Jackson used steaming, fetid poultices to treat a growth on the chieftain's neck. Deeth squatted in the dust outside, beside the pit holding the girl. She hid in shadows and tangled, blood-caked, once-blonde hair. Her shoulders were scabby ruins. A cloud of insects surrounded her. She looked like one of the Nordic pleasure girls, a cheap, mass-market product.
There was a steady demand for Nordics. The Norbon raised them real-time. The Family had a good strain.
The Norbon claimed several excellent pleasure strains. Coffee Mulatto Number Three regularly placed in the shows.
Deeth shrugged. That was another reality, a billion light-years away and a thousand years ago. It was another Deeth who had learned pride in Family achievement.
"You," he grunted.
She did not respond. He kept squatting there. The sun crept across the sky, sliding his shadow across her. He felt her growing curiosity.
She glanced up, saw the rope around his throat. Fear and hope crossed her battered face.
Deeth did not recognize her. Clearly, she knew him. He smiled reassuringly.
He felt the caress of compassion, a gnarly, knobbly sort that had its roots more in classroom training than genuine emotion. He had been taught to cherish and maintain Family property. Abuse and waste were sins. Homeworld was a sometimes harsh, always poor planet. Its values and institutions were geared to conservation.
He could order a thousand slaves killed without a touch of conscience if there was a compelling need. He could not waste one, or destroy it out of malice. He could not abide waste or malice in others.
That was fitting in a Head.
He was the senior Norbon on Prefactlas now. The welfare and conservation of Norbon properties were his responsibility.
"Be patient, girl," he whispered. "Endure. We'll create our own good luck."
He felt foolish. His promise was meaningless. He was powerless to hurt or help. What would his father have done? Or Rhafu?
The same. Endure. Take care of their own.
An animal came howling into the village. He pointed behind him. The empty square filled. Animals hustled their valuables, especially the new slaves, into places of hiding. Bows and spears appeared.
Jackson grabbed Deeth's rope and fled. The old man cursed softly and continuously.
A pair of Marine personnel carriers clanked into the village from the far side. A support ship whickered over, hovered above the square. There were shouts and explosions. They faded as the old man kept putting distance behind them.
Were they looking for him? Deeth wondered. Did they know about his escape? He hoped not. Sant spare him, they would hunt till they got him. Humans were single-minded that way.
They reached the cave. Jackson beat him as though he were responsible for the raid.
He endured.
Months groaned by. Each staggered on like a wounded levitathan.
Deeth spent three-quarters of a Prefactlas year as Jackson's slave. They made weekly trips to the village. The animals had stayed put since the raid. They were afraid to migrate. Stronger tribes might prey upon them.
The slave girl Emily was the only Norbon animal not recovered by the Marines. Deeth visited with her whenever he had a chance. He kept repeating his promise of rescue.
He added the obligation to his hatred. Together they sustained him.
Twenty-Three: 3031 AD
In 3031 the dead did not always stay down.
Human brains were in demand in an exploding cryocyborgic data-processing industry. Personality-scrubbed and inplugged to computation and data-storage systems, a few kilos of human nervous tissue could replace tons of specialized control and volitional systems.
No remedy for degradation in nervous tissue had yet been found. The cryocyborgic environment sometimes accelerated decay.
Nerve life had become the practical span limit for men like Gneaus Storm, who had power, money, and access to the finest rejuvenation and resurrection technology.
The number of brains available for cryocyborging never filled demand. The shortfall was filled in a variety of ways. Old Earth sold the brains of criminals in exchange for hard outworlds currency. A few were available through underworld channels. The bulk came of involuntary salvage.
There were a dozen entrepreneurs who jackaled around the edges of disasters and armed conflicts, snapping up loose bodies to resell organs. Confederation's armed forces often left their lower grade enlisted men where they fell. The soldiers themselves were indifferent to the fate of their corpses, Most were desperate men willing to risk anything to earn a long retirement outside the slums of their birth.
Gneaus Storm's agents dogged the service battlegrounds too, selecting men who had died well. Cryonically preserved, they were revived later and asked to join the Legion.
Most accepted with a childlike gratitude. A rise from a slum to the imaginary glory and high life of the Iron Legion, after having escaped the Reaper by Storm's grace, seemed an elevation to paradise. The holonets called them the Legion of the Dead.
Helga Dee used hundreds of scavenged brains in her business. Only the Dees themselves knew the capacity of her Helga's World "information warehouse." Publicly, Helga admitted only to capabilities in keeping with brain acquisitions that were a matter of public record.
Storm was sure she controlled a capacity twice what she admitted.
Helga's World was a dead planet. The human contagion had touched it only once, to create and occupy the vast installation called Festung Todesangst. The heart of Helga's far-reaching Corporation lay there, deep beneath the surface of that remote rock cold in the claws of entropy, orbiting a dying star. No one went in but family, the dead, and that occasional person the Dees wanted to disappear. No one came out but Dees.
The defenses at Festung Todesangst were legend. They were as quirky and perverse as Helga herself.
Men who went down to Helga's World were like last year's mayflies: gone forever. And Gneaus Storm meant to penetrate that ice-masked hell hole.
He did not expect Helga to welcome him. She hated him with a hatred archetypal in its depth and fury. Michael's children all hated Storm. Each had compelled him to recognize his or her existence and respond. His crime was that he had come out on top every time.
The Dee offspring were worse than their father.
Fearchild had raised his fuss, costing Cassius a hand. Storm and Cassius now kept him confined in a place only they knew. He was a hostage guaranteeing restraint by the others. The Dees were, unfortunately, all irrational, passionate people, apt to forget in heated moments.
Helga had tried to avenge Fearchild by capturing Storm's daughter Valerie and using her as part of Festung Todesangst.
Storm's response had been to capture Helga and deliver her to her own fortress so badly mauled that she had been able to survive only by cyborging in to her own machines. Forever damned to a mechanical half-life, she calculated and brooded and awaited a day when she could requite his cruelties.
Seth-Infinite, too, had given frequent offense. He seemed to be everywhere and nowhere, appearing openly some place like Luna Command, then disappearing before the swiftest hunters closed in. Half the things he did were nose-thumbings at the Storms. Like his father, he was slippery, and he always had several schemes in the air. Like Michael, he did nothing for a simple, linear reason.
It would be a fine, serendipitous thing, Storm reflected, if Cassius surprised Seth-Infinite on The Mountain.
Twenty-Four: 2354-3031 AD
Michael Dee's moments of happiness were tiny islands scattered in a vast sea. His life was a swift one. He had so much in the air that, when he found time to look around, he seemed to have surfaced in an alien universe. In the year of the Shadowline he had nothing but his schemes.