Chapter
Six – The Arena
Grampa
swears the dead don’t dream. I believe he is wrong. I believe death is a place
of nothing but dreams. Absent the confines of a frail and desperately needy body,
the self that looks through the lens of our consciousness lifts off, soaring, to
the realms beyond life. From time to time it may return to visit the
living.
The events on Freelife
after Grampa’s arrival opened the doors of doubt for me, allowing me to see his
teachings in a new light. Not as absolute truths, but the best he could do in
the moment. I still hoped that his actions of late had my welfare in mind, but
I had come to see him as something less than infallible. And as far as the
dream thing goes, “Come into my world, Parvenu,” that’s what Cypher said to me
after I curled around Cassie and passed out.
I lay immobilized by
strong cords tied to the side rails of a hard table or platform. My injured leg
still throbbed but in the murky light I couldn’t see any bleeding. Cypher
emerged out of a colorless, odorless mist and stood to my left so I had to turn
my head to see him.
He
was dead by my hand, and he must know that, returned to haunt me before I made
my final exit from this bright stage. His head lolled to the right, the knife
having been removed, and after it severed all of the supporting structure on
the left side of his neck. As he spoke to me in the shadows of the dream, I saw
in the milk-white hue of his unblinking eyes that his sight had departed with his
life. We were two, together, continuing our shared nightmare.
“You’ve made a mess of
things, you know,” he chastised me, shaking a bloodstained finger. “You were
supposed to die. All their plans and ambition are turned to dross. Life will
never be the same. You will never be the same.” He laughed. He chewed his nails;
something I’d not noticed when he was alive. The quick was exposed and covered
in bloody scabs on nearly every finger.
“What
do you want with me, Cypher? Can’t it wait? I feel like I’ll be with you soon
enough.”
He
opened his mouth to answer, but all that came out was a fresh surge of black
blood, which he tried to catch by cupping his hands. It ran between his fingers
and he fell to his knees, sucking the spill from the ground between us. In a
moment he sat up and wiped his mouth. His skin was white, his lips red, as were
the rims of his eyes. With his right hand he propped his head upright and
cleared his throat a number of times before attempting to speak again. The
voice that I heard was like water plunging over a fall, a rushing sound
punctuated by the splash of small drops and muffled by mist. Each utterance
cost him dearly a reflected in the crimson tears that streamed down his face.
He spoke slowly, each word seeming to stick in his throat before tearing loose
with a sound like sandpaper on raw wood. His chest was still. It seemed that
the air came in through the gaping hole in the side of his neck, swelling his
throat until it forced out the next word, like certain species of giant frogs
in the swamps of Thebes. Whoever pulled the dagger out hadn’t been particularly
careful and the barbed edges had torn away the flesh which hung in pink, red,
white, and purple ribbons around the wound.
“Dominicus
said I should be careful with you. That you were enhanced, favored. I laughed
at him. I wanted to kill you in the tunnel. You know that, right? But Cassie,
that bitch, wouldn’t let me.” He made a horrible face when he said her name,
his tongue, which had been cut halfway through on the underside, flopped out of
his mouth and it took both hands for him to push it back in.
“Enhanced
how?”
“Something
about the thing you stole on Thebes.”
“It
wasn’t on Thebes, it was on…”
He
covered his ears with both hands and shook his head.
“It
was Thebes. I’m not talking about the compound from the lab on Cronus. That was
all removed. You remember that pain, but that isn’t what I’m talking about.”
I
did remember. They’d taken out most of my bone marrow and replaced it with a
cultured substitute. There was an ethical debate in the press about whether or
not they should have let me die. It would have been cheaper, I think, to have
done so. Let me die and then strip the stolen compound I’d been injected with
from my corpse. No need for an expensive marrow replacement procedure.
Ultimately, the need to prove what I’d taken and then let me stand trial with
irrefutable evidence outweighed the economic considerations. The sLOD needed to
set an example for other would be smugglers, saboteurs, and industrial thieves.
And it was ultimately an economic
decision, as are all sLOD rulings in such manners. The only way they could
disband the militia, who I now, and for the first time, saw as the only check
on their seizing unlimited power, was to orchestrate a society of peace and
reasonable prosperity. Bread and circuses, indeed. Who was I sympathetic to in all
of this?
“I
didn’t steal anything from Thebes.”
He
tried to smile but the left side of his face had sagged so that it looked as if
the skin might slip all the way down his neck to his shoulder.
“Perhaps
you don’t remember it because someone drugged or hypnotized you. We all know
how susceptible you are to that. You went under on the jump to Freelife,
remember. They made it so you couldn’t even speak the name of your home, so you
couldn’t confess your crime. They muzzled you for ten years. Cassie, that
bitch, she wasn’t lying about any of that.” He caught his tongue before it
slipped out again as he spat Cassie’s name.
“Maybe
so, but I’m free of that now. Thebes, Thebes, Thebes. I speak the name of my
home as easily as I do yours, you murdering Judas. I named my crime. And I’ve
gained a lot of perspective. I see my entire life in retrospect. My whole life
on Thebes was spent working or studying. Amos saw to that. I didn’t have any
opportunity to steal.”
“Such
passion becomes a martyr, not a hero, Parvenu. But who are you, really? Think
again, Garrett Cold. Think back to the day you climbed the cliff above the
creek. Amos wanted to divert the flow. You were sent to set charges in the rock
face above. What happened there?”
I
knew the incident he referred to. I’d recalled it as I hung from the ledge
during Ella Cantor’s landing and escape. There had been a cougar. Grampa might
have killed me with his rock-throwing.
Cypher had moved very
close, standing now beside where I lay. His bent so his face nearly touched
mine. I could smell the stink of his bowels where they’d released in death. I
tried to push him away but he grabbed me all the same, his head falling
sideways again as his hands gripped my shoulders, lifting me as if I were a stuffed
toy so that our eyes were on the same level.
“Let
me go.” I had to remind myself this was a dream. I was powerless to move and he
shook me like an angry child shakes a doll or a puppy.
“Or
what? You’ll kill me?” he laughed. “I might enjoy watching you try.”
“What
do you want?”
“How
did you escape the cougar?”
I
stopped to think about that. I’d climbed nearly to the top when the big cat
appeared. Yellow eyes and a long tail with a black tip twitching in the
brilliant sunlit afternoon. I could hear the squeak of a bad bearing on a
windmill not far from the creek, probably the next project Grampa had in mind
for me, and smell rich moss on the rocks in the stream bed below. Grampa was
hollering and throwing rocks at me, or the cougar, it was hard to say for sure
which. I had twelve cylinders of BLAST strapped to my back. The cougar was
waiting above on the ledge. The cat was hungry, anxious, and pacing, staring hard
at me so I had to avert my eyes, or else fall from the dizziness induced by the
big cat’s motion.
“I
don’t remember.”
“Don’t
you?”
I
struggled to excavate the events of that day.
“I
threw a canister of BLAST at it. Grampa said it would kill me and the cat, but
he was wrong.”
“Hanging
by your fingertips after free climbing a cliff, carrying volatile, homemade
explosives, you had the savvy to reach over your shoulder, pull just the right
cylinder from your pack and throw it. And everything turned out fine. That’s
the stuff of heroes.”
“I
was lucky.”
“Like
a scythe sweeping the air is lucky when it mows a swathe. If that’s what really
happened.” His words came easier now, as if he were breathing again. The dream world
grew clearer the longer he talked. There were shapes in the distance, the mist
fading and silhouettes of buildings replacing it, and sounds too, the screech
of falcons, the drone and hum of many voices murmuring. “You picked the only
cylinder with a horizontal directional charge. Only a boy and yet you had the
presence of mind to do that. Threw it on the ledge in exactly the right place with
one hand while hanging from an almost sheer rock face with the other, that’s
what you think happened.” The air whistled out the hole in his neck as he
finished the sentence. He let go of my shoulders and looked behind him, turning
his body so his back was to me. “The blast didn’t kill the cougar. It just
knocked it off the ledge, right on top of you.”
“It
bounced off of me and fell to the creek bed. It must have been unconscious. The
fall killed it, shattered its skull.”
“And
what did you do next?”
“Climbed
to the top and set the remaining charges, then climbed down and detonated them.
A third of that cliff came down. Buried the cougar and rerouted the creek
perfectly despite the missing charge. It was a good morning’s work.”
“So
you say.” He turned toward me, holding his head with both hands now. His face
was turning dark, or perhaps the light had shifted, casting a shadow. “Is it
like Amos to send you up there with more blast than you needed?”
“I
was there. It was a very good morning’s work.” All through this encounter I
struggled to free some part of my body. Prickly heat and a sense of ten
thousand needles prodding me from the inside slowly replaced the numbness of my
limbs.
“At
least that’s how you remember it. Still, Amos wasting blast, doesn’t make much
sense to me. But, like you said, I wasn’t there.”
I
had a terrible itch on the top of my head. The numbness in my limbs was
passing. “You stole something that
day. And what you stole became the power within you that has kept you safe. That’s
the power that allowed you to kill me and the Sarconian.”
“The
Sarconian?” Just then I noticed the red-haired convict, the same one who’d shoved
six feet of sharpened rebar through a rammed earth wall, disabling and probably
killing Cassie, emerging from the shadows behind Cypher. I’d nearly torn his
head off with my bare hands, but here he stood, the angry welts of his burn
scars covering a whole side of his body. His head and neck seemed intact, which
given Cypher’s condition I couldn’t really understand. It seemed that the
wounds one received in life didn’t always follow into death. “You’re the
Sarconian?”
“He
doesn’t speak. Before Rheynstadt set him on fire, his tongue was removed.”
“And
I broke his neck. But there’s no sign of that …”
“It’s
because the universe never gives us more pain than we can handle, even in our
dreams, even in death.”
“What?”
“Just
think about it.” He seemed to sense something or someone behind me as he turned
abruptly, using his hand to tilt his an ear in that direction. “We’ll talk
again,” he said, giving me a reassuring tap on the chest with a bloody finger.
It felt like an iron rod.
I
was about to ask him for more details about the power, as he called it, when I
heard a sharp crack near my head, and a scent like boiling ammonia briefly
filled my nostrils. My eyes opened and I discovered that I was both alive and
awake. Cypher would have to tell me the rest of his dream later.
“Thee
wake’d, Gee Cold. Thoughts had I that thee mightn’t live.”
“Tohoana?”
I saw the smashed face of Bernie’s renegade server looking down at me. I was in
a low-ceilinged room, lit by candle lanterns placed on the floor near the walls.
Among the flickering shadows, the smell of tallow mixed with distant shouts in
air that felt like wetted felt. The convicts in the north quarter rendered the
fat of their dead to make subterranean light for the many areas where power
generation had ceased or never existed. Probably just as well that the candles
stank so much. I was lying on a naked mattress, one that I guessed hadn’t ever
been cleaned. The smell of urine and feces, always strong in the north quarter,
occasionally reached my nostrils from directly beneath me in the smoky room. The
injury to my leg burned as if a hot poker were being pressed against it.
Through gritted teeth I asked, “Where am I?”
“Safe,
Gee Cold. Thankee no me for that. Was Dockrill Castello brought you this respite.
Thou and the broken LT. Say true, Gee Cole. Hast thee gone to militia?” She had
a wry smile on her face, hard for most to see in the chaos of her ruined
features, but I’d known her well and for a long time. I tried to sit up and
found my arms restrained, just as they were in the dream. “Stay safe, Gee Cold.
Rise not yet. There be many among those left that would see thee dead and
flagged as Tiny was.”
“I
didn’t kill Tiny, Tohoana. You were there, you know the truth.”
She
nodded and fingered the fabric of my uniform without looking at my face.
“Militia
mans did that foulness. Those that are dressed as such. And shaved, too, thou
are like them, as if truth be not what you speak.”
I had
a moment of nausea and swallowed several times before it passed. My limbs felt
like rubber, as if the skeleton beneath the flesh had dissolved and the muscles
turned to jelly. I coughed and stabbing pains in my ribs reminded me of the
additional damage my body had recently endured. “I’m just doing what I have to,
Tohoana. Trying to stay alive.”
She
ran her hand over my scalp. Her palm was cool and I relaxed a bit, staring up
at the stained ceiling. “Well that thee should live, Gee Cole. Well for all to
live.”
“Where
are we?” I asked.
“Dockrill
Castello brings thee here. He comes when rest has restored thee. Here is
nourishment.”
She
fed me a cup of tepid broth, spooning small mouthfuls one after the other until
I choked on it. Nearly all the food on Freelife was freeze-dried or dehydrated.
Mixing it with grey water and heat released weak flavors, but it was
nutritious, able to keep miners alive and strong for years if they avoided
accidents. Her eyes never once met mine.
Convicts like Tohoana,
those with special talents, managed to form tenuous relationships with cargo
ship captains who smuggled in small quantities of herbs and dried medicinal plants
from the softie worlds. I could tell from the taste of the broth that it
contained something other than protein and chicken flavoring. I hesitated,
sniffing at the mug, but Tohoana encouraged me to drink it all.
“Thee
needs strength for the trials to come, Gee Cole.”
“What
trials?” She didn’t answer so I had a moment to think. “What about Cassie? The
LT…”
“Broken.
But Dockrill Castello sees to that one also. Thou and she belong to Dockrill
Castello now.”
“Belong
to Dockrill, is that what you said? Is Dockrill now a sLOD?”
She
didn’t answer.
I
choked down the last of the broth which had a strong flavor of mint beneath the
food stuff. Dockrill Castello existed only as a rumor for most on Freelife.
Militia and convicts used his name as an oath and a curse. Said to be the
longest lived resident of the system, he was proprietor of the arena, holding
it through an ever-shifting population of violent, ambitious men and women. The
reputation of the North Quarter as the place where pleasure and pain both
reached their peak ran parallel with Castello’s presence. Yet he was never
seen, at least not by anyone outside of his inner circle. Because his presence
served as the only consistent stabilizing force in the north quarter, the
militia seemed to leave him alone. Or perhaps they’d tried to root him out and
failed. If an ancient convict could keep the maddest of the inmates contained
to one quarter of Leaveton and that quarter served to channel away much of the
aggression of a million others, then allowing him to run the arena without
condoning his actions seemed a reasonable compromise. And Dockrill knew the
limitations. He never tried to exercise his power outside of the North Quarter.
Tohoana
stood as if to leave. I called to her, hearing the creak of the cords holding
me as I strained to reach out. “What do thee want, Gee Cold?” She put a hand on
my chest and looked at my face so that I saw into her eyes for the first time.
What I saw there sent a chill down my back.
“Tohoana,
I wanted to ask…” My voice trailed off. What did I want to ask her?
“Go on, Gee Cole, ask
all thou likes. Meets knowing comes free for Dockrill Castello’s man..”
“Dockrill, yes, Dockrill
Castello. I’ve never seen him. Yet you say he brought me in. Why?”
“Dockrill
Castello do no tell the meaning of his works. Thou and I both confounded by
such, though it be long confirmed in here.” She tapped her forehead and then
mine. “He asks when Gee Cold be strengthened for trial. I tell him soon. Sleep
now, Gee Cold.” She pressed a callused finger to my sweating upper lip before
leaving, closing the door of the room behind her. I heard the dropping of a bar
and the latching of a shackle lock.
I
wanted to get up and explore this new cell, but a sense of sudden heaviness
filled me as the drugs in the broth took effect. I wondered if Cypher would be
waiting as I passed out of consciousness. He wasn’t. Tohoana had provided me
with that which I most needed, deep, dreamless sleep.
When
I next awoke, I felt ready to wrestle a cougar.
Bradna
Cucrow served as Dockrill Castello’s right-hand and mouthpiece to the residents
and visitors of Freelife Seven. A man in his fifty’s with a typical middle-aged
paunch and elaborately coiffed silver hair, he had an affinity for good music,
young men dressed as women, and the logistical challenges of running the arena.
Unlike his reclusive master, Bradna’s face and stentorian voice were known to
nearly all of the planet’s permanent residents and many of the miners. He often
rode the transport buses from the spaceport to Bernie’s or would be waiting in
the circular clearing outside the tavern when the miners arrived for their
holidays, generally accompanied by a half-dozen young men and women, the most
attractive that the north quarter had to offer, giving his well-rehearsed and enticingly
erotic pitch to visit Dockrill’s arena, “There to witness the most exquisite
debaucheries, debasements, and defilements that lovely Seven has to offer.
Deflowering of virgins, devouring of body wastes, and a special performance at
sunset in the main ring, a piece Dockrill calls convict justice.” It was this
resonant appeal that had drawn me onto the flatbed cart, drawn by a team of
twenty-four naked men wearing hand-made horse head helmets and fitted with plumed
anal plugs in a rainbow of colors. This was the first act in a burlesque
theatrical adventure that few could resist looking in on at least once.
When
I awoke and hollered for Tohoana to cut me loose, it was Bradna Cucrow who
unlocked the door to the cell where I was being held.
“Feeling
better, I see, Marshall Cold, or do we call you Private Parvenu now?” he said
as he stepped into the room, stopping just over an arm’s length away from the
cot to which I was bound.
Cucrow’s
presence confirmed for me where I was. The arena. I hadn’t been here in nearly
five years. The fact that the number two man was personally taking an interest
in me showed that the occasion was an important one.
“Bradna,
why am I tied up?” I’d been struggling with the stout braided cords ever since
awaking. Whoever had tied the knots knew what they were doing and I’d made no
progress in securing my release.
“I
really do apologize for that, Private Marshall,” he said with a slight titter.
“Dockrill said you appeared to be having some sort of identity crisis and he
thought it best we keep you restrained until that sorts itself out. It’s a
shame, really, but there you are, although I must admit, you look very
delicious all trussed up like that. Lean and fit as ever. I’m jealous.” He eyed
me in a way that would have caused Corporal Bundy to shoot him. Not that I
wanted Corporal Bundy anywhere near me.
“Listen
you old queen, I’ve done nothing but try and help all of you for as long as
I’ve been on-world. The LT I was with was trying to help too. Rheynstadt has
gone off the deep end and the convicts are getting even worse treatment than
usual from the militia…”
“And
yet you,” Bradna said, looking me over from head to toe, “are dressed exactly
like the militia.” He extended all of the consonants when he said the word
militia so that I could hear how distasteful he found them. “Right down to the
dogtags, or so I’m told. How do you account for that? Dockrill is most anxious
to hear what you have to say on the matter.”
“Then
untie me and let’s go see him.”
He
shook his head, his mouth set in a tight-lipped smile that conveyed both
sympathy and amusement at my suggestion.
“One
doesn’t just go see Dockrill, Marshall Cold. Besides, Dockrill is the one who
carried you in here. It’s not his fault that you were unconscious at the time.
I believe you’ll find that he saved your life.”
“And
the LT?”
“Ah
yes, the LT, Cassandra, right? I wouldn’t fret about her. You see, she’s the
daughter of an old and dead friend of Dockrill’s. I suspect she’ll be given the
best care we’re capable of here. Our resources, always skimpy, have become even
more limited. But then again, you militia know all about that, don’t you?” All
the time he spoke he circled me, looking at my legs, my arms, occasionally
reaching out as if to touch me but stopping just short of actual contact.
I
had no idea what he thought I knew, but I’d never convince him or Dockrill of
anything so long as I wore a uniform. Bradna wore a uniform of sorts as well.
As de facto host and master of ceremonies of the arena shows, he had made
significant modifications to his standard issue prison coveralls. Nearly every
square centimeter of the fabric was covered with hammered metal buttons.
Gleaming disks the size of a thumbnail had been meticulously crafted and sewn
on individually with such painstaking exactness that instead of looking
supremely tacky, the suit appeared to be a gleaming serpent, his multi-colored
scales reflecting as a million drops in the candlelit room and giving off a
soft chatter of solidarity whenever he moved. He also wore a large black
cod-piece with a serpent’s head painted on it. I’d often wondered if Bradna had
more than one such outfit. Like many north quarter inmates, Bradna rubbed
aromatic spices on his body to hide the unpleasant odors that were the natural
consequence of his decrepit lifestyle, making it difficult to know if either he
or his clothes were clean. Still, the suit I saw a meter and a half away from
me looked brand new.
“You
like this?” He touched his hair, running his hands from it down the front of
the garment. “I know a tailor or two. Certainly would be happy to recommend one
should you decide to shed the rather shabby attire you’ve adopted.”
“I’m
sure Tohoana told you, but in case you were too busy preening to hear her, I’m
wearing this because it was a way to survive. Militia mined every avenue out of
the quarter. You know we’re all trapped, right?”
“The
reports are still coming in, but yes, thus far, that appears to be the case.
Dockrill…” he stopped and looked knowingly at me. It occurred to me that
Dockrill may have been close by all the time that Cassie and I were discussing
the logistics of getting out of the quarter.
“What
about Dockrill?”
“Oh,
nothing. He thought perhaps since you and your, what do you call the other
soldiers? Your unit? Oh dear me, that’s rich.” He put a finger in his mouth to
stifle the laugh, and then, catching sight of something that displeased him on
one of his fingers, withdrew a small file from a pocket of his jacket and
worried away at his nails for several minutes. When he’d finished he put the
file away and folded his hands in front of his prominent stomach. “Now, dear
boy, where were we? Have you seen your grandfather? Amos, I think that’s his
name.”
“The
militia are holding him. He arranged my escape. He was wandering the quarter
for some time. You must have seen him, earlier I mean.”
“Dockrill
saw him. Said that he was drawing a map. Why do you suppose he was doing that?”
“Cucrow,
we’re just dancing in the dark here, you and I. Why don’t you either get to the
point or leave me in peace until Dockrill decides what he wants to do with me.”
“Oh,
but dear Garrett, Dockrill has decided already. Assuming you pass the trial he
has in mind, you’ll be kept here for your safety.”
I
looked around the room. It was empty except for the cot, which I thought was
bolted to the floor given that it didn’t move at all as I tried to pull free
from my bindings. There was a low table against a wall to my right. The walls
were stone and rammed earth. That meant this was one of the newer levels of the
arena, one near the surface but far away from the sandy center ring.
“How
many are left here?”
“In
the arena, enough. We’re quite capable of sustaining our present way of life
for some time. Dockrill is a prophet, you know. He saw this day coming years
ago and has been laying away provisions for longer than you can possibly
imagine. Protein packs and water may not be my favorite delicacies, but they’ll
keep us alive until we’re ready.”
“Ready
for what?”
He
gave me a baleful stare and said nothing. I asked again, louder.
He
moved, taking a step toward me. I could smell the stink of him now through the
eye-watering heat of pepper dust he’d apparently been dipped in. I wondered how
he could stand it. I sneezed several times in rapid succession as he gazed down
on me.
“Ready
for you to lead us, boy. To take the garrison and the town, and from there, the
whole system.”
“What?”
“Of
course, as I mentioned, there is a small test for you to pass first. Dockrill
will be around presently to explain that part of your new life to you.” He
leaned over me and inhaled deeply as if somehow the aroma I gave off, which was
probably no better than his, contained some sort of power that could be
transferred through olfactory intimacy.
“I
need to take a piss.”
Bradna
stood up and reached beneath the cot. He came up with a battered metal pan,
covered in stains.
“How
am I supposed to use that?” I raised my bound hands as far as the cords
allowed, a distance of about ten centimeters above the frame of the cot. He studied
the situation for a moment and then moved to the foot of the cot, where my
bound ankles held my legs apart. He slid
the pan along the bare mattress until it touched my inner thighs. All the while
his purple lips smacked and his face contorted in a mixture of curiosity and
horror.
“I
was a nurse once, you know,” he said, moving with speed I’d never have guessed
he possessed to undo the front of my trousers. He hesitated, looking at the
task ahead with what I took for pleasure, and I started to protest, but a
sudden change in his expression led to his backing away to the door. “Oh, shit,
we’ll just have to lengthen these cords. Someone will be around to take care of
it presently.”
“Bradna,
you weren’t a nurse, ever. Don’t ever touch me again, even in your mind. Now, tell
whoever’s coming to hurry.”
He smiled
at me before he left the room. I lay back and closed my eyes, counting slowly
up from one as I waited for someone to come lengthen the ties. I wasn’t
surprised to see Tohoana enter the room and close the door behind her as I
reached my second hundred.
“Gee
Cole, no damned sense in this. You piss self if you like. I no like this idea.
You very dangerous man. Tohoana knows this. Gee Cole knows this too. I no untie
thee.”
“A
very dangerous man who has to urinate. Seriously, Tohoana, help me here.”
“Maybe
your grandfather come help? What you say to that?” She leaned over and punched
me hard in the stomach. I cried out and felt as if my bladder had burst. It
would have if she’d hit me six inches lower.
“What
the hell?” I said through clenched teeth.
“You
grandfather Amos Cold, the LT tell us that. You son of a killer. You a fool,
Gee Cole and Dockrill probably skin you alive.”
I
was hurt, confused, and furious so that I could barely sputter a protest before
she hit me again, right in the center of my chest, knocking the wind from me and
leaving me gasping so that I forgot all about my bladder. The warm, wet heat
spreading across my groin let me know that I no longer needed longer ties.
“I
lose many friends on SixKill Day,” she said with a snarl and launched into me
with exactly the sort of ferocity I imagined her to be capable of, pummeling my
chest, arms, and face until I no longer could keep track of where the pains
were coming from. I thought for a moment I might die in the next few minutes,
but then I realized she was actually being very careful, focusing the punches
on the large muscles of my arms, legs, chest and shoulders. The blows to my
diaphragm and face were lighter, making it hard to breathe and speak but not
doing any serious damage. Convicts called this sort of beating a ‘tenderizer.’
It softened you up so you couldn’t move for hours, all of the major muscles
being bruised beyond feeling, but didn’t do any permanent damage. I closed my
eyes and gritted my teeth. Whoever ordered her to do this would be in to see
me, and to ask the questions that they thought I’d lie about if they didn’t
beat the answers from me first.
I
blacked out several times but Tohoana was prepared. She’d crack another of her
ampules or throw a bucket of filthy water on me and then lay into me again.
After what I guessed to be a half a standard hour my hands and fingers no
longer responded to commands from my brain. My head felt like a raw sore atop a
sack of blood. There was no part of me that moved according to my will. My
eyelids twitched, as did the brows above them. My legs were a series of knots
and whenever I moved an ankle to stretch one muscle, another seized in a charley
horse. I’d never hurt so badly and I had no sense of why or who might be behind
this. It wasn’t Dockrill’s style. He’d throw me in the center ring with a
hundred angry cons, all carrying rebar truncheons with red bandannas on them.
This was something different. I blacked out again and when I came around I
tasted blood in my throat. I turned my head to the side and spat a red glob on
the floor at Tohoana’s feet.
She
looked at it, shoved my head back and crossed to open the door of the room.
Bradna
Cucrow was first in to the room, followed by three of the most muscular men I’d
ever seen. They were dressed in white loincloths, surprisingly clean, and had
long blonde hair pulled back over their massive shoulders. Stationing
themselves around the cot, one on either side and one behind, they neither
looked at me nor spoke to me. Bradna examined the tableau around me, nodded to
himself and left the room. He returned a moment later leading two people.
The
first was a tiny man, older even than Digit, dressed in convict standard issue
coveralls that were faded nearly to white and several sizes too large for him.
He had skeletal limbs and I wondered if he was perhaps even shorter than
Tohoana. He didn’t look at me, but instead turned to his companion, bowing to
her as she entered the room. My vision was fuzzy from the beating, but there
was no question in my mind that I knew who it was that now stood at the foot of
the cot looking at me as if I were a curiosity in a freak circus. She turned
back to the aged convict, who had gone to his knees as she passed. Everything I
saw reaffirmed my certainty as to who my captor was. Wearing a militia uniform
that had been stripped of all insignia, her golden hair reaching nearly to her
waist and filigreed into an elaborate braid, she gestured to the tiny old man.
He rose shakily to his feet and came to stand beside her. She took his hand and
they both looked at me. I had the strange sensation of being a newborn lying in
a nursery bed while beaming relatives gazed at me through layers of germ
resistant glass.
Bradna cleared his
throat and the woman smiled.
“Garrett Cold, may I
present Dockrill Castello and …”
I said the name with
Bradna, my voice barely audible over the ringing in my ears.
“…Ella Cantor.”
