by Kate Elliott
It seemed but minutes later that Callioux woke her up. “Level four is clear,” Callioux said. “We’re evacuating level two now, so if you want to find your friend before she gets lost on the transport ships, you’d better go now. All the prisoners are still locked in their cells. It shouldn’t be hard.”
Lily nodded, pushing herself with difficulty to her feet, and found Jenny beside her. They took the Auxiliary B elevator down to level 4. The broad tunnel was quiet, patrolled by pairs of white-uniformed Jehanist rebels. Now and again a prisoner spoke or yelled from one of the cells, but otherwise they remained silent.
They passed cell door after cell door, small entrances to small compartments.
“I was expecting something livelier then this,” Jenny said in an undertone to Lily as they headed for the C Block console that would register names to cell numbers. “From what Yehoshua said, I thought this would be more like the Havliki District on Landfall; bars and stages and street tunes and dancing all hours.”
“They are prisoners,” replied Lily.
The four soldiers at C Block were expecting them and showed surprise only when Bach plugged into the console and quickly perused the level 4 records.
“That’s strange,” said Jenny, looking over Lily’s shoulder. “Most of the prisoners on level four are in six-bunked rooms, but your Paisley is in this block of solitary cells.” She shrugged, but her mouth turned down with suspicion as Lily turned to get a manual key from the officer in charge.
“I hope it was worth it,” Lily muttered to herself, still seeing the carnage of the command center, as they reached the cell door and keyed in the “open” sequence.
The door slipped aside to reveal a small, shabby room, made pathetic by a tattered blanket in faded colors that was hung up to cover one grey wall. On the metal bed that doubled as a bench, seated on a thin pad of uncovered foam, Paisley stared, head bowed, at her clasped hands. Her hair in its tight braids still hung to her waist, and she wore the self-same tunic that Lily had bought for her on Unruli Station, although its colors were now muted and it was patched and threadbare in places from long and continuous use. The Ridani girl did not lift her head until, reacting to the silence as if it was unusual, she looked up.
“Min Ransome!” Her face, pensive in repose, transformed with a brilliant smile, quickly shuttered by despair. “Oh, they got you, too. I be sorry for that.”
“No, they didn’t get me—” Lily paused, realizing that Jenny stood behind her, still in her guard’s uniform. “This is Jenny. She’s not a guard. Paisley, we’re here to free you.”
“Free me!” Paisley flung herself at Lily, throwing herself to her knees at Lily’s feet. She burst into tears.
Lily let her cry for a while, and then tugged her gently to her feet. “You’re coming with us, now, Paisley,” she began, prying Paisley off of her. “You’d better get what belongs to you here, and we’ll go.”
Paisley recovered her composure with an obvious effort, dabbing at her eyes with her knuckles. “If you hadn’t my kinnas already, min Ransome, sure be you’d have it now.” She glanced up, and her expression cleared. “Sure, and glory!” she exclaimed. “It be min Bach.” She offered Bach a formal, little bow, to which the robot replied with a quick flurry of notes.
Heartened by this display, Paisley climbed up on the bed and yanked down the tattered blanket that hung above it. She sat down cross-legged in the middle of the cell, her back to the doorway, and began with deliberate movements to rip the blanket into shreds.
Lily glanced at Jenny, questioning, but the mercenary merely shrugged. The blanket proved to be so worn that it took little time for the Ridani girl to reduce it to strips, which she placed with careful precision in the four corners of the room, chanting a strange, tuneless little song under her breath all the while. When she had only three strips left, she backed out of the cell, forcing Lily and Jenny out into the corridor, and left the last strips to mark her path.
She stopped in the corridor and looked at Lily. “I be cleansing the room,” she said, “so that ya memory of it don’t bind me.”
“But don’t you have anything to take with you?” Lily asked.
“Didn’t bring ya nothing here, so be it I can’t take ya nothing away. It all be in ya pattern, you see?”
“Sure,” said Lily, an unconscious echo of Paisley’s speech. “I remember how that tunic hung on you. At least they fed you well here.”
“Sure, and course they fed me. I be ya entertainment, bain’t I? Had to keep me looking ya swell, didna’ they?”
For the first time, Lily heard real bitterness in Paisley’s voice, and examining her more carefully now, she saw that the beautiful adolescent from Unruli Station had somehow matured in a way that had sharpened the edge of her beauty, as if with a knife, or with the pain of harsh experience. Jenny was frowning, seeing something that she, too disapproved of.
“But what did you do all this time?” asked Lily.
“Lily,” began Jenny, warning.
“Sure, and what did you think they do with ya handsome tattoos?” Paisley examined Lily as if she were sporting tattoos herself. “Forced us as ya fancy whores for ya guards as wanted to be slumming with dirty pleasure, and them prisoners as had ya special privileges.”
“Oh, Paisley.” The knowledge came as such a truly unexpected shock to Lily that she could only mouth platitudes. “Oh, Paisley. I’m sorry. What did you do?”
Paisley shrugged. “I shut my eyes.”
Lily turned away, unable to reply.
“How old are you?” asked Jenny gently.
Paisley considered, both the question and the dark mercenary, and eventually decided something in Jenny’s favor. “I begun ya bleeding ya two years back, I reckon. Thereabouts. Ya Station time, that be. It be right at ya Festival time, too. That be glory good kinnas.”
“Fifteen, maybe,” muttered Jenny, and without thinking she put a hand out to rest on Paisley’s shoulder.
“How did you stand it, Paisley?” Lily murmured, still not looking around. “More than a year. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anything as awful as that.”
Paisley shrugged again, a wealth of fatalism in one small gesture. “Hadn’t much choice, had I? There be also ya rule, no hitting ya girls, and they most of them followed it, so it weren’t so bad as it could have meant.” Her face brightened slightly. “And there be also ya Mule.”
“Mule?” Lily turned, caught both by the strange name and by the tone of Paisley’s voice.
“She be good to me. She be in ya tech division, and her credit be so good, she could afford near anything, but she asked for me—me!” It appeared that, to Paisley, this choice was inexplicable. “Near half ya nights I be working.”
“Randy bitch,” murmured Jenny.
“Weren’t nothing like that!” cried Paisley, pulling roughly away from Jenny’s hand. “Sure, we slept together, but she got no—well, it were more cuddling, like. She be lonely, I reckon. Given what she be it were no surprise ya others shunned her, though they be ya Ridani and shunned themselves. It were mostly companionship. She taught me to play ya bissterlas. And she begun to teach me ’bout ya tech workings. Sure, she be hot ifkin on ya math, and she learned me all ”bout ya ’bots and ya motors and—” Words failed her. In the glare of the corridor tubing she seemed taller, older, scarcely adolescent at all, as if the girl from Unruli Station who had so blithely adopted Lily and tagged along behind her had been cocooned on this planet and only now emerged as a new self. “Everything! I be sure enough trained for ya tech job now.”
“Who is this woman?” Lily asked. “Where is she? Was she an officer here?”
“She be no woman. Nor ya officer. Ya prisoner like me. Ya Mule. That be what we called her. I don’t even know her real name.”
“No woman?” asked Jenny. “Then what is she?”
“See for yourself,” answered Paisley. “If you kin get me out, sure you kin get her out, too.”
“But Paisley,” protested Li
ly. “All the prisoners are being freed. Why do we need to bring this person with us?”
Paisley pursed her lips, looking stubborn. The dappling of her tattoos lent determination to her expression. “If that be so, why’d you come get me, if you trust ya new folk so sure? They be for freeing me, too, bain’t they? I reckon you fair have ya little trust in such folk as would have use for ya prisoners such as be put here. That be ya truth, don’t it?”
“Paisley,” began Lily, warning. Jenny checked her wrist-com for the time.
“Well, it be ya truth,” continued Paisley recklessly. “I kin see ya meaning in ya talk that runs between ya prisoners here, and ya guards. They say Jehane hae come, and if it be true, then I reckon either you hae no trust for him ’cause he be ya Ridani, or ’cause you reckon he be not ya real Jehane.”
“Well I hope I’m not so prejudiced,” Lily burst out. “We have to go, Paisley. I can’t just adopt every stray who comes to my attention.”
“It be only fair.” Paisley paused and looked pointedly at Lily. “She saved me ya much grief.”
Lily looked away, aware that she was being shamelessly manipulated on the altar of her own guilt. “All right,” she said, frowning at Jenny’s expression as she capitulated. “Where is your Mule? If she’s not boarded onto the transports yet, I’ll see what I can do.”
“Bleeding heart,” muttered Jenny, but she did not object as Lily led them back to the level 4 guardroom and directed Bach to plug into the console and track down this prisoner called the Mule.
Unfortunately, Bach quickly located the Mule, by a combination of name cross-reference and an audit of the EntOps transaction books, in a solitary cell on level six, deep enough that one might suspect a prisoner of some worth or some recalcitrance. Lily merely shook her head.
“Jenny, take Paisley and Bach up top. Pinto should have brought the shuttle in by now. I’ll fetch this Mule, and Kyosti, and see what provisions Callioux has made for us in the fleet, and then meet you there. And Paisley”—now her tone was stern—“no more strays.”
Paisley bowed meekly and followed Jenny without a word, although she began almost immediately an animated conversation with Bach as they left the guard block for the main elevator.
Lily bullied her way past the officer in charge and got the Auxiliary C elevator down to level 6. The Jehanist soldiers there did not dispute her right, carefully linked with frequent invocation of Callioux’s name and authority, to remove one of the prisoners early.
As she left, she heard one whisper to the other: “Isn’t that the comrade who led the strike force that opened the dome?”
Level 6 consisted mostly of solitary cells and shaft openings, and she tracked down the requisite cell and keyed it open with little difficulty.
And found herself for the second time on Harsh staring at a physical piece of her past, so unexpected that, like meeting Finch, she was at first too stunned to react.
It was impossible that she not recognize, and remember, the Mule. The name itself brought illumination with it: on the plain metal bed of the cell, which was richly furnished by the addition of a terminal hooked out from the wall, sat the sta who had been incarcerated in the cell beside her on Remote. The sta who had questioned her about kata, and shown interest in her befriending of an inconsequential Ridani girl.
But not a sta, and certainly not a woman. She—he?—looked up at her, incurious, bored, or perhaps simply rendered fatalistic by the cruel blow fate had long since dealt it.
“Hoy,” breathed Lily, astonished, but capable still of keeping the rest of her thought unvoiced: that she had thought it was just some obscene tall tale, about stas and humans actually—and that in any case, it was impossible that they might actually interbreed. She shuddered, suppressed it out of pity. Caught herself and spoke. “Do you remember me?” she asked carefully. “From Remote. My name is Lily—Heredes.”
The Mule regarded her with an expression all-too-humanly sardonic on its sta-ish face. “Ah, the Lily Ransome, I thought it was. I recollect you.” Its voice was a sibilant hiss, but not as fluid as a sta’s. “The Ridani girl was your friend. As now she is, in a fashion, mine. But she is an innocent child, and naive to the ways of prejudice.”
“I’m sorry,” said Lily abruptly, drawn to the reddish sheen—not skin, not scales; the lank mane that could not crest; the muzzled face, protruding not quite far enough; and most of all, resting on the terminal keys, the four-fingered, one thumbed human hands. “But I just can’t believe it. How can you even exist? It’s impossible.”
“Clearly you have no understanding of the juxtaposition of humor and cruelty in the unformed will of the cosmos. Of course it is impossible that I exist. Therefore, I do.” The sta-ish fluidity of the Mule’s voice could not disguise the cutting sarcasm of its words.
“You must be lonely,” said Lily simply, feeling at that moment the true horror of the Mule’s situation.
The Mule stood, unflexing to a sta-ish height, lifting its human hands from the terminal in a dismissive, angry gesture. “Spare me this. What do you want?”
“I, and some people with me, came to Harsh to join Jehane, and to free Paisley. I have Paisley, and she wants you to come with us.”
“Jehane? The Ridani hero? Is there really a Jehane?”
“There’s a man who calls himself Jehane, and he’s just liberated Harsh’s prisoners, and he means to destroy the corrupt government on Central and institute a new government.”
“Uplifting sentiments.” The Mule considered her skeptically. “Why should I want to join Jehane?”
“I don’t know,” replied Lily. “Maybe you don’t. I have my own reasons, and asking you to come with us is a favor I’m doing for Paisley. If you care to join us, and especially if you have talents that I can use to bargain for a good place for us within Jehane’s forces, then you are welcome. If not, then please just accompany me up and explain to Paisley yourself that you don’t want to come with us, because otherwise shell never let me rest.”
This speech reduced the Mule to silence, followed by a long, slow hiss that she recognized after a moment as sta-ish laughter. “Compared to the vistas of opportunity that have previously been brought before me, the word ‘welcome’ is—” It paused. “—acceptable. Very well.” With deft fingers, the Mule dismantled the terminal and quickly packed a small duffel bag with sundry clothing and items stowed beneath the bed. “I will join you.”
“Thank you.” If Lily’s tone was dry, her face hid it, and the Mule chose to ignore it. “But I can’t just call you ‘the Mule.’ You must have another name.”
“No. I was cast off the moment the nature of what I am was discovered.” Lily did not school her expression quickly enough, for the Mule’s mane lifted slightly, in sad parody of a sta’s glorious crest of rage. “Don’t pity me!” it hissed. “How I despise your pity, all of you who are whole and blithe in wholeness.” It turned its back on Lily and repacked the entire contents of the duffel bag before it turned around again.
“Let’s go,” said Lily quietly. They left, but she was bitterly aware of the soldiers’ curious stares, of laughter behind hands, as she passed with her new companion. The Mule said nothing, showed no emotion, inured to such display.
They walked into chaos at level 1, the medical personnel and patients being ferried up in lots to the waiting transports. She found Kyosti at last beside the stasis couch that held Yehoshua, who was now without a right arm. White swathed his shoulder and chest. He was unconscious, but Kyosti spoke in a low voice to his cousin, Alsayid. Hawk’s white medical jacket was speckled with the almost familiar colors of human suffering.
Lily waited, impatient, checking her wrist-com, until Kyosti finished and waved to a group of soldiers, who wheeled the couch out of the complex, Alsayid following. She watched as he glanced around the empty ward, as if he were looking for something, until his gaze stopped on her.
He smiled.
Glanced at the Mule beside her, and his eyes widened in surprise. T
he Mule made a strange, strangled tsshs with its tongue. Lily looked over to see it regarding Kyosti with a similar surprised, but intent, scrutiny. Abruptly, as if with common consent, they dropped their gazes and Kyosti walked smoothly over to them as if nothing had interrupted his smile at Lily.
He kissed her chastely on one cheek and turned to her companion. “How do you do?” he said urbanely. “You must be the Mule. I’m Hawk.”
The Mule acknowledged him with a little hiss of sta-ish laughter.
“We have to go,” said Lily. “I need to find out how we’re leaving the system and when I’m meeting Jehane.”
“Callioux already told me,” said Kyosti. “They want me on the hospital ship, so we’ll travel with them until the rendezvous point. I need to check the last ward before we go. Come with me?” He gestured toward an open door.
“Excuse us a moment,” Lily said to the Mule, and went with Kyosti. From the doorway of the ward, she watched him move from couch to couch, adjusting tubing at one bed, massaging a leg at another, shaking his head over the motionless form at a third. At the end of his tour, he spoke for a long time with the technologist supervising the twelve patients. Then he returned to Lily.
“We’re leaving these. They’re all guards and too badly hurt to live through a window. Two technologists to watch them. Central should send people in soon enough.”
Lily stared up at him. His face had an impassive, but intent, expression as he spoke, considered and at ease. Quite the same expression he had when he had shot dead the two guards on level 9.
“I don’t understand you,” she whispered. “How can you kill people with one hand, and heal them with the other?”
He blinked. “How can I not?” he asked, not understanding the question.
“How can it be so easy for you to take life, and yet so important for you to save it?”
The passion of her question seemed to give him pause and, curiously, he glanced past her toward the patient, waiting figure of the Mule at the opposite side of the empty ward. “‘Roses are planted where thorns grow,’” he said, “‘And on the barren heath sing the honeybees.’”
