“But it isn’t a difficult way,” she said. “You can have the whole of your time free, without working, if you just breed one of us at the start of each day. We will take good care of you. And at the end you may choose one of us to stay with, or depart, as you prefer. Can you blame us for wanting to enable some of our number to return to the surface?”
Darius thought of his similarly benign captivity in the reality of the DoOon, just before coming to the reality of Oria. There they had wanted new breeding stock too, though it had been Colene they had proposed to take it from. They had given him a position as a space captain, with three most attentive animal-headed personal servants. The luscious female, Pussy, had had the head of a cat and the body of a perfect woman. At first he had sought to dismiss her, but as he came to know her he had understood that Pussy was a fine person in her own right, a victim of the system. So it was now with Null-Colene.
“Are you able to assume the head of a cat?” he asked.
“A cat? That is a surface creature?”
“Yes.” The rabble had lived so long down here without animals that they had forgotten they existed. “With whiskers, and a furry face, and large round eyes.” He formed a mental picture, but it was of Pussy rather than an ordinary cat face.
The woman’s face changed as he watched, assuming the likeness of Pussy. It wasn’t really a cat face, but a human face highlighted by certain feline characteristics. Seqiro was guiding the image, so that she got it right. The body followed. Now it was as if Pussy were bound before him.
He kissed those feline lips. “That’s perfect,” he said.
She smiled. “It is the first time I have been kissed in this situation,” she said, glancing down.
Darius was not given to blushing, but he felt the heat coming to his face. She was still on the pot!
“Oh, I envy your true love,” she said. “You are a man like no other.”
By the time he recovered normal color, the invisible boy was gone. Nona would let him return to visibility once he was away from this chamber, but would guide him to some suitable place for them to go.
But the period of the duel was ending. “Soon I will go, and you will have a new woman to oppose,” Null-Pussy said wistfully. “I will not be allowed to be with you until all the other thousand have had their turns. I plead with you, Darius, I beg of you—”
“What would you have done had you succeeded in tying me?” he demanded.
“I would have raped you.” She sighed. “You have made your point.”
But Darius experienced yet another surge of guilt. He knew that he would not be able to endure a thousand days of this. He would soon be broken down, and have to do what the rabble wanted. As the rabble surely knew, having had experience with prior captives. The whole point of this one, who was probably not even at her fertile time, might be merely to begin the process of breaking him down. Once he capitulated, they would match him with those who were ready to conceive by him. It was a practical system.
“The familiar has found an isolated chamber,” Nona reported. “We must gather together before the duels end, or we will have to fight again before we can escape.”
“None too soon!” Stave breathed. Darius knew exactly how he felt.
Null-Pussy gave him a direct glance. “I have one more ploy, handsome man. I have sharp cat ears now. I can hear you talking to yourself, and it is in no language I can fathom. But when you talk to me, I understand you perfectly, though you speak in that same language. You have the magic of mind-talk. ”
She had missed her shot, but not by much. Darius did not answer.
“And you do not want others to know,” Null-Pussy continued. “Breed with me, and I will keep your secret.”
Darius shook his head. “I wish I could make that deal.”
She bowed her head, and the tears flowed again. “I will keep your secret anyway.”
That destroyed his remaining resistance. Darius took a step toward her.
You must not. Stave is ready to make the illusion of you.
Darius stopped. How close he had been to losing!
Now step quietly away.
He stepped to the side. He saw the image of himself still standing. But he could not see his true body at all; Nona had crafted her illusion of nothingness at the same time. It was as if his soul had left his body.
After a moment, the image-Darius turned and walked away from Null-Pussy. Darius, watching her from the side, saw her jaw clench. It had indeed been another ploy, complete with tears, and it had failed. She was calculating, not submissive. He was glad that he had seen that tiny signal; it made him feel better. But he still wished he could have done what she wanted. She might be indistinguishable in her malleability from any of the other thousand, but she was quite a woman anyway.
He walked slowly and silently to the edge of the dais, and down the stepped tiers. No one saw him. This was amazing! The magic of illusion was a marvelous thing, especially when cleverly applied.
He saw Stave and Nona on their daises, and knew by the somewhat regular manner of their movements that they were illusions too. In fact, the movements of all three images were synchronous; Stave evidently could not handle individuality in multiple cases. But only someone watching all three with that in mind would catch on.
He crossed between his dais and that of the horse. He climbed. It remained eerie, moving invisibly while his apparent self waited behind. He was accustomed to his own magic, but the magic of others brought wonder.
He came to the top. Was this Seqiro, or merely his image?
I am real. Stave will not be able to maintain the images when we conjure away, so there is no point in making one for me. We will depart together.
Darius remembered the complication that had occurred when Nona’s bat was out of Seqiro’s mind range. Nona could reach farther than the horse could, for this was her reality. But her mind reach was limited to her familiar.
Then something else occurred to him. She had just made a child a familiar. Could she make a grown person a familiar too? If so, that might enable her to establish mind contact beyond Seqiro’s range.
If she made me her familiar, we might have considerable range, Seqiro agreed. Now the others are coming close.
Soon they were all there, touching hands beside the horse. “The familiar is within your range?” Darius inquired.
Yes.
“Give me the image.”
The picture of an empty chamber appeared in his mind. This was what the child was seeing. Nona was looking through his eyes, and Seqiro was relaying the image to Darius. Good enough.
Darius brought out his collection of icons: horse, woman, man, man, woman. He removed the last woman; that was Null-Colene. He held the others together in one hand and activated them. He fixed two positions in his mind, represented by two circles: here and there. Then he moved the handful from the first to the second.
There was the familiar wrenching. Their surroundings changed. And now they were all jammed together, in the manner of his handful of icons. Darius found himself plastered to Nona, both of them firm against Seqiro’s solid side, with Stave on the horse’s other side.
“You are the real Nona?” he inquired gravely after he uninvoked the icons.
She laughed. “I hope so. And this is Jud, my four-year-old familiar.”
She turned, and there beside her was the boy, now visible. His eyes were big and not quite focused. Darius realized that he remained under control, which was perhaps just as well.
“Go find us another empty chamber,” Nona told the child. “Up near the ceiling.” The boy walked away.
“So we can conjure through to the central cavern,” Darius said, making sure he had it straight.