They took Mischa onto the plaza that fronted their dome. It was early: the ceiling lights were still brightening. Mischa wondered what day it was, if she had been in the deprivation cell overnight or longer. It seemed longer. Another of their Family was releasing the two people from the previous day's punishment. Friends waited for one, and helped him away, but the other was still unconscious, and alone. She was shoved off the plaza and left.
Six truncated transplanted stalagmites projected three meters from the deck. Their broken tips held metal rings; the attached thongs were stiff with blood and sweat. The administrator and her assistant lifted Mischa up and tied her. The cool stone pillar angled out a few degrees, partially supporting her. Her feet did not reach the ground.
They hung two other people up beside her. On her left was a man, an adult. On her right, a paid companion, not much older than she, did not resist as they took away his beaded vest and tied his hands. His face was marked with the tracks of tears. A long red scratch cut from the side of his chest down his ribs to his stomach, and under his low kilt. He would probably have to find another job, after this, or work at a much lower grade.
Someone stood at the front of the platform and began to read charges.
People gathered on the lower level to watch. Mischa rested her head against the stone and tried to shut out her perception of their hungry expectant feelings. They were anticipating this morning, reliving other mornings. Most were merchants with self-righteous auras; a few were Family people. The sound of a scuffle interrupted the concentration.
The charge-paper crackled when it was folded.
The older man was first. Mischa had not heard his crime and did not care what it was. His pain and his screams battered at all the defenses she could build. He possessed no anger, only fear, regret, remorse. Mischa neither understood nor shared his emotions; this punishment could not make her feel guilt. It would be guilt at her own survival. If those who punished her did not know that, she did.
The administrator's feelings came through. She enjoyed the power she held in the braided leather. The reactions of the spectators were approval and hate and vicarious pain and sexual excitement. The mixture had a mental odor of slime and decay and death. Mischa fought rising nausea and retreated within herself. The man screamed again and dragged her back, and that was the first time she really heard the whip crack and slash, and slither as it came away. Cool drops of blood spattered the shirt hanging around Mischa's waist, her side, her small breast, her cheek. She tested the thongs but they were tight on her wrists.
The smell of sweat was strong, mixed of exertion and excitement and fear. Mischa heard the man sob as his short punishment was completed. She tensed, involuntarily, and heard a laugh, very soft.
The man's filtered pain had not prepared her. The whip cut her back almost to the bone, crushed her against the rock, and rammed the breath out of her. She tried to inhale. The gasp was a shudder. The whip fell again. Mischa clenched her teeth. The blood-crusted stone pillar rasped at her forehead and her fingernails dug into her palms, but the sensations grew peripheral when she tried to concentrate on them. The lash always brought
her back.
The administrator gave her twenty, and five for insolence, and five for attempted escape. She was an expert. She knew the timing so the pain did not black Mischa out; exactly the timing that could lure Mischa into believing that she had miscounted, that every one was the last.
Just before Mischa did lose consciousness, when the punishment was finished, she heard quiet, beautiful, horrible laughter.
Chapter 4
Center shut down its radar beacons during the winter, for no one ever landed in the storms. This Subtwo knew, and planned for. The ship's instruments traced out the wide, flat desert, the high mountain ranges bracketing it, and the single anomalous flat-topped peak jutting from its dark expanse. Echoes and reflections hinted at unusual geology. Subtwo increased the magnification until the three-dimensional image of the peak filled his screens and he could see the tiny plot of the blockhouse off to one side. He was hypersensitively aware of everything in the control room of his ship, everything and everyone, all human-machine and human-human interfaces, his pseudosib next to him quite prepared to take over, the other people in the control room almost as superfluous as the old navigator's despondent young friend. All the instruments reported audibly, each on a different frequency: Subtwo could hear changes more quickly than his assistants could report them. But the crew was occasionally useful, and Subtwo did not begrudge letting them perform what they saw to be their tasks. Subtwo tolerated the trappings of leadership. He often thought Subone enjoyed them.
Subtwo's hands and feet moved against controls, his tongue and teeth guided pressure-sensitive switches, his eyes directed the functioning of photoelectric cells, as the ship fell through the upper atmosphere and began to decelerate. Wrapped in the framework of the control cocoon, Subtwo felt very nearly happy. All his senses were in use; no perception of waste impinged on his sensibilities. He was fulfilled.
The voices behind him whispered and exclaimed: his raiders lay in their acceleration couches and stared out the observation ports, watching the wisps of cloud as they whipped past the ship. The clouds thickened as the ship slowed, growing darker until the sunlight was cut off, and the only illumination came from within the craft, shining out against swirling iridescent grains. They could hear the particles scraping and skittering along the metal skin; the sound was of a thousand tiny fingernails against dry slate. Subtwo silenced the voices by allowing the ship a single shudder in the wind, and immediately regretted it, for he could pilot in worse conditions than this; he did not want his skill doubted by even the least experienced of his people. Still, his action produced the proper reaction, and the control room remained silent as Subtwo let the image of the ship sink toward the image of the plateau, very near the blockhouse. His instruments musically told him the characteristics of the ship and its surroundings, atmosphere and wind and approaching surface, engines, fuel, and personnel. The harmonics sang of earth, air, fire, water.
The ship touched and settled, powered down, vibrated at a frequency above that which most human ears could detect. But Subtwo heard it.
A brief hesitation, like a tribute to gods: do not rejoice too quickly. Then a quick laugh and the voices again, and a scatter of applause. That, not the hesitation, was for Subtwo. He thought all the people who followed him quite mad.
"A fine landing," Subone said. Subtwo saw that he had never integrated himself into the secondary controls, he extricated himself so quickly.
"Your trust is flattering."
"You seemed to want to bring the ship down yourself," Subone said, "so I let you."
Subtwo's absorption in the landing had protected him from Subone's annoyance, but he felt it now. It made him guilty and contrite. "Did you want to do it? I didn't realize—"
"Never mind. Let's go in."
Now that he had apologized, Subtwo realized that an apology had been unnecessary. Time and again he had asked Subone to communicate his wishes verbally, normally, instead of relying on the artificial biomechanical link between them. The link was no longer dependable, for which Subtwo was glad: he only wished it would finish dying and dissolve completely. Something must be wrong: he and Subone should have been free of one another long before this. But as they remained, they would always be too concerned each with the other; they would continue to have difficulty dealing with ordinary human beings, who could not and would never know automatically what another person was thinking. Something must be wrong: at times, Subtwo thought he could almost feel the link, implanted in the primitive part of his midbrain, growing, not dissolving, binding him inexorably to Subone. But he knew that was a delusion.