Pandora's Genes (29 page)

After a moment, a young Trader entered, looking annoyed and sleepy. “What is it?”

“I can’t sleep from the pain. Can you untie my hands just for a while?”

“I suppose it’ll be all right,” the young man said. “Brother Yosh left word that you were to be made comfortable.” He stooped and loosened the bonds, freeing Zach’s hands from the tent pole. Zach had thought to overpower him, but the risk of noise was too great unless he killed the man immediately, and he didn’t want to do that. “Thank you,” he said. He turned over and closed his eyes, then began to breathe slowly. He waited until the guard had come and gone twice, checking on him; then he got to his feet and quickly went to the back of the tent, where he awkwardly removed the stakes that held it to the ground. Then he wriggled out into the night. Not five feet away was one of the perimeter guards, sitting motionless in the dim moonlight. Moving as slowly and silently as he could, Zach crawled along the ground toward the nearest growth of bushes, then got to his feet and began to run.

He was disoriented in the dark, and had been away from the camp for only a few minutes when he heard shouts. He stopped and tried to decide which direction would most likely lead to safety. There was the sound of men crashing through the brush and the smoky glow of torchlight. He stopped thinking and simply ran, his breathing heavy and painful from the weeks of convalescence.

It was growing light when Zach suddenly came to a sheer rock face. He could hear the Traders behind him, drawing nearer. He looked up, knowing that it would be a difficult climb even with undamaged hands. Still, it was his only chance. He pulled off his tunic and wrapped it tightly around his right hand for protection, then, ignoring the pain, he forced his left hand to grip handholds as he began to inch upward. He had climbed perhaps one third of the way when he heard a shout.

“Stop right there!” Zach looked down. Galen and another man had bows trained on him. “I told Yosh not to trust you,” Galen said.

The camp was noisy with the sounds of tents being struck and protesting animals being loaded. At midmorning Galen and his aide approached Zach where he sat bound securely to a tree. Zach supposed that they had come to question him again before killing him. In the hours since his capture he had given himself up to what seemed inevitable; he only hoped that he could maintain strength enough not to betray the Garden.

The two men untied Zach and guided him to where the Trader caravan was waiting. Galen attached Zach’s aching hands to the lead of one of the pack animals, and it was only when they began walking into the forest that Zach understood he was not to be executed; that, for whatever reason, the Traders were taking him with them to their base.

T
HE
T
RADER CAPITAL WAS INDISTINGUISHABLE
from any village in the District, though the level of construction of its few buildings was much more primitive than that found in even the most backward District areas. Crude cabins of roughly hewn logs, roofed with sod and bark, surrounded the village square, a grassy, parklike meadow. At the northern end of the square was an altar carved of stone and sheltered by three walls and a roof of boughs. At the southern end was a low, solid structure built in the ruins of a pre-Change building. Its small barred windows were nearly level with the ground, and its roof barely high enough to accommodate a man. This was the Trader prison.

Zach had only minutes to see these details; no sooner had the caravan arrived than Yosh, dressed in long, filthy robes, approached him, his face alight with his sunny, open smile.

“Brother Zach,” he said, embracing him. “It’s good to see you.”

Zach just looked at him, bewildered. “What—” he started to say, his mind exploding with questions.

Yosh shook his head. “There’s no time to talk now. This is where you will stay,” he went on. “It’s for your own protection. I’ll visit when I can.” Still smiling, he turned to greet other members of his camp, leaving Zach with Galen. Galen prodded him through the low door and down a narrow flight of stairs to a tiny dark room illuminated by a single fish-oil lamp.

The jailer, a stout man with a red face and tangled, deeply black beard, looked Zach up and down. “So this is the famous prisoner from the District,” he muttered. “We know how to take care of scientists here!” He unlocked the door behind him, then led Zach through a narrow corridor and down another short flight of steps to what had evidently been the basement of the ancient building. The ceiling was so low that Zach’s hair brushed it, and the only illumination came from flickering torches set in the wall at either end. The walls were of mortared stones, and four thick wooden doors faced each other, two on each side of the room. Each door was held shut by three massive metal bars secured in iron holders. There was a small peephole the size of a man’s fist near the top of each door. Except for a faint moaning from behind one of the doors, the hall was as silent as it was dark and malodorous.

At the second door in from the stairway the jailer stopped and, his powerful muscles bunching, slid the three bars to one side. He swung the door open and told Zach to enter.

Zach hesitated a moment, trying to see into the dim cell beyond, then Galen jabbed his ribs with something sharp. “He says go in.”

The door slammed shut and Zach listened to the bars being set into their holders while his eyes adjusted to the gloom. The cell was constructed of heavy blocks of stone, carefully mortared into place over the ruined ancient walls. Across from the door was a small barred window, just above the level of the ground, not quite the height of Zach’s head, and perhaps the length of his forearm.

In width, the cell was only a few feet across, and its length was just enough for Zach to stretch out. Along the wall below the window was a pile of straw spread with a rough woolen blanket. To the right of the door was a small opening in the stone, slightly larger than the earthenware bowl set just inside it. The floor of pre-Change concrete was uneven and cracked, with scattered spots of mildew.

As soon as he heard the third of the bars slip into place, Zach inspected the cell closely, looking for some means of escape. The narrow window was out of the question; it was not large enough to put his head through, and even should he be able to enlarge it, it would take him weeks and would easily be observed from the outside.

The door was massive and immovable. Only the little opening for the chamber pot showed any hope of yielding, and, again, any work he did would be readily observed from the outside hall, where, he soon discovered, a guard patrolled regularly.

His only hope for escape would be somehow to break through the floor and tunnel outward and up like a mole. Not only would such work be risky, he realized that it would probably take him years to accomplish.

Feeling tired, and weak, and sick from the march after weeks of inactivity, he sat on the straw pallet, his back against the rough stone wall. It was late afternoon and the light filtering through the window was bright enough only to pick out shadows in the corners of the gloomy cell.

There would be no escape from this prison in the usual physical sense. He did not know how he could endure being so confined, away from fresh air and sky and trees. Execution would have been preferable.

Not, he told himself, that execution had been ruled out. He could not fathom why he had been brought here. Was there to be a public trial, in which he would be denounced as a scientist? Was he to be repeatedly questioned until every bit of information about the District was forced from him? Whatever would be, he hoped it would happen soon. He felt that he could not stay here for more than a very few days without losing his mind.

He was to be in the prison for nearly five years.

The first months of his confinement were the bitterest of Zach’s life. Each day he hoped for word from Yosh, but his guards, who twice daily brought food and water and emptied the chamber pot, refused to answer questions or to engage in any conversation. His lone fellow inmate was, as nearly as he could tell, completely mad. He was given to periodic, maniacal shrieking and seemed to be too deaf to respond to any questioning. Zach quickly forgot about him, adding the weird noises to the background of constant discomfort.

He learned how poorly designed the prison was the first time it rained. Water dripped down the wall through the window, soaking his bed. Moving the straw to the center of the cell helped only a little. As the weather grew colder, snow drifted in and tiny icicles formed beneath the bars of his window. The food was monotonous and barely enough to sustain him, consisting of thin porridge with an occasional vegetable or bit of new-fowl, and hunks of dark, tasteless bread. At night the rats and insects which shared his cell ran about freely, brushing his arms and face as he tried to sleep. He slept poorly in any case; even his dreams were of the cell.

For the first few days he spent long hours gazing out the window, watching the poorly dressed, humorless Traders as they went about their business. Once he was startled as a small child’s face peered into the window. Before he could say anything the boy’s mother angrily called him away.

After several weeks of this he turned his back to the window and simply sat on the straw, resting against the wall. His hands were still swollen and the discomfort seemed to extend up his arms and into his whole being. His food, which he had eaten hungrily at first, he now left nearly untouched. He stopped asking the guards questions, stopped demanding to see Yosh.

No matter what the weather, he was always too cold, shivering under the blanket. Daily, he could feel his skin becoming slack as his muscles disappeared, and felt his eyesight was growing dim, as was his mind. He thought that he was slipping toward death or madness, either of which would bring welcome relief from the intolerable confinement.

Sometimes he thought of the Principal, and of Evvy, wondering if either was still alive. He began to spend more time in his memory, returning to the cell only when bodily needs forced him. His memories became waking dreams for him, more vivid and real than anything in this cell, this building, this town. Gradually, he moved farther and farther back in his mind, until he reached the time in his life of greatest happiness and greatest sorrow, the brief period of his marriage to Leya.

A
LL HE KNEW WAS THAT
he wanted to mount Leya as often as possible, and to care for her in between, the way he had observed some animals taking care of their mates, licking them softly, curling beside them to give warmth, and protecting them from whatever came. He would bring her food, and skins to make clothing, and would build and keep for her a warm, snug cabin with a roof which kept out rain and snow, where they could be together in the evenings, talking in front of the fire.

All he expected from Leya was that she should be there and allow him to do these things for her, for as long as their lives together would be. He wanted from her far more but knew that she could not yet give it. For now, what he had was more than enough. Every week she smiled more often and sometimes laughed in her clear, high voice.

Her work kept her from the cabin sometimes for days at a time, but that was all right too, because she always came back. His work, tending the crops and animals, cutting wood, and guarding the surrounding woods, kept him busy and content. He knew that Leya and the Mistress wanted him back at the Garden, at least some of the time, but he was not gifted in scientific work and felt that what he could contribute here was far more important to his life and hers, as well as to the Garden. Another reason, which he kept to himself, was that he could no longer enter the Garden without remembering the night Will had left.

Sometimes he wondered what Leya felt when she returned to the Garden, but he never asked her. He had read enough of the history of the human race to know that he was as happy now as he could ever expect to be, and that there was no reason to think that this happiness would last.

It was at the end of a three-day period, when he knew she would be returning to him soon. He was surprised to hear a mount coming over the low hills through the shallow river, and when he saw that it was Leya, he knew immediately from the way she held herself that things had changed and that perhaps the happiness had ended.

“A
RE YOU SURE
?” Z
ACH COULD
not help asking the age-old question, but he knew the answer before she gave it, with a wan but frightened smile. His atavistic, unbidden feelings of joy won the fight with the worry, and he enfolded her. “I love you, Leya,” he said. He held her so tightly that she could scarcely move. After a moment she spoke: “I know you do.”

Week by week the baby grew, and finally it showed in Leya, in her figure and in the way she moved. Her moods changed even more quickly than usual, and he learned to be very patient with her, but it was not difficult, because he had always known that she was not like him, that her happinesses and sadnesses came and went quickly, without leaving the traces that his own sometimes did. The dangers they never talked about; the possibilities, the life they would build for the child, they discussed frequently.

Of course they both hoped and assumed that the child would be a male, and they picked out a name for him: Ilya, after his grandmother. Leya continued to work, but she went to the Garden less frequently and stayed for shorter periods of time and finally began to bring her work home with her, which Zach had long wished her to do. They had agreed that it would be most prudent for her to spend the final month at home; she returned from the Garden on this final journey in the company of two other women, on mounts laden with packs, containing small cages of the animals Leya was working with, and the few small tools of her trade that the Garden could spare her.

That night he had taken her into bed in his arms and held her closely, dreaming of making love to her, but knowing that she did not want it now and wouldn’t again until after the baby was born.