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"And you?" the voice asked. "You are from very far, too, are you?"
Kiril looked up. He wiped a dribble of saliva from his lower jaw as he stared
into the silvery mask. "Elena," he said softly.
"How far away do you live?"
"Mediweva," he answered. "Very far."
"Just a sailor who's traveled far? Or did something compel you to come here?"
"Something," Kiril said. "Elena. Take off your mask."
"What brought you here?"
"You did."
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"Not I. Something specific."
Kiril saw Barthel and Bar-Woten standing in the middle of the room under close
watch by three guards.
"I had to save you. Save her." He was aware now whom he was talking to.
"Her?"
"My only love." That was hypocritical, he thought. The self-accusation echoed
and vanished.
"Ah." The figure gestured.
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The cage opened. When he fell, he was caught by yielding arms and taken to
join his companions.
"Did you see where we are?" Bar-Woten asked. A guard shouted at him. He glared
back. "We're in the country of the Wall!"
The guard raised his rifle, and Bar-Woten backed off with hands up, placating.
The Wall.
Twenty-two
They sat in the tiny cell and stared listlessly at the padded walls. Bar-Woten
crouched with his hands clasped between his knees, knocking his knuckles
against his legs. Barthel stood and picked his teeth with a fingernail. They
had been given a thick gruel three hours before. It was acting on them
unpleasantly. Kiril lay on his back with head and shoulders against a wall,
looking green and feeling very docile.
"We've been drugged," Bar-Woten said. Kiril nodded. They wouldn't offer much
resistance in their condition. A small window in the door showed them the hall
outside, and by peering at an angle they could see the rigid shoulder of a
guard, but nothing more.
The door swung open. An officer stepped into the cell and looked down at
Kiril. "You are the
Mediwevan?" he asked in thickly accented Teutan.
"Speak English. I can understand. Yes, I'm the Mediwevan."
"Come with me," the officer said. He reached down and picked Kiril up. With a
last look over his shoulder at his companions he was pulled down the hall to a
brightly lit room beyond.
The room was outfitted like a surgery ward, with a central couch covered by
worn brown leather and strips of absorbent cotton. He was strapped onto the
couch and his pulse and blood pressure were taken. An orange-robed man with
intersecting black lines drawn across his bald scalp bent over him with a
syringe in hand.
The demon-figure entered from another door. "You may administer," it said. It
leaned over
Kiril as the needle went into his arm. "This will not hurt you. Just to find
out what you are ..."
Kiril went blank.
He awoke with a sour taste in his mouth and the shock of smelling salts in his
nose.
"You've been cooperative," the thing in black told him. He was taken to the
cell. Barthel and
Bar-Woten were removed next. Kiril asked the guard why they were both going.
The guard looked at him sternly, then checked up and down the corridor before
answering. "We believe you're the one we want," he said. "But we will test
these two just in case." He swung the door shut and locked it.
In two hours the Ibisian and the Khemite were brought back. Bar-Woten weaved a
little and slumped to the floor. Barthel stood rigid against the wall, eyes
wide and staring into the opposite corner of the cell.
"What did they make me say?" Bar-Woten asked.
"Nothing," Barthel snapped. The Khemite looked into the comer and flinched as
if from a blow.
What Bar-Woten had revealed under hypnosis was slowly mangling Barthel's
insides. He had never suspected....
Overhead they heard the sounds of distant explosions. Kiril peered through the
window and saw the guard standing away from the cell, looking anxiously down
the hall.
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The lights went out. After an hour they slept. Bar-Woten snored loudly, head
lolling between his legs. Kiril hung on the edge of sleep. He heard someone
move in the cell, but stirred and drifted off.
"No," Barthel said. He closed his eyes but couldn't block out what he saw. In
the corner, standing above the reclining
Kiril, was Barthel's mother. She glowed faintly like the sea, and her throat
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What she murmured to him he could not accept. But it was true. He had heard.
"Not now," he said.
She spoke to him again.
"No."
He turned away from the corner and butted his head softly against the padding.
The lights came on again. Kiril stood and stretched in the cramped space.
Barthel slept on, standing with his head wedged into the corner. Bar-Woten
looked at Kiril specula-lively from his spot on the floor.
"You're the chosen one," he said. "They're sure you're the one who'll get them
into the Wall."
"Get who in?"
"The thin ones. You told the right story, I suppose. Barthel didn't. I'm sure
I didn't. The one who isn't human, it spoke to the guard while they were
making Barthel talk. It spoke English but I could understand. There are three
of them here."
"Three of who?" Kiril asked, mind still foggy from sleep.
"The thin, strange ones. They aren't from this part of Hegira. They came
across the Wall in a ship of some sort. They've made a pact, and they're
sharing knowledge with the English-speakers."
"They want me to take them to the Wall?"
"You're lucky," Bar-Woten said, nodding. "You'll reach your goal. I doubt if
we will."
"I don't want to help them with anything," Kiril said. "They don't deserve
it."
"The thin ones might be more friendly than the English-speakers. They didn't
like the slaughter at the Obelisk camp. Seemed to think there might have been
more like you. Dead pilgrims are no good to them."
"What are the English-speakers doing for them?"
"Didn't say." Bar-Woten's face crinkled into a smile. "It's fairly obvious,
though. The thin ones want to get back to where they came from."
"Through the Wall?"
"Any way they can. Perhaps the English-speakers are building them another
rocket."
"Then I pity them. They'll be double-crossed."
Bar-Woten shrugged. "I don't understand much of anything now."
Barthel jerked and pulled away from his corner. He nibbed his eyes, then
looked over Kiril's shoulder and seemed relieved.
The door opened an hour after they were all awake. Another officer, paunchy
and florid, ordered them out of the cell and took them down the hall in the
direction opposite the laboratory.
Two young, wan-faced guards followed with holstered pistols.
A hovercraft waited on the concrete airstrip. Craters ten and twenty meters
across had been punched into the pavement and the surrounding rocky hills.
Fragments of metal littered the area.
The fat officer rapped the butt of his gun on the port of the hovercraft. The
port swung open, and a ladder came down. "Climb in," he told them. They went
up the ladder into the ship. The guards followed, and the officer managed to
squeeze through with some straining. A low, round metal tube led them around [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]