Trickster se-3

by Steven Harper

  A sigh. "We went through this with Sejal before the Despair, Harenn. The Children can't save everyone. The resources just aren't there."

  "That doesn't make it right to leave the others behind." Harenn's voice held a righteous indignation that Todd remembered well from their marriage. He had hated it then and he definitely hated it now. He almost felt sorry for the nameless Father, who was currently on the receiving end of it.

  "There isn't anything I can do, Harenn," the Father said. A pleading tone had entered his voice. "Now that we know about the Collection, maybe the Children can send another task force later to get them out. But we're just one tiny group here, and I'm not a miracle worker."

  "Ara would have tried."

  "Low blow, Harenn. Besides, you don't know that she — "

  "Stop. Isaac will wake any moment now. We'll discuss this later."

  "No, Harenn," Father Nameless said tiredly. "We won't."

  Todd lay still and tried to breathe normally. He heard Harenn approach his bed and he became acutely aware of the slightly stiff sheets beneath him, of the little current of cool air from the nearby vent, of the smell of cooking oil on Harenn's skin. His heart beat fast. Todd was afraid of Harenn, and he hated himself for it. He fervently wished he could go back in time and stop himself from marrying her, no matter what price he had gotten for… what had she named the kid? He couldn't remember. Not that it mattered now anyway.

  "Is he awake?" Father Nameless asked. "We need to get him back in his room."

  "I judge he has approximately thirty seconds left. Perhaps forty-five."

  Isaac silently counted to thirty-eight and stirred. He opened his eyes and saw Harenn looking down at him.

  "It is time to return you to your quarters," she said. "Now."

  "What did you ask me about this time, Harenn?" he demanded as he always did.

  "Nothing of importance to you," she replied. "But I suspect you will… enjoy the memory of your dreams."

  He didn't speak as she accompanied him back through the maze of blue corridors to his tiny, boring room. The slave band around his wrist prevented him from running, though he desperately wanted to. They had almost reached his quarters when a boy who looked to be eight or nine years old dashed up to them. He had dark hair and eyes that matched Harenn's, but his face… Todd blinked. The boy reminded Isaac of holograms of himself taken when he was young.

  "I got tired of waiting, Mom, and the computer said you were here," the boy blurted. "Are you ready for me in medical yet?"

  "Leave us," Harenn snapped. "Go down to medical. Now!"

  "Who's this?" the boy asked, and coughed. "The guy in the room? Rigid!"

  Todd took a chance. "I'm your dad."

  The boy's eyes bulged and he backed away. "Are you going to cut my throat?"

  "What? No. I-" A wrenching shock made him gasp and clutch at the band around his wrist.

  "You will be silent! " Harenn snarled. "You will not speak to him. You will not look at him."

  "He's my son, too, Harenn," Todd told her.

  "You gave up all rights to him when you sold him into slavery. Bedj-ka, go!"

  "But I want to see-"

  "Better obey your mother," Todd said. "Or she'll shock you like she does me. She likes shocking people, son."

  "The only thing that is stopping my knife, husband," she hissed in his ear, "is the possibility that we might still need you. If you speak to him again, you will die, no matter what orders I am given. Is that clear?"

  When she took her hand from his mouth, he said, "Perfectly clear." He staggered to his feet — Harenn offered no assistance — and added, "You call me a monster, Harenn. How is what you're doing to me any different?"

  "I care nothing about what you say, Isaac." She nudged him forward. "I do not let the words of one who sells children into slavery bring doubt to my mind."

  "Maybe you don't," he said without disguising the relish in his voice. "But what about Bedj-ka? I wonder what kind of bedtime story he'll ask for tonight, wife."

  She shocked again, but it was worth it. And when he was back in his tiny room again, he made himself wait an entire hour before contacting Edsard Roon.

  Kendi could see the trouble on Bedj-ka's face the moment the boy entered the medical bay. Automatically, he said, "What's wrong?"

  "That guy you've been keeping in that room?" Bedj-ka replied. "I saw him with Mom in the hall. He said he was my father."

  Bedj-ka nodded. "Is it true? Mom didn't deny it."

  A dozen lies rushed through Kendi's head. He could say it wasn't true, that Todd was a prisoner of war, that Todd was a pathological liar. He could simply avoid the question and let Harenn deal with it. After all, he was her son.

  But Kendi was captain of the ship, and that made Bedj-ka's relationship with Todd Kendi's responsibility, in a way. Besides, Kendi knew Harenn well enough to predict what she would tell him. Perhaps he could spare her a little pain.

  "It's true," Kendi said. "His name is Isaac Todd, and he's your dad."

  "Why didn't anyone tell me?" Bedj-ka demanded, then coughed hard.

  "We didn't want you to get upset," Kendi replied. "It's still true that he sold you into slavery when you were a baby, and we didn't want you to be afraid he would do it again."

  "You should have told me." Bedj-ka's tone was belligerent. Kendi sank down onto a rolling stool so his head was lower than the boy's, and let his arms hang limply at his sides in a non-threatening gesture calculated to avoid provoking further anger.

  "Maybe we should have," Kendi admitted, voice quiet. "Sometimes adults make mistakes. But we figured you'd already been through so much. I mean, I remember how confused I was when Ara freed me. We didn't want to make things more complicated for you than they already were."

  "He said Mom shocks him a lot. He said Mom likes to shock people for fun."

  "That's not true," Kendi said. "I've known your Mom a long time, and she doesn't hurt people for fun." Only when she has a reason, added a wry voice in his head. "I think he was trying to make you angry at her by telling lies. Bedj-ka, I know this is hard and it hurts to hear, but Isaac Todd isn't a nice man. He's cruel and mean. That doesn't mean you're a mean person. You can be the person you want to be. You don't have to be like him."

  "I don't care about him," Bedj-ka said. His voice shook. "He isn't really my father. He didn't raise me."

  "That's right. And your mother loves you very much, no matter what anyone might say." Kendi patted Bedj-ka's shoulder. "She'll get that cold fixed right up, too. I'll even bet she won't make you do what I had to do when I got sick on the frog farm where I was a slave."

  Bedj-ka looked at him, interested despite himself. "You were a slave on a frog farm?"

  "Sure was. Anyway, this one species of frog secreted a substance that was refined into an anti-viral drug. We slaves couldn't refine anything, of course, so when we got sick, we only had one choice."

  "What was that?"

  Kendi kept an absolutely straight face. "We licked the frogs."

  "Blech! You did not!"

  "Absolute truth," Kendi said.

  "That's disgusting!" Bedj-ka said just as Ben walked into the medical bay.

  "What is?" he asked.

  "Kendi was telling me about how he got sick when he was a slave," Bedj-ka said cheerfully.

  Ben groaned. "He's not telling that atrocious frog-licking story, is he? It's completely apocryphal, you know."

  "Hey!" Kendi said.

  "What's 'apocryphal'?" Bedj-ka asked.

  "Look it up," Ben said with a smile.

  "Before you destroy the rest of my stories," Kendi growled, "do tell me you copied the logarithms into keys."

  "Just finished."

  "Did you trace the line from Roon's home office?"

  "Gretchen did. And we got lucky — there's a hotel right up the street from his house. Gretchen's already got a room."

  "Then let's go down there and get to work. Lucia should be back right soon with that clunker shi
p, and we have a lot to do."

  Bejd-ka sneezed hard.

  "But first," Kendi said, "we better get Harenn down here. Before that… thing happens."

  "What thing?" Bedj-ka said.

  "I don't want to worry you," Kendi said seriously.

  "Oh, god," Ben muttered.

  "Worry me about what?"

  "Well… back on the farm there was this one slave I used to work with who sneezed so hard, a big chunk of brain flew straight out of his nose. It landed in a pond and the frogs ate it. I had to cut them open to get it back."

  "Disgusting!" Bedj-ka howled happily.

  "You're going to do him more damage than the Enclave," Ben said.

  Keith bent his head and Dreamer Roon himself dropped the Beta medallion around his neck. Dreamer Roon boomed, "All praise the Dream!"

  "All praise the Dream," shouted everyone. Martina mouthed the words but didn't say them. Keith's face beamed with pride, an expression shared by the six other new Betas on the stage. Martina and the other Alphas, along with their Deltas, knelt on the tiered floor, exactly as they had done the first day Dreamer Roon had addressed them.

  She put the thought on her mental list of Confessions- I doubted Dreamer Roon's teachings. Impure! — and went back to telling herself it wasn't real. She could get out of here. She would get out of here, and she would take Keith with her. A while ago-Martina couldn't measure time in days or hours anymore-she would have thought this impossible, but Martina now had something that might allow her to pull it off.

  Martina had a keycard.

  She surreptitiously touched the palm of her left glove. The little square of plastic was still there. She had spotted it on the floor on her way to this very ceremony. Most slaves learned a certain amount of sleight-of-hand in order to pilfer small treats or hide forbidden objects, and Martina was no exception. With a false grunt of annoyance, she had bent over to scoop the object up, then told her questioning Delta that her slipper hadn't been unfastened after all, so sorry for holding up the group. Her yellow robe had no pockets, but she had folded her hands together inside her sleeves and worked the little card into her glove for safekeeping.

  Martina was dying to examine the key more closely. Did it work solo? Or did it work in conjunction with a print or retina scan? No, it had to work solo. She had seen the Deltas use keycards to access computer terminals and open doors, and they hadn't used any other scanners. Their prints, after all, were covered with gloves, and retina scans would take too much time for daily tasks like opening doors, especially since the Deltas all wore hoods or wimples that half-hid their eyes and would get in the way of a scanner. A security weakness, but a necessary one-the Deltas couldn't risk one of the Alphas touching them skin-to-skin by accident and learning they weren't Silent. This was Martina's chance, she knew it. The only problem was figuring out how best to use it.

  "You are closer than ever to touching the Dream without the taint of drugs," Roon was saying on the stage. "And let your progress serve as an example to your former compatriots. I know it gets difficult, dear Alphas, but believe me when I tell you that it will one day be worth every moment of discomfort and tribulation. I enter the Dream whenever I wish, with no trancing, no drugs, and no time limits. You can be free, as I am. As these new Betas are close to becoming. As you will be."

  Martina tried not to shift. Her knees ached, though not as badly as they had on that first day. Hours spent kneeling had hardened her to that simple discomfort. What she wanted more than anything was to grab Keith's hand and bolt for the door, and the thought filled her with unbearable restlessness. She called upon years of meditation exercises to slow her breathing and bring a measure of calm. At least she didn't have to keep her eyes down anymore. Roon had decided that the Alphas were no longer too impure to gaze upon his face.

  "For the immediate future, Betas, you will continue to labor side-by-side with your former Alpha compatriots," Roon continued. "But your bodies are more pure, so you will receive even better food and more sleep."

  "Soon we will begin the next stage of your training," Roon said. "Some of you will be selected to raise the next generation of Silent. You will be paired with an appropriate genetic match, though there will be no impure sex. Insemination will be artificial. However, a selected few Alphas, women who are particularly impure, will be partnered with me so that my body can show yours the way."

  A small ripple of emotion moved through the kneeling Alphas, quickly silenced by the Deltas. Martina stared, and her stomach wrenched itself into a knot. Was she hearing right? Either she was going to be impregnated with some stranger's child or Roon was going to rape her. Anger and fear fought for ascendency inside her.

  Roon continued speaking, haranguing and motivating. The new Betas listened raptly. Martina snuck looks at remaining Alphas and guessed by their expressions and body language that despite Roon's little bombshell, about two-thirds of them were already willing followers of Roon's project and would strive to become Betas themselves. The remaining third were… less than enthusiastic. She made a mental note of these Alphas as potential allies.

  After Roon's speech ended, he vanished out a side door. Alphas and Betas stood, stretched, and were allowed to mingle for a time, presumably so the Alphas could bask in the Betas' presence while the Deltas looked on. A small table to one side held munching food, though it was all finger vegetables and sugarless gelatin salad. Party voices murmured and swirled around the room. Martina managed to worm her way up to Keith and draw him aside.

  "Congratulations," she said.

  "Thanks," he beamed. "I hope you get here soon. I feel freer of N-waves already. And soon we'll be parents!"

  Martina ignored the last comment and lowered her voice. "Remember how we talked about… going elsewhere?"

  "You mean… not here?"

  Martina nodded. They both had to chose their words carefully, keep their meaning vague in case the computer in their wristbands interpreted their conversation as seditious.

  "Why would I want to do that?" Keith said, clearly puzzled.

  Martina tensed. "You like this place, don't you?" It wasn't a question.

  "I feel at peace here," he said. "They love me and they're teaching what I need to know. I have no worries here. Look, if you aren't happy, we can talk to one of the Deltas, and-"

  "No," Martina interrupted. Her throat felt thick. "No, don't say anything. Please. I… I want to try working it out on my own." She forced a note of sunshine into her voice, though her heart was twisting inside her. "Besides, how could I leave a place that makes my brother so happy? I'm going to work harder. Then I can be a Beta, too."

  Keith nodded happily, then winced. A warning tingle shot through Martina's body. She had been talking to Keith-a man-for too long. She smiled a farewell at him and turned away. Abruptly her gorge rose and she had to swallow hard to keep it down.

  "Are you all right, dear?" asked Delta Maura, placing a concerned hand on Martina's elbow.

  "I'm tired," Martina managed, and wondered how it would look if she threw up on Delta Maura's green slippers. "Is it almost ti-I mean, are we near a sleep cycle yet?"

  "Soon," Delta Maura assured her. "Though the ones Dreamer Roon selects for himself won't get much sleep." She said the latter sentence like she might say she was expecting a com call. Martina swallowed hard again and took a pair of deep breaths.

  "Perhaps," Delta Maura said, noticing, "I should take you back to your room a little early. Just this once."

  A few minutes later, Martina lay on her bed and stared at the yellow ceiling. The door would open any moment, she was sure of it, and Roon would enter. What would he do? Speak first? Make small talk? Just yank up her robe and shove himself inside her? Martina had been a slave for most of her life, but never once had she been raped. Her Silence-and the value it added to her-had protected her from it. Or maybe she'd just been lucky. Now her luck was coming to an end. She had to get out of here, and she was unfortunately and dreadfully certain that she wouldn't be able
to take Keith with her. He had already fallen under Roon's spell.

  Martina wanted to cry, wanted to shout and scream and throw something. She did none of it-cameras in the room recorded her every move. So far she had located five of them while tidying her room. It was a strain to act as if nothing were wrong, step naked into the shower every morning with hungry, invisible eyes upon her.

  Who else knew about this place? Martina couldn't imagine that her disappearance had gone unnoticed. DrimCom would certainly have called the police. If they had figured out where she was, they would have done something, wouldn't they? Of course, for all she knew, DrimCom had found Roon and he had simply paid them for her. No, that couldn't be. She was far, far too valuable in a post-Despair universe. A place like this had to be a secret, or else it couldn't- — couldn't function.

  Martina sat up. She didn't have to get Keith out. She only had to get herself out. Once she was free, she could tell someone about this place, tell a hundred people, a thousand. The news that Roon had stolen two dozen functioning Silent would crash through the Dream like a thunderclap and bring down the wrath of governments, corporations-perhaps even the Children of Irfan. Roon would be shut down and Keith would be freed.

  Now all she had to do was get out herself. She brushed the bit of plastic in her palm and thought long and hard.

  CHAPTER TEN

  "Hate binds us to our enemies."

  - Irfan Qasad

  Ben pried up the access panel and, with another glance at the street corridor, dropped into the maintenance tunnel. It was dry and dimly lit, with dozens of pipes and color-coded cables pipes running in various directions.

  "In," Ben said, and examined the dozens of wrapped cables. "Let's see. SA datalinks are coded in blue, so it has to be one of these." He brushed his hand across a thick clump of tiny blue cables bound wrapped with plastic bands and followed them down the tunnel away from Roon's house. In his other hand he carried a small tool satchel.

  Ben didn't answer and continued tracing the cables. He came to an intersection, followed the cables to the right, and kept going. The tunnel ceiling was low, and for once Ben was glad he was short. His footsteps were muffled by pipe baffling and the close quarters. A leaky pipe dripped a bright green fluid Ben declined to scrutinize, but otherwise the tunnels were pretty clean. He doubted this would be the case in the poorer sections of the station.