Empire (15 page)

Air vents, much too small for his growing body to negotiate, were arrayed about the apartment and kept the air from getting stale, although it was always either too hot or too cold. This did not bother his keeper, and he decided not to let it bother him, either. He had lived through much worse in the fields, and even the Kreelan girl was more socially palatable than Muldoon had been.

Each day began with the same ritual, a portion of roasted meat brought to his bedside by the Kreelan (she apparently did not trust him in the kitchen) and however much water he chose to drink. She did not eat with him, but watched silently, as if she were observing a rodent in a psychology experiment, taking notes in her head. The only time he asked her if there was anything else to eat – vegetables or fruit, perhaps – she had grabbed his meat from him and disposed of it somewhere, refusing to feed him for the next two days.

He did not make that mistake again.

Once the morning meal was over, she sat him down in the atrium and began to teach him their language and a seemingly endless series of obscure customs and protocols, grilling him mercilessly on what he had been taught as they stopped for the mid-day ration of meat and water. The language came to him quickly, but many of the other things she tried to teach him – so much of it based on a hierarchical symbology of Kreelan history that was often totally beyond him – were difficult to understand at all, let alone absorb and remember. But he tried, and quickly he learned.

During these inquisitions, her reactions to his answers varied from thoughtful contemplation to severe beatings that left him with bleeding welts and horrendous bruises that did not go down for days. He had learned to accept them quietly, as protest or complaint only seemed to make the treatment more severe, and he did not feel quite strong enough to challenge her. Yet. Survival was paramount, but his pride ensured that he looked her in the eye, even if he had to pry them open from the swelling to do so.

When the endless hours of study were over, she returned him to his room where she directed him to exercise. She did not care what he did, as long as he expended energy doing it. He did pushups, sit-ups, and chin-ups from the rafters in the ceiling, or just jumped up and down on the pad of skins that was his bed. He did this for as long as he had to, for to stop before she ordered was to invite anything from a scolding to a beating, generally depending on how well he had done during the preceding learning period.

After that, she made him wash himself from the cold water that dribbled from an open pipe in one wall of his room that provided water for drinking, washing, and sanitation. This was also when he discovered that modesty was something the Kreelans apparently did not believe in. After the first few times he had to stand naked under the frigid water and Esah-Zhurah’s equally frigid stare, he stopped feeling embarrassed. His haste to get dressed was more to get warm and dry than to conceal his nakedness from her alien eyes.

Then there was the evening meal, consisting of yet more meat and water, after which he was allowed to collapse into an exhausted sleep.

He was able to keep this up for what he thought must have been several months before he realized that he was becoming ill, and he was fairly sure of its cause: malnutrition. He knew that his body could not survive on meat alone. While it was adapting as well as it could after the trauma of the voyage to wherever he was now, given enough time his present diet was as lethal to him as poison. He knew of rickets and other diseases caused by malnutrition, and knew that if he was to live for much longer, he needed more than just the stringy red meat served to him three times a day from an unclean plate.

The only problem would be to convince his keeper of these facts. With him being a mere animal in her eyes, that wasn’t going to be easy. Reza had to act.

When the girl came in one morning with his hunk of meat and water, she found Reza already awake and clothed, standing near his bedding. She usually had to rouse him from his exhausted stupor with a rap on the head or leg, whichever happened to be protruding from the skins, and actually showed surprise that he was awake.

“So, my animal is eager this morning, is it?” she commented as she plopped the meat down on his bed and stood back to watch him eat. Reza did not glance at the meat.

“My name is Reza,” he said firmly in Standard, an offense that itself warranted a beating, for he was only to speak in what she called the Language of Her Children, or not at all, “and I’m not your pet animal.” He gestured at the smoldering meat. “My body needs more than just meat to survive. If you want me to keep playing your stupid little games, you’re going to have to give me some fruit and vegetables and let me out of this hole to get more sunlight.”

For a moment, she simply stood there, utterly stunned. Her eyes went wide and her fists clenched and unclenched at her sides.

When she finally reacted, Reza was ready for her. Another resolution he had made in the night while he contemplated his failing health was that he was going to make her earn the right to beat him, because if he waited much longer, he might not have the strength to defend himself at all.

She hissed an alien curse between her teeth and stepped toward him, her right hand reaching behind her to the short whip clipped to her back armor, the instrument she used to deliver the worst of the beatings she meted out.

Predicting her move, Reza rushed her the moment she was committed to working the whip’s catch. Her surprise was such that she simply stood there as he launched himself into the air over the short expanse between them, bowling her over onto the floor where they struggled in a desperate embrace.

Reza held her from behind, pinning her arms so that she could not lash out at him with her claws, but he was unable to hold her for long. She was larger than he was, taller and stronger, and several times she bashed his head by flinging her own back and forth.

Realizing the precariousness of his failing grip, he let go and rolled away, barely avoiding her talons as they gouged the floor centimeters from his spine.

The two got to their feet, and Reza noticed that the whip lay on the floor near his bedding, practically at Esah-Zhurah’s feet. But she had no need of it. Her claws were all she needed to kill him.

“Well, come on then!” he shouted, adrenaline surging through his body. He knew that if he died now, at least he would die fighting, which was better than many could ever hope for in this war.

Esah-Zhurah moved toward him slowly, her eyes fixed on his and her fangs bared in rage. Her nails were spread in a calculated pattern that would do the most damage should they make contact with her prey. The small room gave little opportunity for maneuver, and Reza saw his options evaporating with every cautious step she took.

But then he saw with slow-motion clarity her mistake, the mistake he needed. She stepped onto the hide rug, the edge of which lay at Reza’s feet. Suddenly dropping to the floor, he grabbed the rug’s edge and yanked it up and back with all his strength, snapping it like a magician pulling the tablecloth from under a full setting of priceless china.

Esah-Zhurah gave a startled yelp as she flipped backward, her arms flailing in a futile attempt to balance her fall. Her head made a sickening thump as it hit the stone floor, hard.

She lay dazed, moaning, and Reza snatched up the whip. Rolling her over and leaping onto her back, he wrapped it tightly around her neck above the neckband. He held the whip’s ends in his hands and planted one knee in her back, putting his full weight behind it. As her senses returned, she began to struggle, weakly at first, and then with growing strength at the realization that she had been fooled. But Reza tightened his grip, forcing her to the brink of unconsciousness before she stopped struggling.

She lay there gasping, her hands reaching feebly for the black leather whip. Her eyes bulged, and saliva ran from her gaping mouth.

“Stu…pid animal,” she rasped, straining against the dark clouds of unconsciousness that loomed over her.

Reza leaned close to her ear. “Listen to me,” he said, his own breath coming in heaves from holding her at bay, his arms beginning to burn furiously from the exertion, “I want to live. But I’m not going to live as an animal in whatever experiment you’re running here. I am something more. I need more to survive: more food, more light, more freedom, and you’re going to give them to me.” He tugged savagely on the whip, eliciting a gag from Esah-Zhurah. “And you’re not going to beat me anymore. If you don’t want to see me as your equal, that’s fine. I know I am, and that’s enough for now. But if you want to go on treating me like an animal, then just nod your head and I’ll kill you now and take my chances.” He paused a moment, catching his breath. “What’s it going to be?”

She hissed and strained against him, and then finally gave up. She laid both hands on the floor, palms down.

“
Kazh
,” she said softly, bitterness evident in her voice. “Stop.”

“All right,” Reza said warily. He let go of the whip with one hand, then uncoiled it quickly from her neck before she could get hold of it. “I think I’ll keep this for now, if you don’t mind,” he told her, quickly backing away and making ready for a renewed assault, “as a reminder of the bargain you just made.”

She made no move to strike out at him. Instead, she lay gasping for a few moments before finally rising to her feet, turning toward him as she did so. He could see that she was still dazed from hitting the floor, but she surprised him with what she did next. He thought for a moment that she was collapsing. Instead, she knelt to the floor, bowed her head to him, and crossed her left arm over her breast in an alien salute. Then she stood up, without lifting her gaze, and unsteadily made her way out of the room.

A few moments later he heard the thick door to her room open and then close behind her. Then all was quiet.

Reza collapsed on his bedding, too physically and emotionally drained to enjoy any thrill of victory he might have felt.

Damn
, he thought,
how the hell am I going to make it here?
He had no friends, no allies, no one but himself. “I don’t even know what planet I’m on,” he whispered quietly as he rubbed his arms, the muscles aching and sore from fighting the girl. His entire body ached and shivered, and it dawned on him that he was starving.

“Breakfast,” he sighed with morose resignation, “hurrah.” He looked around on the floor of his room for the morning’s meat, but could not find the plate. He frowned. He did not remember Esah-Zhurah taking it back when she staggered from the room.

Puzzled, he wandered into the atrium where the morning’s fire smoldered in the open pit. There, balanced carefully on the pit’s stone rim, was a clean bowl of what could only be some type of weird fruit. There were at least two kinds, one that looked something like a purple squash, the other of a bright orange color but no particular shape, as if it had formed in variable gravity without any genetic code governing how it should turn out. There were also a few strange cakes, off-white with darker flecks of brown, which perhaps had been made from some sort of alien grain.

Next to the bowl was a large metal mug that he had never seen before, containing something that, on closer inspection, smelled of alcohol. He tasted it carefully, and found that it had the bitter taste of what Wiley had called “ale,” something he occasionally served Reza and Nicole from out of the back closet of his library apartment.

Reza took a long swallow of the ale and with his other hand reached for the fruit, curious as to how it might taste. He could only assume that Esah-Zhurah had taken his body chemistry into account. If she had not and the food was poisonous to humans, he might well be about to eat his very last meal.

He was half finished with his small bounty (he found that the orange fruit had a sour taste that he hoped meant it was high in vitamin C) when he heard her voice close behind him.

“Is it what you need?” she asked, her voice brittle. She stood in the doorway of her room, clutching at the frame. She obviously had not yet recovered from her encounter with the floor. She did not look him in the eye.

He looked around and stood up to face her. There were long black streaks down her face, as if she had rubbed charcoal from under her eyes down to her neck.
Kreelan tears
? he wondered.

“Yes,” he replied quietly. He was shocked that she was treating him with such respect. “Thank you.”

“
‘In’she tul’a
are the words in the New Tongue, human,” she told him, still looking down at the floor. “There is more food in there,” she gestured to a previously empty cabinet under the hearth.

Reza nodded, wondering when the fruit and bread had been put there. Could she have somehow been expecting this?

“You will rest now,” she said. Her voice was subdued, but there was no mistaking that it was still a command. “We will continue tomorrow.”

With that, she turned and disappeared back into her room and was quiet for the rest of the day.

Reza did as he was told, but only after finishing off a second bowl of the fruit and dry tasteless cakes. His mouth salivated uncontrollably as he gobbled down the precious food, praying that his stomach could take it all.

When he returned to his room, he stretched out on the bristly hide and settled down to a contented, restful sleep, his first in he did not know how many weeks.

* * *

“
…karakh-te na tempo Ta’ila-Gorakh
.” Reza heaved in a breath, his lungs empty from reciting the first eleven commandments of the
Se’eln
, the orthodoxy that governed the equivalent of Kreelan public behavior and etiquette.