Rift (37 page)

Day thirty-seven
. The face peering down at Reeve seemed normal enough. Slightly wedge-shaped, the young man’s face was preceded by a very prominent nose, accentuated by close-cropped hair.

“I really hope you’re comfortable.” His captor peered down at him with apparent concern. When Reeve didn’t answer, the young man tugged at the ropes, testing them, and then slightly loosened the one holding Reeve’s left wrist. “Have to tie you up right now.” He bent close and said in a conspiratorial manner, “This part doesn’t last long, though, so don’t worry!”

Reeve struggled to move, but the ropes held him flat to the cave floor. During the night, Reeve and the other prisoners had called to each other, figuring out that they were in separate, open cubbyholes carved into rock, with Loon next to Reeve and Spar four cells down. The six jinn prisoners were comprised of five sailors and a courtier of Dante’s.

“One of your people died last night. Sorry. He had an intestinal wound that Brecca couldn’t repair. His name was Zuni, and we gave him a good burial. You
sailors put up such a fight! Well, people always do. They’re afraid of us, because of … how we look.” He sprang up and fetched a small thermos. “Thirsty?”

Reeve nodded, and the fellow held up his head so that he could drink. No harm in drinking what they offered. They could kill him anytime they liked, and poison was just as good as any other death. His thoughts were of Loon in the next cell, and of the
Cleopatra
, sailing toward its destination,
his
destination.

“I’m Dooley. You?” He screwed the cap on the burnished metal thermos and waited expectantly. “Don’t feel like talking yet. I understand!” He looked with concern at Reeve’s spread-eagled form. “I can loosen these a little.”

As he worked the ropes one at a time, Reeve could hear his labored breathing, as though he had asthma or an advanced case of indigo. Remembering the cold night just passed, Reeve looked enviously at the man’s quilted jacket and fur boots.

“The others say you’re the leader, so you’ll get top-notch inturning.” He cocked his head impishly. “What’s inturning? That’s the first thing people ask. Well, inturning is the first stage in your apprenticeship. Then you go—if you have talent—to assistant-ship, and on from there.” He sighed. “It’s mostly grudge work, I’ll admit that. But everybody has to start somewhere. You can’t be too proud if you mean to work for Brecca. Take Gregor, for instance. Please take Gregor!” Here he laughed, a squeaky titter of enjoyment that snapped off when he glanced down the corridor. “Even Gregor started as an inturn, flat on the floor, all roped up just like you! We start everyone the same—very democratic—and then each rises as high as his talents. I would have risen further, but my offering wasn’t accepted. It’s no shame. Most of us stay assistants. But someone like you, you’ll probably reform grandly! Brecca will try a bold theme with you.”
His eyes filmed over with emotion. “I envy you—not because you’ll be important, but because you’re at the very beginning, the start of your transformation.”

Reeve looked away, toward the cave wall. Punching this fellow in the nose was his foremost thought. But that was as impossible as tearing loose his bonds or reaching the Rift in time.

A noise down the corridor caught Dooley’s attention. He darted to the den opening. “They’re getting ready. But we still have some time.” He scampered back to sit at Reeve’s side. “You want to talk yet?” He licked his lips and waited, eyes darting. “I guess not. I don’t blame you. I talk too much—it’s part of my offering. Along with the lungs.” He took a deep breath, creating a deep, fluted sound. “The lungs are layered, like parallel filters. Take up half my chest. The talking-too-much part is just extra.” He nodded. “Annoying, isn’t it? Don’t worry. It won’t hurt my feelings.”

He turned once more to check out the long corridor that Reeve and the others had been herded down last night. “I’d better hurry. Let’s start at the beginning.” He began to talk, in rote style:

“We are the Somaformers. We offer ourselves—test subjects—to transform the human colony. Transformation is the way of new life, the survival of the fittest, according to Saint Darwin. Who is fit, only the Labs can say. As subjects of the Pool, we offer ourselves in humility, reforming for the greater glory of the Labs and the resurrection of humanity. Outside the Pool we are monsters. We are the Mercury Clave, the children-stealers, the scab-lovers. These names cannot hurt us! This too is a sacrifice, that everyone names us and yet no one can name us.

“We are the Somaformers. We offer ourselves—test subjects—to transform the human colony. Transformation is the burden of living creatures. The rocky world transforms without volition. Humanity transforms as an act of devotion. We do penance for the sin
of terraforming, that betrayal of the world as Deity made it, for which we now accept our punishment. Where there is pain, we endure. Where there is deformity, we are grateful. Where there is failure, we accept. Where there is success, we exult. We are the Somaformers. You will become one of us. You will transform.”

His eyes shone with emotion. “Beautiful, isn’t it?”

Reeve yanked at his ropes in frustration. Then, taking a breath to calm himself, he asked, “Who is Brecca?”

This provoked a startled reaction from Dooley. He scuttled closer to his prisoner. “That’s it! No sense sulking now, is there?” He cleared his throat, reciting: “Brecca is the Ministrator, Chief Operating Vizier, the COZ. She ministrates the Lab, the resurrection of—”

“No, Dooley. Who
is
she?” He turned to look Dooley in the eyes. “In plain language.”

Crestfallen, Dooley hesitated. “Well, I should recite the convocation.…” Then, looking at the expression on Reeve’s face, he sighed. “OK. Plain language. Brecca is … the holy representative of Deity on the world. She keeps all the secrets and science publications and the computers. She is the Holy Gengineer, Chief Scientist, the Ministrator.” At Reeve’s glare, he took a deep rippling breath, flattening his mouth in concentration. “OK. Brecca is … the one who’ll reform all you inturns. The Lab assistants will do the analysis, but Brecca has to approve all transgenic plans. She may even do you herself, if you’re blessed. She’s fierce, Brecca is; you’ll see! Life and death—she’s got both. She’s got your life, she’s got your death. She controls all the pairings. Last year she did the codes on my future mate, and now we’re base pairs.

“But Gregor, the Successor, tried to snip us off, because he doesn’t like me and Lillie, especially together. You’ll meet Gregor. He’s the one that never smiles. He’s got all the Somas afraid of him because he can
make or break your career, put you on some backwater sacrifice and advance his friends to the cutting edge. But Brecca relies on him, and puts him through advanced degrees so the Pool will survive. Otherwise, after Brecca goes, we’d end up just like you.” He winced at his own words. “No offense. But look at you. Utterly undifferentiated, completely maladapted. And your breather doesn’t fool us, either. It’s a device, not blessed by the body. If they hadn’t already seen the breather, I’d have dumped it for you. It’ll get Gregor off on a tangent, I bet.” His eyes snapped up in anxiety. “Here they come. Good luck. You’ll do just fine.”

“Dooley?”

“Yes?”

“You folks use genetic engineering to turn yourself into freaks?”

Dooley’s face turned slack-jawed. “Shhhh!” He scuttled back to Reeve’s side, fidgeting. “Don’t say anything like that to Brecca, or you’re a dead man!” He shook his head sadly. “I take responsibility for this; I’m a lousy teacher.”

“No, Dooley, you were brilliant.”

“I was?”

“It’s just that we disagree. In science, that’s a good thing.”

A crowd was heading toward them down the passageway.

“Shhhh!” Dooley enjoined him, prancing in nervousness, finger to lips.

A shuffling of many feet told Reeve that people were approaching. Despite the ineffectual Dooley, Reeve’s stomach tightened in fear. He was to be a lab rat, an experiment. And so were Loon and Spar. He heard singing, a sonorous, liturgical chant.

“Loon,” Reeve called out. As she answered him, her voice was a saving counterpoint to the dooming song that approached. “I love you,” he said, surprising himself.
Take me
, he wanted to say to the Somaformers.
Let her be; release her in the company of the scrawny warrior. Take me
.

Marie was on her way to Bonhert’s camp. It was on her shoulders now, saving the world. In some ways, it was a relief to give this mission to someone else. Marie made a better hero: smart, unsentimental, tough. She wouldn’t be haunted by the memory of the fight on the ship, wouldn’t be thinking about people that fell to her sword.…

Past Dooley’s shoulder, Reeve could see a procession of deformed humanity dressed in white gowns. They passed his view in syncopated step, some tall, some short, some limping. One had limbs so thin he looked like a sapling tree. Another had a bubble protruding in place of a mouth. Yet another had a chest too large for her frame, housing, perhaps, the future lungs of Lithia. At last the white robes gave way to mere white shirts or jackets over quilted pants, but under those jackets bulged humps where none should have been.

They had passed him by. Down the corridor the sounds of a scuffle, and the curses of a jinn. After a moment, the procession approached Reeve’s cubbyhole again, led by an imposing woman of lush dimensions. Her ample chest was adorned with medallions, covering an enormous white gown that flowed around her like a tent. Circled around her head was a long braid of gray hair, making her surely the oldest claver Reeve had yet seen.

At her side was an ordinary-looking man with a flat white hat, from which hung a tassel. This individual turned to regard Reeve with a piercing stare.

“Gregor,” Dooley whispered. “That’s Gregor!”

Behind Gregor shuffled one of the jinn, bound in heavy ropes and sneering at his fate, whatever it might be. As a resounding clang of a door announced the procession’s departure, silence reclaimed the network of caves. Until Dooley began again.

“It’s not fair. I thought they’d take you first.” He shook his head. “I should have helped him. I try to give some instruction so they can make a good impression. And not be so scared.” He sighed.

“Don’t worry about that fellow,” Reeve said. “It takes more than a white parade to scare a jinn.” He settled back onto the floor, his neck weary.

“A jinn?” Dooley sat next to Reeve, cradling his knees with his arms.

“Some of your prisoners are members of the Atlantis Clave. They call themselves jinn.”

Dooley plugged his ears with his fingers. “Da da da, da da da da. Don’t want to heeeear!”

Reeve fixed him with an ironic stare. “Sure you do.”

The fingers came out of his ears. “OK, Atlantis Clave—where is it, and how many people live there? Quickly, before I start talking again.”

“Atlantis Clave is at the mouth of the river, on the Inland Sea. Got thousands of members. All going to come looking for us, mad as hell.”

Dooley shrugged. “That’s all right. That’s what the Labs were built for. Assault!”

“How so, Dooley?”

“Because that’s what they were built for, to look like dumb caves! The First Scientists built these Labs in secret, so mundane people wouldn’t pillage them. Back then, it was forbidden to transform humans, against the law of the land. But in the Dark Days, in the first hundred years, the fore-scientists knew that only Somaforming could save us. So they built the Labs deep in the canyon rock, and hid them, and we’ve kept the faith, all these generations. Each generation raises up the next generation of scientists to carry on the transformation.”

“Doesn’t look like you’ve gotten very far.” Reeve thought of the fantastic variations on the human theme, some painful-looking.

Dooley scrunched up his face. “That’s not the point. It isn’t necessary to succeed. Just to try.”

“Dooley, do you ever listen to yourself?”

A slow, sad shake of the head. “I don’t think Gregor is going to like you.”

“How’s he going to like wearing that stupid hat around his neck?”

From behind them came a gravelly voice. “He would not be amused.”

Dooley scrambled backward as fast as he could to get out of the shadow of the white-coated man with the funny hat.

“Untie him,” Gregor ordered Dooley. “Here’s a creature badly in need of reforming.”

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