The light alternately buzzed and whined as it flickered. It might snap off at any moment, leaving them in darkness as, behind, the sound of screams, sobs, and broken pleas carried in past the woven curtain.
What if the light went out? Rose bit a hand, stifling a scream. She hadn't been in darkness for months.
This was how the night-bound lived, shrouded in twilight. Or at least that's what Akvir said. That's what they were escaping.
Saying nothing, the old woman closed up the back of Doctor Baby Jesus and dropped the screwdriver into a pocket in her faded skirt. She examined Rose as might a clinician, scrutinizing her faults and blemishes. Rose stared back as tears welled in her eyes and spilled because of the pain in her knees, but she didn't cry out. She kept biting her hand. Maybe, possibly, they hadn't noticed her run in here. Maybe.
In this drawn-out pause, the shadowy depths of the tiny chamber came slowly clear, walls revealed, holding a few treasures: a photo of Doctor Baby Jesus stuck to one wall next to a larger photo showing a small girl lying in a sick bed clutching the doll itself, or a different doll that looked exactly the same. A cross with a man nailed to it, a far smaller version of the one in the church, was affixed to the wall above the cot. Half the wall between shelf and corner was taken up by a huge, gaudy low-tech publicity poster. Its 3-D and sense-sound properties were obviously long since defunct, but the depth-enhanced color images still dazzled, even in such a dim room.
Especially in such a dim room.
Her father's face stared at her, bearing the famous ironic, iconic half smile from the role that had made him famous across ten star systems: the ill-fated romantic lead in Empire of Grass. He had ripped a hole in the heart of the universe-handsome, commanding, sensitive, strong, driven, passionate. Doomed but never defeated. Glorious. Blazing.
"Daddy," she whimpered, staring up at him. He would save her, if he knew. She blinked hard. The sim-screen wavered and, after a snowy pause, snapped into clear focus.
The curtain swept aside and the commander clattered down the three wooden steps. One creaked at his weight. He slid the barrel up her spine and allowed it to rest against her right shoulder blade.
"Ya lo veo!" cried the old woman, looking from Rose to the poster and back to Rose. She began to talk rapidly, gesticulating. When the commander said nothing, did not even move his gun from against Rose's back, she clucked like a hen shooing feckless chicks out of the way and scurried over to take Rose's hands in hers.
"Su padre? Si, menina?" Your father? Yes?
Then she turned on him again with a flood of scolding. The rapid-fire lecture continued as the commander slowly backed up the stairs like a man retreating from a rabid dog.
"What hind of fool are you, Marcos, not to recognize this girl as the child of El Sol? Have you no hind of intelligence in your grand organization, that it comes to an imprisoned old woman like me-" She spoke so quickly that the translation program had trouble keeping up. "… que ve las telenovelas y los canales de chismes… who watches the soap operas and the channels of gossip [alternate option] entertainment channels to tell you that you should have known that more people would be on that ship than the children of businessmen?"
The old woman finished with a dignified glare at her compatriot. "This girl will not be harmed."
"That one?" He indicated the actor, then Rose. "This child? With the marked face? How is it possible? She carries this blot." He touched his own cheek, as if in echo of the stain on hers. "The children of the rich do not have these things."
"God's will is not ours to question," she answered.
He shrugged the strap of his scatter gun to settle it more comfortably on his shoulders. "Look at her. Even to look past the mark, she is not so handsome as El Sol."
"No one is as handsome as my father," retorted Rose fiercely, although it was difficult to focus on the poster since the image blended with the words scrolling across the bottom of her sim-screen.
They both looked at her.
"Ah." Seсora Maria waved a hand in front of Rose's face. Her seamed and spotted palm cut back and forth through the sim-screen. Swallowing bile, reeling from the disrupted image, Rose blinked off the screen.
"Imbйcil! Que estabas pensando? Esta niсa, de semejante familial For supuesto que lleva implantada la pantalla de simula-cion. Ahora ya ha entendido cada palabra que has dicho, tu y los ostros brutos!"
Without effort, she turned her anger off, as with a switch, and presented a kindly face to Rose, speaking Standard. "For favor, no use the seem… What it is you call this thing?"
"Sim-screen."
"Si. Gracias."
The seсora looked up at the commander and let loose such a stream of invective that he shrank back against the curtain momentarily, but only to gather strength before he began arguing with her. Their voices filled the chamber; Rose covered her ears with her hands. Mercifully, the itching had subsided completely. She dared not blink the screen back on, so she cowered between them as they argued fiercely over her head. One of the young toughs stuck his head in but retreated as the seсora turned her scolding on him.
Through it all, her father watched, half amused, half ready to take action, but frozen. It was only his image, and his image could not help her.
In the church, the screaming had subsided and now Rose heard whimpering and weeping as orders were given.
"Go! Go!"
"But where-!" The slap of a gun against flesh was followed by a bruised yelp, a gasp, a sob, a curse-four different voices.
"Go!"
Shuffling, sobs, a crack of laughter from one of the guards; these noises receded until they were lost to her ears. The Sun-seekers had been taken away.
"Are you going to kill them?" she whispered.
They broke off their argument, the commander frowning at her, the seсora sighing.
"We no kill-we do not kill." The seсora spoke deliberately, careful over her choice of words. "They bring us better money if the parents buy them from us."
"But kidnappers always get caught in the end."
The commander laughed. "Fatalism is the only rational world-view," he agreed.
"In the stories, it may be so, that these ones are always caught," continued the seсora. "We take a lesson, a borrowing, from our own history, but this thing called ransom we use for a different purpose than the ones who stole the children in the old days."
"What purpose?" Rose demanded. She had gone beyond worrying about cliches. "I see the poverty you live in. Are you revolting against the inequality of League economics? Is this a protest? Will you use the array to help poor people?"
The commander's sarcastic laugh humiliated her, but the seсora smiled in such a gentle, world-weary way that Rose suddenly felt lower than a worm.
"Hija, I am the inventor of one of the protocols used in this solar array that powers the ship you children voyage on. These protocols were stolen from me and my company by operatives of Surbrent-Xia. In much this same way as we steal it back, but perhaps not with such drama." She gestured toward the poster and the stunningly handsome blond man who stared out at them, promising dreams, justice, excitement, violence, and fulfillment. "No beautiful hero comes to save me. The law listens not to my protests. Surbrent-Xia falsifies their trail. They lay certain traps for me, and so the corporation and patent laws convict me, and I am dropped into the prison. There I sit many years while they profit from what I helped create. All these years I plot my revenge, just like in this story, The Count of Monte Cristo, no? Was not your father starring in this role a few years ago? So now we have the array in our hands. I leave-have left-markers in my work. Like this stain upon your cheek, those markers identify what is mine. With these markers, no one can mistake it otherwise. With this proof-"