Then I began stuffing the sack - a loaf of bread, sunflower seeds, three apples, a wedge of hard cheese, a roll of crackers. What went in didn't matter ... Foerga had told me to fill it, and I did.
I eased toward the back door and stepped into the rear garden. 'No! You will not!'
At Foerga's yell I ran along the side of the house, slipping up to the edge of the front hedge.
Only a single free-run glider rested by the gate, and Wolyd and Trefor, along with a single Shraddan, stood beside it. Another glider was at the end of the lane, but even with my sharpened vision, I could not discern who rode within, although I did see one dun-red uniform.
Foerga blocked the gate. You just want an excuse to kill him.' She held a staff, an exercise wand, and the Shraddan held his right wrist.
'He's a demon and she is, too!' Wolyd lifted his shimmering gun, turning it toward her.
Foerga flipped the staff into a thrust toward him.
Sssssss ...
With the power of the guns, Foerga convulsed, the staff falling, clattering on the hard green ceramic tiles of the walk outside the gate. They kept pulsing the guns, and I realized they wouldn't stop, not until she died.
I dropped the rucksack and moved faster than I had thought possible, past the hedge and up behind the mad truffler, arms and legs striking, misusing the art of defense.
I felt Wolyd's neck crack. At least he would not poison any more Dzin masters.
Trefor seemed to move in slow motion, too slow, and I crushed his neck with my elbow.
The broken-wristed Shraddan ran back toward the other gliders, yelling, 'The demon is loose! ... demon loose!'
I bent down and cradled Foerga, black hair spreading across my arms, but it was too late. Her eyes were blank, and her body limp.
Behind me, the whistling whirr of the gliders rose.
I wanted to stay, but then Foerga's last effort would have been worth nothing. The rucksack -1 had to have food, any food. I groped for the canvas and came up with it.
The whining slowed, then grew louder.
Eyes nearly blind, rucksack dangling from one hand, I began to run. Away from the house of a master of Dzin and toward the uncertain future of a demon, death at my back.
15
One can never conclusively prove an idea, only disprove it.
For days, interrupted periodically by gently frustrating conversations with Cerrelle, sleep, and dreams of Foerga and pursuing gliders and dun-red-coated Shraddans, my head swam or spun with the so-called background knowledge imparted through nanopills and sprays. Even when I lay down upon the silklike sheets of the bed, I felt as if my head and my entire body were bursting, like my very soul had been crammed with years of instructions by masters. But there wasn't any insight, no interpretation, just fact upon fact, image upon image, until my very self seemed ready to drown in information.
Some of the images were vivid - like self-assembling nucleonic weapons that destroyed much of the original coastline of ancient Dorcha. Others were prosaic - the basic idea of the food replicator. Others were mathematical - why would I ever need to calculate relative orbital mechanics? I thought that was what that series was about, but wasn't sure, because it had other math that applied to something called overspace, and how could there be something above real space? I thought there might be, but it wouldn't be practical if one couldn't get there, and the math didn't make sense. It seemed logical, but so had ancient speculations that the world was flat or that all other worlds held life.
Yet Cerrelle insisted everything was just background.
You know all of this?' I asked her at another lunch in the same small dining area.
The green eyes glinted again in the expression I had come to see as a combination of warmth, wistfulness, frustration, and, I suspected, anger. 'Much more.'
'How can there be overspace?' I asked. 'And if there is, how can one get to it? And of what use is it?'
'Overspace exists, and we use it for interstellar transport. There are special ships ... you have that background. Why do you ask me what you know?'
'Because it doesn't make sense.'
'It doesn't make sense to you because it's outside of your
Dzin background.' She set down her glass of lemon drink and looked at me. 'Now that you know the basics, and when I talk to you and you don't answer, it's because of stubbornness, willful ignorance, or something other than lack of knowledge.' She paused. Tou're bright. The tests show that. Why are you so uncooperative? Was there a big wall you had to climb, Tyndel? Did anyone say you couldn't seek refuge here?'
'A barrier in the mind is as real as one in stone.'
'I'll accept that' She nodded. 'If you can tell me what barrier so that you can work on it.'
I shook my head. How could I say I was angry she was alive and Foerga was dead? Or that I resented her probing and pushing and pressing? Or that I hated the arrogant superiority that seemed to infuse all of Rykasha?
A momentary expression of sadness crossed her face, and it was replaced with an equally vanishing look of anger before she sighed. 'I'm sorry. It is hard for you. Sometimes, I forget. Let's try it another way. How did you end up getting infected?'
'Some daft truffler caught me off-guard, stunned me with a demon gun, and somehow infected me with something that multiplied my strength and endurance and sharpened my vision - your original nanites, I gather. That qualified me as a demon.' I glanced at my bare wrist. 'At least it extinguished the yin in my passlet.'
'The passlets measure certain body fields in reverse - fairly ingenious for mite technology. We can duplicate them and manipulate them, of course.'
'Mite technology ... mite stupidity ... why do you call non-demons mites?'
The green-eyed redhead actually looked down at the table ... with an expression somewhere between guilt and embarrassment.
I waited.
'It's a derogatory term. Short for termites.'
'You think of us as low-level social insects?' My voice rose.
You aren't one of them anymore, and you never will be. The tests would indicate you probably never were, not in mental outlook. And yes, old-style human beings aren't much more than technologically gifted social insects. As a group, they aren't any more able than termites to surmount their inability to overcome instinctual hardwiring. How many mite geniuses have been killed or stifled or exiled because they didn't fit the social norm?'
My mouth opened and closed.
'How many unwanted and unneeded children have been born and killed over the millennia? How many prophets have claimed to represent one deity or another with no proof, no evidence, except demonstration of powers available to every human being? And how many mites have swallowed the words of those prophets? Is that rationality or free intelligence?'
'Dzin holds society together.' I forced myself to speak slowly.
'I didn't say it didn't.' She took a swallow of her drink. 'Instinct holds a termite colony together, instinct and accepted social practices. Dzin is a way of limiting human social practices and abilities to ensure that human beings don't destroy society and themselves. It's a declaration of failure. It says that humans cannot reach their full intellectual and physical potential without becoming a danger to themselves and to their society. So Dzin preaches and enforces restraint.'
'Of course it does. If someone eats too much, and there isn't enough food, others will starve. If someone wants to build weapons and use them on others, others suffer. Restraint is necessary in any human society.' Was Cerrelle blind? Were the demons that different?