“It’s not me, it’s Tedla,” he said, pushing me forward.
“Tedla!” she said, startled to see me. We had last met in Squire Tellegen’s dining room.
Worried that she, too, would stop listening, I blurted out, “Elector, the blands aren’t rebelling. There’s a few of them that think—well, never mind. What you need to do is calm them down and tell them you’re in charge. They’ll obey you, especially if you’re kind.”
She heard me out, then turned toward the head martialist and said, “Who called you in?”
“I did,” said a large, imposing supervisor with a black beard. I knew from the blands that his name was Collum; he was in charge of red and yellow teams. “The vicious devils have got Ellia Moriston in there. We’ve got to get her out.”
In a razor-sharp tone, Elector Hornaday said, “Supervisor Collum, you had no authority to call in the Order of Martialists, and they had no authority to declare an evacuation. We solve our problems within the order. You should have contacted me.”
Collum was obviously under stress; now he burst out angrily, “It’s your softness with these brutes that has made them rebellious in the first place.”
“That’s enough,” Elector Hornaday snapped.
“No, it’s not,” Collum said. “We can’t keep them under control, the way you hamper us with your ‘humane’ restrictions.”
“I didn’t ask for a critique of my policies,” Hornaday said. She turned to the martialist. “Kindly get these troops out of here.”
The martialist didn’t budge. “Elector, this is a convergence-wide security issue. If the mutineers spread through the bland-runs, they could infect the other shafts as well. This is not just your problem.”
“When they spread to other shafts, you may step in. Until then, this is a questionary matter.”
Collum cried out in frustration, “While we stand here arguing about jurisdiction, they may be murdering Ellia!”
Elector Hornaday said, “I’m going down there and talk to them now.”
Complete consternation showed on the other humans’ faces. The martialist was first to recover. “I can’t allow that, Elector. It’s too dangerous.”
“Are you in charge of my order house?” Hornaday said.
“They could ambush you.”
“Elector?” I said. She turned to me. “When I left, they were all in the refectory, barricading the doors into the bland-runs. I don’t think they will have left the room.”
Hornaday turned back to the martialist. “Send a security team with me to the door, if you like. But we will try negotiation first.”
Collum gave an exclamation of disgust. “As if they had brains to reason with.”
The elector said to me, “Tedla, come with me. Magister, please stay here.” She headed back into the supervisors’ office complex then, plucking a postulant from the crowd to show her the way. Behind us, the officer gave some orders, and there was a rumbling hustle of martial boots at our heels.
We went down the stairway to level three. Here, the usual arrangement of space was reversed; human space consisted of narrow access corridors, and grayspace was the large area surrounding. I had come through the human halls to report to Supervisor Moriston’s office, so I knew the way. I whispered to the elector how to get to the refectory.
The halls were perfectly deserted and quiet. As we passed doors into grayspace, some of the martialists stayed behind to guard them so we wouldn’t get cut off. I was astonished how much tactical sophistication they imagined the blands to have.
When we reached the double doors into the refectory, we could hear noise from beyond—a rhythmic pounding, like drumming, and raised voices. Elector Hornaday turned to me. “What are they doing?”
“Magic, most likely,” I said.
The martialists behind us tensed. One said, “Elector, should we fetch a welder to cut the door open?”
“It’s not locked,” I said.
Elector Hornaday tried it and found she could move one of the doors enough to open a crack. She cupped her hands around her mouth and said loudly through the crack, “You blands in the refectory—East Questishaft blands—please unbar the door.”
The drumming abruptly stopped. She went on, “This is Elector Hornaday. There is no reason for you to be afraid. No one is going to harm you. But you have to let us in.”
We heard tense voices on the other side, apparently arguing. Then there was a blood-chilling shriek and something crashed against the door. We all jumped back.
“My god, they’re murdering her!” the postulant said.
I saw panic passing through the humans, and said quickly, “No. That’s not what’s happening. Elector, tell them you know all about Cholly. Say that Cholly needs help. Tell the good blands in the room to do the right thing, and let us in.”
She looked at me a moment, then turned back to the door and gave my message. I knew the effect it would have: It would confirm all their superstitions about the omniscience of humans. They would know they didn’t stand a chance.
We waited, hearing indistinct voices again. I was praying for them to listen and obey, because I knew what the humans’ next step would be. “Come on, Pots. Come on, Bink,” I whispered.
Suddenly, there was a loud concussion from beyond the door, then terrified screams and running feet. The fire detector sirens in the refectory began to wail.
“They’ve set a fire!” someone shouted.
Nothing strikes fear into residents of an underground city like fire. We are drilled from infancy to react swiftly if it breaks out. The martialists surged forward, pushing the elector back out of the way, and tried to force the door open. I was pinned flat against the wall of the hallway. As the troopers put their shoulders to the door we heard the sound of blands dismantling the barricade on the other side, dragging the tables out of the way. At last the door burst open. A crowd of terrified neuters surged toward it to escape the smoky room. I saw the lead martialist, with a baton in one hand and a shocker in the other, charge forward into the crowd, bringing the club down viciously into the face of the first bland in his way. The bland dropped to its knees, its nose broken, covered with blood.
One of the martialists was hustling the elector away down the hall, but not so fast she didn’t hear the screams behind her. The shockers were going off like popcorn, and I could hear grunts of exertion from the humans as they brought their clubs down on flesh and bone. Too sickened to watch, I dashed down the hall after the elector. But when I reached the first door into grayspace, the martialist guarding it caught me by the arm and shoved me back toward the melee, saying, “Get back in there, puber.”
“Elector!” I shrieked. She was too far away. I saw the martialist’s shocker coming out, and tried to twist free and dodge it. He caught me in the shoulder. The shock flattened me. I fell to the floor, every muscle convulsing, struggling to draw breath. He nudged me with a boot, but I couldn’t move. Someone called to him. I blinked through a field of crackling sparks, and saw he’d stepped away from the graydoor. With my last scrap of will, I forced my limbs to drag me through into grayspace.
It was like the kind of dream where you are pursued by some terrible danger, but your limbs will not move. Agonizingly slow, I first crawled, then stumbled, down the corridors of grayspace, propelled only by fear. When I came to the place where the cleaning carts were lined up, ready for the morning’s chores, I fell to the floor in between two of them, hidden.
The fire siren had gone silent, but down the hall there were still shouts and screams of pain. It sounded methodical and deliberate now. I knew it was only a matter of time before the humans started scouring nearby areas for hidden rebels, so as soon as I could move I crept away into the maze of bland-runs. It was all deserted and silent. I climbed the southeast stairway, then doubled back to Magister Galele’s quarters.
He wasn’t there, of course. I fell onto the couch, my hands over my eyes, my skin still prickling and blobs of light floating through my vision. Then the
blobs formed pictures: the baton breaking a bland’s nose in a spurt of blood. A bland screaming, twitching from the pain of the shocker. Cholly, cut open like a basin, and all the other blands lined up to wash their hands in the blood.
I started up, trembling, wondering if it had really happened.
It was hours before Magister Galele came back. I hid until I was sure it was him. When he saw me he exclaimed, “Tedla!” in such a joyful voice that I rushed to his arms and buried my face in his burnous. He hugged me tight.
“Thank god you got away!” he said. “It’s been driving me crazy. I’ve been down there, waiting for you. I thought you were trapped with those poor souls in the basement.” He tensed; his voice was haunted. “It was a bloodbath. They were beaten. Disfigured, some of them.”
“I know,” I said.
He hugged me close again, as if to reassure himself I was real. Softly, he said, “When I thought you were down there, dead or injured—” A tremor went through his whole body. I pulled back to look at his face and saw what a helpless tangle of conflict he was in. He went on, “I realized how much I...how much I...”
He couldn’t say “love you.” Instead, he blushed scarlet and looked away, as if expecting me to blame him. I couldn’t imagine what was going through his mind.
“It’s all right,” I said.
He shook his head, then said in a slurred voice, “I want to deserve your trust. For once in my life, I want to deserve something good.”
I hugged him tight and said, “You do. I’ll love you no matter what.”
He clutched me hard, as if holding back some strong emotion.
***
I slept on the couch that night—if a tense doze full of violent dreams can be called sleep. In the morning I felt exhausted, and Magister Galele didn’t look much better. We looked at each other over the breakfast table, thinking of the part we had played in the previous day’s events.
“What are they going to do?” I asked.
“There’s going to be hell to pay,” he said gravely. “I heard there was sheer panic in the other shafts when the news went around that our blands were in revolt. People will be screaming for more safeguards. The other electors and mattergraves are going to come down on Ovide like a ton of bricks.”
“Are they going to investigate? Will they interview any blands?” I felt sick with dread. If they did investigate, there was not much hope for me. I had been one of Cholly’s accomplices; I had even provided the liquor. At any point we could have stopped the whole conspiracy just by reporting it. We had chosen not to.
He saw what I was thinking and said, “I’ll get you out of this, Tedla. I got you into it, after all.”
It was brave and generous of him, but I knew he didn’t have the power.
“I’ll talk to Ovide,” he said. “Don’t worry, we’ll think of something.”
Right after breakfast he called the elector’s office for an appointment. To both of our surprise, she agreed to see him at once. Quietly, her assistant warned him not to say a word to anyone until he had seen the elector.
He decided that I needed to come, and wouldn’t hear a word of argument. My uniform from the day before was dirty and soaked with sweat, so I had to wear my human clothes. I decided they would make me less conspicuous anyway.
As soon as we set foot in human space, I could feel the change of atmosphere. All routines had been disrupted; people were gathering in clusters to talk. As we passed I heard their voices—grave, angry, frightened. For a moment I felt a rush of anger: What did they have to be frightened about? No human had had so much as a fingernail broken, unless you counted Supervisor Moriston. Resentment was so strange to my nature that I glanced at Magister Galele, thinking he was the one who had made me think this way. For a moment I wished I had never seen him. Then, repentant of my thought, I took his hand and squeezed it. Roused from his own preoccupation, he smiled tensely.
The elector’s office was on an upper floor, in a suite of rooms that looked out over the Questishaft. When we came to the reception room, a vestigator waiting there called out, “Magister Galele!” I had never seen him before, and didn’t think the Magister had either; but everyone knew who the alien at Tapis was.
“What was the Capellan role in the uprising?” the vestigator said.
“None, none at all,” Magister Galele stammered, taken aback.
“You were seen down there, talking to the elector at the height of the crisis. What were you saying?”
“Really, I can’t tell you.”
The vestigator’s eyes fell on me. “Was this the bland involved?” he asked. I shrank back behind Magister Galele.
We were rescued by the opening of the elector’s door. Two mattergraves and another elector issued out, looking grim. The vestigator’s attention was distracted, and Elector Hornaday’s assistant signalled to us from the door. We dodged behind a desk and into the elector’s private antechamber.
“The snoops have been ambushing everyone in and out all morning,” the assistant said apologetically. “I wish the elector would let us throw them out.”
“Wouldn’t that just make them more suspicious?” Galele said.
“That’s what she says.”
When we entered her office, Elector Hornaday was standing at the large window looking pensively out on the Questishaft below. When she turned to us, her face was strained and weary. Flatly, she said, “Magister, I need to know what your role was in yesterday’s events.”
I could see him snap into defensive mode. He stood there fidgeting a moment, then said, “Why does everyone think I had a role?”
She said impatiently, “You showed up on the scene with a great deal of inside information. We’re not stupid, Magister.”
He looked at me. I whispered, “Tell her the truth.”
He nodded, but looked miserable. “This is so horrible. I never intended...You’ve got to believe me, Ovide. I was just trying to observe.”
“I’m waiting,” she said.
He told her the whole story then, standing there shifting from one foot to another. As she listened, her expression softened from accusation to a kind of hopeless resignation. When he was done, she sank into one of the office chairs, her chin resting on her fist. He sat gratefully in the sofa facing her. Since no one had invited me to sit, I remained standing.
“You have been a trial to me, Magister Galele,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” he said, utterly contrite.
“You know what the rumors are saying. That you somehow incited the revolt. That you have suborned our blands.”
“Oh, no,” he said.
“Those inclined to think of conspiracies don’t have to go far on this one. Pretty soon we’ll be hearing that it’s the Capellan plan to undermine our social system by encouraging the blands to revolt. Once our planet is in chaos, you can then take it over.”
“It’s false!” Magister Galele said, really alarmed. “Absolutely false.”
“I know,” she said. “People who don’t know you can’t possibly give you enough credit for stupidity.”
He winced and looked at the floor, just like a bland.
There was a long silence. At last the elector sighed and said, “I think you had better leave Tapis. Things might not be very safe for you here.”
He didn’t try to contradict her or ask why. He just said anxiously, “What about Tedla?”
Her eyes turned to me. I could tell from her expression that if Magister Galele was a trial, I was a problem impossible to solve justly. “You surprised me yesterday, Tedla,” she said.
“Yes, ma’am,” I murmured. I knew it wasn’t a compliment.
“You were very levelheaded, and knew exactly what to do.”
What she meant was, “You didn’t act like a bland.” I was silent. In the heat of the crisis yesterday, I had revealed too much.
She turned back to Magister Galele. “It would be better if no board of inquiry ever had a chance to examine Tedla.”
She
knew that it would be too hard for me to hide how Magister Galele had tampered with my training. He had suborned me. He hadn’t intended to, but he had done it, and there was no undoing it. I was a piece of evidence better left undiscovered.
Magister Galele said, “Tellegen asked me to look after Tedla. He charged me very solemnly to keep it safe. I feel the responsibility keenly. I can’t let anything happen that he wouldn’t have wanted.”
“So this is all Prosper’s doing?” Ovide said faintly. “That bastard.”
She came to a decision then. “I think you ought to take Tedla with you. Get it out of Tapis. Don’t draw any attention to it. Just stay inconspicuous. It’s the safest way.” She studied his perplexed face for a moment, then looked to me. “Do you understand?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said.
“Good.” She called in her assistant and said, “Have my aircar waiting in an hour. There will be two passengers for Magnus.” She turned to Magister Galele. “Can you be ready?”
He was speechless at the abruptness of it. “But—” He waved his hands incoherently.
“His research records,” I explained. “Can someone send them?”
“What do they contain?” she asked sharply.
“Nothing of interest to anyone but me,” he said. “But to me, they’re very important.”
I caught her eye and shook my head to signal that it wasn’t that simple. All my reports on blue team’s witcheries were there: our role, spelled out in the clearest detail.
She turned back to her assistant. “Make that two hours.” To Magister Galele, she said, “Take the crucial parts with you. We’ll send the rest. You know what I mean, don’t you?”
“Yes,” he said, but I knew he didn’t. He was thinking academically, not politically.
“Show them out the back way, so the snoops don’t get a crack at them,” the elector said to her assistant. Then she turned to Magister Galele. “Good-bye, Magister. Knowing you has been...interesting.”
His gaze dropped to the floor.
We raced back to his rooms, knowing how little time we had. When we got inside, I hesitated a second, then said, “Pack your clothes, Magister. I’ll get the records.”
Halfway Human Page 37
