Except for his daily visits to the hold where he pumped high-energy concentrates into the prisoners and renewed the drugs that kept them unaware of where they were and what was happening to them, Puk the Lute stayed in his quarters, wandering through the labyrinths of his mind with the help of a small pharmacopoeia of pidramins. After watching him sweat and make faces for a while, Shadith sighed and left hint to it. Because his drug-fantasies were probably the most interesting things happening on the ship, she wished for a moment or two that she could take a walk through them, wished that she were one of those rare full range telepathy the universe threw up to make life a bitch for students of psi who swore that true telepathy was a phantasm created from the yearning of the powerless for an ultimate kind of power. But she wasn't and she couldn't, so she went on searching for some other distraction to boot her out of her growing lethargy.
The three mercs knew each other too well, they'd exhausted the entertainment in old exploits; whenever one started up a story the others had heard too many times before, they stopped him with howls and thumps. The little bit they did talk, it was about women. She listened now and then, but generally tuned out after a short sample, either bored to the point of ossification or furious to the point of indigestion. She went back a number of times, hoping to catch them speculating on the purpose of this expedition, but even among themselves they didn't discuss the affairs of their employer. Their reticence was either principle or prudence or both (knowing old double-knotter Ginny like they must, they had to suspect their quarters were EYEd). So they spent their time bragging about their women, going over their equipment, exercising almost as fanatically as Ajeri, reading or sleeping. She got some amusement out of inspecting their equipment, what the well-dressed merc was wearing these days, but somewhere around the twentieth time she watched a merc break down and polish his needier, the last motes of interest were wiped away with the last infinitesimal motes of dust.
Engine crew were a pair of Sikkul Paem doublets; they were passing the insplit rooted out and contemplating whatever they used for a navel, so motionless in their dirt beds they might have been still-life holos.
Nothing. Nothing. NOTHING.
Gray.
Gray entered her mind and soul; gray sucked the life out of her. It wasn't something new or wholly unex-pected; it'd happened to her once before-last year when she was rattling about Wolff wondering what she was going to do with her life. Aleytys recognized her state near its onset and acted immediately; without bothering to ask her consent, she kicked Shadith's feet from under her, knelt on her and set her healer's hands to work, readjusting Shadith's metabolism, then she shoved her into a flitter and dropped her in the middle of the Wildlands to live or die as she chose. Shadith discovered she wasn't ready to die yet; besides, she was too irritated with Aleytys to give her the satisfaction. That irritation and the struggle to survive jolted her loose from the gray doldrums; it was heart massage in every sense of the word.
There was no one to jolt her now.
On the forty-ninth day out from the Spotchals Transfer Station she stopped eating. There was no purpose behind it. She simply lacked the energy and the will to leave the cot. She turned her face to the wall and began shutting down.
She woke in the sickbay with Bossman standing over her, looking annoyed.
"What did you think you were doing, child?"
Weak tears gathered in her eyes and spilled over. She stared at him without trying to answer. Dimly she remembered that she wasn't supposed to know this face. "Who're you?" she said finally, her voice a dry-leaf whisper.
"That is not important. Answer the question, please."
"Your voice…" She closed her eyes. "Nothing."
"That is not an adequate response. What do, you mean?" She turned her head away. How could she explain when she didn't understand it herself?
"You had food, a comfortable bed, facilities for washing and elimination. Everything necessary."
Resentment giving her a spurious energy, Shadith kept her eyes closed and jeered silently at him. Stupid old Wahw! Don't know ass from eathole.
"What is wrong with you, child?"
Shadith kept a tight hold on her pride and said nothing. Her mind told her it was stupid, but her body got satisfaction out of silence. She went with, her body.
Ajeri snorted. She came swiftly around the couch, caught Shadith by the shoulders and shook the breath out of her; all that exercising had given the Pilot a tigerish strength which she didn't bother trying to con trol. "Stop sulking, brat. Act like a baby and you be treated like one." She threw Shadith away from her. "Get your little mouth in gear, or I give you a spanking you won't forget."
Rage exploding through her, struggling to retrieve her self-control, Shadith lay sprawled and panting where Ajeri had flung her. Careful, Shadow. That miserable ooj, that creeping bakbook. Wait, you remember wait? That braindead pervert, that… she… they… You can't do anything now. Not in the insplit. And not tied to this stupid cot. Can't do shit till we get where we're going. Fool them, pull their rotten strings and make the bastards dance.
She crammed herself back into the role of child and let the child's words pour out: "I'm going crazy in that coffin. I need something to do. Give me my harp. Give me something bright to look at, red or blue or green or yellow, all that gray turns me moldy. Mold growing on my bones, mold growing over my eyes and on my tongue. I'll rot if I have to look at all that gray much longer. And fix the light so I can read. Give me books, magazines. Something to pass the time. Talk to me. What harm would that do you? You promised to protect me. You're killing me. Why can't you understand that?"
He rubbed his stick thumb up and down his bony chin as he chewed over what she'd said; the harsh toplight shadowed his eyes and deepened the lines in his face, put a shine on the end of his long nose. There was less expression on his naked face than there'd been on the flesh mask he'd worn before.
Ajeri stood behind him, watching skeptically, not wholly buying the innocent bit. She had more… call it connection… with others than he did, which meant that right now she was more dangerous than he was. Unless he got one of his insight flashes which the gods forbid.
He cleared his throat, said mildly, "I put you there for your protection, child, for your purity. You were distressed by the, advances of that guard, I did not wish you to fear similar treatment here."
Shadith told herself she was too tired to keep gnawing at her resentments. She pushed the hair off her face, looked vaguely around, then sat up. "I'm not afraid of men, I just don't want to be raped." She shrugged. "Who does? I mean, it's not the sort of thing a girl dreams about when she becomes marriageable."
He nodded. "I see. You will go back to where you were, no, be quiet and listen. I have heard you. Some of what you have said will be done. Not all, you must not expect that." He produced a smile like a wince. "Come," he held out his hand, waited for her to take it. "Be patient with us. We are not very experienced with children."
"Well, now you know what happens." She slid off the couch and let him lead her from the chamber.
Twenty minutes after Shadith walked into her cell, the dim grayness changed, brightened all over, while a spot-a reading light-focused on the pillow end of the cot. She felt herself expanding like a paper flowerbud dropped in water. She laughed, clapped her hands. "Better better better," she caroled. "Oh, betttterrr."
An hour later the chimes bonged, the slot slid open. Instead of food, there were six magazine paks and a reader on the tray.
Ajeri stood in the doorway, a dark blue blanket draped over her arm, Shadith's harpcase hanging at her side. "You wanted it, you got it, brat. Hope you satisfied because you an't getting any more." She dumped the blanket on the floor, slid her arm from the strap and set the harpcase on the blanket, then she stepped back and the door slid closed.