“You don’t have to coerce me,” Bryan said testily.
“Don’t misunderstand!” Bormol appeared pained. He gestured at the gaudy throng, now leading the other prisoners inside with every evidence of good fellowship. “Are your friends being coerced? The torc isn’t a symbol of bondage but of union.”
Bryan felt a surge of anger and dreadful weariness erupt in him. His voice remained calm. “I know you mean well. But there are many of us humans, one might say most of us in my world of the future, most of the normal members of humanity, who would rather die than submit to your torc. In spite of all its consolations. Now you must excuse me. I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I’m not up to any learned discussions right now. I’d like to go to bed.”
Bormol bowed his head. One of the human servants came running up with Bryan’s pack. “We will meet again in the capital. I hope you will have modified your harsh opinion of us by then, Bryan… This is Joe-Don, who will take you to a retiring room at once. Rest well.”
Bormol and Creyn glided away. Almost everyone else had already left the courtyard, “Right this way, sir,” Joe-Don said, his breezy aplomb equal to that of a bell-man in one of the Old World’s posher hostelries. “We’ve got a nice room ready for you. But too bad you’ll miss the party.”
They went off into corridors decorated in brae and gold and white. Bryan caught a glimpse of the unconscious Stein being borne away on a litter by four more human attendants.
“If there’s a doctor in the house, Joe-Don, that man could use looking after. The poor chap got clobbered both physically and mentally.”
“Don’t worry, sir. Lady Damone, Bormol’s missus, an even better medic than Creyn. We get a lot of whacked out specimens passing through here, the time-portal being the shock that it is. But most of the casualties get fixed up pretty good. This Tanu bunch don’t have anything like the tank regeneration equipment we grew up with, but they slop on through pretty good regardless. They’re mighty tough themselves and they can heal most injuries and diseases with the help of the torcs. Lady Damone’ll give your pal a good vein-feed and see to his scattered marbles. Another day, he’ll be as good as new. Quite a pile of muscle, isn’t he? They must have him tapped for the Grand Combat.”
“And what,” Bryan asked quietly, “might that be?”
Joe-Don blinked, then grinned. “Kind of sports event they have a couple of months from now, and around the end of October. Traditional with these folks. They’re great ones for traditions… Well, here’s your room, sir.”
He threw open the door to an airy chamber that had white draperies billowing in front of a large window. A vertical string of sapphire lanterns hung beside a cool-looking bed. More conventional oil lamps cast a pool of yellow radiance on a table where a simple supper had been laid out.
Joe-Don said, “If you need anything, just pull this ring beside the bed and we’ll come running. I don’t suppose you’ll require any consoling companionship? No? Well, sweet dreams anyhow.”
He whisked out and closed the door firmly behind him. Bryan didn’t bother to test the lock. He gave a great sigh and began unbuttoning his shirt. Somehow, although he had not been aware of moving upward, he had come to the topmost floor of the Tanu mansion. The view from his window over looked much of the town and gave him a distant glimpse of the city gate. Roniah lay silent and glittering, an earthbound constellation, reminding him of a Christmas display he had seen long ago on one of the more extravagant Hispanic-heritage worlds.
He wondered in a perfunctory fashion what kind of exotic cheer his companions were presently enjoying down at the Tanu party. No doubt he’d hear all about it tomorrow. Yawning, he folded the shirt… and felt the small bulk of the duro-film sheets tucked into the breast pocket. He took them out and there was her picture, glowing dimly with its own light.
Oh, Mercy.
Have they taken you and made you one of themselves, as they are trying to do with my friends? Thin sad woman with yearning sea-deep eyes and a smile that keeps me bound despite all reason! I have never heard you play your harp and sing; but my mind’s ear creates you:
A deep brazen note sounded, snatching him from his fatigue-drugged reverie. It was the great gong at the city gate. The portal swung open in response, seeming to admit the rising sun.
“Christ!” whispered Bryan. He watched transfixed as the Hunt came a-homing.
A rainbow poured down the main avenue of the town, taking the same route that their own party had followed not long before. Flaring and twisting, the creature of light resolved itself into a procession of splendidly mounted Tanu leaping about with the antic joy of a Novo Janeiro Mardi Gras parade. Both chalikos and riders glowed with an internal effulgence that continually shifted up and down the entire spectrum. The Hunt came closer and closer and eventually passed almost under Bryan’s window. He saw that the participants, men and women alike, were arrayed in bizarre armor, apparently of gem-studded glass, adorned with spikes and knobs and other decorative excrescences that gave them the look of humanoid crustaceans fashioned out of diamonds. The chalikos were partially armored with the same material and wore shining gems on their foreheads. Both mounts and riders trailed brightly colored streamers of gossamer fabric that emitted sparks from the tapered ends.
The Hunt made a triumphant noise. The men struck their bejeweled shields with glowing glass swords to produce a musical clangor; some of the women sounded weirdly twisted glass horns with animal-head bells, and others chanted at the top of their powerful voices. Near the end of the parade were six riders glowing a uniform neon-red, evidently the heroes of this particular chase. They held tall lances, upon which were mounted the night’s trophies.
Severed heads.
Four of the heads had belonged to monsters, a fanged and wattled horror gleaming black and wet, a reptile with ears like batwings and a fringe of tentacles at its cheeks that still twitched, a thing having branched golden antlers and the face of a bird of prey, a nightmare simian with pure white fur and still-blinking eyes the size of apples.
The other two heads were smaller. Bryan saw them quite clearly as the procession passed by. They had belonged to an ordinary little man and woman of late middle age.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
It was the unexpected re-creation of old pain that finally gave Amerie her insight.
The swollen ankles chained immobile to the high stirrups, the stretched muscles on the insides of her thighs, the horde of imps twanging toe spinal ganglia in the small of her back, the cramps in calves and knees, she remembered them. It had been just like this twenty-six years ago.
Her father had told the family that descending into the Grand Canyon of the Colorado on a mule would be a wonderful adventure, a trip through a cut-open layer cake of planetary history that they would all look back and savor after they’d gone out to far Multnomah. And it had started out fine. On the trail down, Amerie the child delighted in fingering the strata of colored rock that became older and older, until at the bottom she had picked up a two-billion-year-old fragment of black glittering Vishnu schist and studied it with suitable awe.