Rift (23 page)

So much for big tech.

There was a time when Nerys would have been eager to speak with one who had lived in the sky amid all the learning of the old days. No time for such things now. It was always the way, that learning came last.
Save your breath
, the claves said. By which they meant don’t bother with something unless it’s building, fishing, toiling.

From behind her, Thallia mumbled, “They are slavers, Nerys. You saw?”

“I won’t be a slave,” Nerys answered.

“Nor I.”

Eiko muttered, “If your brat had not been asleep at the oars …”

Nerys chose to ignore Eiko as she watched the securing of the ship with ropes and the hauling of trade goods in both directions down the broad wooden causeway. When all the prisoners had debarked, Bunyan ordered them into single file and led them toward the deeper shadows. The jungle of machines pressed in on them from every side as they entered the
domain of the rats. Above them, the arched ceiling strained the sunlight to a pale glazing.

5

Marie and Reeve sat on the floor sharing a meal of smoked fish, the remains of Bunyan’s meal. Lord Dante would soon interview them, they’d been told, a prospect first fraught with anxiety, and later boredom. At the dock Loon and Spar and the others had been led in another direction, despite Reeve’s pleas to keep them all together. Why it should matter, Reeve was unsure, but he did take some comfort in their presence. Now, awaiting their interview, he and Marie dozed, leaning against each other. After several hours, Kalid joined them, freshly showered from the look of him, and richly dressed in a bright vest and clean trousers tucked into his boots.

Kalid nodded to Bunyan, who grinned in obvious pleasure. “Who would have thought the zerters so meek?” Kalid said, scanning his prisoners.

“Dull as stumps,” Bunyan agreed, to Reeve’s great annoyance.

At that, a commotion issued from down the hall, and Reeve saw the great doors open. He sucked the last of the fish oil off his fingers and stood up with Marie as a guard approached them, beckoning Kalid to follow. The back of the guard’s bald head was traced with an intricate design, almost familiar. When Reeve drew closer, he saw that it was two words, wrought as a design: marco polo. Marie noticed it too, and shrugged at Reeve. From behind them, Reeve heard Kalid say, “Only the truth, Reeve Calder, or you will shame my training.”

As they entered the room, their attention was arrested by a man standing immediately before them, arms crossed in front of him and looking down at them from a height of over seven feet. He was dressed in a
long flowered coat without sleeves, beneath which he wore a bloused shirt tucked into brocaded pants. Suspended around his neck was a medallion the size of his considerable fist. His head, though shaven, had been tattooed in great detail, giving him the appearance of having blue hair. Beneath the layered clothes, a powerful body bulged.

Kalid bowed before the man, and Reeve followed suit, while Marie stood stock-still.

Dante—for it could be no other—looked at her with skepticism. “Some who live with the orthong,” he said as though to himself, “grow old as this one. Perhaps she has escaped from the scabs.” His voice boomed effortlessly in the large chamber around them.

“It is possible, my lord,” Kalid said. Attendants stirred around Dante and Kalid, giving Reeve and Marie wide berth. All were bald except for Kalid and the women, one of whom was also very tall and dressed in an elaborate gown out of some eighteenth-century drama. Beneath a towering headdress her frazzled black hair stuck out in every direction, as though she had dressed in a hurry. But she was the most beautiful woman Reeve had ever seen, with sculpted ebony features and full lips tending toward violet.

Dante moved closer and examined them each in turn, not touching them, but squinting at their faces.

Though Reeve guessed his age to be almost thirty, the man’s face was a great ovoid, curiously lacking in planes or lines. His light brown eyes were flecked with gold, as though something had recently exploded there. Dante’s full lower lip protruded as he scrutinized their breathers. “Curious,” he said.

The room was tucked up against the edge of the dome, its steeply slanting wall forming a sort of pavilion over a great carved desk and chair, behind which Dante now took a seat. A feather pen stood upright in an inkwell, and papers cluttered the surface. “So you have come to invade Atlantis,” he said.

Kalid raised an eyebrow at Reeve, and Reeve stuttered, “No … no, we …” Words failed him. He must be careful about what he said.

“No?” Dante boomed.

Reeve shook his head. “No.”

Then Dante shouted out loud. It was several seconds before the startled Reeve realized the man was laughing. “No!” he bellowed as though at a great joke. The room erupted in the laughter of his lieutenants. He became quite serious. “
No
is the right answer, Stationer!”

He waved his hand at his officers, settling back in his chair. “Tell me something interesting,
Stationer
. Of your great sky wheel, for instance.”

Reeve groped for something impressive. “Gravity,” he said. “We produce our own gravity. So we don’t float in the air, but walk on the floors, as you do.”

When a crumple appeared in Dante’s forehead, Reeve glanced quickly at Kalid, who gave him a tiny shake of the head.

“So you walk as real men, on the floor,” Dante said. “Now
that
is a wonder.” The woman in the headdress walked to his side, resting her hand on his shoulder. She smirked in derision, but it couldn’t alter her exotic beauty—which was marred a moment later when she cleared her throat, producing an ugly, scraping cough.

“We create our food in bottles. We fly in airplanes.” If he wanted wonder, Reeve knew, he must think of things that would sound wonderful to a barbarian.

Unimpressed, Dante absently rubbed his cheek against the arm of his gowned attendant.

“We—,” Reeve began, but Dante interrupted.

“Kalid tells me your airplane broke, that it killed those who sat inside it. Is this true?”

“Yes.”

“So you die as we do, walk as we do, and have no meat on your plates, but suck your food from bottles,” Dante summarized in derision.

Marie stepped forward. “On-Station,” she said, “the air was pure, the food plentiful.” Dante’s attention flickered into focus for a moment. Marie continued, “We could live forever.”

Dante narrowed his eyes, cradling his chin in a large, pale hand. “You look like you’re dying.”

“The sun burns our skin a little. I may be ugly, but I’m happy.”

Laughter erupted from the leader, a barking sound like a struck drum.

“And”—here Marie fixed the tall woman with a piercing glance—“I do not cough, though I am over fifty years old.”

Dante looked up quickly at his attendant, as though afraid of her reaction. “Careful what you say to Isis, old woman.”

Marie lowered her eyes in deference. But she had made her point. The beauty named Isis was all attention now.

“Prove that you are over fifty,” Dante said. “You
could
just be ugly … or diseased.”

Marie smiled, accepting the insult with grace. “My skin is wrinkled, but I can walk long distances—if you do not starve me,” she said. At this boldness, Dante leaned forward, as though surprised to be addressed with candor.

“I am past my monthly bleeding, and can have sex without getting children. I still have my wits, and can count backward from one hundred by sevens.” Dante raised an eyebrow, as though this were of particular significance.

Marie continued: “I know fifty years’ worth of big tech, and I know how to talk to a great leader without wasting his time.” This last she said with a dismissive gesture at Reeve.

“By God,” Dante said, rising to his feet. “This woman is fifty!”

A soft, lisping voice interrupted him. Isis spoke: “You cannot have children?”

“No, thank the Lord,” Marie said, with no small irony.

Isis’ face lit up in a stunning smile, which Marie matched, while the men in the room looked from one to the other in bemusement.

“Enough of babies and bleeding!” Dante pronounced. He strode to an elaborately carved side table heaped with rolls of paper. He gathered up a handful and waved them at Reeve and Marie. “Do you read?” he bellowed. “Everyone says they can read! But do they read these? My captains bring me readers from the ends of the world, but what do they read?” He turned a fierce scowl on Reeve, the scowl deepening when Reeve didn’t answer. He swung toward Marie, his face questioning. When Marie remained silent, he went on: “Words!”

As his tone and volume veered into a rant, Dante’s attendants shifted uncomfortably—all except Kalid, whose ironic smile seemed nailed in place.

“I’ll tell you what words are worth!” He stabbed a finger at the sloping back wall, and a servant rushed to pull on a rope and tackle. When the curtain had been raised, there appeared, through the semitranslucent walls, three cylinders swaying outside the dome.

“Now, tell me if you can read!” In his excitement a dry cough racked him for a moment. When he recovered, he strode forward with an armload of rolled papers, thrusting them at Marie.

She unrolled one and scanned it. Reeve drew near, looking over the unfurled engineering drawing. The paper was stained and yellowed, and almost illegible. He thought he and Marie would have a hard time guessing its use, if this was their assignment.

But Marie knew her engineering, and said, “The dome.”

By Dante’s pleased expression, Reeve knew she’d
guessed right. It was then that Reeve focused once more on the shapes suspended outside the dome walls. He couldn’t know for sure, but suddenly he was almost certain they were bodies, hanging from a beam.

Suppressing his revulsion, he grabbed for some of the papers, vying with Marie to name the drawings and their features. “Condensing turbine,” Marie said. And: “Flow meter, heat exchanger, exhaust conduit.”

Dante grew animated. “Conduit!” he repeated, looking in triumph at his lieutenants.

“Air handler, circulation pump, generator,” Marie continued, followed by Dante’s echo: “Cir-cula-tion pump, gener-ator!”

Rifling through another sheaf, Reeve found something he knew very well: an electrical diagram. “Coils!” he blurted out. “Armature, voltage, magnetic field!” It was an industrial-sized induction meter. If the batch of papers related to each other, it might be a piece of equipment in the dome.

Dante now turned his attention to Reeve. “What do you know of hyp-notic fields?”

“I know about electricity. I can read these.”

“E-lec-tri-city!” Dante shouted. His lieutenants repeated the word,
Lec-tricity, lec-tricity
, while Isis, losing interest, slumped into Dante’s chair and picked at her teeth—a startling gesture from one done up like a queen.

The horrid trio of lumps outside and the mad shouting of Dante had combined to make Reeve disoriented and dizzy. He leaned on a nearby chair, bringing a look of alarm to Dante’s face. The man called for refreshments for his readers. At this, the momentum was lost, and Dante and his thieves turned their attentions to setting up a table and chairs.

Meanwhile, Kalid approached the two prisoners, grinning. “You are in favor today, Reeve Calder.”

“And tomorrow?”

Kalid shrugged. “
A new day, a new Dante
, we sometimes say.”

Reeve smiled as Kalid rejoined his lord at the table, where servants were bringing trays of food and great pitchers of wine. While Dante and his attendants fell upon the meal with gusto, forgetting their readers for the moment, Marie and Reeve settled themselves on the floor, studying the drawings. They appeared to be industrial designs, many if not all related to terraforming. “What does he want from us?” Reeve whispered to Marie.

“Whatever it is, we’re going to give it to him,” she replied, the chill in her voice belying the pert smile she directed at Dante.

He waved at her from his table, ordering an attendant to bring them food. A great tray arrived, piled high. They picked their way through masses of rotting fruit to find a few edible pieces.

Dante shouted at them, “Eat!” For now Dante was clearly of a mind to feed them, not hang them, a mood Reeve suspected was subject to instant change.