Devoured: Brides of the Kindred 11 (34 page)

“Just because I’ll lose my
emotions doesn’t mean I will abandon my promises to you,” Garron said softly.
“Your safety will still be my first priority. And I will avenge you—I swear
that to you, Tess.”

Suddenly her eyes were burning
and she had to swallow back tears.

“Look, I know you only have good
intentions, talking like that, but it’s making me feel worse. Could you
just…just hold me tonight? Would that be all right?”

“More than all right,” he
murmured and she felt the soft brush of his lips in her hair as he kissed her.
“I just wish I could offer you more than tonight.”

“I wish you could, too,” Tess
said and then the tears came and there was no way to stop them.

Garron held her tighter and
buried her face in her hair.

“Gods,” he whispered fiercely.
“I’ve never hated what I am more than I do right now. Tess, if there was any
other way…”

“But there’s not.” She turned
over and pressed her face to his chest. “There’s not. So stop talking about it
and just hold me.”

“All right.” He stroked her back
gently.

Tess pressed against him and
cried herself to sleep in his arms, knowing she would never be held in them
again.

Chapter
Thirty

“So you’ve decided to get the
emo-damper, so you have, so you have?” Yipper looked at him hopefully.

“Yes,” Garron said heavily. “It
seems I have no choice.”

Tess said nothing.

They were standing in Yipper’s
Enhancement Area, a large, white room on the third floor of the medical barge
filled with racks and rows of all kinds of bio-mechanical equipment. Garron saw
robotic extremities—from small things like fingers, hands and feet all the way
up to entire arms and legs. There were many different ocular mounts, artificial
acoustic ear enhancements, even nasal plugs that he supposed greatly increased
the sense of smell.

Not that he needed any help in that
area—he could smell everything. The metallic scent of the robotic parts, the
sterile cleanliness of the room, Yipper’s aroma, a bit like an old rug that had
been stepped on with muddy boots.

But more than anything else he
smelled Tess—smelled her sorrow and disappointment which hung in the air around
him like the aroma of dying flowers. Though she was keeping her face carefully
blank this morning, that scent said everything to Garron. It said she felt like
he was leaving her, abandoning anything that was or could ever be between them.

Which
is exactly what I’m doing. But what the seven hells else can I do? Better to
lose her forever than let the dr’gin out to devour her! I can’t risk it—I
can’t!

Even now he could feel the
dr’gin
trying to force its way out of
him. He was holding it in check—just barely. But he had the same feeling you
get when you’re sick or drunk and know you’re going to throw up. You know it’s
going to happen eventually—it’s just a question of when.

Garron already knew the answer.
His name day was tomorrow. If he didn’t get the implant today—right now—by
tomorrow he would be a murderer. And the person he would most likely kill was
the one he had sworn never to hurt. The one he loved.

Because he did love her—so damn
much. So much it hurt—burned inside him like a fire that refused to be
quenched.
Stupid,
he told himself
angrily.
Stupid to let yourself love her,
to let yourself feel so much so quickly. You haven’t even known her that long.

But he’d known her long enough.
Long enough to know she was the female he wanted to spend his life with. Not
that any of that mattered now. Once he was rendered an emotionless robot like
the Dark Kindred, nothing would ever matter again.

“Very good, very good,” Yipper
said, rubbing his long, hairy fingers together. “Let me see—I was working on
the implant last night. Strengthening it just for you…”

“Is it that hard to implant in a
grown male?” Garron asked, frowning.

“It’s tricky, yes it is, yes it
is.” Yipper nodded. “Mostly because you weren’t grown in an incubation tube,
like most of the Enhanced are.”

“But I thought you said the male
you implanted successfully with an emotion damper
wasn’t
grown in a tube?” Garron said.

“He wasn’t. His family died of
scarlet plague—yes they did, yes they did. He came to us as an adolescent. At
first One, the first emissary of the Collective, simply tolerated him—allowed
him to live as best he could scavenging on the barges. But then he went and
asked to become one of the Enhanced. He had the necessary DNA and the Kindred background
so One allowed him to try an implant—with the understanding that if it failed,
he would die, yes he would, yes he would.”

“Die? Will this implant kill
Garron if it fails?” Tess demanded, speaking up for the first time. “Because
that’s
not
acceptable! Even if he
can’t feel, he has to be safe!”

“I am speaking of Six, not
Garron,” Yipper said gently. “A failed implant would mean Six’s death because
emotions are forbidden on the planet’s surface where the Collective rules
supreme. If he was caught exhibiting signs of feelings he would be summarily
executed. Still, it was a risk he was willing to take.”

“I don’t understand,” Garron
said, frowning. “Why is having emotions a crime on Zeaga Four?” He asked the
question not just because he was curious—he had sworn to Sylvan that he would
try to get some background on the strange inhabitants of the mechanized planet.
He ought to honor his word.
Right—that’s
the only reason you’re asking. Not just to put off the implant a little while
longer,
whispered a cynical little voice in his brain. Garron pushed it
aside. “Well?” he asked Yipper.

The Tolleg frowned and scratched
one of his long, floppy ears.

“Well, it has to do with the
history of Zeaga Four, yes it does, yes it does. You see, it didn’t used to be
ruled by the Collective—”

“What
is
the Collective?” Tess asked, coming to stand beside Garron. She
slipped her hand into his as though they were just making casual conversation.

I
think I’m not the only one who wants to put this off,
Garron thought, entwining her small, soft
fingers with his. Just holding her hand made his heart thump painfully but he
forced himself to ignore it and concentrate on what Yipper was saying.

“The Collective is the ruling
body of mechanoids—they control all aspects of life on Zeaga Four,” the little
Tolleg explained. “But they have not always held power. Many centuries ago, the
life forms that lived on the surface looked very like the two of you—tall,
bipedal, mostly hairless…” He made a face as though this was distasteful.
“Anyway, they went to war—the whole planet fighting among themselves, yes they
did, yes they did. The lot of them were nearly wiped out. Only the rise of the
Collective saved them from going completely extinct.”

“So…the machines took over?”
Tess asked, frowning.

“For the good of the planet.”
Yipper nodded earnestly. “Yes they did, yes they did. And they determined that
the root cause of the problem was the emotions—all the feelings the inhabitants
had all the time. So they gave them a choice—eradication of all emotion or
extermination.”

“And they chose to lose their
emotions rather than die,” Garron said, nodding. “I see.”

“But I thought you said the
inhabitants were grown in tubes?” Tess said.

“They are grown in incubation
tubes
now
, of course. Yes they are,
yes they are.” Yipper nodded vigorously. “I was speaking of the beginning of
the Collective—centuries ago. Back in the beginning, after the eradication of
emotion, sexual procreation decreased until the organic inhabitants of Zeaga
Four were in danger of dying out. In fact, the females of the species
did
die out. That is one reason the
Kindred were allowed to merge with the society on the surface—they offered
fresh DNA and they were willing to give up all emotion, as the Collective
demanded.”

“But why?” Tess asked. “I don’t
understand why anyone with a choice would choose that.” She didn’t look at
Garron as she spoke but he knew she was thinking of him.

“Why, because there were no
females to call at that time. No there weren’t, no there weren’t,” Yipper said.
“It had been years since a new trade partner had been found and their existing
sources for brides had reached saturation levels. So a branch of the Kindred
broke off and came here, to Zeaga Four. They declared that if they could not
call brides, they wanted to rid themselves of all desire and emotion. So they
wouldn’t miss what they could not have, don’t you know, don’t you know?”

“I guess that makes sense.”
Garron sighed. “If you can never have the female you crave, I supposed it’s
better not to crave her.”

“It’s still pretty hard on the
female, though,” Tess snapped.

“Tess…” He squeezed her fingers
and she shook her head.

“Never mind, I’m sorry.” Her
eyelashes fluttered rapidly, as though she was trying to blink back tears. “So
how did the Kindred get rid of their emotions if it’s so hard to implant a
grown male?”

“This was centuries ago—the
Collective had different technology. In fact, the unit I customized for Garron
has been modified using the notes from those first emotion dampers, back when
the Kindred first joined the Collective and became Enhanced. I’ve worked quite
hard on it, yes I have, yes I have.” He looked proud.

“I’m sure you’ve done an
excellent job,” Garron said shortly. “But…” He searched his mind, trying to
think of another question—anything to put off the implant. Anything to feel
just a little longer for the female at his side.

Tess came to his rescue.

“So the reason you’re performing
this, uh, procedure up here instead of down on the surface of Zeaga Four is
because no one who has emotions is allowed down there?”

“Well, there
are
special dispensations that are
occasionally handed out—for visiting dignitaries and the like, yes there are,
yes there are,” Yipper explained. “But yes, in general the Collective prefers
to keep the surface an emotion-free environment. They even have a whole
subclass of mechanoids devoted to making sure no feel-crime is committed—the
sniffers.”

“Feel-crime?
Seriously?”
Tess looked skeptical.

Yipper nodded. “Oh yes. But you
don’t have to worry about being sanctioned for that up here. Feeling is safe
aboard the medical barges. At first, of course, they harbored only the
incubation tubes to grow new organic inhabitants for the planet but now there
are far too many visitors to expect them to all get emo-dampers.”

“Of course,” Garron murmured.
“So you probably don’t implant them much.”

“Except in the tube grown, no,”
Yipper said. “Though it was the first enhancement ever offered, back in the
beginning. Then, because the organics wished to be able to keep up with the
Collective physically, we began offering other enhancements.”

“They certainly seem to have
kept up.” Tess shivered and Garron wondered if she was thinking of the two Dark
Kindred they had seen in the lounge the night before. “But why do you offer
free medical care and enhancements to everyone?” she continued. “And is it
really
free?”

“It is free in that we only take
what our clients would have left behind anyway, yes we do, yes we do,” Yipper
explained earnestly. “We get paid in genetic material.”

“Meaning?” Garron raised an
eyebrow at him.

“Growing new organics in the
tubes requires fresh DNA on a regular basis, lest we fall into a rut by growing
mindless idiots, as the Scourge did before their end,” the Tolleg said. “As we
work, any blood or tissue left behind is banked—stored for future use.”

“So you mean cloning?” Tess
looked horrified.

“No, no—not exactly. We mix the
DNA some before we use it. And we never use it in the lifetime of the donor, no
we don’t, no we don’t. Maybe a hundred solar years from now there will be an
organic male who has some of the same characteristics as Garron, here. He may
even look a bit like him. But he will not
be
exactly like him. Not a true clone, no indeed, no indeed.”

“Even if he
was
a true clone I doubt he’d look anything like me,” Garron
growled. “He’d probably have robotic legs and a metal arm and a camera for an
eye or some damn thing like that.”

“It is true that the organics
that live on Zeaga Four tend to get many Enhancements, yes they do, yes they
do,” Yipper admitted. “Of course, part of that is because the Collective
doesn’t allow
anyone
to visit the
surface without some form of enhancement—however minor.”

“Even the visiting dignitaries
that are allowed to have emotions?” Tess asked.

The Tolleg nodded. “Even them,
even them. The policy tends to…discourage all but the most determined of
visitors.”

“I bet it does,” Tess muttered.

“But the law makes perfect
sense,” Yipper said earnestly. “For now you can scarcely tell the organic
inhabitants from the mechanized ones. The two have almost completely merged—a
truly blended society.”

“A blended
emotionless
society,” Garron muttered bitterly.

“True, true.” The Tolleg nodded
again. “But they have no more war on Zeaga Four. No conflict or unhappiness.
Everyone knows his place in the Collective’s Rubric. It is a truly harmonious
place. Well, except for the purges…”

“The what?” Tess demanded.

“Nothing, nothing,” Yipper said
quickly. He looked around the white room as though someone might be listening.
“We have spoken enough, yes we have, yes we have. I have, perhaps told you,
more than I should. Are you ready for your implant, Kindred?”

“Not quite.” Garron frowned. “I
have a few more questions.”

“No more about the Collective or
Zeaga Four, no indeed, no indeed,” Yipper said quickly, looking around again.

“Nothing like that,” Garron
assured him. “I just want to know
exactly
what I’m getting into before I let you do this.”

“Let me show you the implant.
Truly, it is a work of art—yes it is, yes it is.” Yipper climbed up on a tall
white stool to reach something in a long row of cabinets along the wall as he
spoke. He searched in several cabinets until at last he seemed to find what he
was looking for. He climbed down and turned to Garron, holding something in his
hairy little fist.