Khe (20 page)

The room begins to warm. Weast, or some other lumani, has slipped in. Pradat’s mouth draws to a tight line and she begins turning the knobs on another machine, working faster. I feel dizzy and fevered.

I know it’s Weast, and not another lumani, that has come in the room—though I can’t say how I know. I know too that it won’t become visible so long as Pradat is here.

Are you here
? I send, and watch the thought-grains undulate through the air, seeking a destination.

Weast doesn’t answer, but I track my thoughts across the room and see the spot where Weast absorbs them. The lumani is next to the machine from which the green-black liquid flows. I feel its excitement.

Pradat, too, seems to know that Weast is here. No spots are lit on her neck, but I feel a change in her, an anxiety, and determination. She makes more adjustments in the machines.

Weast, talk to me
, I send.

This is the moment of our uniting
, the lumani sends.
You do not feel the effect of my essence yet, but I feel it working
.

My heart beats wildly. My neck burns, but my spots don’t light. I try to rip the tubes from my arms, but they are too well embedded.

Stop
, Weast sends.
You will do damage. The tubes must be pried out easy, with two hands. You cannot remove them yourself
.

“Take the tubes out,” I yell at Pradat. “Take them out.”

Pradat doesn’t answer. She twirls dials on the machines.

I slump back on the cot. There is no hope … no hope.

We should speak together now
, Weast sends.
To keep our minds from unpleasantness. You asked to speak with I
.

What do you feel
? I send, but don’t care about the answer. All I want is to sleep, and wake, and find myself back with Marnka, or in the kler with Inra and Tanez.

A draining
, Weast replies.
More pain than the calculations predicted. Not normal.

I’d laugh if I could. How could the lumani have expected something as unnatural as this to seem normal?

And you
? Weast asks.
What is your experience
?

An egg is quickening in my sac. It feels like half-congealed blood. And hot, like the electric heat the lumani bring. My channel is expanding, to let the egg slide out. It feels like something clawing at me from the inside. I want to scream.

Nothing
, I send.
I don’t feel anything
.

Pradat leans over the machine where Weast is. Her bottom lip is caught between her teeth. I feel her concentrating as she makes more adjustments, working to get it right. I don’t know who I hate more, her or the lumani.

A wave of dizziness pours over me. The hum of Weast’s whirring fragments changes pitch from a low steady thrum to a higher, erratic sound.

You are fortunate to feel nothing
, Weast sends.

I sense Weast wanting to say more, its nervous apprehension.

I want to talk, too, to block my pain with words. The egg moving down my channel feels wrong. Too soft. Growing softer. Burning—a river of flame sliding through my core.

Pradat works at her dials and buttons. Nausea rocks my stomach. The hum of Weast’s fragments grows shrill.

The orindle is mistaken
, Weast sends.
Tell her to see the machine that tracks my changes. She must lower the energy.

I clutch my hands into fists and grit my teeth. I feel Weast’s panic, its suspicion that Pradat is making the wrong adjustments on purpose, its failure to make that fit with its belief that orindles always follow orders exactly.

Make her stop
, Weast sends.
Make her stop now
.

Sweat bathes my skin. I want her to stop as much as Weast does. The egg is wrong. Moving too quickly. Burning.

“You’re doing it wrong,” I tell Pradat. I can hardly force out the words.

Pradat’s face screws up in anger. “You presume to tell an orindle how to do her job? My orders come from the Powers.”

The textbox on the rolling cot begins whirring. I glance down and see words forming on the screen.

“Here.” I try to point in Weast’s direction, but am too weak. “Look at what the machine says. The Power wants you to stop.”

I’m as desperate as Weast to end this.

“Please,” I say.

Pradat gives the dials another twirl. Pain stabs through me. My stomach knots and my neck muscles tense, snapping my head back. I feel like I’m going to fly apart.

A deep, gurgling sound comes from Weast.

The air turns suddenly cold—a shock against my burning skin. In the back of my mind, a dim awareness rises. Weast is gone.

“Quickly,” Pradat says, hastily but carefully removing the tubes from my arms. “The Power may have sent messages to others.”

She grabs my hand and pulls me from the cot. My legs are weak. I wobble, hardly able to stand. When I do, a thick, sparkling glob of something rolls down my leg and falls on the floor. My stomach clenches in disgust at the lifeless abomination splattered at my feet.

Pradat glares at me, pointedly ignoring the thing on the floor. Her voice is cold. “You’ll have to walk. We’ll go as slowly as we can. If the creator is kind, the Power hasn’t called for help.”

My head swims. How can Pradat expect me to walk when I can hardly stand? I must walk. I try a step and don’t fall. Maybe I can make it.

Pradat presses a button on her textbox and the door dilates. She takes my elbow and drags me toward the door. When we step into the hall, there’s no one there. She glances up and down the long passage.

“Is this a trick?” I ask, and mean a trick by the lumani, or by her, or both. It’s hard to talk. I need all my energy and focus to stay on my feet and walk.

“Possibly. The Powers are fond of their tricks, though they don’t see it that way. They see it as letting an incident run to its natural conclusion.” I look at her neck. There’s no color. She’s being honest.

“That’s how they caught you and your companions,” Pradat says and leads me down the hallway. “Azlii the corentan was spotted moving through the kler with three kler doumanas. The Powers watched your movements until they felt your destination could be predicted, arranged for gas in each room at Presentation House, and waited.”

Her spots light with the purple-black of shame. I lean against the wall for support and wonder if Pradat helped in our capture.

“There never was any hope of success?” I ask.

“Not while you were with the corentan. The Powers know their enemies.” Her mouth crinkles. “Most of them.”

I open my mouth to speak, but Pradat hushes me. “We’ve no time to waste. Come.”

She leads me down a hall painted the blue-purple of victory. I make my legs move one at a time, one foot after the other. We pass rows of doors, all shut, and another hall jutting off the one we are in. No lights are on and I realize from the natural brightness that it must be day. Night would be better for escape.

“Where are we going?” I ask quietly.

“Out of Chimbalay.”

“I won’t go without the others.”

Pradat gives me a hard glare. “I can maybe get one out of here, but not four.”

“I won’t leave them.”

She stops and takes hold of my shoulders. “We are on the ground level, and near enough to the door that we stand a chance of escaping. Your companions are on the seventh level. If we try to rescue them, no one will get out. What good will that do?”

I let out a shaky sigh. She’s right. I can barely walk; I’d never make it to the seventh level. And Weast will not stay silent for long. Our only hope is to go now and find help for the others. I slowly nod.

Pradat lets loose of my shoulders. “We’re going through the pink door.”

Three doors and another passageway lay between the pink door and us. Pink, the color of nurturing. The door should be red-black, the color of my rage.

“Can you make it?” Pradat asks.

I nod again.

“Through the door is a foyer,” she says. “A guardian and a few helphands will be there. You’ll have to walk past them as though nothing is wrong.”

My heart pounds against my ribs. I feel nothing on my neck.

“We’re going to make you a helphand,” Pradat says. “Wait here.”

I slump against the wall and rest while Pradat walks to a white door, opens it, and disappears. She reemerges a moment later with a yellow hip wrap and pair of brown foot casings in one hand and two collars in the other.

“Put these on,” she says, holding the fabric and foot casings out to me.

I unknot the wrap I’m wearing—Tanez’s—and Pradat helps me fold the yellow cloth around my hips the way helphands wear it. She steps back and appraises the results. Satisfied, she hands me a collar. I don’t tell her that I don’t think I need it.

“We’re on our way to the corenta for supplies,” she says, and fastens a collar around her neck.

I do the same. Tanez’s wrap lies on the floor. “We can’t leave that.”

Pradat picks up the wrap and tosses it into the room behind the white door.

“Ready?” she asks.

I nod and we head down the hall. She pulls open the pink door, showing a nerve I couldn’t have managed. We walk through.

The foyer is painted the pale-green of contentment. Three helphands look up when we enter. They obviously recognize Pradat; deference is all over their faces. Two guardians, wearing cloaks held closed by the same type of insignia clasp Larta wears, stand near the door. Pradat pays them no notice. She strides to one side of the foyer, to a small nook that’s filled with cloaks. She takes two and hands me one. My shaking fingers can barely manage the clasp.

“Oh,” one of the guardians says, “Off to the corenta, I see.”

Pradat nods.

“Something for your
special cases
?” The guardian’s eyes widen and a slight smile stretches her lips.

Pradat strides to within inches of the guardian and glares at her. “Not even within these walls are you to speak of what is none of your concern.”

The guardian shrinks back. I think how clever Pradat is. Now the guardians and helphands will be thinking about Pradat’s harsh words, the guardian’s embarrassment. No one will be wondering who the unfamiliar doumana with her is.

Pradat glances over her shoulder and motions with her head that I am to follow her. The door irises open. We walk into daylight and see the doumanas of Chimbalay kler going about their everyday business.

Chapter Twenty-Three

The land is the deep song. The land is the creator’s laughter.

--The Song of Growing

A crust of ice-snow sheets the ground and a chill wind is blowing. The hem of my cloak flaps against my knees as we walk along Pale-Green Circle, two anonymous, collared doumanas heading for the corenta. The traffic in and out of Chimbalay is lighter than when I first came to the kler, but still busy enough that we don’t stand out.

Pradat and I walk in silence. It takes all my will to move one foot in front of the other. No one seems to be pursuing us, but I don’t trust anything that
seems to be
in this place. The lumani could be “letting the incident run to its natural conclusions.”

Or Pradat could be leading me to a trap. Her emotion spots are hidden. When I look at her in an empath’s way, the purple-black of guilt shines like a beacon. I wonder why she’s in Chimbalay instead of Morvat Research Center. I lean toward her and tap her arm.

“Where are we headed?” I whisper, even though no one walks near enough to overhear.

“The corenta,” Pradat says.

“Not there. Sooner or later the lumani will come looking for us. They have Azlii. It’s the first place they’ll try.”

Pradat’s mouth thins to a narrow line as she thinks this over. I can see she knows I’m right.

“There’s a cave in the wilderness,” I say. “It’s less than a day’s walk. We’ll be safe there.”

Pradat sucks in a breath.

Probably the idea of the wilderness terrifies her. That almost makes me laugh. I have seen a different world than Pradat in all her travels.

Exhaling, she nods.

I’m not certain we’ll be any safer in the wilderness than the corenta. I don’t know how the lumani spy on us, or what their abilities to track and find a specific doumana might be. It might make no difference where we go.

I have another reason for returning to the wilderness. I hope Pradat will know a way to help Marnka.

The wide-armed metal embrace of Chimbalay’s gates loom before us. My chest tightens and my neck burns. If the lumani want to stop us in the kler, now is their last chance. Several doumanas are close to us now, funneling from the streets into the passage between the gates. We are squeezed together by the slow moving vehicles passing on our left. None of the doumanas I see wears a guardian’s insignia, but that doesn’t mean anything. My shoulders tense. I expect someone to grab hold of me at any moment. We pass through the gate, carried along with the small crowd heading toward the corenta.

The corenta seems closer to the kler than it was when I came here. I blow out a breath. The corenta sits directly in our path. My eyes lock on the white mud walls that mark the corenta’s boundary—the sentient walls. Do they take notice of us? I think I should ask them. The idea of communication with walls and buildings doesn’t seem so strange anymore, not after Weast. If something like that can have consciousness, why not structures made of mud, or of bricks and mortar? I almost call out to the walls then change my mind. There could be empaths in this crowd who are not so kind as Inra.

The corenta’s main gate is open. Empty-handed doumanas stream in, and doumanas bearing goods stream out. A group walking near us chatters happily about the trades they intend to make. A single vehicle makes its way past us, leaving little Vs of stirred up snow in its wake.

I bend my head close to Pradat and whisper, “How did you make Weast sick?”

Pradat’s mouth crinkles in a smile. “The Powers are made of tiny bits of matter held together by the attraction between positive and negative forces. I adjusted the machines to disrupt the balance.”

An idea starts forming in my mind. It’s vague and I can’t really get a hold of it.