Khe (17 page)

“What is this place?” I ask

Inra keeps her eyes focused straight ahead. “Chimbalay Research Center One. Where the babblers were made. Where they are now trying to change the energy levels in a fresh crop of victims.”

And where the orindles are. I mark where the place is, so that I can come back later.

On Blue Green Circle—Victory Street—the traffic thickens. We pass group after group of doumanas on their ways to and from somewhere. Individual transportation vehicles stream past, stirring up soft wakes of snow. We walk in silence now. I feel the tension in Azlii, Inra, and Tanez. My neck prickles and burns from the dread rushing through me. I pull my cloak up to hide my neck.

Inra stops at a structure in a shadowed area between two obelisks. Tanez and Azlii stop as well.

“That’s Presentation House,” Inra says to me, and gestures toward it with her chin.

I tilt my head back to see the top of the tall building. It’s fifteen levels at least. White stone bridges connect it with the buildings on either side at the fifth and tenth levels. Behind these buildings are even taller sites, rising twenty levels and more. Beyond them is a small forest of impossibly tall, thin-trunked trees crowned with snow-crusted branches.

We follow Inra up the four black-stone steps to the wide silver door of Presentation House. My heart beats like a fist against my ribs.

“Inspection!” Azlii calls loudly.

A moment later, the door dilates open.

“Now?” a nervous doumana says, her spots blinking on. She tugs at an orange hip wrap that contrasts badly with the purplish red of her skin. “It’s meal time. Only a few technicians are on duty.”

“I am aware of what time it is,” Azlii says, brushing a bit of snow off the shoulders of her cloak, drawing attention to the guardian insignia that clasps it closed. She sweeps through the doorway as if she makes inspections daily. I admire her sham of confidence.

We follow the orange-wrapped doumana down a long, black-floored hall with walls painted a dazzling crimson. It’s like walking through flames on charred logs. I stare at the back of the doumana’s head and concentrate, trying to feel her emotions, to know if she accepts us for what we’ve said we are or if she’s leading us to a trap. All I feel is my own anxiety, and Azlii’s.

Halfway down the hall, the doumana stops and waves her hand over a nearly invisible depression in the wall. A well-disguised door irises open, but the doumana doesn’t go through or invite us to.

“We were inspected only nine days ago.” The doumana twists the hem of her wrap in her hand. “Were there any . . . irregularities found during that visit?”

Azlii glares at her and says nothing. Following her lead, Inra, Tanez, and I harden our faces and stare at the doumana.

The doumana shifts from foot to foot. “I’ll send for my First. She can better answer your questions.”

“I’m sure you can answer well enough.” Azlii pauses long enough that several of the doumana’s spots flare pale-gray with worry, then asks, “How many technicians are on duty?”

“Only two,” the doumana says quickly, more of her spots lighting. “Three were scheduled, but one is sick.”

“I see,” Azlii says as though she doesn’t see at all and suspects that something is amiss.

The doumana stares at the floor. A few more of her spots flare blue-red with anxiety. I wish I knew what’s making her so nervous. Something is wrong here, and this doumana is desperate that it not be discovered.

“We’ll see the technicians now,” Azlii says.

“Of course,” the doumana says but doesn’t move.

Azlii tilts her head to one side. “Perhaps you’d like to meet with
my
First?”

The doumana steps aside. “The third yellow door,” she says as we sweep past her.

The hallway is as orange as the doumana’s hip wrap. Orange floor, orange walls, orange ceiling fitted out with orange lights. We pass door after door, bright colors—white, blue, black, purple, yellow—leaping out against the orange.

My heart thuds. Azlii doesn’t knock on the third yellow door, but waves her hand in front of the wall, the way the doumana had. The door irises open. Two very surprised doumanas--an orindle in green and a technician in white--turn and gape at us.

“Equipment inspection,” Azlii says. “You may leave.”

The technician glances at a time measurer on a table and frowns. “How long will this take?”

Azlii shrugs and says nothing.

“Is this a full inspection or a partial?” the technician asks. Four of her spots light from nerves.

“Full,” Azlii replies.

Both doumana’s emotion spots wink out. My hands begin to sweat. The doumanas should have been more nervous over a full inspection. The technician looks again at the time measurer and motions with her head for the orindle to follow her. Their hurried movements worry me. I feel anxiety from Inra and Tanez as well. Azlii glances around the room, searching for something she doesn’t seem to find.

When the doumanas leave, Tanez says, “All that’s left is to set Khe down by the scan and let her talk.”

“What’s a scan?” I feel my spots prickling.

“This,” Inra answers, and points to a small glass orb. “It will send your spoken and text words and your image to every vision stage in the region.”

“Too easy,” Azlii mutters, walking toward the door the doumanas have left open. Before she can touch it, the door squeezes shut and locks with a hard, metallic thud. The air smells suddenly of dead leaves. A brown fog fills the air.

Chapter Nineteen

Learn first to surrender. All else follows with ease
.

--The Rules of a Good Life

Two are breathing in this darkened room. Me and . . . can’t see. Black in here. Groggy mind. Drugged? I remember . . . a mist. Azlii and Inra crumpled on the floor. Tanez doubled over, gasping for breath. Are they with me? Only two here from the breathing sounds. The other doumana
wheezes, a rattle in her chest.

I remember . . . a cold needle pricking my neck. Dreaming of Marnka. “Beware. Be strong,” she said and turned into a giant bird, flapping her great wings across the sky. Dreaming, Inra touched my mind. She said something. What was it?

I remember voices in the darkness. Too many questions. So tired.

Tanez? Where is Tanez?

Chair noises. Wood-on-tile squeak. The doumana
rises. Air rasps in her lungs as she moves. Walking slow . . . hard for her? No, she does it well—quiet walking. Knows how to move without sound, the way a helphand walks in a patient’s room.

I breathe in, deep. Bad smell. Purifying chemicals. The smell of a research center. So tired.

***

The helphand knows I’m feigning sleep. Three times she’s come to check my pulse, and each time she lingers, watching, wondering. In my mind, dark lavender and ocher swirl in a vortex—the colors of her curiosity and impatience.

They’ve stopped the drugs. I’m stronger now, and thinking well enough to know that I can’t pretend to sleep forever. I make a quick prayer to the creator not to forsake me, and open my eyes. The room is nearly as dark as it was with my eyes shut. A shadowy figure moves.

“Awake at last,” the shadowy doumana says, standing over me. “Good.”

I try to move my arms and find I can. I move my legs and roll over half way, then roll back. I’m not restrained, which must mean they’re not worried that I might escape.

“Your body still works,” the other says. “They took care with that.”

Who are
the
y? Orindles? Guardians? Why did they take such care?

“They must have found out something interesting during your conversations,” the other says, sounding pleased with herself for knowing this information. “They say the Powers are sending new orders regarding you. Only you. Your companions are of much less interest.”

My heart hammers. Do my spots light? I feel nothing on my neck.

“They’ll want to know that you’re conscious,” the other says, and leaves me alone in the darkness.

The room is soundless. My throat feels as parched as the sides of a dry well. I sit up and fumble in the darkness, feeling for a table or chair that might have a pitcher of water on it, but there is nothing within arm’s reach. I try to get up and walk. My head throbs at the effort. I lay back down.

When the door whooshes open again, no light comes in. The outside hall must be as dark as this room. Footsteps of two, maybe three doumanas tread across the floor.

“How are you feeling, Khe?” a new voice asks, a longer, heavier shadow than the one that wheezes.

They know my name. Did I tell them, or one of my companions?

“Where am I?” I won’t refuse to speak—no point in that. No reason to answer their questions directly, either.

“You’re in Chimbalay Research Center One,” the long shadow says.

I don’t remember being moved from Presentation House. The ache in my head grows worse. My arms and legs feel heavy.

“Could I have some water?”

“What is your commune?” the long shadow asks.

How do they know I’m a country doumana? “I’m very thirsty.”

“Your sisters must be worried about you. Would you like us to contact them and tell them that you’re well?”

“Some water?”

The long shadow taps her foot and leans close to me. I feel her breath. Her face is nothing but a deeper darkness in the gloom.

“We know you’re not a Chimbalay doumana or a corentan.” The shadow’s voice sounds kind—an effort for her, I think. “The name of your commune can be found easily enough. You should tell us. It will go easier for you.”

Do they ask because they don’t know, or because they do and want to see if I’ll tell the truth? I say nothing.

“Who planned this intrusion to Presentation House with you?” the shadow asks.

My voice cracks. “Some water, please.”

“Just you four, then,” she says. Her voice warms from kind to sympathetic. “You’re not the first doumana taken in by Azlii the corentan’s lies. She’s led others astray and left them behind when her plans went wrong—just as she did to you.”

A streak of red-brown erupts from the shadow’s belly and arcs across the space between us. The doumana’s emotion slams into my chest. My stomach heaves. I don’t want to feel her shame.

I know now why the room is dark. I am not corentan and this doumana won’t insult me by wearing a collar. She needs the darkness to hide her emotion spots, the bodily proof of her lies. The darkness hides my spots as well.

I lay on my side, panting from the onslaught of her emotion. My ribs feel bruised. Crossing my arms over my chest, I make myself breathe slowly.

“Please,” I say. “I need water.”

I listen as a set of feet moves towards the door. The door opens, then contracts shut. Almost immediately, the door whooshes again.

“The orders have come,” someone new says, one with excitement in her high-pitched voice.

The one near me sighs and rises from the chair. A blindfold is slipped over my eyes, but I can tell that lights have been switched on. I hear the soft whir of a textbox.

One of them mutters and sucks air across her teeth.

My hands clench at my sides.

“We’re to leave now,” the long one says. There’s pity and fear in her. I see her colors behind my blindfolded eyes.

The lights go out again. I hear the door whoosh open and then close. I pull off the blindfold. The room is dark. I close my eyes, lie on the hard-as-stone cot and wait.

Gradually I grow aware of a presence in the room, more than one presence—something hot, a disturbance in the air. I open my eyes, but see nothing.

“Who’s there?” I ask.

“You know who we are.”

The words are like a blow. My head snaps back, as if hit by a large, open hand. The room is empty.

No, not empty. Floating an arm’s length in front of me are three faintly shimmering, insubstantial bands of light. They stretch almost floor to ceiling in a room twice my height. The vaporous bands, no thinker than my wrist, curve and twist as though blown by a soft breeze. The air in the room is still.

“We have a great interest in you, Khe.”

The words come more gently now, like a sister’s stroke on my neck. I hear them not with my ear holes but in my mind. Only one of the vaporous beings seems to communicate. The others hang back. I don’t see emotion colors from any of them.

I know what they are. “Why are the Powers interested in me?”

The three streaks quiver, undulating like ropes flicked by a skilled hand.

“We forget that is what you call us. We call ourselves
lumani
.”

My neck lights with the muddy gray of fear.

Bracing my arms, I sit up and make my voice sound as calm as possible. “Why are the lumani interested in me?”

“I, in particular, am called Weast,” the one speaking says.

Is it ignoring my question or did I interrupt the introduction and it continued on anyway? The other two lumani shimmer, and then contract into small, hazy balls of almost light. The balls sink down slowly and spread out until the entire floor glitters with tiny sparks. Weast remains shaped like a vaporous band.

My spots glow with fear colors. My voice sounds calmer than I feel. “Am I of interest to the lumani, or to Weast?”

A sound like the rumble of distant thunder vibrates through me. Laughter. The lumani thinks I’ve said something funny.

When the thunder dies away, Weast says, “To all, which includes, to a greater degree, I.”

“Why you more than the others?”

The band vibrates. “We have decided that I am to be your donor.”

Every muscle in my body tenses. My emotion spots flair blue-red with anxiety.

“Are you fatigued?” Weast asks. “You should be well rested first, to make a good decision.”

A thousand years the lumani have been watching us, and they can’t tell anxiety from exhaustion. They can’t read the colors of our spots. The realization is comforting. What they don’t know can maybe be used against them.

“I am well-rested,” I say and don’t flinch at the lie. My spots light, but it doesn’t matter if I lie or tell the truth to these beings—they can’t tell the difference.

The glittering band that is Weast expands to twice the width it was. “Good. We will talk now. Do you have more questions?”