All senses keen, Rimon followed the road, watching for evidence that somewhere a group of people had left it. Another Gen body tossed casually aside told him he was going in the right direction, just as he was beginning to fear he had missed their turnoff.
He hadn't Fresh hoofprints diverged from the road. They weren't even trying to cover their trail. Why should they? Out here, other travelers would just go on their way, thankful they were not the ones ambushed.
As Rimon followed the Raiders' trail, occasionally he began to sense selyn nager. As the sun set and twilight deepened, he relied more and more on his Sime senses.
Finally he found them. He could zlin the powerful combination of Sime and Gen nager, the Gens peaking a titillating fear, just a short distance ahead. They had stopped.
He left the trail, tethered his horses, and proceeded on foot. By the time he had crept up to where he could see them, they had made camp. He counted nine Simes and five Gens. Was one of the Gens Kadi?
On a wave of desperation, he realized that he would not recognize her. She had a Gen's nager now, not the child's nager he had known. He would have to get close enough to see the Gens to discover if Kadi were among them.
One of the Simes was circling the camp, well away from the cluster of lives in the center, zlinning the countryside to see if they'd been followed. Rimon ducked behind a large rock that would shield him to some extent, and deliberately damped his fields—the old scouting trick his father had taught him. The Raider passed by without a sign that he'd sensed Rimon.
Keeping a safe distance between them, Rimon followed him. When the Raider reached the camp, he called, "All clear. We'll be safe till morning, at least."
Rimon crept closer, knowing that his field would not be noticed amid the nageric clutter. He could see the Simes around the fire they had built, but they had pitched a tent and put the Gens inside it. It would be hot and stuffy in there. Apparently, they wanted to make their captives as uncomfortable as possible'.
The Raiders were the sickliest people Rimon had ever seen; scrawny, skeletal, their skin loose over their bones,, their faces wrinkled into masks of old age, although he had heard they seldom lived more than five years after changeover. They lived under constant augmentation, existing entirely on the kill, burning themselves out in one continuous flare of energy. And as fast as they died, new recruits seemed to filter across the border from Gen Territory—poor unfortunates turned true predator.
Beside one of the Raiders, Rimon would look like a Gen. His father insisted that all the Simes who worked for him eat two meals a day, with the result that they looked and felt better than average, and lived longer with fewer health problems. Most Simes ate at least a few meals each week, to provide the raw material for body growth and repair. The Raiders were the extreme, and looked it.
There were both men and women in the group, but one had to look closely to distinguish sexes. All were dressed in rags, with a few newer, recently stolen garments. No curves distinguished the women. And even from where he watched, Rimon could smell the foul stench of unwashed bodies.
They flitted about the camp, augmenting merely to move from place to place, wasting selyn profligately. Clearly they were addicted to augmentation and hyperconsciousness, not seeing beyond Sime senses, not caring what they did to themselves—or others.
Two of the Raiders pulled one of the Gens out of the tent—a young boy with unruly black hair and frightened blue eyes. His nager, and that of the other Gens, peaked from steady anxiety to desperate fear, and the Raiders cackled with scarecrow laughter.
A small man dressed slightly better than the others stood a few paces away, shouting, "Come here, boy!" as if accustomed to being obeyed.
The wide eyes stared at him, but the boy didn't move, paralyzed by fear. One of the women kicked him and he stumbled forward, only to be tripped by one of the other Raiders and land on his face at the leader's feet.
Yards away, Rimon was desperately fighting down the intil aroused by the boy's terror, but the Raiders around him roared with laughter. Jaded! None of them were in need—the kills along the trail attested to that—but the proximity of such fear would cause a normal Sime to react with a sharp sense of need—intil—unless he were satiated from a very recent kill.
One of the women picked up a stick and drew a circle in the dirt, within the edge of the circle of firelight The boy watched her, his head turning, stupefied.
"Boy, you want to live?" the leader asked.
The boy looked up at him, climbing to his knees. The Sime's words kindled no hope in him.
"We'll let you go," the Raider said in a wheedling tone. "If we let you go, maybe you can escape across the border."
"You're not going to let me go," the boy said hopelessly, standing to face his tormentor.
"Yes, we will. I promise. All you have to do is get out of the circle."
Again the boy's eyes traced the circle, so small that he could run out of it in a second. But not faster than a Sime could augment. He knew that—but it was his only hope of life. He ran—and came up against one of the Raiders blocking his way, holding his arms up with tentacles extended but making no attempt to touch the boy. He ducked in another direction. Like magic, a Sime appeared between him and freedom each time he approached the edge of the circle. He threw himself one way, then another, unable to stop until he wore himself out and collapsed in exhaustion, sobbing hysterically.
When one of the Simes bent to pick the boy up, Rimon hid his face in his hands and forced himself down beneath his Sime senses, down to hypoconsciousness, so he could not zlin the kill.
When he dared to lift his head, though, the boy was not dead. He was sitting up, drinking in great gulps from a cup someone had given him, his emotions so worn out that his field had gone flat. He sat, paying no attention to what went on around him as the Raiders brought another Gen out of the tent.
This time it was a girl, tall, awkward, heavy-set. She was twice the size of any Sime there, but her fear did not peak as the boy's had; she radiated only hopeless resignation.
"Hey!" said one of the Raider women, "we have to feed our Gens or they won't keep. Here, girl—make some soup!"
She picked up a heavy iron kettle and heaved it at the girl, who barely caught it against her stomach, falling backward with the impact. Blankly, she climbed to her feet and carried the kettle to the fire, then turned and said, "Where are the ingredients?"
The Raiders howled with laughter. "You think we carry fodder for Gens? Only for our horses. Horses we keep!"
Even that only caused a slight ripple through the girl's nager. She had clearly resigned herself to her fate long ago.
"Oh, you're no fun!" spat the woman who had thrown the kettle. "Let's have some music!"
One of the Raiders sat down with a shiltpron and began to play on the aural level. Rimon was glad of that. He'd been slightly drunk on shiltpron in Scobla—was it only last night?—and didn't want a hangover to impede his rescue attempts.
The Sime instrument required both fingers and tentacles and could produce music at both sound and nageric-field levels. The nageric level could become so intense in skilled hands that it produced actual intoxication.
"Dance!" cried the Raiders, dragging the Gen boy to his feet and throwing him into the arms of the Gen girl. Clumsily, they stumbled about, then were grabbed by two Simes who whirled them helplessly into a wild tarantella.
The shiltpron player began striking an occasional nageric chord. Rimon drew himself down to hypoconsciousness again, listening on the physical level only, so that the music would affect him less. Yet it kept intruding on the edges of his consciousness as he wished the Raiders would bring the other three Gens out of the tent so he could see if Kadi was there.
The music grew faster, and the Raiders zipped crazily through the figures, gone mad with the rapture of the shiltpron. Rimon realized he had a chance. If the Raiders were drunk, he might be able to dash in and snatch Kadi away from them. His fear that she was in that tent turned slowly to hope.