'That's it,' he said. 'I've given you two pints of synthetic blood so you shouldn't experience too much dizziness or nausea. The clamp and probe holes may be a bit sore, but they will quickly heal.'
'Then you can take the blocker off,' Jarvellis said.
'Not until I'm sure that myself and Jeth are utterly safe,' he replied.
'You're going to keep me like this until the investigators get here?'
Tull shook his head. 'I told you we are not uncivilized.'
Jarvellis felt herself drifting from the frame. Tull was propelling her to the door.
'It won't take me long to run a diagnostic and initiate another dish. In fact our transceiver will be back on line within the hour. It may take some time for the investigators to get here. For a ship blown in orbit with planar explosives, I should think we'll get someone from Earth. Nerve-blocking, for any length of time, can become a very unpleasant experience. There is also the chance that it might damage the innocent life you carry.'
He had her to the door now, and then through it. To her right the little robot had appeared and was swinging along with her.
'Are you sure about this?' she heard Jeth saying, but she could not see Tull's wife.
'Oh, I'm sure. Laser burns through her suit, planar explosives… we know what that means,' said Tull.
Jarvellis wondered what he would say if she told him how she had actually received the laser burn. Best not -he might keep her blocked for her own safety, and the safety of that 'innocent life', rather than for that of himself and his wife.
Soon Tull had her in the elevator and had pushed her to what would be the floor in the outer ring. Now she could see that Jeth was holding a bundle of clothing and a bag filled with blocky items. The Outlinker pressed these down beside her.
Tull said, 'When you reach the outer ring, Sam will remove your blocker. After that all the elevators will be shut down. Now, there are service tubes you could find to get back here, but be aware that, should you try that, we will immediately leave the station, so you'll achieve nothing.'
Jeth said, 'Here's food and clothing.' She pointed to these items and turned away guiltily.
'I wouldn't have hurt you,' said Jarvellis. 'I've never hurt anyone.'
'Yes,' said Tull, stepping back with his wife, then closing the elevator door on her.
Jarvellis considered what she had just said. It was true: personally she had never inflicted injury on anyone. What concern was it of hers what people did with the weapons she smuggled? They were the criminals. She was just trying to make a decent profit. That was all right, wasn't it?
Weight returned and pulled her head down onto the worn decking. The elevator door slid open and, as it did so, feeling returned to her body. Jarvellis sat upright and looked down at Sam. The little robot held the nerve-blocker in one three-fingered claw. It held it up above itself as if frightened she was going to hit it and so was demonstrating how it had helped her. She looked to the bundle of clothes and the food. The latter was out of the question at the present. The one-quarter G that dispelled space sickness was pulling at and twisting those places where she had been cell-welded, and where the clamps and probes had been pulled out. She now effectively felt as if someone had methodically pinched over her skin with a pair of pliers. She reached for the clothing: disposable underwear and deck shoes, a soft cloth shirt and padded trousers. With hands that did not seem to have any grip in them she slowly dressed herself. Once this was done she felt better, and began to think what the future might hold for her. Her prospects did not seem much better than they had done outside. Now though, she was beginning to feel hope. Maybe John was not dead yet. Maybe, even if he was, she could get to that bastard Pelter. Maybe she could live.
'Please take the bag and step out of the elevator, Captain,' said Tull over an intercom.
Jarvellis did as she was told, faintly amused that the intercom had crackled like the one in the Lyric, only this intercom crackle was genuine.
'The cabins to your left you will find comfortable. We maintain them for visitors from the surface.'
She headed in that direction, wondering where Tull might have positioned pinhead cameras, then it occurred to her that the EM pulse might have knocked those out as well. Any systems on the outer ring of the station, unprotected by its bulk, would have gone down, and the little cameras were prone to do so. Then again, maybe there were no cameras. She was assuming he might be as paranoid as herself. She stopped at a door and pressed one of the two square buttons beside it. A buzzer sounded inside. She pressed the other button and the door slid open. At the threshold she paused; she might well be walking willingly into her own prison. She shook her head and stepped back. When the door closed again, she squatted down and opened the bag.
It contained fresh fruit, probably from the station's hydroponics, film-wrapped sandwiches with some sort of meat filling, even a small bottle of a wine that bore the name 'Passion' on its label. As Jarvellis looked up from the bag, it occurred to her that she would not remember the Outlinkers' generosity. After ECS tried her for arms smuggling, and then mind-wiped her, she would remember nothing. She'd be a pregnant mother operating on instinct: a mere animal until they downloaded a personality into her, and - whether construct or real -that personality would never be her own. She closed the bag, stood up, and began walking. In the cabin she could just hear Tull's voice speaking over the intercom. No cameras, then. She knew that the Oudinkers would have some sort of AG shuttle at the centre of the station for their own use. What she now wondered was if any of the station's original shuttles remained in this outer ring.
Dawn flung greenhouse light across the land. It seemed, with this coloration to the light, that the temperature should be high. But the day began wintry and showed no sign of changing as it advanced. Viewed from above, the ruins had the appearance of an impact site in the forest of blue oaks and chequer trees, and perhaps at one time that was precisely what this had been. The two bikes skimmed over crumbling buildings towards the central ring of the broken dome. They came in to land at the edge of the dome, where there was just enough room to fit the sky-bikes close together on apparently firm ground.
Donning their helmets, the four advanced through the wreckage, their boots crunching on broken glass and heat-splintered plascrete. All around, old wiring and the remnants of computer systems were sinking into decay.
Most surfaces were covered with grey and yellow lichens. This ruin could have been thousands of years old, rather than the few hundred it actually was. Soon all four stood at the rim of the dark shaft of one of the underground silos.
Cormac gazed into that dark and contemplated what these ruins meant. This is what happened when worlds seceded from the Polity. This is what happened when base humanity tried to govern itself.
'Cormac,' came Mika's voice over his comunit. 'The dracomen just grabbed the AGC. They're coming your way'
'Shit!'
Cormac looked up at the sky, but could see no craft. What was Dragon up to? What were the dracomen up to? He was tempted to put a hold on the mission until he found out, but, after thinking about the chances of getting some answers out of the dracomen, he decided to go on.
'Thorn, put a shot down there and see what stirs.'
Thorn leant over the edge and fired. The purple flash disclosed the depth of the silo before rubble exploded from it on a hot flash. Something began screeching in the ruins behind them and they turned to see a couple of corvine birds flap raggedly into the sky. Thorn tracked their course for a moment, and then turned back to the silo. The rest of them turned with him and, as smoking stones rained down, they waited expectandy.