Requiem for Anthi: Anthi - Book Two (11 page)

“You will answer.”

The shattering pain came and went, leaving him gasping. Clammy sweat broke across him.

“You will answer.”

He was in no danger of obeying. It was only an interrogation machine talking, and its frequency set was not capable of breaking through his defenses. He held himself braced in the vil-thread straps and counted the four-second interval between the command, the pause in the case of an answer, and the jolt of punishment that always followed noncompliance.

There were several ways of enduring pain. It must be caught. It must be channeled away from nerve endings. It must be denied.

He’d quickly figured out that cushioning the jolts in his rings didn’t work. The more he cushioned, the harder the jolts became until his brain felt on fire and his whole body was battered from convulsions.

They’d nearly stopped the interrogation that time. They thought they’d killed him. But as soon as his heartbeat started again and his breath came back, the machine was switched back on.

It was easier to endure it if he didn’t try to relax, if he just lay there stiff and let the pain break him apart. Then the questions would resume, and he would manage to breathe again and blink the sweat out of his eyes and almost recover before the command tone came again:

“You will answer.”

He screamed that time, and the vil-thread straps dug deep into his flesh as his whole body convulsed. Then he came crashing down against the board, his breath rasping in a throat that felt raw and bloody. He coughed, tried to lift his head, and decided that a pretense of cooperation might be wise. It would not gain him a release, but at least he would be tortured in a different way for a while.

“Where is Blaise Omari? Where is—”

“Dead,” he said, gasping out the word. “He’s dead.”

For a moment he was so weak he wasn’t sure what language he’d attempted it in. But at least he’d spoken for the first time in hours.

The machine clicked over to a new track and hummed a moment.

“Repeat response.”

He nearly laughed. He’d forgotten how ludicrous some of this security equipment could be. He might have just gasped out his dying word, and the stupid thing missed it. Demos, didn’t they have recorders still built in?

He didn’t respond, determined to have human interrogators for a while. Where were they? Gone off to bed? Maybe their stomachs were too weak to watch what their machines did.

“Yes, sir,” said a voice that did not come over a machine tape. “He’s beginning to break. We haven’t made a direct translation. No, I don’t think it was an oath. It was definitely a response. Yes, sir. The scale registered it that way.”

The glaring light over Asan dimmed. There was a low whine slowing down as machinery shut off. Asan closed his eyes although the white glare still danced behind his eyelids. He drew in several deep breaths, his muscles stretching out degree by hesitant degree, burning and cramping as the lactic acid built up from so much tension spread out through his tissues. His body began to shake so hard he rattled against the board. He ignored this reaction. It was natural. He was just grateful for these few minutes of rest.

A hatchway in the side of the cylindrical interrogation chamber opened, and burly Captain McKey and one of his officers stepped inside. Asan turned his head to watch them. They weren’t quite in focus at the edges. He shut his eyes again. McKey reminded him too much of Saunders. Maybe it was that red hair and stocky build. Or maybe it was that dull look of immutable loyalty to the Galactic Space Institute.

“You turned it off,” said McKey. “Just when he was starting to talk? Are you mad, Ramer?”

“Sir. I thought you would prefer to conduct this yourself. The machine’s translator isn’t quite on frequency yet.”

“Damn.”

McKey stood over Asan and rubbed his chin. It needed shaving, Asan noted. A slight sense of superiority filled him. That was one of the nicer things about exchanging a human body for a Tlar one: no more facial hair.

The evidence of a beard also told Asan that McKey was something of a maverick. Beards were strictly against ship regulations.

“Well, Ramer? How the hell am I supposed to talk to this devil?”

“Here, sir.” Ramer stepped up and handed him a translator.

McKey held it in one enormous fist and frowned. He cleared his throat loudly. “Where is Blaise Omari?”

Weariness passed through Asan. McKey could have at least chosen a different way to phrase that question. Asan closed his eyes against this unpleasant angle of looking up McKey’s nose.

“Dead.”

That time the translator made it. Tlar-manufactured translators were better, Asan noted. Or maybe it was just easier to translate Standard into Tlar rather than the other way around. He certainly wasn’t going to betray the fact that he understood Standard.

“Damn,” said McKey. “Omari’s dead. I wanted to bring that little vat snake in myself. All right, you. What happened to him? How did he die? And when?”

“Shot,” said Asan, and went into another coughing fit.

His throat ached with thirst. It was too hard to talk. He longed to be able to communicate directly with McKey’s mind. But there were blanket beams switched on this chamber. The humans knew he was telepathic. Aural must have told them that too.

“Shot?” repeated McKey with a scowl. “Go on. Explain.”

“Executed by Leiil Hihuan, tyrant of Altian. Now also dead.”

As he spoke, Asan remembered that day of bewilderment in the black sands of the desert. Thinking his leg had been shot off, he’d lain out there beaten with exposure and pain until a Bban hunting party found him and dragged him back to their dara.

“Damn.” McKey was holding the translator upside down and shaking it. “I’m only getting about half of what he says.”

Ramer frowned. His face was almost too narrow to be human, with a quick nervous intelligence in his dark eyes. He took the translator from McKey and made a slight adjustment.

“I think he must be talking too fast, sir. The language also sounds inflected, which adds to our difficulties. This SK model has always been inferior to the newer—”

“That’ll do, Ramer,” said McKey. “We’ll try simpler questions. You, what’s your name?”

“Water.”

“We’re not at a garden party, you damned yellow giant. What’s your name?”

“Give me water.”

McKey was turning red. “Your name first—”

“Sir.” Ramer touched his sleeve. “He has been coughing blood. He might give us information more readily if it’s less painful to talk.”

“What? Oh, very well.”

Ramer vanished, returning more quickly than Asan expected with a short beaker of clear liquid. Asan strained for it, then his sense of smell warned him of chemical additions. He jerked his head away and scowled.

“Chielt! Pan’at cha. Muli’it nun part. Tel!”

The contempt in the Bban words was plain enough to color Ramer’s face. He stared at the beaker while McKey shook the translator in disgust.

“Not a word of that came through.”

“Different language, sir,” said Ramer quietly. “He detected the drug.”

McKey grunted. For the first time a measure of respect entered his eyes as though he finally considered Asan an intelligent being. “Well, then. We were doing better as we were. Go and get him some plain water.”

The liquid was soothing, incredibly cool against his raw throat, and not nearly enough. Asan swallowed in greedy, desperate gulps, straining against the vil-thread straps. When Ramer pulled the beaker away, Asan curbed the urge to demand more and let his head fall back against the board. Relief spread through his body along with the moisture. He felt almost ready to tell them anything they liked.

“My name,” he said, remembering the bargain, “is Asan. I am Tlar leiil, First of the Great and the Arm of Anthi.”

McKey’s brows shot up as though he hadn’t expected such cooperation.

“It is not of need to treat me in this way,” continued Asan. “To kidnap me and torture me for answers to unimportant questions.”

“The whereabouts of these people is vitally important.”

“How? Were they of rank? Was their house and lineage noble? Were they above caste? If so, how did they come to us as fugitives, homeless and destitute, to die far from their own world?”

McKey blinked through all this. “Omari was a petty criminal who hijacked one of our ships to escape detention and rehabilitation. You’ve told us what happened to him. What about the rest of the crew? Saunders and Captain—”

“All dead,” said Asan. He was anxious for this to end now.

But the quick answer was the wrong one. At once he saw that McKey did not believe him. McKey frowned.

“Maybe,” he said. “Maybe not.”

Asan frowned. “How could they live? You have seen our world. It is not a place for outsiders. Survival is difficult. Food is scarce. Protection from the black sun is hard to find. The sand will eat one’s flesh from one’s bones.”

“Sure,” said McKey. “But Queen Aural told us you had our people hidden away in your stronghold.”

Asan nearly laughed at the absurd title. Did she know what the translator reduced her to? A queen was a nonentity compared to a leiis of the blood. But his anger at Aural’s betrayal came back to kill the laughter. She was going to have to pay for all she’d done.

McKey was speaking again. Wearily Asan pulled his attention back to him.

“I have no stronghold. Aural lied.”

McKey snorted. “We’ll get the truth out of you.”

“I have told you the truth.”

McKey started at him, and with dismay Asan saw a look in those eyes which told him Aural had reached McKey’s mind and shaped it to her perceptions. He would never believe Asan. Aural had planned it that way.

Asan thought about trying to overcome the blanket beam and reach McKey’s mind himself, but he knew it wasn’t possible. Not in his present state. He sighed. Maybe he’d told them enough for a while. Maybe they would take him out of the TANK and let him rest. Maybe they would feed him.

McKey turned away, then glanced back at Asan. “Tell me this. We picked up trace indications of advanced technology on your planet when we were barely within orbital range, but close-up scanning found nothing. So we know you people have defenses you aren’t letting on about. Tell me about those. Tell me about your secret weapons that you’ve hidden away, and I might just accept what you’ve told me about the
Forerunner
crew.”

Asan stiffened. “What we have is no danger to you as long as you leave Ruantl in peace and do not return.”

McKey glanced at Ramer. “Funny. I expected an answer like that. Turn the machine back on, Ramer. Feed in a new tape. We still have a lot of questions to go.”

The first thing Zaula noticed as she came slowly awake was the heat. She was sweating in her heavy robes, and a strand of her dark hair was stuck damply to her brow. Puzzled, she opened her eyes, only to shut them quickly against the dazzling light.

Then she remembered. She’d been taken by the strange
n’kai
on their transport into the sky. They’d locked her into this cell and left her hours ago.

Rubbing her eyes, she sat up on the soft bunk and gazed around. Luxury surrounded her. The blanket on her bunk was of a soft gray material as light as air, yet warmer than borlorl fur. The light that had blinded her at first was clear and artificial. She glanced about, but saw no lightcubes. Nor could she find a source of the heat that throbbed through every muscle in her body. She felt pliant and curiously content.

Stretching, she took off her heavy robe of leadweave and tossed it over a chair of strange design. There was a table fashioned of a material that was neither metal nor wood. She tapped it with her fingertips and frowned at the objects sitting on top of it.

One was a faceted cube about the size of her fist. At first she thought it was a stone. When she picked it up, the surface was polished and cold. Its color changed from a brownish-gray to white to a face staring back at her.

“Ah’hi!”

She dropped the stone, and it bounced on the tabletop with a thud. The face disappeared, and after a breathless moment she felt ashamed of her fear.

Slowly she picked up the stone again and waited until the face reappeared. This time she saw that it was not a living creature trapped within the center of the stone, but only a representation. The face was alien to her, pale and grayish-pink in color with a shapeless bump of a nose, striped eyes, and a smile frozen in time. She found the
n’dl
ugly and put down the stone.

Beside it was a panel of machinery controls, all in different colors. She traced her fingertips over these, wondering what would happen if she pushed one, yet not daring to do so. Machines were fragile, precious things which only trained technicians of the House of Kkanthor must touch. No one else.

The pad and stylus did not interest her at all. Writing was for Henan scribes. A small bowl the size of a dye pot held small pebbles of different colors. She scooped some of these up in her palm, fascinated by the purples and pinks and ambers flashing iridescently in the light. Then she let them spill between her fingers back into the bowl. They tinkled musically as they fell.

Laughing, she scooped up another handful and let them fall. This time the musical notes were in another order as though different colors made different tones. Perhaps the
n’kai
were not such strange creatures after all. If they enjoyed music, they must be civilized.

She played for a few minutes, trying all kinds of variations and testing each color individually to listen to it before combining it back with the other pebbles. Then she returned the bowl to its place and continued her exploration.

On the other side of the cell was a door that vanished as she approached it. Startled, she jumped back. The door reappeared with a swift hiss. Frowning, Zaula tried to touch it with her hand. The door vanished again. This time, however, she saw that it was only recessing itself into the wall. She smiled in approval. The
n’kai
did not need slaves if they had such marvels as this.

She stepped through the doorway into a shadowy alcove. At once lights sprang on. She did not flinch this time. The floor beneath her feet was a gray, springy substance that gave slightly under each step. The walls were of the same material. The function of this alcove was plain. She stared at the nozzles overhead, then looked at the lever close to her hand. She hesitated a moment and pulled it.