An Exchange of Hostages (30 page)

With any luck he’d understand it all when next he woke.

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The lab work was going well, that was a good thing. St. Clare was doing well, which was a very good thing indeed. The Sixth Level exercise wouldn’t start until tomorrow morning; there was a cushion of time yet before he had to face the next trial-that was good. Life was not bad, not for this minute slice of it. It could have been residual euphoria, left over from the morning; had he really made remarks of that sort to Joslire, dark-eyed women, twins? He had to have been thinking with his fish. That was the only explanation. Sometimes a man simply woke with a brisk fish breaching from his hip-wrap, half-drunk with some unfocused and erotic dream of the ocean every woman carried with her and fish that sought their source and native place.

Hearing Joslire’s signal at the door to his lab space, Andrej keyed the admit. “Step through.” A moment yet to shut down on the comps and launch an analysis run, and he’d be ready to go.

“The officer is expected for physical exercise: combat training drill. Yes, yes, he knew that. Not even combat drill was actually unpleasant at the heart of it, though. And since to spar with Joslire, he had to concentrate on what he was doing — if he didn’t want Joslire to bounce him off the wall — it freed him from contemplating the troubles of his life.

“Coming immediately.” He could come back after third-meal to see how his analysis had run. Tutor Chonis would be able to use this drug for Noycannir’s Fifth Level one way or the other, but he wanted to extend its non-lethal effect to Class Two hominids for his own professional satisfaction. Efficiency was a virtue, of a sort. “Just a moment, though, Joslire. I mean to ask you a question, if we are still off monitor.”

Joslire scowled at him with his eyebrows, a restrained expression Andrej had learned to read as confusion. “The officer’s communications are still privileged in lab space. If the officer please.”

Rising stiffly from the bench, Andrej stretched, wondering how to phrase his question to avoid giving alarm. Or to create the least amount of anxiety. All this time together, and Joslire seemed as far from relaxed in his presence as ever he had.

“You know that the Tutor has required four-and-forty of me, in consideration of St. Clare’s supposed fault. And it was part of the bargain that I would punish him with my own hand.”

He felt too awkward by half to be discussing this with Joslire. Surely it was in very poor taste of him. But he had to talk to somebody about it; and he knew that Joslire had ample experience upon which to base an answer to his questions.

“So much was understood, if it please the officer.”

Oh, was it, really? And by whom? No, he was not going to permit himself to be distracted. He was going to cling to his good spirits while he could. All of those Security in the corridor, the other night . . .

“I want you to tell me so if you would rather not respond. But if I am to do this, I need to know the manner in which it is best done. Thou art scarred, I cannot help that. I need to know what you can tell me — how would a man prefer to be beaten, if he knew that there was no hope of getting ‘round it?”

As embarrassed as he was to hear himself use a familiar form with Joslire, he could not regret it. Not when he saw how much it seemed to gratify the other man. Anything to make it easier on Joslire was a good thing, to Andrej’s mind.

“There are requirements.” Joslire chose his words with evident care. “Blood must be drawn, or the stroke repeated. So it is . . . easiest . . . when the officer lets blood with each stroke. It is over more quickly.”

Thinking about the question, consulting his own difficult memories. Andrej stood silent, in respect for Joslire’s pain.

“Then it is also easier when there is a regular pattern, one can prepare. Sometimes the officer is sympathetic, and the stroke is regular. Sometimes the officer has no skill or stomach for it, blood is not let, and then the stroke must be repeated. It is counted as good at the third stroke, though, and the next looked for — ”

Joslire seemed to shudder, and fell silent.

Andrej decided that he didn’t want to probe any more deeply into Joslire’s wounded spirit.

“Thank you, Joslire. This is good information for me to have, and I thank you for it.” Wanting to call Joslire back from the black moments in his past, he could afford to pass on more technical details. He could revisit the instructional material; the standard techniques addressed the issue of maximizing suffering, and surely the same information could be back-engineered in some sense to serve his purpose.

Joslire seemed to shake himself awake, and Andrej put a hand out to steady him. There was a moment, and it seemed to Andrej that it was a long one; then Joslire was recovered, taking a deep breath, bowing politely. To request the release of his arm, Andrej supposed.

“Sir. The officer would not wish to be late to his drill. It would only have to be made up for later.”

A lie, a blatant lie. Joslire knew very well that Andrej would just as soon miss combat drill and makeup drill alike. Preceding Joslire out into the hall, he started down the corridor that would lead them out of Infirmary, wondering at the unnecessary comment.

They didn’t go to the room he was familiar with, however. It seemed to be in rather a different area of the Station, although there was as little traffic here as Andrej was accustomed to seeing on his way to Tutor Chonis’s office. He was going to need to see Tutor Chonis to describe the drug he had created for Noycannir. After his exercise, perhaps.

The exercise area itself was somewhat more spacious, at least to judge from the changing area. Was this where Joslire had brought him to the sauna before? There was a door at one end of the changing area that looked promising in that regard. Still unfamiliar, but promising.

Changing into exercise uniform was not a difficult task; the clothing was loose and comfortable, if relatively minimal, and mat-socks were much easier to get into and out of than his boots were. Joslire didn’t seem to be changing, however; no, not even when he’d got Andrej’s uniform folded and draped and all of the things Joslire did with his uniforms.

Andrej didn’t understand.

“What is this, Joslire, are we not to dance together?”

Dance. That was what they called it at home, on Azanry. Combat drill was not unlike a young man’s-dance, a challenge-dance, a test of dominance. Andrej had always liked all of the different dances, and some year he would perhaps get as good at this particular sort as Joslire was — but not without Joslire’s help.

“If the officer would please step through to the exercise floor. It is considered beneficial that the officer be exposed to different combat techniques as part of the officer’s instruction.”

The whole thing made him rather nervous, actually, but Joslire-as usual-left him no room for protest. Well. He wouldn’t know him, then, whomever his partner was to be. Perhaps Joslire was afraid that Andrej would grow complacent, having begun to learn how to dance with Joslire; and would consequently fail to generalize his knowledge and protect himself against a stranger?

“You will wait for me, I hope,” he suggested. “I’m not sure I could find my way back on my own.” As if he’d ever been permitted to wander about unattended. Joslire would surely see right through his transparent stratagem to the sudden case of nerves that underlaid it.

Joslire merely bowed once more, in silence. Declining — Andrej thought to himself, a trifle resentfully — to give him an opportunity to delay his exercise by responding, or pretending to respond, to Joslire’s answer. There were times when he felt that he might as well be in his father’s House, where at least he had some nominal clout with the servants. Joslire could be impossible.

Frustrated, Andrej pushed aside the door between the changing area and the exercise floor, and stepped through.

A much larger room than he was accustomed to, yes; large, and very dimly lit, actually. The equivalent of a docking slip, perhaps, within the maintenance atmosphere? And waiting for him — not one but four Security. Five Security, one standing a little apart from the rest-the senior man, apparently, calling the detachment to make formal notice of his arrival. “Attention to the officer!”

The senior man — was a woman.

Andrej approached her detachment, anxious to understand what this exercise might entail. Two on one, three on one, well, there was an abstract sense of a sort to that — he supposed. But five on one?

He didn’t have a chance.

“Thank you, Section Leader. How are we to conduct ourselves, for this practice?”

The closer he got to the five of them the more uncomfortable he felt. Tall, yes, no problem. None of them wore green-sleeves, so they were all Station Security; that was unusual. Bodies lithe with muscle, he expected that. But there was going to be a problem, quite apart from the senior man’s unexpected gender. Because not only was the senior man a woman, but so was the first of her detachment, and the second of her detachment, and the third of her detachment, and not to put too fine a point to it — they were all women, and all of them taller than he was.

Not only that.

As far as he could tell — Andrej realized, with a deepening horror that bode well to shade too quickly into utter panic to be braked — they all had dark hair. Dark hair, dark eyes, one of them with the glossy purple-black skin of a Sangreal lineage, and, oh, but he had a bad feeling about this.

“With the officer’s indulgence. A series of warm-up drills, and then we would like to demonstrate the primary sequence of the basic combination throws.”

It sounded innocent enough, surely. “Very well, shall we begin?”

It could be just a coincidence.

There was certainly no reason to let his masculine imagination run away with him, whether or not he was suddenly burdened with a rude fish cresting in his belly, where his self-respect ought to be.

If only he had not been so cheerfully flippant with Joslire just this morning . . .

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A man could not fault so subtly planned an assault, no, not really, not even when a man was at such a disadvantage, not even when the passive role was so unfamiliar. Andrej had to concede the superior planning and execution of the exercise ungrudgingly. Combat drill continued until he had been thoroughly warmed, and no, he wasn’t nearly good enough to actually compete with his opponents, but he fancied that his performance was at least good enough to spare Joslire any unnecessary mortification on his behalf. Surely he proved that he had not been a dull Student. He could almost imagine that within a year he would be able to compete on equal terms with one of the women; competition with two at once was clearly several years out of his range in his estimation, and when they teamed three on one there was nothing for him to do but to relax and submit to instruction, and hope that he was not too distracted by the unusual environment to retain at least some part of what he had been sent in there to learn.

But then the senior of his instructors called for twilight drill; Andrej had never heard of that. The lights fell to half their original dimness or more, dim as that had been. Someone switched on a ventilator, very old, very loud, and there was no hearing oneself think in such a racket — no hope to hear what the five of them might be saying to each other, at a little distance.

Twilight drill commenced with a new series of one-on-one encounters, standard positions, unusual recoveries. The first approached head-on. He could not quite find the right balance to flip her, because she seemed to have shifted her weight to her offside foot. No matter; a useful hint of what to practice next. But it did mean that he was thrown rather than she — and thrown quite emphatically, with his assailant following up with a sliding tackle of sorts, as if to ensure that, by landing on top of him, he’d stay thrown. Most unusual, Joslire had not taught him that trick yet. But the uniforms were thin and damp with sweat, and Andrej’s body was immediately convinced that it knew the trick precisely, and was eager to play the game. She pushed herself up and away from him slowly, with a caressing gesture of her hand across his face and down his throat; then she was gone, and he had to concentrate on the next step.

The second approached him with a sidekick, very sharp, very precise, but he was a match for that one, and brought her down. Joslire had taught him to regain the advantage, if brought down in such an attack, by wrapping his leg around behind his opponent’s knees, and trying to get a good scissor hold to compensate for having been thrown. So it made good sense to him that, once they were both down, she would throw her leg over him, around his thighs; but the manner in which it was done, and her evident intent to press close to him rather than gain the advantage of distance, were neither of them calculated to keep a man’s mind on his business. Certainly nothing Joslire had ever warned him against.

By the time the third had thrown him onto his belly and pressed herself along the length of his back to give the back of his neck a sharp wet nip in parting, the piscine portion of his masculine nature was so strongly minded to seek the ocean seas of its native origin and proper place that Andrej’s head was swimming. There were too many of them, and no dealing with it either, especially not when they teamed up against him so mercilessly. Professional Security, and women all the same, their bodies hard and supple with constant combat practice — except where they were soft; respectful of his rank, respectful of his modesty — except that they seemed clearly determined to ignore his rank and disregard his modesty for unknown purposes of their own . . .

He struggled virtuously with himself for long eighths, certain that he had misunderstood. Somehow. No matter what his fish might think.

But the women weren’t having any of it.

Instead the women seemed intent on having him, and he could either struggle helplessly against them — and be efficiently immobilized, for his pains — or he could mind his manners and do as he was bidden. In a manner of speaking.

In the end Andrej surrendered to the unarguable logic of superior force, and gave himself over meekly to their calm deliberate hands. Their judicious, considered kisses. Their polite but unequivocal, if unspoken, demands, precise in conception and pleasant in execution. Their charitable forbearance of his fish’s impertinence, which puffed itself up proudly to be so stroked and petted; and their generous permission to let his fish dive deep where it was certain it belonged, granting the greedy thing such new and delightful seas in which to disport itself that, in the end, it wilted of an excess of exercise and had to be returned with gentle hands to where fish were generally to be found.