Kalamat. The miracle.
“You know the rest, of course,” Bowra coughed wearily, letting the ’file flicker into stray shafts of silver and blue light that sprayed across our faces. “Now to end this segment of your training module, I’ve arranged for one of the Kalamat series to be brought here this morning—”
He glanced at his watch, pressed it, and impatiently spoke to the Junior Officer who served as his flunky. A few minutes later we all turned at the sound of two sets of footsteps echoing down the corridor.
“Imre, that toad,” Aidan hissed, grimacing.
Pilot Imre’s tread was easily recognized, because of his limp. But the other step was unfamiliar: a heavy, even ponderous, tread, as of huge feet dragging slowly across the cold stone floors. John and I exchanged glances. I knew he was recalling that cage in Wyalong so many years ago. But he only smiled at me wryly before turning away.
I looked over at Aidan and saw how pale he was. The freckles stood out on his high cheekbones, and he stared fixedly at his knees. I leaned over to say something to him, something reassuring. But before I could speak, the door was flung open. The energumen stumbled into our classroom.
It was huge, even larger than I had expected—nearly eight feet tall. Pilot Imre walked beside it, separated by several feet of heavy luminous chains. He held a sonic cudgel between his nervous fingers. The thing was sedated, of course. It trudged into the middle of the room, where Imre sent a small blast at it—an unnecessary cruelty. The thing moaned softly and we all gasped.
Because its voice, at least, had not changed. It was still the voice of a fifteen-year-old girl, childlike, horribly out of place in that cold, echoing chamber. I shivered and muttered a curse. Beside me I could hear John Starving swearing under his breath. Of the three of us only Aidan was silent, his gray-green eyes fixed on the front of the room.
I don’t know what would have been more terrible—to view some creature utterly flensed of all resemblance to its human originator, or to see what we saw. A huge figure, unmistakably human but no less monstrous for all that—tall and big-boned, its head shaven and tattooed with an identifying ideogram that showed it belonged to the independent Urisa Agency, an L-5 mining conglomerate. Its arms were corded with muscle, its legs thick and welted with the marks of chains and with raw blisters left by other cudgels.
But when Imre tugged its chain, the creature raised its head; and there was the face of Cybele Burdock. Grotesquely elongated, with flesh the color of obsidian rather than Cybele’s tawny brown, and rampant with scars; but Cybele’s face nonetheless. I knew it by the eyes, if nothing else. Because even though it would certainly have killed me without thinking, crushing my head between its huge hands like a melon husk, still it had the eyes of a child—bright and wistful despite the sedatives. Hopeful, even, as though somewhere within that monstrous body Cybele Burdock was still imprisoned, and still dreamed of escape.
“God, look at her.” Next to me John Starving tightened his hands upon his knees. “She’s just like that other one, in Wyalong—it’s like it’s the same one —”
I nodded, my mouth too dry to speak. When I glanced at Aidan, he was gazing at the energumen in a sort of horrified rapture. I quickly looked away.
At the front of the room Bowra was rattling on about the energumens—their strength, their speed, their intelligence. At the word intelligence several cadets broke into nervous laughter. The drugs, combined with the incongruous innocence of its features, gave the energumen the appearance of a huge and slightly witless child.
“Come on, then. Say your name. Tell them who you are,” rasped Bowra, as Imre gave the chain another yank and prodded the energumen impatiently. There was a burst of static, loud enough to make my ears ring. The energumen cried out, tried to clap its hands to its ears, but the chains held it back. Imre shouted at it, pointing to the classroom full of rapt faces.
“Your name! Go on, tell them—”
The energumen swayed from side to side, staring fixedly at the floor as it moaned softly. Then, very slowly, it raised its shaven head and spoke.
“Kalamat.”
Its eyes, so dark they were almost black, stared pleadingly at the silent room.
Will it hurt, Daddy?
I looked away; but beside me I could see how Aidan strained to see it, could hear his breathing and the curses he murmured, nearly drowned by Imre’s command.
“ Louder! ”
“Kalamat,” the energumen whispered in its childish voice, and began to weep.
9
Message from the Country
I DID NOT SLEEP that night, nor did Jane. Several times I saw Giles walking wordlessly from room to room, carrying boxes and objects that trailed wires and cords behind him. He carried them all to the front hallway and left them piled there: every one of the inn’s monitors, video screens, telefiles, and magisters, and last of all the shortwave radio from the kitchen. When I passed the empty rooms, they looked blinded, with ragged holes where the monitors and telefiles had been yanked from the crumbling plaster walls. Afterward I did not see Giles again, although in the hollow hour before dawn I heard soft noises and followed them until I found their source, in the steps leading down to the cellar. A glimmer of light ran along the bottom of the closed doorway. I rested my hand on the wood and paused, listening. I expected to hear sobs, or perhaps Giles talking to himself; but there was only the sound of someone moving down there, as though Trevor still silently went about his work, gathering mushrooms.
Dawn found me alone on the front porch. The sun seemed to flush a certain expectancy from the green shadows of the trees, a quiet foreboding that grew deeper as heat seeped into all the hidden places of the world and the sky burned away from indigo to blue to white. By the time the roosters began crowing in the barn, the morning already seemed exhausted. The leaves curled limply on the oaks; the smell of honeysuckle was everywhere, thick enough that I could taste it in my throat, gritty with pollen and dust.
“Are you packed?”
I turned to see Jane framed in the doorway. She had traded her old clothes for loose cotton trousers and a man’s white shirt, and cut her brown hair so it curled raggedly around her face.
“I thought maybe I’d look different,” she said. No note of apology or even explanation in her voice, just a blank statement. Her brown eyes were smudged with lilac circles, and her mouth was drawn thin with exhaustion. “So the Aviators won’t recognize me, if they come. God, it’s hot. Do you think it’ll be like this in Cassandra?”
“I don’t know.” I sighed, shaking my head at Jane’s appearance. It would take more than a bad haircut to keep the Aviators at bay. “I’ll go gather my things.”
I went upstairs. My body acted as a faithful old servant, caring for a feckless master too dissipated to pay attention to such matters as going about the business of washing, changing my clothes, lying down on the bed for a few minutes’ rest, even ordering me to the kitchen, where I found Giles heating water in the little glass oven for tea.
“Cadence should be here in another hour or two,” he said. He had changed into a white robe and braided his hair with a white ribbon, like a Paphian going to a bed-warming. The Aviator’s gun was slung into a thin leather belt at his waist. I tried to keep my eyes from filling with tears, but he only said, “Please don’t worry about me, Wendy. I told you, Trevor and I had planned for this a long time ago.”
So I sat with him at the table and we drank tea together—a macabre breakfast, I thought, with Trevor’s corpse who knows where and Giles seemingly ready to enact some suicide pact. Even after Giles left, I waited, half-expecting Jane to join me. She never did, so finally I went back outside.