your superiority.
The pain increased as the tutor exerted her will on nerve endings and receptors. She could feel the pressure of that terrible regard, as her thoughts skittered and scrambled. She tried to hide from the pain, all her perceptions obscured by it, so that she was blind in truth, and the pain, the pain...
We have taken away much, as is our right, according to our ability.
She was ablaze; the skin crisping on her bones; her reason spiraling toward chaos. Just like—
We shall now bestow a small reward.
Just like her poor creature, which had done so well, for a lower order, built to be dominated, manipulated and—
Monitor the flux of the emotion 'gratitude.'
She was not a base construct. She was not. She would fight. She would—
She would dominate.
Atom by atom, she scraped together her shattered will and focused on the roaring source of energy obscuring her perceptions. Pain. Pain could be used.
Beyond the inferno, she felt the weight of her tutor's regard increase.
She thrust her will into the howling depth of the pain—
The tutor's regard altered, sparked—
Using raw power and no finesse whatsoever, she created shields and threw them into place.
There was an orange and yellow detonation as the tutor's will slammed into her barriers—but she had no time for that, now.
The tutor launched another assault, but her protections held. Of course they held. Had she not survived the First Doom? Her shields had withstood the stare of one of the Iloheen; they would hold against a mere dramliza.
For a time.
Working with rapid care, she bled off the pain, sublimating it into working energy, using it to rebuild her depleted strength.
As she dominated the pain, her focus returned and she was able to survey the wreckage of her envelope.
Tentatively at first, then more swiftly as she began to integrate the fine points of the interrupted lesson, she rebuilt her body.
Arms, legs, eyes, ears, nerves, dermis... As she worked, she considered making alterations—and regretfully decided not to do so. Alterations made in haste and in unstable conditions might later be revealed as errors. Best to wait.
She did, however, strengthen her shields.
Then, she opened her eyes.
Carefully, cocooned in total silence on all perceptual levels, she came to her feet, and raised her eyes to the instructor's dias.
Lower your protections. The characteristic bright orange thought was shading toward a dangerously bland beige, and the taste of manganese was very strong.
With all respect, she answered—no.
You may lower them or Anjo will destroy them.
She looked to the submissive, and found his pale eyes open and focused on her face, with ...interest...
I will not, she made answer to the dominant. And Anjo shall not.
Upon what order do you undertake this action?
Upon my own initiative.
Ah. The dominant extended her will to the submissive—and froze in time and space as a long Shadow fell across the room and the perceptions of all within.
The air grew chill and the tile took on a glaze of ice before the Iloheen deigned to speak.
Discipline has been meted and met. It goes no further.
Edonai, the Anjo Valee dominant answered, her thought warm against the Shadow's chill. On the dais, the dramliza bowed low. Those who yet knelt before their lab dishes threw themselves upon their faces on the ice-slicked floor.
She—she bowed until her head touched her knees, and held it, as the Shadow fell full upon her—
And was gone.
Abruptly, the room warmed. Behind her, she heard small noises as her cohort straightened and stilled. She unbent slowly, and looked up to the dais. The dominant did not meet her eyes.
You will return the specimen to its original state, the tutor ordered the class entire. When that is done, you will wait upon the philosophy tutor.
iii.
THE DOWNLOAD WAS about to take place.
She, with those of her cohort who had survived the Second Doom, watched from a distance, thought stilled and vital energies shielded, to insure that the tumzaliat would not perceive, and thus seek to attach, their essences.
In the birthing room, the vessel was readied. Its arms were spread, held thus by chains woven of alternating links of metal and force, the ends melded with the smooth tile floor. Similar chains around each ankle pulled the legs wide. Its head was gripped in a metal claw; a metal staple over its waist held it firm and flat.
On the plane from which they observed, the vessel was nothing more than a smear of pink, which was the glow of the autonomous systems. The hopeful dominant showed not even as much as that, so closely did she hold herself.
Withi
n the lesser aetherium, the tumzaliat pursued their small, simple dances, which were so much less than the intricate movements of rebellion and abandon performed by their wild kin, the zaliata. Those such as she—and the cadet preparing herself below—they were fit only to exercise dominion over tumzaliat and so forge a working dramliza unit, to thereby accomplish the will of the Iloheen as it was expressed to them.
They were, after all, nothing more than embodiment of the vast wills of the Iloheen, without which they would have no existence. So the philosophy tutor taught.
In the birthing room, all was ready.
The cadet knelt beside the vessel and took the autonomous system under her control. This was necessary to prevent the tumzaliat from sabotaging the vessel, or, as was more likely, damaging it through terror and ignorance.
Control established, the cadet entered the lesser aetherium, cloaked and dim against the brilliant broil of the tumzaliat.
Cloaked and dim, the cadet drifted, while the heedless tumzaliat frolicked, melding their energies and dashing off at angles that seemed random until one considered the ley lines that passed through the lesser aetherium. The tumzaliat followed the ley lines, feeding on them—perhaps. Seeking to influence them, certainly. But the Iloheen had constructed the aetheriums in such a way that the ley lines which intersected there were rendered sluggish. They could, so said the engineering tutor, be manipulated, though not by a mere tumzaliat. Once downloaded, dominated, and fully integrated into a dramliza unit, then—perhaps—a tumzaliat might have access to sufficient power and focus to manipulate the ley lines from within the aetherium.
But, by then, it would no longer wish to do so.
The cadet had, by stealth and by craft, managed to separate one particular tumzaliat from the rest. She had not yet fully revealed herself, though she was now shedding a small—and unavoidable—amount of energy.
The chosen tumzaliat was large, its energies brilliant. Its cohesion was perhaps not all that could be desired, and it showed a tendency to flare in an unappealing manner. But it was well enough. For a tumzaliat.
The chosen abruptly rolled, as if suddenly realizing its vulnerable position on the outer edge of the tumbling pod. It flared and changed trajectory, seeking to rejoin the others—
And spun hard as the cadet revealed herself in a blaze of complex energies, cutting it off from the group, crowding it toward the containment field.
It was a bold move, for tumzaliat rightly feared the field, and the danger was that it would bolt and break through the cadet's wall of energy, with catastrophic results for both.
The creature hesitated, confusion dulling its output. The cadet pushed her advantage, herding it, pushing closer to the containment field and the egress port. The tumzaliat took its decision, feinted and reversed, diving for the fiery fringe of the cadet's wall, gambling, so it seemed to those observing, that it could survive the passage through the lesser energies.
It was over quickly, then.
The cadet allowed the tumzaliat to approach quite near, allowed it to believe its gamble was about to succeed. At the penultimate instant, the tumzaliat gaining momentum, its emanations coalesced to an astonishing degree—the cadet released the greater portion of her energies.
The tumzaliat tumbled into an oblique trajectory, now running parallel to the cadet's weaving of power. She contracted the field, as if she meant to embrace the fleeing creature in her energies.
Again, it changed trajectory, hurtling back toward the containment field with undiminished momentum. Perhaps it had some thought of immolating itself. It was of no matter. The cadet extended a tendril of energy, slipping it between the tumzaliat and the containment field, at the same instant contracting the field.
The force of the contraction threw the tumzaliat into the egress port. In one smooth maneuver, the cadet triggered the port and withdrew the tendril separating the tumzaliat from the containment field. Emanations sparking in terror, the tumzaliat tumbled into the port, bracketed and contained now only by the funnel of the cadet's energies, guiding it, forcing it—
The port closed.
In the birthing room, the readied vessel flared, the glow lingering as the nervous system accepted and imprisoned the tumzaliat's energies. The cadet's envelope flared less brightly as it accepted her return. She raised her head, and a small tremor of satisfaction escaped her.
On the floor beside her, the vessel spasmed against its restraints. The chest heaved, mouth gaping, and the birth scream echoed against the air. Quickly, the cadet straddled the vessel and lowered herself onto its erection, bonding herself with it on the biologic plane. Beneath her, the vessel screamed again—and again.
"Nalitob Orn," the cadet crooned against the air. She extended her will and plucked at the tumzaliat's captured essence, weaving the syllables into the fabric of its frenzied consciousness. The vessel would already have been seeded at the cellular level with those same syllables, which would now and henceforth be its—his—name, binding it to the body and to his dominant.
The submissive drew breath for another scream; his dominant extended her will and disallowed it. Carefully, caressingly, she relaxed the straining, fear-poisoned muscles, and released sleep endorphins.
Only when Nalitob Orn was entirely and deeply asleep did she rise. With a thought, she cleaned herself, and with another clad herself in the blue robe of a dramliza-under-training. For of course the work just completed had been only the first and the simplest of the bondings required before this nascent pair become a functioning unit.
The new-made dominant turned toward her sleeping and receptive submissive—and turned back, bowing low as the Shadow fell over the birthing room, excluding the observers from whatever passed between the Iloheen and the daughter of its intent, the Nalitob Orn dominant.
iv.
ATTEND ME IN the testing chamber.
Their philosophy tutor's thought was a steady silken mauve, lightly flavored with copper.
With the five others of her cohort she rose and walked down the stone hallway—naked, silent, but no longer identical. They had some time since been instructed to adjust their physical seemings. This was—so the philosophy tutor explained—to allow them to grow more easily apart, to sluff off the small ties that bound sister-students, and to make themselves ready for that bond which would define their futures and their service to the Iloheen.
As it was also necessary to seem to be one of those who continued to defy the Iloheen, among whom she would of necessity walk, she considered it well to appear both harmless and unable to defend herself. Thus, her stature was small, her bones delicate, her breasts petite. She sharpened her facial features and added amber pigment to her eyes. Her hair was red, short and silky; her ears shell-like and close to her head. She would appear, to one of those enemies of the Iloheen, to be young, her skin unlined and tinged with gold.
With these changes she was content, though she was the least altered of her cohort. Neither their tutors nor any of the Iloheen who increasingly oversaw their progress instructed her to make further alterations, so she accepted it as her full and final physical form.
Attend me, the philosophy tutor sent again.
The thought was no less serene, the tang of copper no more pronounced than ever it had been. There was nothing to differentiate this from countless thousands of previous summons.
Saving that the philosophy tutor never summoned them twice to the same lesson.
It was then that she knew they were being summoned, not for a mere philosophy test, but to the Third Doom, the last they would face as students.
The others must have also perceived the warning in that second summons and drawn their conclusions. Indeed, the two boldest quickened their steps, eager to meet the challenge, while the three most thoughtful dared to slow somewhat.
Being neither bold nor thoughtful, she kept to her own pace, and withdrew slightly from her envelope, centering herself and unfurling what she might of her protections. It was, of course, beyond her abili
ty to know what test the Iloheen would bring to them this time. Experience of two previous Dooms, however, indicated that it was well-done to hold oneself both aloof and prepared upon all planes.
Behind two sisters and leading three, she turned the corner into the hall. The stones were slick and frigid beneath her bare feet, the air thick with ice. Ahead, the entrance to the testing chamber was black; empty, to her perceptions, of all energy.
A state of no-energy was impossible, so her tutors had taught, each in their own way. To which the philosophy tutor had added, With the Iloheen, all things are possible.
