He closed his eyes for a moment. «Where is she?»
«She's welded into an escape module. The module is hidden in a cave on Darkside. There is air and water and heat, but no food. No light. She's been there for six days now, so she`l l live for a few weeks more. You'll never find her.» The man sat straighter in his bonds. «Release me. Ill take you to her.»
He looked at the man. «I cannot trust you,» he said sadly. His gaze strayed to the fireplace, where a poker lay in the coals, glowing cherry red. The man followed the direction of his glance, and fear appeared on the brutal face for the first time.
It seemed to go on forever, the fierce, shameful joy. Finally, Ash returned to himself, nostrils still distended with the stink of burning flesh. The Green peddler stared down into his eyes, wearing an almost-human expression of concern.
«Agree with you it did? Perhaps another better would serve?» The thick fingers fumbled another wafer from the tray. «Here. `The Touch of the Hook this is.`» Avlsum held it out, and Ash snatched off the harness, shuddering.
«Will you give Us the benefit of your human perspective now?» the snake asked.
«It seems harmless,» Ash said thickly. «Though I cannot imagine why a Dag would wish to experience human emotion. At least those human emotions.»
The snake considered. «How,» it asked the Green, «do the Dags pay? If you trade for cryptopods or cryptopod essences, We must expunge you.»
Avlsum's wrinkled face displayed injured dignity. «No, no. With their own experiences they pay. As your slave has paid. For a memory, a memory. Each being at least one worthwhile memory has. A collector I am.»
«Then collect freely. Come, Ash. You have more important duties.» As Ash turned to go, the snake spoke on the private channel. «What did the peddler take from you, We wonder?»
Two Standard days passed. The snake seemed uneasy. The slow Obsidian night moved a little closer to dawn. Outside, the sporing bodies spurted white dust into the still air, then collapsed to the ice. Ash began to imagine that the workers were watching him with hostile eyes. The Dag overseer no longer observed even the bare forms of Dag civility.
Several times he saw the big Dag moving toward the load-in area, where the Green peddler had set up its device. A steady stream of off-shift workers passed in and out, and Ash wondered what experiences they bartered.
Ash was standing by the outer airgate, looking to the north, when the mutiny began. A red light bloomed suddenly on the horizon, then another.The snake contracted, squeezing the bones of his wrist painfully. Ash jerked, afraid. For a long moment the snake was silent; then a roar filled Ash's head.
«Betrayal!» it raged. «The rigs are sabotaged, all the beautiful rigs. The Green is an emancipator, a filthy, skulking slave-lover; We see it now. To the lagoon, before it is too late!»
But as Ash snapped the last closure of his exosuit, a thudding explosion shuddered through the rig. The snake's voice grew too large to bear. Ash staggered and nearly fell. The snake stung him ferociously, and he seized a graser and plunged through the Seagate, arm on fire.
The snake made an effort to moderate its voice. «The fields hold. It may not be too late yet. Hurry, hurry.»
Ash was terrified, but he jetted swiftly through the black water toward the insulating-field generators. He saw no workers; they would be hiding in the reefs, awaiting the outcome. He tried not to imagine what would happen should the damaged generators fail while he was in the water. He could not estivate in the ice, like the Dags. The ice would crush his soft human body, a slow, inexorable squeeze.
As he approached the damaged sector, a sputtering pink glare became visible, where the generators bled power into the water. Ash saw a massive shape outlined against the light; the Dag overseer blocked the ladder that led to the generator pod.
Then he saw the sharp pry hook the Dag held, and he drifted to a stop, bringing up the graser.
«Kill him,» the snake ordered, and fed a jolt of pain into his arm.
«Wait,» Ash gasped. «We should find out why…» He still remembered the female's beseeching eyes.
«Kill, We said!» The pain increased, and Ash shuddered.
The Dag overseer pulsed a chime. After a moment, Ash remembered to activate the lexitran, and the Dag spoke again. «Go away, Keeper. I do not want to harm you, though if you get too close, I will cut the Will from your arm.»
The snake hurt Ash so badly that he blacked out. But he woke almost immediately, before he could drift down toward the sump. «Why will you not obey?» the snake asked.
When Ash could speak again, he asked the Dag, «Why have you done this?»
The Dag seemed to expand, and his palps opened to reveal his colors, smoky crimson on dark metallic green. «A friend gave us dreams; not so fine as the ice dreams, perhaps, but still good.»
The snake made an inarticulate sound of rage, and a thin magenta beam from the snake's head struck through the water to find the Dag's brain. Steam boiled along the track of the beam. Bubbles rose glittering to the surface. The Dag floated limp, a great hole burned through his face.
«See?» the snake screamed. «See what you have forced Us to? We are not designed to use so much energy; you have made Us weak. But We can still punish you; We can still make you long for death. Up, up, to the generators.»
Ash climbed the ladder, emerged dripping from the black water, to find the Green peddler standing on the sponson, holding a very large graser.
«Destroyer!» the snake shrilled. «Kill it! Quickly, there is still time.»
«I cannot,» Ash sobbed. «It will kill me first.»
The hum of the generators changed pitch subtly, and the lights flickered. «No time, no time,» the snake said, and seemed to fall into a muttering dialogue with itself. Ash slumped against the sponson wall, looking at the Green.
Ash whispered, «Who are you?»
«A free-lance emancipator I am. By the Society to Conserve Sentient Diversity, I contracted am. The Dags… Of the ice dreams they deprived were. Live so, they cannot. Like humans, of sleep deprived. . they die.» The peddler waved one hand at the twisted metal of the generator pod. «An incompetent demolitionist I am. But patience I have.»
The snake's voice was suddenly loud in Ash's head. «Kill it! Kill it now,» the snake raged. The pain rolled up his arm, a pain that seemed to split open the fibers of his flesh.
The Green looked at him with shadowed eyes, the wrinkled face impassive, the huge graser never wavering from the center of Ash’s chest.
«Spare you I would,» Avlsum said. «But treacherous the snake is. Trust you I cannot. Sorry I am.» The Green's thick finger tightened on the trigger.
Ash did not raise the graser, despite the screams of the snake. It no longer spoke in words. Skull-shattering bursts of static filled Ash. He dropped the graser, and it bounced to the edge of the sponson.
He fell to his knees, blind with pain and the terrible roaring in his head. He collapsed, almost rolled into the black water, and for a moment the snake released him. He caught himself, pushed away from the edge. The generators paused, began again, then ceased completely, and the lights dropped to the dull amber emergency level.
The water in the lagoon touched the ice outside.
With his last strength, Ash thrust the snake down into the water. The water closed sluggishly over the snake and became ice in the next instant.
He looked up. The Green squatted on the sponson, graser still carefully aimed. Avlsum's wide mouth twitched with sad amusement. «There only one way is,» Avlsum said kindly. «Transportation to the Belt City I will give. If you can.» Avlsum slid the graser within Ash's reach, then steadied its own weapon with all four hands.
The snake poured out pain, twisting Ash into a knot of agony. «What have you done?» it shrieked, and its voice filled the world. Ash's body flopped and jerked; he felt bones in his arm break where the ice held him. The ice bulged and fumed; a red light flickered as the snake tired to melt its way out.