“Does that matter now, with the Mukhtar ready to tighten his grip?”
“And that's another thing. Are you so certain he'll back down if we show him that defeating us would be too costly? You said yourself that he spoke of destroying us if need be. Earth may have backed off long ago, in my mother's time, but the Habbers helped to bring that about. Earth couldn't afford a confrontation with them. We can't use that kind of threat against this Mukhtar. Your people saw to that, fools that you were.”
“I thought you'd say that.” Eva closed her eyes for a few moments. “May Ishtar forgive me. The Guide is convinced that Kaseko will shrink from the battle, but at the same time she doesn't fear one if it comes. She mentioned the sacrifices the Spirit demands of Her followers. I can't believe that she means it, and yet I saw the same look in her eyes as I saw in the Mukhtar's when he said he was willing to see our people die.”
“I won't be responsible for leading our people to that.”
Eva bowed her head. “I am prepared to make certain sacrifices. I didn't discuss this with Chimene—she'd only see it as a betrayal, but the Habbers may be our only hope now. We have to appeal to them and pray that they'll forgive us. Whatever my feelings about them, I never believed many of the stories I heard about them. Shuttles have reached the nearest Hab before.”
“There might be pilots willing to take the chance,” Risa said, “but why should the Habbers listen to their pleas? Why would they do anything for people who asked them to leave and who undoubtedly wouldn't welcome them back?”
Eva looked up; her blue eyes seemed old and weary. “They might listen to me. I would be willing to go and beg them for help, may the Spirit forgive me. I see what's coming otherwise—not the perfect world the Spirit wants but a place that would be either Earth's prison or a graveyard. Maybe they'd listen to one who's so close to the Guide and understand that I wouldn't shame myself that way unless we were desperate. I can tell them of our fears over the fate of the people in Turing. Surely they'd feel some concern over those who were their friends.”
Risa's hands were trembling; she pressed them against her thighs. What would happen to her son and his companions when the patrol in Turing learned what was happening outside? She shuddered; she could not think of that. She could only hope that these plans succeeded in time to help Dyami. The Habbers might insist that the people in Turing be freed in return for their help, and Chimene could always blame their ill-treatment on Boaz and the patrol. It was Dyami's only chance now.
“We have to act quickly,” Eva said. “There's little time. Boaz is going to have to move against his opponents soon—and against Chimene.”
Risa gestured at the screen. “You may leave those records with me. I'll see that they get to people who'll help us.”
“When you need to speak to me again, contact Devon Holman. He can be trusted, and even Boaz doesn't suspect him of any disloyalty. He would do anything to protect Chimene.”
Eva stood up. “You'd better not leave by the front door,” Risa said as she guided the taller woman toward the corridor. She felt as though she were carrying a heavy burden, one she could not let slip; it was the same feeling she had endured when she had been on the Council.
* * * *
Devon Holman, a young, bearded man wearing the sash and a patrol member's wand, brought Risa to Lena Kerein's house three days later. She kept expecting a trap; only desperation could have led her to trust Eva Danas. She kept her head down, clinging to Devon's arm as he led her through the dark, keeping away from the nearby path. Lena's door would open, and Boaz Huerta would be waiting for her.
Yet when the door opened, she saw only Lena and her bondmate Carlos sitting with Eva and Yakov Serba. “Speak softly,” Lena said as she guided Risa to a cushion. “My parents can be trusted, but they're sleeping, and I don't want the children to hear.”
The door to the kitchen opened; Evar IngersLens entered the room, carrying a tray of cups and a teapot. He set the tray down, then settled himself. “I've given recordings of the Guide's speech to all the pilots I can trust,” he said without preliminaries. “Some of them have gotten it to the other settlements, and it's made its way to friends on the Platform. You'll have most of the pilots with you when they learn what the Mukhtar intends. We don't care for the idea of having Guardians aboard our ships again.”
Risa gazed at her former lover in surprise. “I knew you had some pity for my son's plight,” she said. “I didn't know you were with us.”
“He has been for a while,” Yakov said.
“Not because I've lost my faith, you understand.” Evar ran a hand through his graying brown hair. “I only want to work against those who have misled and deceived the Guide. She'll return us to the right way then.” He cleared his throat. “My copilot and I will leave the Platform with Eva. When we're out of orbit, our allies on the Platform will take over. There may be a little fighting then, but they know who's likely to resist.”
She reached for the pilot's hand. “I underestimated you, Evar,” she murmured. “I thought your faith had blinded you to so many things.”
“I'm not happy about this.” His throat moved as he swallowed. “I don't like running to Habbers. I don't know what I'm afraid of more—that the Habbers might not listen and that I wouldn't have any way to get back home or that we won't make it to the Hab in the first place. I can alert the Habbers through our comm once we're on our way, but it'll take a shuttle a week to reach them now, and we have to hope the vessel can make the trip. If they refuse to answer and don't put us under their protection, there will be time enough for Anwara to send a ship after us and disable us. The Mukhtar would probably be happy to let us die out there.”
“You mustn't think of that,” Risa said. “The Habbers will help—we have to believe that.” If they didn't—She pushed the thought away forcefully.
“My arrangements have been made,” Eva said. “Matthew was quite pleased that I agreed to make this trip.” Matthew, it seemed, had his doubts about some of thse people working on the Bats, who were complaining that Ishtar asked for too much of their credit in contributions. Eva had volunteered to go to both polar satellites in an effort to bolster the workers’ morale; it had been the excuse she needed to get aboard a shuttle. “We leave in thirty-five hours.” She glanced at Yakov. “The rest is going to be up to you.”
“I've gotten the lists to my contacts in the other settlements,” Yakov said, “and when they hear that the Platform is secure, they'll detain as many councilors and permanent patrol members as possible. Some of the volunteer members will help in disarming them. The Islanders will be able to view Chimene's plea on their screens by then, since we'll be putting it through public channels, but they'll have to fend for themselves. I suspect a lot of them will wait to see what Earth or the Habbers might do before they jump to one side or the other. Some of the pilots will secure our bays. If—when we manage to restore order in the settlements, Administrator Alim will be told that we have no intention of bowing to Earth.”
“I guess it's settled then,” Risa said softly.
Yakov tugged at his short gray beard. “If Boaz Huerta doesn't find out before we can act. If our allies in the other settlements move on time. I'm hoping there'll be a minimum of violence, but we won't be able to avoid some, and if the Habbers decide to keep out of it—” He sighed. “A lot of people could turn against us again if we accomplish nothing except leaving ourselves at Mukhtar Kaseko's mercy. We'd find out exactly who's with us by then, if not before. Earth might be ready to stand by and let us destroy ourselves.”
“Let's go over everything again precisely,” Risa said. She would be sending messages to Irina in ibn-Qurrah and Patrick in Kepler later. A battle, possible bloodshed, Cytherian against Cytherian—everything she had hoped to avoid would now become part of her world's history. No wonder Malik, with his burden of knowledge, had held no faith in Venus and had decided to escape this history. It was, after all, only another variation on what lay coiled in a human nature
that refused to change. But then she thought of the son she hoped to save—and still might lose if the patrol in Turing, sensing defeat, turned its wrath upon the helpless captives. If she lost Dyami, any victory would be only defeat.
Thirty-two
Dyami's world had been shrinking steadily. Once it was only the size of Turing itself. Events outside these two domes—the lives of people who did their work, visited with friends, lived in households of loved ones, and shared life's simpler joys—were so distant that they hardly seemed real. Such lives were part of a dream world he might have conjured up when he was younger, a world he could never recapture.
The world had then narrowed to become the places where he worked—the refinery, the greenhouse, the kitchen—and the tiny room where he slept. The forest where he had once wandered was now only another place where he labored and where the casual blows of the guards interrupted any reverie that might enlarge the world inside himself.
After that, the core of his world had become a room in the house where Maxim Paz stayed from time to time. He had deceived himself by believing that his tormentor might feel some regret about what he had done, if only because it had taken Dyami days to recover and Jonah had not been pleased at losing his labor. But Maxim had summoned him again, sending two other guards to bring him to the house three weeks later.
Dyami was barely inside the door before he was disabled by the young man's blows, then bound. The horror had begun again, worse this time without any drug to dull his mind and more painful when he struggled. Maxim had been more careful, beating him only enough to subdue him and leave him with a residue of pain while keeping him able to work. The promise Dyami had made to himself, that he would kill Maxim if the guard ever touched him again, had been an empty threat.
He had to think of his friends, who would surely suffer even more if he struck out at the man he hated; Maxim had made that quite clear. He had to make Maxim think that he had lost the capacity to resist, if the prisoners were to have any chance at overpowering their captors.
Maxim hurt him however he could even when Dyami accepted the assaults passively. That was the whole point of the exercise, to make him loathe what he was and become unable to love any others of his kind. But Maxim did not hurt him quite as much when he did not resist and pretended to more agony than he felt. Dyami had lost the last shreds of his pride when he groaned in order to mimic a pain his numbed and beaten body could hardly feel.
Now his world was bounded by his bruised body, the intermittent dizziness and twinges of pain in his skull, the aches of his muscles and bones, the throbbing of his genitals, the inflamed, raw feeling of his insides. Maxim had taught him to hate that body, which had become the instrument of the young man's torture. He had been living in constant dread of the next assault while simultaneously hoping for it, because Maxim would be a little kinder when it was over and leave him alone for a few days afterward.
He had no escape. He was no longer able to entertain the mathematical flights of fancy that had once diverted him or to see an image his mind held shaped by his hands. He could not dwell on memories of the always gentle Balin without remembering how Maxim's brutal assaults parodied their loving acts.
Now he would finally have the chance to strike back. He was awake even before Suleiman reached over to touch his arm. He had been able to sleep soundly until this moment; he felt no righteous rage, no anticipation of revenge. His torment would be over one way or another, and he did not care if it ended with his victory of his death. Just as well, he thought, that he did not care, that his fear of what might happen to him was gone.
Dyami sat up, then rose from his mat and went to the door. Faces peered at him from the room entrances along the hall. He began to pound at the door. “Open up!” he shouted.
“What's going on?” a voice answered from outside.
“Open this door! I can't take it anymore! I have to get out!”
The door slid open; a guard was raising his wand. Dyami knocked him aside, then chopped him on the side of his neck before wresting the wand from him. Another guard came at him; Dyami fired and saw him fall. He aimed toward the dormitory's other door, hitting the guard standing there. People spilled from the doorway behind him; two beams shot through the darkness before the other seven guards were overpowered by a group of prisoners.
“We're all right so far,” a man muttered. “They didn't sound the alarm.” Dyami took a breath; he had feared that one of the patrol might alert others through a wrist-comm or with a shout.
His eyes were adjusting to the dim dome light; in about two hours the disk above would begin to brighten. Someone called out; the weak cry broke off as a wand struck a guard's head. Two prisoners were opening the other door. The patrol had disconnected the devices allowing the doors to be opened from the inside but had not troubled to install locks; anyone could open the doors from outside. Two women raced from the other door, then turned to run in the direction of the lake; he glimpsed Amina's pale hair before the darkness swallowed her.
Jonah, without knowing it, had provided them with the remaining tools that had made their plans fall into place. The overgrown forest near the lake had to be thinned out and cleared, and Jonah had not wanted to take the prisoners from their other tasks. Two crawlers, with large jaws usually used to clear and crunch up rock, had been brought inside and driven to the woods. That was Jonah's solution; the crawlers, with two guards running them, could cut through the trees and clear away much of the underbrush. That this would also scar the land had not concerned the guard; any damage could be repaired later, when more prisoners arrived. Dyami had seen immediately that the crawlers could also be used as weapons. Amina and Luinne would board the unguarded crawlers, cross the creek farther down, and wait on the other side. The crawlers would provide cover for the prisoners when they advanced on the patrol's dormitory and houses.
Sigurd came outside, followed by Suleiman and a few others. Dyami surrendered his wand to his roommate; three others were quickly handed to other men. Suleiman nodded, then hastened away with five companions. Their job was to get to the tunnel that led into the south dome, stun and disarm the two patrol members who would be guarding it, and make for the airship bay, which would have to be secured. The woods behind the ceramics plant would conceal them for part of the distance; the few guards who stayed on nighttime duty in the south dome would be inside the refinery or the external operations center. The six pilots stationed in Turing would be sleeping in their residence near the bay; Dyami hoped that some of the guards on duty would also be asleep. He had heard a few of the guards complain about Jonah's insistence that they stay awake, since the systems were operating smoothly and alarms would alert them to any problems. But Suleiman and the others had weapons they could use in any case.
“Let's get them inside,” Sigurd muttered. The man Dyami had shot was already being dragged through the other dormitory door. A few people would remain outside, to alert the rest if any other guards were seen approaching; they hunkered down in the grass, and one of the women fastened a wrist-comm to her arm. Their captors had grown a bit more careless in recent weeks, convinced that the people they had brutalized were almost completely under their control.
That had been the hard part, Dyami thought; cowering in front of the guards, keeping anger and determination hidden, sacrificing whatever pride they had left, and persuading a few fearful people that they had to fight now, before any more patrol members and prisoners arrived. The other guards were being dragged toward his door. Dyami went inside and waited in the hall with the people standing there. Two men remained outside near the door, to open it when those inside were ready to come out again.
Two of the female guards were unconscious; the guard Dyami had struck looked dazed. The Peeper was with the group. Their wrist-comms were quickly stripped from their arms before they were bound with their sashes; torn clothing became bonds for their legs. The guards had been lax lately; they had been lounging outside, leaving only two of their number to keep an
eye on the doors.
“Gag them,” Sigurd ordered, “and make sure those knots will hold.”
“Killing them would make more sense,” Dyami heard himself say. “It'd be fewer we'd have to worry about.”
“No killing,” Sigurd replied, “unless it can't be helped.” He stared at Dyami for a moment, then looked away; they had engaged in this argument before. “Now we have to see about getting more weapons.”
This was going to be more difficult. Five guards were on patrol on the other side of the creek; at least two would be on watch outside the patrol's houses and dormitories. If any of them saw the men who were heading for the tunnel, the rest of the guards were certain to be alerted. Dyami pushed that worry aside.
Sigurd handed a wrist-comm to Willis Soran. The slight young man had a talent for mimicking the Peeper, a skill that would now be put to use.
“Steven Ginnes calling,” Willis said into the comm, using the Peeper's slightly nasal tones. “Respond.”
“This is Lila,” a woman's voice replied. “What is it?”
“Some of the penitents are acting up.” Willis had captured the guard's speech perfectly; Dyami hoped it would fool the woman. “A man was banging on the door earlier, making a fuss. It's quiet now, but we're going to go in and take a look around. I think you'd better bring the others over here for a bit. I'm not expecting much trouble from this lot, but I'd rather have you nearby, in case we need some support.”
“Should I wake up some others?” Lila asked.
“That's not necessary. Just bring the ones patrolling with you. I'm not really expecting anything to happen, but we should be covered.”
“You'd think they would have learned by now,” the woman said. “We'll have to make a few examples—we can turn them over to the ones who enjoy chastising the recalcitrant. We'll be there in a few minutes. Out.”
Sigurd motioned to Dyami. “You proved you were a good shot before. Get out there and take a wand. Remember—wait as long as you can before you shoot. We can't give them a chance to summon help.”
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