CHAPTER 19
The captain awoke somewhat blearily to find he was in a prison cage—a cave with floor-to ceiling bars—and his ship coveralls had been replaced by a bright orange one-piece garment. He was sharing the cell with about twenty other prisoners—although, if they crowded them in, there was space for five times that. Ta’zara was also waking. His first question was: “Where is the Leewit?”
“I don’t know,” said the captain, grimly. “But we’re going looking for the others.” He held out his forcecuffed wrists to Ta’zara. “Tap in the opening code. I want to be able to slug a few of these fellows.”
Of course these were the cuffs that they’d brought along, and that Vezzarn had worked on, so Ta’zara could and did. No sooner had he done so than one of the others in the cell—a bent, elderly wizened man in an identical orange one-piece who had been industriously sweeping the cell a few yards from them—started yelling. Ta’zara might still have been forcecuffed, and groggy from the drugging, but the fellow never got to draw a second breath to yell again. Hastily, watching the others in the cell, the captain freed Ta’zara from his forcecuffs.
“Can you do the rest of us too?” asked one of the other prisoners quietly. “Someone may check on what the yell was about. Probably another trusty.” He pointed at the unconscious sweeper. “He’s already a Karoda slave. Happy cleaning the cells and keeping watch on the prisoners. I guess he was too old for the Mantro barges. And he was telling us we’d all soon be happy too,” he grimaced. “I’d rather go down fighting.”
He wasn’t the only one holding out his forcecuffed manacles. In fact, all of the other prisoners were.
“I wish we could,” said the captain. “We only have the codes to these new ones. But we’ll break you out of the cell, anyway. We’re going.”
He used his klatha ability to cocoon off the lock—which as it was no longer attached, they pushed out. That left them in a cave passage, lit by glow-globes. They met another trusty coming around the corner—this one did not even get to scream. The only problem was there was a choice of passages beyond, and no clue to which lead where.
* * *
The Leewit, Goth and Me’a also awoke in a barred-off cave. Me’a still had her wheelchair—but they’d been stripped and given a new pocketless garment. The Leewit was the first to wake. The first thing she noticed was that Tippi the rochat was not in the shirt of her new garment. In fact, wasn’t anywhere. That was enough to make her angry and worried, leaving aside being drugged and caged. They could use the Egger Route to escape, but what had happened to Tippi?
She felt rotten so she tried using her healer skills on herself. Her teaching pattern said she’d been doing that already, which is why she was awake first. A little time would still be needed to clear the anesthetic gas through her liver, but it was happening. She set to work on her sister, and then Me’a. Knowing what was needed made it easier, and by the time they were awake her own feeling of sickness had largely gone. All she was, was hungry, angry and worried about her rochat. “Time we got out of here,” she said. “The captain can catch up with us. I need to find Tippi.”
“Dears, you mustn’t try to escape,” said one of the other women in the cell, a dumpy older woman, barely looking up from her work of polishing the bars with a rag. She beamed at them quickly before going back to concentrating on her work. “You’ll soon be happy.”
“I’m going to whistle at you,” said the Leewit, “And you’re not going to be happy.” She pursed her lips.
Goth put a hand in front of the Leewit’s mouth. “Wait. That’s important. I’ve heard it before. I need to ask why we’re going to be so happy?”
“You will be taken to the Ghandagar. I know you are afraid, but really it will be so much better afterwards. You will have service to be happy in. Believe me it is the best thing that could happen to you. I was never happy before. I was rich and powerful, but not happy.”
“Jaccy’s woman, Yelissa,” said Goth. “I never realized she was a Karoda slave. Like this woman obviously is.”
“It’s not slavery, child. I love to serve and I am happy. I never was that before.”
The Leewit looked at the woman with her cleaning rag. “This is what they do to their slaves?”
“I’d say so,” said Goth. “Nasty.”
“It isn’t,” said the woman, calmly. “And you will find this is true too.”
The Leewit walked over to her. “Hold my hand, will you?”
The woman took it…and moments later slumped to the floor. The Leewit had to stop her head from hitting the ground.
“Good thinking,” said Me’a. “She would have tried to stop us. But how did you do that?”
“Shut up,” said the Leewit, fiercely. “I need to concentrate. I need to work out what has been done.”
And she did. The good part was that she understood it, with a little help from the teaching pattern. The bad part was that it would be hard to undo. It wasn’t a very complicated neural change. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was—at least as far as the slave was concerned—that she really did feel just about exactly as people did when they were really happy…only a lot more. The Leewit knew, even without her teaching pattern, that any human would struggle to step away from that.
It shared some characteristics, neural pathways, hormone and endorphin production stimulation of what humans called “love,” the teaching pattern explained. The brain of the slave had been changed, physically forming new pathways to ensure this.
The Leewit, not used to not knowing how to deal with something, found herself not knowing what to do this time—except for making certain it didn’t happen to her or the captain or Goth. Or Ta’zara or Me’a or Vezzarn. Or, actually, anyone else. “Right,” she said letting go of the woman’s hand, leaving her unconscious on the floor. “It’s time we got out of here. Goth, can you ’port us some keys? Or a piece out of the lock? Hide us in no-shape so we can go looking.”
Goth took a deep breath. “I can’t.”
The Leewit looked at her crossly, her mood not helped by what she was trying to process. “Don’t be a dope, Goth. Stop waiting for the captain to do everything.”
“Don’t you be a dope, little sister,” said Goth. “I mean I can’t. I can’t ’port anymore. I think I can still read things because this place is giving me the grue. I don’t want to touch anything. But my other klatha skills seem to be gone. I burned out. I used too much getting back down the Egger Route.”
The Leewit stared at her and blinked. And then shook her head. “That…”
“Hush. There is someone coming down the passage,” said Me’a.
It was several of their heavily armed captors. The Leewit was quite pleased to see them right now. She got to whistle, finally. To use some of her directional whistles was just more pleasant than dealing with thinking about all this stuff. The first whistle was a thin, high-pitched whistle, a refinement on the whistle she had used on Moander. The delicate components of those heavy blasters’ charge units became shards of fragmenting glass. There was quite a lot of heat generated in the process, to judge by their yells and desperate attempts to get rid of bandoliers of charge units. You could see that in the sudden flare of the burning units, as the passage lights also exploded.
But the Leewit was in no mood to stop there. Sound, she’d found, was a lot more powerful than people realized. It could stun, induce anything from terror to confusion and make various muscles—including the ones controlling sphincters—suddenly relax.
When she’d finished, Goth said, “Great. Now we’re still trapped, but in pitch darkness. And they stink.”
A light glowed into life, on Me’a’s wheelchair. “Fortunately they don’t seem to have examined my chair too closely. I can cut the bars and get us out of here. If you want to go, that is? I think being somewhere else might be a wise move.”
“Sounds like a good idea to me,” said Goth.
“Yes,” agreed the Leewit. “I need to look for Tippi. And bust their enslavement machine.”
“Very well,” said Me’a. “I have some thermite putty. If you apply some around the bars for me we should be able to depart this cave, hopefully without bringing the roof down. You will have to close your eyes and cover your ears, of course.”
“Get these forcecuffs off first,” said Goth, practically. “But then, yes, let’s blow this place.”
So they did. The thermite putty ringed around the bars weakened them enough to make pushing them out easy, and they were able leave the darkness, the stunned captors and smoke, and head down the passage. “Your Wisdom,” said Me’a, as she struggled to steer past the bodies. “Not that I want to complain, but this is quite hard to negotiate in a wheelchair.”
“Then why don’t you use your floater-boosters? I’ve seen you do so for stairs often enough.”
“They use a fair amount of power. I’m not sure when I will be able to recharge. And, after your whistle some of my utilities are reporting damage, even if I wasn’t on the front end of it. I’ve gotten my diagnostics repairing what can be dealt with. This chair is normally as powerful as a small tank. Now it’s more like a small armored car.”
“Oh. I didn’t think…” admitted the Leewit.
“I still have more than enough functionality and a few weapons,” said Me’a.
“Just stun them next time,” said Goth, tersely. “Now let’s find the captain and Ta’zara.”
“I reckon they’ll find us,” said the Leewit. “I want to find Tippi. If they’ve hurt her…”
“The gas is unlikely to have affected her,” said Me’a, soothingly. “Remember rochats can survive outside on Cinderby’s World without any form of rebreather. And they’re very hard to catch—or even to hurt.”
“They still better not have hurt her,” said the Leewit, darkly. “Or I’ll do a lot worse than I’m planning to do to them anyway. And that isn’t going to be pretty.”
“Let’s settle for stunning the next one, so we can get some answers,” said Goth. “And I’d like a working weapon, if possible. Right now I feel sort of helpless, and I don’t like it.”
“Well, you’re—” started the Leewit.
“Ware!” said Goth, as another one of their former captors stepped out of a doorway built into the cave warren. Before the Leewit could even whistle, the man jerked violently and fell over, shuddering.
Two thin wires trailed back from the dart in him to Me’a’s chair. “Electrical paralysis. You wanted one alive for questioning. I suggest we hurry, though. I hope he’s cooperative.”
“He will be,” said the Leewit grimly. She went over and whistled gently in the bulky fellow’s ear, while Goth helped herself to his holstered military grade blaster, and a belt of charges. The Leewit knew exactly what that whistle, from so close, would do.
The problem thereafter wasn’t getting the man’s cooperation, it was getting the man to stop stammering. Fortunately, it turned out that he was one of the guards who had overseen the stripping and redressing of the gassed new prisoners. And yes, they had seen Tippi the rochat. She’d bitten an unwary hand and fled the scene. Someone had tried to shoot her.
At this point the Leewit slapped him. “You get up and go and find them. Tell them—and all your other friends—that if Tippi is hurt or killed I’ll see to it that they die slowly over a month, in pain. And just so you can tell them what the pain will be like…this is how it will feel.” The Leewit tweaked his nerves and he shrieked and then lolled into unconsciousness. “And not just for seconds either,” she said, grimly. “Come on, let’s go.” She got up.
“While I understand you’re worried about Tippi,” said Me’a, “do you think we should just be charging around looking for her?”
“Yes, of course!” said the Leewit.
“I mean, we need a plan, a method, or sooner or later they will be luckier than we are. And they’ll be expecting us after this. They’ll shoot first and ask questions later.”
“So what do you suggest?” asked Goth.
“It appears that the captain also has very special abilities. I would suggest finding him first and combining his skills with yours. We’re outnumbered and, little as I like to admit it, outgunned. It’s that or gain some high-value hostage.”
* * *
Both of those proved quite difficult, however. It was obvious that word had gotten around that some of the prisoners were on the loose, and the Soman Consortium was out in force to try to kill them. The Soman Consortium also had some idea where they were going—which was not an advantage that Goth, Me’a or the Leewit had. They went into the next cave…and into an ambush—with several slightly too hasty blaster bolts having betrayed the ambushers hiding behind a stack of boxes.
There was a sharp and sudden click and two transparent crystallite screens appeared in front of the wheelchair, as well as the hum of hyperelectronics. At this point Me’a used her wheelchair’s armory. A shriek of rocketry and the boxes and most of those behind them disappeared into an explosive cloud. Advancing into the dust and smashed debris, the Leewit finished the contact with a stunning whistle that the echoes in the cave multiplied.
As they moved forward, Goth picked up a handheld communicator from the chaos. Its lights still blinked. A voice from it said, “Macsell, Macsell, respond. What’s happening in D5? Do you need backup? Ramio and his squad are coming down from the upper sector.”
“They’re obviously coordinating. Let’s listen in,” she said. So they did as they moved on. The chatter over the communicator told them two things—firstly, their enemies knew roughly where they were and were sending more fighters. And secondly, they weren’t the only problem the Soman clan had. There’d been a slave breakout. At least twenty slaves were scattered in several groups though the caves. They were apparently armed, or at least some of them were. “That’ll be the captain and Ta’zara,” said Goth, plainly pleased.
“That is good. But it doesn’t help us,” said Me’a. “I suggest you both stay behind me. The crystallite should be proof against any mechanical attack, and the hyperelectronic shield will diffuse the effect of blaster bolts.”
“I have another idea,” said the Leewit. “Can that chair shut out sound?”
“It has a spy screen that should do that.”
“Right,” she said, reaching for the communicator. “Can you get Goth into it? I’m going to give them a few whistles.”
“A few seconds and I’ll do my best to shield my own equipment!” said Me’a.
“Better,” said the Leewit. “I’m planning to bust theirs up a bit, and put the frighteners on them. And to use some new words I’ve learned, seeing as the captain isn’t here.”
* * *
Captain Pausert and Ta’zara were finding the resistance stiff, despite the fact that they’d removed quite a lot of heavy weaponry from the first of the Soman Consortium’s men to come into contact with Ta’zara. The Soman men might be good with weapons, but at hand-to-hand combat, they were not so good. The captain could shield them, but it took energy—and then, to respond, he had to take down the cocoon. At first the other prisoners had just followed them, but, as soon as they found a few more weapons in what was plainly the slavers’ rest room, the captain put a stop to that. He handed out weapons on a first-come-first-serve basis. Even in forcecuffs they could still shoot.
“All of you have a choice of slavery for life, or fighting and maybe dying,” he said. “Split up into small groups. They’ve got the heavy weapons and numbers to deal with us in one group. But that advantage goes away if they’re fighting small battles everywhere. You’ll win some and lose some. If we stay together we will probably all die together.”
They were in a maze of caves, where the Soman Consortium knew where they were, and the desperate escapees did not. It was a tough fight. The captain was forced to cocoon two of them when they stepped around a corner to face a barricade, and a Mark 20 tripod-mounted blaster cannon, pouring fire on them. He wasn’t sure how they could get out of this one. The cocoon stopped the blaster effects, but if he stopped using it for long enough to fire back, it would be all over for them. He would have to wait for them to run out of charge—and by the size of the power pack they had, that might take a while.
And then, abruptly, he saw the gunner and his four companions let go of their weapons, clutch their ears—and then run away. He opened the cocoon. “The Leewit is on the loose,” he said, with a broad grin. He saw relief all over Ta’zara’s broad, normally near expressionless face. “That is good. She is my duty to guard. Let us go to them.”
“We may not see them. Goth will have them hidden in no-shape.”
“They will see and hear us. It is time for the war chant of my clan. The Leewit and the woman who calls herself ‘Me’a’ will know then that it is us.”
The war chant echoing through the Soman caves might also have made their enemies run, thought Pausert. But there was no sign of Goth, the Leewit, or Me’a. Just dropped weapons and the still-smoldering remains of a hand communicator.
“That’s how she did it,” said the captain, pointing. “I suppose we’ll just have to go on looking.”
The Leewit’s actions had not destroyed the Soman Consortium, but it had left them unable to communicate, badly rattled and looking to fort up in large groups, rather than searching for the escapees.
Not surprisingly, the next people who shot at Pausert and Ta’zara were some of the escapees. Fortunately they were rotten shots and no one got killed by the new armory they had picked up, and equally fortunately the other escapees had a captive. He wasn’t the ideal guide—until Ta’zara gave him the benefit of a one-on-one war chant. Then he was much more cooperative.
The problem was, even with a guide, they had no idea exactly where the others were, or where they were heading. It was just a case of hoping they were lucky. So the captain decided that it was time to rely on his klatha-sourced luck. Which way felt best? He paused. Saw how he felt about the choices. “We’ll go that way,” he said, pointing to a small cave mouth.
The prisoner looked openly dismayed. “You can’t!” he blurted. “It doesn’t lead out; it leads to the Ghandagar. We…we can’t go there without breathing equipment. I…you would end up as a slave.”
The feeling was much stronger now. “Then you better hope we catch up with Goth and the Leewit before that.”
But raw fear made the man frantic, and gave him hysterical strength. He broke and ran.
Ta’zara cursed. “You should have let me hold him, Captain.”
“I thought having your hands free to fight was more valuable. Come on. They might find out where we’re going from him, but we still need to get up there in time.”
So they headed for the Soman Consortium’s slave-maker, “the Ghandagar,” whatever that was.
* * *
They were at least able to travel largely unhindered now, Goth thought. Of course, they still had no idea where they were going, but it was better than being shot at. The long passage they were in now sloped upward, and at least had fewer branches. They’d only passed one in the last while. Me’a had been quite keen on going down it, but the Leewit wanted to go on. Goth came down on the onward side. She found the caverns of the Soman clan incredibly depressing. All she wanted to do was get out of them. With everybody else, of course…but at least this cave sloped upward.
And eventually led into tree-filtered daylight.
Not a great deal of it, though. There was just one tree. They were in a small rock bowl surrounded by towering cliffs. The bowl itself, barring the one tree, was full of a strange and spiky rock formation.
As they came out of the cave mouth, a heavy door slid down behind them. Me’a turned hastily to look, as did Goth. It was also plainly hull metal. “Oh, oh,” said Goth.
The Leewit just said “Tippi!” in delight and rushed forward to pick up the rochat from between the rows of curved and spiky stone going into the structure above. And then Goth became aware of a smell she remembered all too well…the smell of the squill cocoons off the Mantro barge on Parisienne. She was going to throw up… She leaned forward, grabbing one of the stone pillars.
And immediately became aware of three things. The first was that the essence of putrescence, squill-cocoon scent…was making her feel good. The second was even more horrific. Her klatha ability to read the imprinted history of strong emotions in objects had not gone away. And what she was touching was a thing with many such enormously strong emotions…mostly happy ones. The final fact she became aware of was that what she was touching might be mostly silicates, but was alive.
She pulled away, and yelled out, “Leewit! It’s alive. It’s the slave-maker! We have to get out of here!”
The Leewit shook herself, and whistled. That had no noticeable effect.
Me’a fired another rocket to explode in the structure. It knocked a few of the spikes off but had no other effect, except to make the feeling that Goth really loved the stink of squill cocoon even more intense.
The Leewit turned to Me’a. “Don’t. That hurt it.” And she leaned in and grabbed the spiky stone that was the Ghandagar, the slave-maker, her hands glowing with klatha force.
It took seconds before Goth suddenly was aware again of just how revolting sea-squill cocoon scent was, and how that smell made her anything but happy. “Goth,” said the Leewit, “there’s a little vial of some horrible stuff jammed in between the filaments in there. Get rid of it, please. I’m doing some repairs.”
Goth went looking. She had to follow her nose, even though she’d rather not have. She soon found the vial in a nest of long green-gray dangling strips of rock, next to a small storehouse. Even getting that close made her gag. She tried holding her breath. No good. She’d have had to take a breath and be running in from a lot farther away. In desperation, without thinking about it, she tried ’porting it elsewhere.
And to her surprise she felt that familiar surge of klatha power as the vial vanished.
The shock and relief were almost enough to make her fall over. She sat down, hastily, before she fell—and found herself touching the rocky filaments again. Reading the past. It was…not easy. Besides the emotional turmoil of terror, sadness, and then the strange “happiness” there were some very alien images there as well.
Some of them were oddly familiar. She got the full sensory emersion, with the reading of the past. Details that meant nothing to her and a smell she’d smelled before—paratha! The spice that ruined the taste of everything in comparison. Strange aliens combing the stone filaments… With difficulty, she pulled herself away, and went back to find Me’a and the Leewit.
She put her hands on the Leewit’s shoulders, lending strength. “My klatha! It’s back.”
The Leewit didn’t even look up. “I know, stupid. It never went anywhere. It can’t partly go. It doesn’t work like that. And I treated you, remember. I would have known. You just tried too soon and too hard. Now shut up. This is complicated. They hurt the poor thing. And then Me’a shot it. And it is half-starved. Short of minerals.”
“What does it eat?” asked Goth warily, wondering if they were diet items for this…alien her little sister was healing.
“Leaves. Leaves from different kinds of trees…but it can’t collect them,” said the Leewit with a faint air of puzzlement.
“They used to bring it leaves. And brush its filaments. It likes that. Long before it was left here alone and hungry and lonely. Long before the humans came and found it,” said Goth. “It doesn’t like them. They don’t look after it. It wants to go home. Back to the ones who look after a poor Arerrerr.”
“Arerrerr?”
“What it thinks of itself as. A sort of noise it makes. It’s not very bright. It has thought these things very often and been very sorry for itself. Oh. And it remembers rochats. Along with the aliens that used to look after it.”
“What’s going on?” asked Me’a, warily. “I dropped some bugs in the tunnel up here. I’m picking up some sounds. They’re coming this way.”
“The Leewit is healing the thing. The Arerrerr.”
“But…that’s the thing that made willing slaves for the Karoda slavers. Is the Leewit enslaved?”
“Don’t be silly,” said the Leewit. “Anyway, that was the Soman, using it. They blocked its own scent gland, and they put the smells they wanted fixed into the neural pattern there. It thought it was making them love it, making them happy loving it, looking after it, feeding it, caring for it. That’s what it does. It is a kind of pet. It just works better on the human nervous system than the one it was made for.”