Shockball (42 page)

“Listen.”

Rico enabled the audio, and Joseph’s voice came through the panel speaker.

“—have combed the tunnels and neutralized all the traps. They have also placed pulse charges in several areas. You are boxed in. Release my property, or I will have the devices detonated—”

“He has been transmitting it continuously since the assaults on both sides began.” Rico switched it off. “Old Joe thinks he will destroy my
Leyaneyaniteh
.”

“He’ll do that and worse.” I stepped away from the panel. “Why don’t I just surrender to them? As soon as they have me, the tribe will be out of danger.”

“The tribe has never been in any danger, I assure you.” Rico sat back and pressed another keypad. “Bring in the devices we recovered.”

Several of the Night Horse men came in, each one carrying several small metal boxes.

Reever took one and gingerly examined it. “These are explosives.”

“Defused and quite harmless for the moment.” Rico grabbed one for himself and started tossing it back and forth between his hands. “We found every one of them and removed them soon after they were planted by the Shaman’s forces.”

I watched him toy with the deadly device. Even if it was defused, it was still a bomb, and his nonchalant fiddling was making me feel nauseated. “You may have missed some.”

“No.” He gave me a gentle smile, then tossed the device at me. I gasped as I caught it. “We saw them plant all of them. When we came here and created this place, I had recording drones installed in every tunnel.” He turned to the console, and switched on the bank of vid screens.

Each square coalesced into a different image of the entire underground world of
Leyaneyaniteh
. The tunnels outside Medical, the cross sections leading into the sewer conduits and subway systems, all displayed in perfect detail.

“I like to come here and watch when I cannot be below,” Rico said. “When I cannot be here, I have the consoles record the images.”

What he was telling was he had seen or had accessed recordings of everything Reever and I had done since he’d taken us from The Grey Veils. Everything we’d done, from sneaking around and escaping to… I flinched when I saw the hidden lake cavern show up on one screen. Not even on the night had we remained unobserved.

I stopped being afraid. I’d been subject to surveillance before in the past, and I’d never liked it. One bit. I handed him back his bomb. “Didn’t anyone ever teach you it’s rude to spy on people?”

Some of the men made threatening noises, but all the chief did was dismiss them. “There was much I was never taught, patcher. But I learned what I needed.”

“So what are you going to do with the bombs? Throw them back at Joe and his merry men?”

“My men will plant the devices as I have instructed. They will serve my purposes now.”

Given the fact we were under an arena that regularly held several thousand people, I could almost bet what his purposes were. “Your men won’t blow up the arena for you. They don’t hate Caucasians that much.”

“The devices will not be used to destroy the arena.”

“Where are you putting them?”

“I’m not going to tell you.” He sounded like a scheming child. “I want it to be a surprise.”

“I don’t want to be surprised.”

“Very well.” He made a show of thinking about it. “I know—if Reever makes the first score in the World Bowl game, I will have all the devices removed and deactivated.”

“What if I don’t score?” Reever asked.

“Then I will trigger them.” The chief said nothing else, and dismissed me and Reever.

“He’s lying,” I said in a tight voice as we were escorted back to the shelter. “We’ve got to find a way to warn someone up there.”

“I can do it before the game starts. I’ll inform one of the drone officials of the threat.”

“They’ll just arrest you and haul you out of the arena for interrogation. You have to make that first score, Duncan.”

“I will.”

Reever left me to talk to some of the other players and see if any of them would tell him what Rico was planning. Given the tribe’s loyalty to their chief, I didn’t hold out much hope of his success. For now, all I could do was set up a triage area and examine the members of the tribe injured from the cave-ins. Someone cleared out a smaller room for me, and after prioritizing the cases, I moved into my temporary treatment room.

Hawk came in later, after the last of my patients, and I took the opportunity to perform his final back treatment.

“You don’t have to walk hunched over anymore,” I told him as I straightened the curled muscles.

“It is best I maintain the illusion.”

Considering his problem, I had to agree with that call. “I think if I lie and say it’s vitamin shots or something, I can convince Rico to let me administer antibiotic to the infected tribal members. Once he goes to sleep, I can do the same for him. If I pull that off, will you help me and Reever get out of here?”

Every word dragged as he said, “I will help you.”

“Why don’t you come with us? Dhreen will probably steal a starshuttle, and there’ll be plenty room.”

“I cannot go.” He looked around, and spread his arms helplessly. “This is my home.” His gaze darkened and he stared at his footgear. “I cannot betray my chief.”

“Your chief infected you with syphilis. He won’t seek medical treatment, so if you stay, he’ll do it again. You already know he won’t be faithful to you. Come with us.”

“I will not leave him.” Hawk pulled on his tunic and stalked off.

So much for convincing Hawk to improve his situation.

When some of the men delivered the storage containers with my stock of antibiotic, I decided to go ahead with my vitamin-therapy plan, and took a box of fully charged syrinpresses out to the shelter. Everyone accepted my outright lie without a qualm. I performed quick allergen screens—saying they were to confirm what kind of vitamins they needed—and infused everyone with the proper antibiotic.

I saw Reever a few times, deep in conversation with some of the players. He looked at me from across the shelter once, and shook his head.

He was having no luck.

I didn’t see Hawk again until nightfall, when all the lights dimmed and we had to rig some emitters around the different storage rooms. Hawk called me over and pointed to the monitoring room Rico had occupied all day.

“He wants to talk to you.”

“Good.” Now that I had wiped out treponema pallidum in every member of the tribe, it was time for the final showdown with my brother. “I have some things we need to discuss, too.”

I stopped back in the treatment room to retrieve a few things, then went with Hawk. We didn’t go to the monitoring room. Instead Hawk escorted me to another chamber. He opened the door panel, but didn’t go in. I took a look—it was completely dark inside.

I didn’t like dark rooms. “Am I in trouble?” I whispered.

He nodded once.

“Okay.” I stepped inside.

As soon as the door panel slid shut behind me, I smelled flowers and food.

“Hello?”

Soft lights flickered on, illuminating the luxurious furnishings of a private boudoir. The tribe had moved all of Rico’s possessions up from his hogan, and added a few things—tapestries, upholstered furnishings, and a nice big sleeping platform. Platters of food sat on polished tables. If I hadn’t known better, I’d have thought myself back in Joseph’s mansion.

“Good evening.” My brother sat in a wing-back chair in front of the sleeping platform. He wore a black velvet jacket with gold embellishments. His hair was wet, and he was drinking pale wine from a crystal goblet.

Yep, I was in trouble. “You wanted to talk to me?”

“Come and sit down, Cherijo.” He waved toward the matching, empty chair a foot away from his. “I have looked forward to this evening for a very long time.”

I went to the chair and sat on the very edge of the seat.

“Have a glass of wine.” He held out a second goblet to me.

“No thanks. Alcohol gives me headaches.”

“As you wish.” He drained half the glass and set it down. “Hungry?”

“No.” I felt like a butterfly that was about to lose a wing or two. “Chief, we need to talk about a couple of things.”

“Sit back and relax. Tonight I will listen to whatever you have to say.”

Which was a rather ominous way to put it. Would my being honest drive him over the edge, or give him a lifeline? I had no love for my brother or what he had done, but I knew what Joseph Grey Veil was capable of doing. If circumstances had been altered only slightly, I could have been sitting in his chair, sipping wine, and dying of a curable disease while plotting to blow up two hundred thousand misguided people.

“At the pre-World Game press conference, I had Reever run a series of medical scans on you. The results are what we need to talk about.”

“Of course, the business with the champagne. I gave him a black eye, didn’t I?” He seemed pleased that he could remember. “I should have broken his jaw instead.” He shrugged. “There’s always tomorrow after the game.”

“Rico, after running my analysis of the scans, I confirmed you are carrying a sexually transmitted disease. You’ve infected everyone you’ve been intimate with since contracting the illness.”

“That would be a substantial amount of people.”

“Yes, it is. I also discovered that you and I have nearly identical DNA patterns. Do you know what that means?”

“Of course we do. You’re my little sister.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

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The Grandfather of All Monsters

H
earing him say that made my heart sink a little further. I’d been subconsciously hoping to use our connection as an edge. “I never knew I had a brother. Joseph never told me. I wish I’d known.”

“He didn’t tell you about the others, why bother telling you about me?”

My heart did a flip and I clutched the arms of the chair. “How many others survived?”

“We all survived, Cherijo. Joseph was the proud father of nine baby boys, and one baby girl.”

I had eight more brothers. It was too much to grasp. “Where are they?”

“I imagine Joseph has been keeping some of them at the Mendocino facility. I heard rumors of an assistant he sent off Terra, to work with League scientists. Some kind of genius with stardrive design. I imagine he’s one of us, too.”

“Are you the only one who got away from him?”

“No, dear sister. You escaped, too.”

“Rico, I have about a million questions to ask you, but we have to talk about your disease first. What we do to deal with that is the most critical thing right now. Did Joseph ever give you any medical training?”

He ignored my last question as he refilled his wineglass. “My disease. Yes, tell me about my disease.”

“You were infected with it some time ago—ten or fifteen years, at least. It’s a disease called syphilis. It hasn’t existed on Terra for a couple of centuries, so I’m not sure how you contracted it, but—”

“I know exactly how I got it. Would you like to know?”

I leaned forward. “Yes.”

“
Yei
gave it to me.”

“
Yei
?” That was what the little girl had called the masked dancers during the initiation ceremony. “You mean Milass? Or Kegide?”

“
Yei
.” He got up and started strolling in a circle around my chair. Abruptly he changed the subject. “I’ve always known about you. I was there when you were born. I watched him drain the chamber and pull you out. I had a good view of the entire procedure from my cell.”

His cell
. I swallowed hard and shook my head.

“I’d never seen a naked female until that day. When I saw you, all naked and screaming and squirming in his hands, I simply thought he’d neglected to give you a penis. I felt sorry for you, until they took you up to the house.” He frowned. “None of us were ever permitted in the house.”

He wandered over to a table and took a handful of grapes from one of the platters. He started tossing them, one by one, into his mouth. It was so quiet I could hear them squish between his teeth.

“Did the others know?”

“I’m not sure. He usually kept us isolated from each other. So it wouldn’t spoil his tests.” He stopped behind me and leaned over so that his warm, fruit-scented breath caressed my cheek. “I would have liked to have known you, little sister. You were the fairest of us all.”

“He never told me. If he’d told me, I would have—”

“You would have done exactly what he said. Whatever he said. That is one thing I knew about you, Cherijo. He was so pleased with your compliance that he practically sang your praises every day. Each morning I listened to some new tale about my sister, how intelligent you were, how well you comprehended and achieved the goals he set for you. You were his trophy clone, his superb attainment in human genetic engineering.”

It hurt. It hurt to think of all of the years I had spent at the estate and never knew what was happening beneath it. “It may sound hard to believe, Rico, but I was a victim, too.”

“Were you?” He came back to his chair and sat down quickly, making a burlesque of his eagerness to listen to me. “Did he beat you? Put you on the treadmill? Did he wrap you in nerve-webbing and set you on the stimulator for a few hours?”

“No, but—”

“Then, he starved you? He liked to see how long we could go without food. Or the temperature chamber, did he ever make you stand naked in blizzard conditions? Did he rupture your eardrums, to see how fast they’d heal? Did he have a drone fracture your arms, and legs, to monitor the density of the breaks knitting back together?”

“No!” I shot up. “Stop it!”

“Did he touch you?”

I meant to shout something else, but those four words knocked all the air out of my lungs. I could barely form one syllable. “What?”

“Did he touch you? Undress you? Fondle you?”

“No.” Something was making me feel like vomiting, and it was coming from him. “You knew that, too. You knew what he had planned for me.”