Catch the Lightning (32 page)

The mercenaries split us up, taking Althor in the first transport and me in the second. The car had no frills, just a seamless metal interior with four seats and a web console. Two mercenaries sat in the front and one in the back with me. As a low hum started, mild acceleration pushed us into our seats.

I can’t say how long the ride lasted; maybe twenty minutes, maybe an hour. It felt interminable. I sat shivering in my seat, wishing I had a coat. Concentrating on the cold kept me from thinking about whatever waited at the end of our ride.

The car finally slowed to a stop, and a clank vibrated through the metal. The door opened and a woman stared in at us. Large and angular, with a jutting jaw and broad shoulders, she looked as strong as an ox. Her gray hair was pulled back in a twist, with wisps curling around her face. The brown jumpsuit she wore had no patches on it, nothing to indicate she had an identity.

Behind her, I glimpsed an open area the size of a three-car garage with a high roof. Rows of consoles filled it, running perpendicular to the rail. As we stepped out of the car, gravity pulled at us, almost as much as on Earth. Tiles covered the deck, black metal diamonds edged with silver. No windows showed anywhere, just a ceiling and walls the deep blue color of the sky right after the sunset cools. The area looked like a minor control center: operators sat encased in exoskeletons, lights glimmered on consoles, and holomaps rotated in the air, three-dimensional views of equipment, the Cylinder, and hieroglyphics.

People moved about the consoles, some dressed in blue or gray uniforms, but most in brown jumpsuits like our guide. After Althor disembarked from the other car with three of the mercenaries, the Trader woman led us through the control center. Everyone stared at us. More accurately, they stared at Althor. I later learned that Kryx Iquar, the Eubian Trader Minister, had made no secret of his triumph. He had achieved the coveted grail, capturing a member of the' Rhon, a prince who was both a psibernet Key and the ultimate provider.

A man waited for us at the back of the control center. He wore the uniform of an officer in the Eubian navy: gray tunic with red braid circling the cuffs, gray pants with a blue stripe down each leg, black boots. The insignia on his left shoulder showed a black puma leaping out of a red circle, clawed forelegs extended, teeth bared. Althor glanced at the patch, then grimaced and turned away.

At the officer’s command, an oval section of the wall shimmered. It was a modified molecular airlock: when opaque and stiff, they served as solid barriers; when soap-bubble thin, they allowed entrance while guarding against air loss. We walked through the shimmer—into a forest glade.

The emerald-lit clearing was a few yards wide, surrounded by trees with branches that met overhead. Distant bird calls trilled. Purple flowers hung in the foliage like gaudy tiger lilies and a downy green carpet curled around my feet. A carpet. In a jungle.

I looked around. The oval doorway behind us had vanished, replaced by trees. I saw what looked like several large rocks within the trees, but on closer inspection they resolved into control seats with exoskeletons. We were inside a holoart creation, similar to the pictures in Ming’s room on Epsilani but far more elaborate.

The naval officer was staring at Althor. When Althor glanced at him, the Trader dropped his gaze, either awed or intimidated, perhaps both. He seemed a normal person, with graying hair and blue eyes. Age lines showed around his eyes and creased his forehead.

On the other side of the glade, the trees vanished, revealing another oval doorway. Three people stood there, two men and a woman. As they entered the chamber, the forest reappeared behind them. The woman and one of the men had brown hair and blue eyes, but the second man’s hair was darker, almost black. His eyes were the color of rust. I later realized he was a taskmaster, a member of the highest caste among the Trader slaves, probably the illegitimate child of an Aristo with one of his or her providers.

Althor watched the rust-eyed man and the Trader stared back in unabashed fascination. Then the Trader seemed to mentally shake himself. After conferring with the naval officer, he came over to me and spoke in the harsh Eubian tongue.

I swallowed. “I don’t understand you.”

Glancing at the mercenary holding my arm, he repeated his words. The waroid tilted his helmeted head down to me and said, “This is Lieutenant Azez. He requires your identification. Your name.”

I looked up at Azez. “Tina.”

“Tain-ya.” Azez nodded. He walked back toward Althor, staring again, as if Althor were a magnet he couldn’t escape.

In fact, Althor mesmerized all of them. If he cared, he showed no sign of it. He stood between his guards, his face impassive. Azez spoke to him in Eubian and he answered in the same, the harsh syllables incongruous on his lips. /

Then Azez walked “through” the trees. It was bizarre, as if he passed through a ghost forest. Looking more closely, I was able to make out a console disguised within the holos. Azez leaned over it and spoke in a tongue I hadn’t heard before, one" with an elegant sound, smooth and lilting, what I now know is Highton, the language of the Aristos, the Trader ruling caste. After a moment Azez returned to the glade and motioned Althor toward a seat, apparently offering to let him relax. Althor just shook his head. Beads of sweat were running down his temple.

We waited. And waited. Several times a Trader or mercenary made a comment, but other than that we all just stood there.

Finally the oval across the room reappeared, this time revealing a man and woman. Everyone in the chamber bowed, except for Althor and me. I had no idea I was expected to do it, and Althor clearly had no intention of bowing to the newcomers.

Seeing them made my skin crawl, though I didn’t understand why at the time. They had the kind of perfection that comes from being able to afford any features, any physique, any life you want. They were tall even for Althor’s universe, the woman long-legged and well curved, with a sultry beauty; the man broad-shouldered and narrow-hipped, so handsome it seemed unnatural. What struck me most, though, was their coloring: black hair with a crystalline glitter and red eyes, like rubies.

The woman walked to Althor, gazing at him as if he were a prize she coveted, one she would have killed for if she thought she could get away with it. She spoke in Highton, her voice rumbling. Despite the elegant words, she still sounded threatening, as if she were promising him a velvet-draped bedroom in hell. The man in the doorway watched the exchange with a detached fascination, smiling slightly when unease flickered over Althor’s face.

The woman turned to her companion and bowed. He walked forward, relaxed and confident, arrogance in his every move. Everyone else in the room bowed, but he paid no attention; he and Althor stared at each other, fixedly, as if they were carrying out some ritual, vying for control. Their appearances heightened the effect; both men had the same height and build, one gold, the other red and black, like two opposed aspects of a supernatural being. Despite the handicaps Althor brought to the contest—a prisoner, half-dressed, hands locked behind his back—the Trader still couldn’t dominate their interaction.

The woman spoke again, formally, a phrase ending with “Kryx Iquar.”

So. This was Kryx Iquar. The Eubian Trader Minister. The man who had bought us.

Althor and Iquar watched each other, caught in silent combat. Except something was wrong. Althor was falling, falling….

The floor came up and hit my body. I heard a flurry of words and realized the floor hadn’t moved; I had fallen. Althor spoke in Eubian, his voice intense, urgent. I lifted my head to see him fighting in the grip of several mercenaries, struggling to reach me, his face for the first time revealing his fear.

Iquar knelt in front of me. Looking into his red eyes, I shuddered, remembering the gruesome sense of falling. Mercifully it had receded, muffled by whatever deadened the rest of my Kyle senses. I sat up, pushing my hair away from my face, my hand shaking.

“They tell me you speak English,” Iquar said.

I closed my eyes, so relieved to hear a language I understood that a chill ran up my spine.

“Look at me,” Iquar said.

I opened my eyes in time to see a frown flash across his too-perfect face. He stood up. “She is in shock.” He spoke in Highton and people answered, voices tempered with the fear of those who knew they had angered someone they must always please. Althor watched from across the chamber, still held back by the waroids, his face strained.

As the gray-haired woman helped me to my feet, the other Trader woman came over, murmuring in their harsh language. The waroid next to me took hold of my arm and pulled me toward the wall where we had entered the chamber.

“No!” I tried to pull away. They were taking me away from Althor, my only anchor in this confusing, terrifying universe.

Althor was fighting as well now, trying to yank away from the mercenaries holding him. “Let me go to her!”

The glistening oval appeared in the holo-trees and the mercenary pulled me toward it. As I struggled, I screamed Althor’s name. I could hear him fighting behind me.

“Let her go!” he shouted.

The waroid dragged me forward, my heels scraping through the cloud-carpet. Then we were through the oval and the chamber closed behind us, leaving me outside and Althor with Kryx Iquar, both of us caught in a nightmare.

I once dreamed a dream, centuries ago in LA. It mas simple, really: I went to Cal State Los Angeles and earned a BA in accounting. I made friends who carried books instead of guns. That was my dream. That was all I asked for.

I got a lot more.

The room lights were low. I lay on a bed, dimly aware of the gray-haired woman moving about.

Some time later I pushed up on my elbows. My head swam and everything blurred, as if I had been drugged. The room was circular, carpeted in blue, with colors swirling on the walls. Someone had taken off my dress and covered me with a blanket, one deeply blue, as soft as a dream. Across the room, the Trader woman dozed in a reclining chair.

A black table stood nearby. The pitcher on it was delicate, a flower with petals that came together on one side in a spout. Condensation ran down its sides to the table, where it disappeared, and a cup shaped like a blossom sat next to it. I tried to reach for the cup, but my arm shook too much. I collapsed back onto the bed, too drugged to function.

The woman appeared and leaned over me, laying her hand against my cheek, then my forehead. Although she didn’t smile, her touch was gende, like a nurse’s. She poured some water for me and I gulped it down.

I gave her back the empty cup. “Where is Althor?”

She shook her head. Then she tugged my arm. At her insistence, I climbed off the bed, groggy and dazed. She took me to the wall and spoke, evoking an octagonal portal with a soap-bubble membrane that clung to us as we walked through it. A pool filled the misty chamber beyond. Mosaic tiles made delicate patterns on every surface in the room, whirls of gold, violet, and green. With the woman’s help, I eased into the scented pool. I was too dizzy to do much besides sit, listing to one side in about two feet of water.

The woman left. A moment later, she returned with two bowls. Kneeling by the pool, she nudged me back up and gave me a handful of translucent pastel beads. I gazed at them, letting the little spheres pour into the water, too drugged to care what happened to them. After two more tries with the beads, both unsuccessful, she made an exasperated noise. She stripped off her clothes and climbed in next to me. To my dazed brain, it all seemed surreal. She had two belly buttons. Two umbilical cords. If it was a birth defect, Iquar apparendy didn’t consider repairing it worth the trouble.

She took a handful of beads from one bowl and squeezed her hand, then opened it to reveal a frothy pastel lather. A sweet scent drifted up from it, blending well with the fragrance from the water. She bathed me from head to toe and washed my hair. The beads from the larger bowl made a cream that removed body hair. She took all of it off me, except the hair on my head, eyelashes, and eyebrows. It seemed bizarre at the time, but then, to a woman from three hundred years in my own past, my shaving my legs and armpits would probably- have seemed just as bizarre.

She helped me swim toward the far end of the pool. As we drew closer, a fountain resolved out of the mist. She stood me on a dais under it and water fell over me, plastering my hair and sheathing my body. After it rinsed away the lather, she had me swim to the edge of the pool and climb out. As we stood next to a mosaic of waving fronds on the wall, warm air blew out of tubes hidden in the design, soft and hypnotic, drying our skin. Then the woman put her clothes on and led me back to the bedroom.

Someone had cleaned my dress. It had a honey-sweet fragrance, how I imagined ambrosia would smell. I tried to thank her, but she didn’t understand my words and showed no interest in my hand motions. Instead, she went to a console against the wall and called someone. So I lay down on the bed again, drowsing as I listened to the harsh murmur of her voice.

After a while she got me up again. This time we left the room. We followed an octagonal corridor with a floor of crisscrossing bronze strips that felt cool under the bare soles of my feet. Octagonal arches appeared at periodic intervals, glowing with gold light. I looked for a window, a portal, anything to show an “outside,” a familiar sight, trees or houses, animals, some buoy in this buffeting ocean of strangeness. Los Angeles seemed so distant now, like pieces of someone else’s life.

I never saw a window. Eventually we came to a dead end. The woman spoke and the usual shimmer appeared, this time in an octagonal doorway. She led me through it and across a small chamber to a second doorway. The room beyond was large, the first wasted space I had seen, or so I thought at the time. In truth, the pool was also a luxury; she could have simply sprayed me with nano-bots that acted much the same as soap, gathering particles of dirt into the interior of lipid micelles.