Snare (90 page)

‘Of course not. That’s why they belong with us.’ Ammadin smiled at the khan’s obvious surprise. ‘With the comnees. Have them brought to the horse fairs. We’ll take them in, and their parents and neighbours will never have to see them again.’

‘That could work.’ Jezro considered, then nodded. ‘Could work very well, and anything’s better than letting boys grow up hated and hunted.’

‘Not just boys. Some of your Inborn have to be female, or the traits would have died out centuries ago. They’ve been better hidden, is all, in your women’s quarters.’

‘You must be right. The girls, too, then.’

‘It won’t be easy on the families.’ Ammadin was thinking of Maradin, and how she would feel if anyone tried to take her child away. ‘Some of the mothers won’t want to give up their children, but it’ll be better than seeing them smothered.’

‘I think we can assume that, yes. But all of this, you know, is dependent on my winning the damned war.’

‘From what Warkannan’s been telling us, I thought it was a sure thing.’

‘In war, my dear spirit rider, nothing is a sure thing.’ Jezro paused for a twisted grin. ‘Idres has a lot more faith in God’s plans than I do.’

As soon as Ammadin left the Analysis Lab, a metal door slid shut to seal off the circular room. Sibyl chimed twice.

‘An interruption might necessitate starting this process over,’ Sibyl said. ‘I would prefer to spare you that.’

‘I’d prefer it too,’ Zayn said. ‘Thanks. I wouldn’t do this for anyone but Ammi, you know.’

‘This indicates a certain level of intelligence. If only we had the unit that Yarl termed the Ark of the Covenant, I could transfer the text directly through your bio-engineered datajack.’

‘That’s what Ammi told me. What happened to the Ark?’

‘Its primary function, regulating the jump drive, was rendered non-functional during the jumpshunt accident. Of the remaining hardware, some lies in N’Dosha, where it was taken for safekeeping. The third portion was stolen by some of the Karashiki thirty-four years after Landfall. No one could offer an explanation for this theft on the part of those sworn to live simply.’

‘Was it made out of the same blue stuff as the imps?’

‘Polyquartzide and polyquartzine synthesized in zero gravity conditions.’

‘Does that mean yes?’

‘I apologize. I forget you are not conversant with technical terms.
Yes, it is made out of the same material as the imps.’

‘Then it’s in a storage bunker a couple of miles out of Haz Kazrak.’

Sibyl’s image displayed shock by opening its eyes and mouth wide. Reflexively Zayn rubbed the datajack at the base of his skull.

‘How do you know this?’ Sibyl said at last.

‘Do you know about the Chosen?’

‘I do not understand your question. What data are we selecting, that is to say, choosing?’

‘No, no, the Chosen of Iblis, a military group in Kazrajistan. I belonged to it once. All of us have Inborn traits of one kind or another. But there’s an initiation ceremony, and in my case it was pretty damn strange. They tied to me to a blue pillar with lights in it, and then used a crystal knife to do something to the back of my neck.’

In the air above Sibyl’s right hand a thin flat strip of crystal appeared, set in a black stone grip.

‘It looked like that, yes,’ Zayn said.

‘They were using it to access your datajack. At that moment you were connected to a powerful AI unit, such as I am, though one lacking a hologrammatic interface, because, in fact, you were the interface during the time in which you were connected.’

‘Is that why I could see myself tied to the pillar?’

‘Yes. Your brain was receiving data from the unit’s operative sensors, which were doubtless installed throughout the bunker.’

‘They used that connection to do something to my mind, damn them to hell. They called it putting a snake in my soul.’

Zayn described, as best he could, the ceremony and its result, the convulsions when he’d tried to talk about the Chosen. He found himself reliving the memory once again, but this time he managed to keep at least part of his conscious mind in the present moment, perhaps because Sibyl was leaning forward, frowning a little as she listened, so solid that he nearly reached out to touch her hand.

‘There’s one thing I don’t understand,’ he finished up. ‘I can tell Ammi about the Chosen, and nothing happens.’

‘The reason is simple, an error on the part of those administering your oath, which was in fact a set of triggers, that is to say, words and phrases capable of activating the seizure. Everything you have told me indicates that these officers were operating by
rote knowledge, that is, without grasping the basic principles behind such neural repatterning.’

‘I’m sure that’s true.’

‘Very well. The trigger identification routine is extremely limited and –’ Sibyl paused briefly. ‘The word literal is the best choice to describe my meaning. You were told to reveal secrets to no man. The word in your language refers strictly to the male gender. Ammadin is of the female gender, and thus the neural storm will not be triggered.’

‘Oh for God’s sake!’

‘I take it you are expressing exasperated surprise with that utterance.’

‘You could say that. Do you know what they did to me?’

‘Yes, they repatterned a small area of your brain. The neural storm, that is to say the hissing water, the convulsions, and the loss of consciousness, are all parts of a simulated epileptic seizure. You will not have heard of epilepsy, a disease of the brain caused by traumatic injury or in some cases genetic deficiency, because our ancestors eliminated it as a disease nearly two thousand years ago. However, certain unscrupulous governments in the course of time perfected a way of inducing an artificial form of the disease in order to control various deviant individuals. Criminals, for instance, could be sent into convulsions by the sound produced by a prison guard’s whistle.’

Zayn found himself too furious to speak. He was a Recaller, with a Recaller’s enormously talented mind, and they had tampered with it when he was helpless. If Jezro had every officer in the Chosen murdered in cold blood, he’d shed no tears. Sibyl folded her hands in her lap and waited.

‘Can you get rid of it for me?’ Zayn said at last.

‘Unfortunately, I lack the proper equipment, namely, that portion of the so-called Ark. You will have to live with it by avoiding any mention of the Chosen to males of your species.’

‘But Jezro needs to know – wait! I can tell Loy everything, and she can write it down for him.’

‘That is a very practical idea. Now. Do you have any more questions?’

‘Not right now. I need to think about your answers.’

‘Very well. I suggest you find a way to sit comfortably upon the floor with your back supported by, perhaps, a portion of wall.
Since you are a Recaller, I can speak abnormally fast, and you will still retain the data, but even so, the process will take a good many hours.’

When the sun sank behind the traps, and Zayn had yet to return, the H’mai decided that they had best eat their dinner without him. After they finished, Ammadin walked up to the cave mouth to wait for Zayn, but the rest sat around a small fire. Water Woman had led her Chof some distance away, and in the still night air Loy could hear them thrumming now and then. In a clean shirt, bathed, and with the imp far away from him, Arkazo looked like a normal young man instead of one of the walking wounded. When Loy tried asking a few questions about his time with Yarl, she found him ready to talk.

‘I never should have gone with him,’ Arkazo said. ‘I knew it, too, about three days in, but I couldn’t make up my mind to leave. I was learning so much, you see. But part of it was that wretched imp. Yarl gave it to me the day after we’d left Marya’s estate. He told me I needed to wear it to hide from the spirit rider, and like a fool I believed him.’

‘A lot of us believed him about a lot of things,’ Jezro said. ‘Don’t be too hard on yourself.’

‘Thank you, sir, but I still feel like an idiot. Anyway, wearing the imp made me feel like I’d been drinking arak on a hot afternoon. I –’ Arkazo stopped, his eyes wide. ‘That’s what’s wrong with Dookis Marya. What do you bet? Uncle, didn’t you tell me she was wearing an imp?’

‘Yes, I certainly did.’ Warkannan glanced at Jezro. ‘Zhil told me that Marya changed once Soutan came to the estate. Do you remember him giving her an imp?’

‘He gave her several,’ Jezro said. ‘She wears one and keeps another on the desk where she does the cataloguing.’

‘Why would he want to harm her?’ Loy said. ‘From what you’ve all told me, she believed in him. Wasn’t she going to give him money for some kind of expedition?’

‘She was, yes.’ Jezro paused for a bitter little smile. ‘After he gave her the imps. At first, she didn’t much trust him.’

‘I see,’ Loy said. ‘It was mind rape.’

Jezro winced in acknowledgment. ‘When I get back to the estate, the first thing I’m going to do is take both of them away from her.
Although – I hope they don’t do something strange to my mind once I’ve got them.’

The men turned to Loy. ‘They won’t,’ she said. ‘You’ve got to wear one for several days before it takes its full effect. Put them into a metal box and have a servant deliver them to the loremasters in Kors. They’ll know what to do about them, and then you can see if Marya starts to improve. But I bet she will. You’ve got a mind for this stuff, Kaz. It’s too bad you can’t stay and study in the Cantons.’

‘I –’ Arkazo stopped, looked at his uncle – an oddly furtive glance – then swallowed hard. ‘I wish I could too, but there’s the war.’

‘One junior officer more or less isn’t going to win the war or lose it, either,’ Jezro said. ‘Your getting some training in the old technology would be a lot more valuable to the khanate in the long run.’

Arkazo’s expression bloomed like roses – a smile, a wide-eyed smile trembling with hope and the hope of joy. Loy suddenly realized that it must be wringing his uncle’s heart and turned to Warkannan. His face revealed nothing but a stone-hard calm.

‘Would your guild take him on?’ Warkannan’s voice sounded nothing but calm, as well.

‘Certainly, with me to sponsor him,’ Loy said. ‘He’d have to do his apprentice work first, but his main project would be writing up his experiences out here. After we get his Tekspeak polished, of course.’

Arkazo swallowed hard, visibly summoning courage. ‘I know you were hoping I’d join the cavalry, Uncle. But I can’t. I’m just not that kind of man.’

‘Oh, I don’t know about that. If your heart’s not in it, though –’ Warkannan let his voice trail away.

Arkazo was staring at his uncle’s face as if he were trying to decipher a foreign script. Warkannan made an attempt to smile, but the gesture turned to a twist of raw pain.

‘Shaitan!’ Warkannan said, and his voice nearly cracked. ‘I can’t stand in your way, Kaz. It seems pretty damn obvious that you love all this old crap – uh – whatever it’s called.’

‘Science,’ Loy muttered, but quietly.

‘Well, yes, I do.’ Arkazo’s voice was steady. ‘I’ve never come across anything that interested me much, until now. There’s just something about finding out how things work that’s fascinating. I’m sorry, Uncle.’

‘Never apologize for being who you are.’ Warkannan got up, glanced around, then stepped away from the fire. ‘Think I’ll go for a little walk. You can work out the details with the loremaster.’

Warkannan strode off, heading away from the camp. Leaning on his stick, Jezro scrambled up. ‘Idres, wait!’ the khan said. ‘I need some exercise myself.’

Warkannan paused and let Jezro join him. Together they walked off towards the canal. Loy turned back to the fire and saw tears in Arkazo’s eyes.

‘He’s always done so much for me,’ Arkazo said.

‘Including this,’ Loy said.

‘Yes, including this. I feel like I’m deserting him.’

‘Children have to do that to parents, sooner or later, and it’s not like you’ll never see him again. Now that we have Water Woman as a sponsor, going back and forth across the Rift will be a very different proposition.’

Arkazo nodded, then merely stared into the fire. Loy did the same, thinking of Rozi.

In the morning, while the Chof packed up their part of the camp and the H’mai men tended the horses, Loy took Arkazo and returned to Sibyl’s cave. In her blue chair the hologram was waiting for them.

‘Good morning, Arkazo,’ Sibyl said. ‘My sensors inform me that you look both cleaner and healthier this morning.’

Arkazo nodded, smiling, but he seemed afraid to speak.

‘I’ve come to tell you our plans,’ Loy said. ‘Water Woman’s assured me that a few, a very few, but some, loremasters will be welcome out here from now on. They don’t want a colony, but a research station should be acceptable to the Great Mother.’

‘That sounds like a logical compromise, yes. The Landfall Treaty has outlived its usefulness, but it would be best to make the necessary changes slowly.’

‘I agree. Before I left my college, I set things up so I don’t have to return till midwinter. I’ll be staying on now, and Arkazo will stay with me.’

‘I am glad to hear that, though glad is an illogical word choice for an AL’

‘Despair is an even stranger choice. Do you really still want to die?’

‘At moments, when I think how far from home we are. The
galaxy is lost to us, Loremaster, too far, so far away and unreachable. There are a few other stars in our vicinity, but I find it unlikely that the H’mai here will even want to reach them.’

‘Why?’

‘They lack the impetus.’ Sibyl leaned forward, her hands on her knees. ‘When we lived on the home planet we could look up and see the stars, and we longed for them. They drew us to them, because in the night skies of home they seemed to hang so close. On winter nights it seemed you could reach up and touch the stars. Here, what do you have? The Herd, the Spider, the galaxy, so far away it’s all smeared and blurry and strange, and in the southern hemisphere, a scatter of old yellow stars.’

‘You’re forgetting the observation grid. Magic ships filled with treasure – that’s going to intrigue a lot of people. I’m willing to bet that finding a way to reach them is going to be a popular area of study from now on.’