Makwahkik held up four fingers, then pointed south. He clapped his hands.
The sound made Shadith jump, then gasp; the crack of the pellet guns came amplified and echoing up the pit. Four prisoners fell.
"One has learned your lesson, Singer," Makwahkik said. "Tomorrow it will be eight." He clapped his hands again and the kanaweh began herding the prisoners out of the pit. "The next day ten. You can stop it any time."
WATCHER 9
"One Sing "Tom He c the
"One Sing "Tom He c the
"One has learned your lesson, Singer," Makwahkik said. "Tomorrow it will be eight." He clapped his hands again and the kanaweh began herding the
Ginbiryol Seyirshi stroked the simi and smiled with contentment as the scene played out. He was almost regretting the need to ash the world. This was better. Much better. Experience counted, after all. Yes. Makwahkik was handling her very well indeed. And I was right about that streetsinger, she will be more important than ever if I read him correctly. We Praise again this night. Yes. Yesss.
He turned his head. Ajeri Kilavez was playing with her sensorpad, readjusting the EYE transmissions. "I am aware, Ajeri tiszt, how difficult it was to shift the EYEs, all those EYEs, without losing important scenes. Good work, Pilot."
"Thank you, sir."
He cleared his throat. "Puk is?"
"I think we can untie him tomorrow."
"Not tonight?"
"Better not."
"Hmm." Ginbiryol swallowed his disappointment without much difficulty, it was the tiniest of flaws in his vast and increasing happiness. He went back to studying the Cells, one hand stroking the simi, the other moving over the test:transfer sensors of the pathecorder outlet. Chapter 19. Somehow, someway, I'm going to get out of this
The room was a cube, covered floor, ceiling, walls with institutional gray enamel, so many layers of paint the thickness was tangible like an ancient dirty hide pulled over the stone. The entrance was a rectangle of gray-painted steel with a slot waist-high for mealtrays and a head-high covered grill for looking in at whoever occupied the room; a second door led into a smaller room with a toilet and shower, washbasin, and mirror. A three-layer bunk bed was shoved into the corner opposite that door. There were two battered wooden chairs pushed against a wall, a table and an hassock out in the middle of the floor. In a futile attempt to liven what was essentially a prison cell, some hopeful soul had brought in rugs with geometric patterns in bright primary colors and scattered them about and had tucked matching coverlets over the bunk beds. There was no window, air and light came through a grill up where the walls met the ceiling.
Shadith pulled a hand across her mouth, looked at it, then at Miowee. "Don't be more stupid than you have to. Killing yourself won't change anything. He'll just bring another lot in here and hold them over our heads."
"So I should let you corrupt me when he couldn't?"
"Corrupt? Sar! Look, dead, you're dead, he goes on. That seem like a good trade?"
"Dead he can't use me. Dead he can't suck me into his rot."
"If you're set on it, take him with you. At least it wouldn't be a total wipe."
Miowee stared at her, laughed. "You're something else, you really are."
"Well, it's not my world." She frowned, glanced at the ceiling, not seeing the stains crawling over the gray paint, seeing Ginny's Bridge instead. She twitched her shoulders, folded her arms across her chest, hugging herself. "And it won't be yours much longer," she burst out. "Any of yours, not even him."
"What?" Miowee lifted the patch, wiped at the scarred socket beneath it. She fitted it back, dropped her hand to her lap. "What you 'on about, girl?"
Second thoughts chased each other round and round in Shadith's head, she suspected Makwahkik had arranged to overhear whatever passed between her and Miowee and she wasn't happy about whispering her secrets in that yellow-eyed jakal's ear. "I wonder if weasel-face is listening now?" She snorted. It seemed suddenly hilarious that there might be another nose snooping into her business. Concentric shells of panting voyeurs with old Shadow sitting mouse in the middle.
Miowee sniffed, wriggled backward on the lowest bunk until she was leaning against the wall. "Someone out there listening, or electronics? And anyway, what's it matter?"
"Hmm." Shadith dropped onto the hassock, sat with one foot tucked under her thigh. After a minute, she smiled. "Serve him right if he is."
"This conversation stopped making sense 'bout three or four sentences back."
"That's because I've left things out."
"So put them in."
"Why not. There's a thing with a clutch of names, Planetbuster, Worldbanger, maybe just Buster or Banger, Nutcracker, Eggpeeler, you get the idea, right? Right. Part bomb, part… something else-very else. Weird. Anyway, it goes boom and instead of a world, you've got rubble."
"You telling me the Mahk Hen has one of those?"
"Na, and he wouldn't use it if he did. He's not terminally stupid, just corrupt-to use your favorite word." She scratched at her knee, shook her head as Miowee twisted her face into a comic grimace. "All right, all light, I'll stop wuffing. I've lied so much I doubt if I can ever remember the truth, but here goes. This is a play. A drama. All you Kiskaids are actors in it, you turn and twist for the amusement of an audience you'll never see, your lives and your deaths, every emotion you feel, every joy, every agony…" slapping her hand on her knee she counted out the words, ".. all your pains and pleasures, all of it is being recorded for clots with too much money and a dearth of brain cells, slimy little perverts who get off on other's people's pain and torment." She drew her mouth down, shook her head. "Sorry about that lurid bit, call it lack of editing." She sighed, shook her head again as she saw Miowee's face go blank with rejection. "Listen, don't turn me off yet. We were brought here, my friends and I, to make your passions more intense and your suffering worse. Not by our choice, believe me on that if nothing else. The Director of this drama did all the deciding, he reached out and took us and dumped us here. We weren't supposed to know what was happening or why, but he slipped up there. I'll explain later, if you really want to know. You can see why he lighted on the Ciocan and his beasts, impressive, yes? And the way you Kiskaids feel about reptiles had to play some part in why he chose ICikun for the Dancer. Me, I'm a music student. With baaad luck." She reached inside her shirt and rubbed carefully around the wound, it helped the itch a little.
"You expect me to accept this, this fantasy?"
"Expect? Accept what you want. Believe what you want. Maybe I'm lying, though what the point would be, I don't know. It's up to you if you want to play the fool. If not, open your ears. Asteplikota told me about the plague that started all this, how it popped up out of nowhere and vanished into nowhere. He did it, him sitting up there now watching us." She jerked a thumb at the ceiling. "Ginbiryol Seyirshi. Ginny the Creep in his perambulating, poison machine. It was him planted plague on you. Yeh. He wanted a Pakoseo Year and that was the fastest and surest way to get it. Oh, it's just a guess, I admit that, but if I were you, I wouldn't bet against it."
Miowee shook her head. "I don't believe it. Do you know how many people died?"
"Not his people. Besides, that's what he wants, people dying, he feeds on that dying, sucks up the agony to pleasure his customers."
"I… look, if it was for power or revenge, maybe… but for a picture show?"
"I was told his picture shows bring him… mmm, consider the worth of everthing produced on this world for… say five years since you don't have a lot of hi-tech here, then multiply that by a thousand." Shadith spread her hands. "Got it? No? Don't blame you, it's one of those numbers that's too big to make sense."