Battleground (50 page)

He looked at it and she saw the fate of the supplies sinking in. She felt no surprise in him, as if he had gone beyond surprise. Kakrekt was speaking again, louder now. Gabriel said hoarsely, “It's the last one. You take it.”

“I'm holding up better than you are. Don't try to be gallant. Quickly!”

In a minute Kakrekt would get up and demand to know what they were saying. Hanna said swiftly, “I don't know what's going to happen. Bella said something about—it could be armed rescue, I think, but we'd be at risk if they do. Best to avoid it. But be ready for anything.”

Now Kakrekt was beside them and Hanna reactivated the translator and heard Kakrekt say, “What are you talking about? You must have no secrets!”

Hanna watched Gabriel anxiously. The big tablet did not want to go down.

“Answer me!”

A twinge of pain crossed his face, but he turned his head and nodded. Hanna nodded back, relieved, and finally looked at Kakrekt. “Very well,” she said calmly.

She did not say any more while the endless ride went on. She only took Gabriel's hand and held on.

•   •   •

“Another sixty meters up and we could guide them where they need to go,” Metra said. “I'll show you.”

Two more faces had joined the conference, Metra necessarily, Bella at Jameson's insistence. Both of them were looking down at a three-dimensional map of Wektt's subsurface. Presently it appeared, vertically oriented, over Jameson's huge desk. At first it was blurred and wobbled a bit. When it sharpened he was surprised. He must have expected something that looked organic: curved passages like blood vessels, chambers like organs—though he could not imagine where that fancy had come from, unless something in him suggested Battleground was trying to swallow Hanna whole. Instead most of the map was straight lines and right angles, a series of rigid grids. He heard Peter Struzik complain that he could not see it and said absently, “Come here, then,” and ignored the rest of the protests. Commissioners would turn up or not, as they chose. He did not hear Andrella Murphy's voice. She was probably already on the way to his rooms.

“The red dot is the com unit,” Metra said. “We can pick up its signal, but we don't quite have the capability to map what's around it at that depth while the coordinates keep changing. The open area that appears to surround it is actually two to three levels above its real location. We think the levels above that area look like this—” The configuration changed and then changed again, and again, and once more. “Accuracy improves with each level we go higher. And finally—”

One more change. “This is the level closest to the surface. If they can get to the upper levels we can direct them to passages leading in any direction. Actually getting to them physically—”

Metra looked up.

“We've no heavy machinery, no explosives. We have nineteen remaining servos that could dig down to them in one to four hours, depending on what level we have to reach and the geology of the site. The
Admiral Wu
has heavy-duty laser generators that can be calibrated to pinpoint accuracy. Those could do it in minutes.”

“The
Wu
was ordered to proceed as soon as the pods were destroyed,” Jameson said. “Its ETA is twenty hours. Much too long.”

“They're a moving target. Starting to dig now would only alert the population and cause tremendous damage. We'd have to fight our way to them, and they might be killed before we get there. We should wait till they're stationary, wherever they end up, if that's at all possible.”

She turned at Bella's murmur and said, “What?”

“I said, they've just moved up another level.”

“Good. The closer to the surface the better.”

“Maybe,” said Bella hopefully, “that's where they're taking her.”

“There is another possibility,” Metra said. “There are shafts to the surface. Some of them are sheer verticals, others rise at an angle. They're probably for ventilation, but they should be accessible. There might even be ladders in place in the verticals.”

Jameson said, “If you were obsessed with potential invaders, would you leave ladders handy? I wouldn't count on it. And I'd question whether either of them has the strength left to climb.”

“Alternatively, if we can guide them to a shaft we should be able to pull them out,” Metra said. “Depending on the resistance we meet.”

“Pull them out alive, I hope.”

“They're getting out alive. I won't settle for less,” Metra said, and for the first time Jameson almost liked her.

•   •   •

Hanna saw Kakrekt's attention sharpen, apparently at nothing. She heard Kakrekt whisper, apparently to nobody, and focused her own awareness. She had forgotten the small devices Soldiers used as communicators; Kakrekt had one tucked into her ear, invisible under an inner fold, and had just gotten bad news. Hanna waited to hear about it, but Kakrekt did not even look at her. She asked outright, finally: “Kakrekt Commander, is something wrong?”

Kakrekt looked at her, debating an answer. Finally she said, “The Holy Man is displeased that you are not in your quarters.”

Hanna said, because it seemed important though she was not sure why, “Does he know where we are?”

“No,” Kakrekt said. “No one knows where we are going.”
Good,
Hanna thought, but then Kakrekt said, “Not yet. But there are Soldiers who will tell him which way we have passed, and he may deduce our destination.”

Bad,
Hanna thought, because she understood now that Kakrekt did not only want to hide them from other humans; she thought they would be safer hidden away from Kwoort.

•   •   •

Another ramp, up again. Bella said Hanna had to seek out the thoughts of more Soldiers. Hanna didn't want to. She had begun to fade in and out, and think in scraps. Perhaps if she had not given the last meal tab to Gabriel . . . but he had needed it so badly . . .

Bella prodded her:
What about the communicator?

No chance of getting it while Kakrekt's watching.

What about what's around you? Captain wants to know.

Why?
Hanna had absorbed the knowledge that the upper levels were being mapped as rapidly as possible.

In case you don't go any higher. Even if you do, a map doesn't show what's inside. Soldiers? Are they armed?

Hanna made a half-hearted effort.
Soldiers and Warriors mating—
a great blast of it, she knew what that felt like, the cauldron she had almost fallen into once before.
No!
she thought and shut it out, looked for something else. There were Soldiers working in—

Crèches
, she said.
There are crèches here.

All the Soldiers nearby, in fact, seemed to be performing crèche-related tasks.

Makes sense
, said Bella,
if you're getting close to breeding grounds. But are they armed?

Ask Dema. She didn't say anything about weapons in the crèches she saw.

Good
, said Bella, but then came a doubt.
If there's fighting. Children, babies.

Hanna thought of the Soldier-children she had touched. There had been nothing, nothing, to remind her of human children or the young of other sentient species she knew, their eager curiosity and quick emotions. But they were children. Their parents would not care: the horrible difference between Soldiers and humans and, for that matter, other sentient species too. Soldiers would not spare Mickey in a like situation. But still. They were children.

•   •   •

Hanna did not remember sliding into a doze, but woke to find that she and Gabriel were slumped together like
rag dolls. He was awake, though; Bella had been communicating with him. Hanna didn't know where they were. Wherever it was, there was even less light.

Bella said,
Gabriel says you've gone up another level. And you've moved even farther south. There's a plateau over you now. A couple more levels and you'll be right under it. We've got a good, sharp map of the level you're on now and the ones above.

Kakrekt leaned forward and said something to the Soldier-driver. The translator did not pick up her soft words, but the thought was so clear Hanna did not have to probe for it.

We're almost there,
she said to Bella,
but I don't know what it's like.

There's a huge grid of rooms just ahead. Small ones, with thick walls. Exterior corridors that turn back to the city. There's one that doesn't—it's way ahead, let's see, my God, that grid goes on forever! Nothing else for almost two kilometers—just those spaces. Definitely not a crèche layout. Are those the breeding grounds?

Must be—

The vehicle stopped. “Out,” Kakrekt said, and Hanna saw that the corridor had narrowed and they could not ride any further. She climbed out, feeling her legs protest and almost give way.
Not good,
she thought,
two kilometers to any way out—
Too far to go, with nourishment and energy so desperately depleted. She turned to help Gabriel, for what her help was worth, and his hand on her shoulder felt crushingly heavy. Kwek was suddenly there beside her, looking ahead, breathing fast and sweating. Kwek looked quickly at Kakrekt, who said, “You may proceed. Follow her,” she said to the humans.

So they followed, not knowing what else to do; and a little later Gabriel thought for the first time, but not the last, of the circles of Hell.

K
WEK PLUNGED THROUGH
the opening ahead of them, seeking a mate. There was a high, dim chamber with a guarded gateway at the opposite end, otherwise empty except for two male Soldiers who paced nervously but turned when Kwek came in; both started for her but hesitated, less because of the not-Soldiers behind her than because of Kakrekt's insignia. Commanders, it appeared, were not seen here much more often than alien lif
e-forms. It di
d not stop them for long. “Now,” Kwek was muttering,
“
Yes!”
and she headed for the nearest of the males. The pair walked quickly toward the far doorway, already touching each other, sinuous fingers plucking at uniforms, reminding Hanna unpleasantly of her first landing at Rowtt.

The guards had moved forward but retreated now; if the other male had been there first, they would have intervened to be sure Kwek went with him. Kwek had only appeared to have a choice.

Bella had seen through Hanna's eyes. She said,
Don't lose Kwek. Get the com unit!

But Hanna hesitated. Immediately past this chamber there was a maelstrom of noise and compulsion in which she could detect not one single conscious thought. It would be a hothouse, too, because this outer hall already was perceptibly warmer, much warmer, than the corridors they had come from.

She was afraid. What if her perception of that fury of desire took her out of herself again? What if she threw herself on Gabriel and begged him to couple with her, not caring who he was?

Block it,
Bella said.
You weren't blocking then, just the opposite. Block it!

But I'll lose contact with you—

Then get the com unit. You have to anyway. It's all we'll have to track you with.

Still Hanna hung back. She did not want to watch Soldiers mate; the prospect revolted her. Sex was supposed to be a kind of present people gave each other, and honoring the value of the individual Other (or Others, if that was your bent) was part of it. So she had been taught, and so she believed. Nobody in those rooms ahead was giving presents. She understood now, seeing Kwek with the stranger-mate, that it was not even Soldiers who gave pleasure to one another. The neural network was responsive to the facilitators alone.

For just a second she thought of the inquisitive Mi-o once more. Kwoort must have gone into breeding mode while he was on New Earth. But Mi-o could not have given him any satisfaction, nor anyone else, in the absence of facilitators. He must have been desperate—

“Did you not wish to observe?” Kakrekt said, and finally Hanna moved forward, Gabriel behind her, following Kwek—

—while Kwek and her partner sought eagerly through a hot maze of rooms for a cubicle with space for them. The floor was earth here, and the walls, and the air so saturated with heat and spice smell that Hanna thought she might faint. Overwhelming too was the perception of sensation, the blind ecstasy so intense it had once torn her from trance; she obeyed Bella, threw up the telepathic block, and Bella vanished from her mind and she was horribly alone. She moved forward through darkness, one dim light high up in each room barely enough to show the figures on the floor. She did not dare let the block attenuate enough even to think to Gabriel, the only human contact she had left. The rooms were connected by wide arches, and in the dark she could only see moving shapes, most prone, thrusting against each other. They stumbled over bodies in the act of copulation, two by two, bodies strangely changed, torsos almost covered with pale lumps as if mating spawned gross tumors. The cacophony was indescribable; indecipherable, too, because wordless, so the translators filled their ears with a chorus of whistles and screams. Soldiers did not need words to mate. But then, humans did not either.

Then—eyes slowly adjusting to the near-dark—she saw the sick growths on the feverish bodies for what they were. For a moment she was back in a tunnel with Kwoort, in Rowtt:
another species lived on this world, finger-sized, dead white, hairless and blind—it lived underground, they were crowded and scrambling over one another, they turned on each other savagely and tore with sharp teeth and ate, ate
—

They were the facilitators. And they were eating now, but not with teeth. They crawled out of the earthen walls and floor and onto the twisting bodies, and extended glistening filaments that sank into receptor sites that gaped open to take them in. For a frozen instant Hanna focused on one of the things and saw the filaments pulse and knew she saw an exchange of fluids.

An exchange.
They pump something in,
Gabriel had said, and it had not seemed important at the time. But now a tiny, distant part of her mind said it was wildly important, but revulsion silenced it, and Kakrekt said loudly, close to her ear, “They come when it's time. They know. We don't know how they know.”

Kakrekt glanced down absently. One of the things had wriggled onto her boot. It paused and wriggled off. Kakrekt was not in season. There was nothing for it here.

Hanna whispered a question, but Kakrekt could not hear her over the din and bent her head, one ear extended. Hanna raised her voice—with effort, because she was not sure she wanted to hear the answer—“Where do they come from?”

“They are everywhere in the earth, even at That Place. It does not matter where a couple is when the time comes on them. These always ascend from the ground. It is not like that with other animals, only with Soldiers.”

Then Soldiers, if they were native to this world at all, had been altered to breed like this.
There must have been containment and control,
Hanna thought, but what had happened then? Did the creators leave, did they die? Did they free facilitators into the earth, did the creatures escape? If it was purposeful, to what end?

She could not think about it now. All her fading energy was spent in fighting the chaos that filled these dark rooms.

Kwek was out of sight. She had hurtled through another opening, still searching for space. And Hanna could not see Gabriel either. He was gone too.

She had gotten just a glimpse of Kwek before she disappeared. Hanna ran after her, fear soaring to panic, surely Gabriel had gone the same way—if he had not she would never find him—

But he was not in the next space, or the next, or the one after that, there were arches everywhere going in all directions, but she hoped, how she hoped he had gone in a straight line, because maybe Kwek had done that in her haste. Hanna ran blindly, fear taking over, trying to avoid the shapes on the ground, reason dissolving in horror. She crashed into a wall and reeled away, tripped and fell over a mating pair that did not even notice her. Something squirmed disgustingly under one breast and she scrabbled to her feet. One of the slugs clung to her hand and she flailed until it spun away, her scream lost in the tumult of sound around her. She staggered to the moist wall and fell against it and mud flaked onto her face. Movement caught the corner of her eye and she turned her head and stared straight at one of the things. The leading orifice was open and she saw its teeth and behind them the filaments, writhing, beginning to extrude; it reared like a snake, half out of the wall, and she saw other features. Appendages with chitinous ridges for digging. Suckers for climbing walls or bodies. What if it scented Kwek's pheromones on her? What if it thought—

Another scream rose in her throat, only she could not get the breath for it, she could not breathe at all.

The thing popped out of the wall and tumbled to the floor. It had not mistaken her for a Warrior in heat.

She finally gulped in air thick as water, and it came back out in sobs.

Something touched her and she gasped and jerked away, ready to run, but her legs would not move, and then she recognized Gabriel and sobbed again in relief. She clutched at him and his mouth moved but she could not hear what he said over the tumult. She struggled to focus her thoughts, stood swaying on tiptoe to shout in his ear.

“Where did Kwek go?”

“This way!” he shouted back, and grasped her hand and stumbled away through the dark, trying to pull her after him, but there was little strength in his grip and he was unsteady on his feet. He was at his limit, too.

We are both going to collapse,
she thought,
we are going to fall here in this hell and not be able to get up.

It came to her in flashes that she ought to question her revulsion. She had seen animals mate, she had done plenty of mating herself; she had been raped, if it came to that.
But we were conscious of each other,
she thought—dodging a male who rose to his feet, tripping over his companion's foot, somehow staggering into another room.
All the sentient creatures we know—
Gabriel turned to make sure she was behind him—
feel emotion for each other in mating.
She shied away from an earsplitting scream of ecstasy at her feet.
Even in rape there is emotion, even if it is hate on either side. Even an animal wants one mate more than another, when there is choice.

She focused on Gabriel like a beacon; he had found Kwek and was just as focused on her, and they were close behind. There seemed no end to the maze. Hanna had not asked Bella how many of the rooms there were, there might be hundreds of them, thousands, and how many must they pass through to reach the way out? Fear was the only thing that overcame her weakness, and perhaps it drove Gabriel too.

Ahead of them Kwek and the male had become impatient. They paused now and then, touching each other, opening clothing to touch the sensitive ports that in this stage of arousal looked like open sores. Over and over they did this, the pauses becoming longer and more frequent, until their uniforms were bunched at their waists. They did not kiss. Hanna had seen no one kiss. It must be unknown here.

The pair came completely to a stop. Another couple occupied the room but there was space enough, and Kwek and the Soldier tore off their uniforms altogether and fell to the floor. It was littered with the heaving white things, and they surged toward Kwek and the male at once. In a last convulsive move to divest herself of everything that might bar their way, Kwek wrenched the communicator from her wrist. It fell among the facilitators.

Hanna and Gabriel leaned together, breathing hard, and stared at the spot where it had disappeared. Facilitators crawled across it. It was visible in flashes as the things moved over and around it. In a minute they might not see it at all.

Hanna stopped herself from thinking. If she thought about what she had to do it would be impossible. She couldn't bring herself to kneel on that floor. She grabbed Gabriel's hand and said in his ear, “Don't let me fall!”—and stooped and reached, dizzy with heat and noise.

She had never been squeamish and rather liked snakes with their dry, cool skins, but the things her hand met were moist, and hot—not warm, but hot. She groped in the mass of them and gagged at the touch but she did not dare pull away or she would lose her nerve forever.
No, oh, no,
she thought,
no,
she was thinking as she groped for the com unit, and
No!
but she did not pull back until she had it in her hand.

And then she had to throw up, but there was nothing in her stomach, and Gabriel snatched the translator away from her mouth and held her up while she retched.

•   •   •

“Bella?
Bella,
where are you, come in!”

“She's in Command with the captain. This is Aneer.” The voice was calm. “Is Guyup with you?”

“Yes—”

“Are you alone?”

Hanna had not been able to force herself to move; Gabriel had dragged her through another room, with difficulty, because there were no less than three busy couples in it. The one they had come to now had only one pair.

“Alone!” Hanna said, “No, we're not alone!” Gabriel had had to force the com unit onto her left wrist because she couldn't stop rubbing her right hand against her clothing long enough to use it. As if that would get it clean! She heard her own voice changing pitch when she spoke, out of control.
Where do all these couples come from?
—the emptiness of the pairing hall was deceptive; but if a Warrior only had to wait for the first ready Soldier to arrive, the couple could be processed in seconds. That
was
the process, all the process there was. It crossed her mind that Heartworld's founding families might negotiate for years before they signed a contract that authorized a couple to produce children. She began to laugh and was crying.

“Don't.” Gabriel shook her, so surprising a move that she stopped crying immediately, from shock. “Are you thirsty? I am. I haven't seen any water sources here. We're sweating. Don't waste moisture.”

He spoke loudly, but it was not a shout. The overall decibel level seemed a little lower here.

She began to think again. Rational thought felt like a strange relief; she clung to it. “There must be lavatories somewhere.”

“How would we find one? Ask somebody? Tap some guy on the shoulder and say, excuse me, could you stop what you're doing and tell us where to get a drink?”

She felt a giggle rising and forced it down. She couldn't afford more hysteria.

“Bassanio?” said Kaida Aneer.

“All right. I hear you. There are Soldiers around, but they're busy. They haven't noticed us. I don't know where Kakrekt is.”

Now it was Metra's voice: “Get moving while you can. We can track you, let's hope she can't.”

“Which way?” Hanna said.

“Just start moving! Go!”