They were stunned. They didn’t know what to do.
So they did what she had asked, with a little push from their psychiatric technicians and a lot of nudging from Serge Ortega.
They hypno-burned his tortured brain clear of memories and then adjusted him for his new existence, with Mavra doing the instructing. She was like a maniac as she went at it, but the Ambreza indulged her because they owed her something and because, for the first time, she had a passionate interest beyond escape.
Joshi was the first step in the project that had been forming in her mind, a project she was now frantic to live to see: the establishment of their own independent little world.
He wasn’t as bright as she by a long shot. That is not to say that he was stupid or retarded, merely average. She taught him to speak Confederation, in which she still thought, and to read Ambreza and the old Glathriel tongue, no longer used but still enshrined in prewar books maintained by the Ambreza. Most of his knowledge had to be force-fed; the studies didn’t really interest him, and he tended to forget things he didn’t use, as most people will.
Their relationship was an odd but close one; she was both wife and mother to him, he her husband and son. The Ambreza, who followed her activities off and on, believed that she had to play the dominant role, that she had to feel and actually be a little superior to one close to her.
Joshi stirred behind her. It was getting dark, their natural time to be active established by long routine. The helpless ten-year-old had grown and matured; he was larger than she, and almost coal black, although the pinkish scars of the fire marked him all over.
He came up to her. They had been careful in transforming him; too long an exposure to that Olbornian stone made one a docile mule in all respects.
In some ways, despite the scars and darker coloring, he resembled her—same type of legs, ears, and downward angle to the body. But he had no tail, of course, and his hair was quite different. Some of it had been burned away in the fire, but he still had a fairly full head and a manelike growth down the spine to the waist. He was also fat. The native diet was not the world’s best balanced. His scraggly beard was tinged with white, although he was still in his twenties.
They were used to each other. Finally, after drinking, he asked her, “Going down to the beach? Looks like a clear night.”
She nodded. “You know I will.”
They left the compound and cantered down the trail. The sound of the pounding surf grew very loud.
“Must’ve been a storm out there,” he remarked. “Listen to those breakers!”
But far-off storm or not, the sky was mostly clear, obscured here and there by isolated wispy clouds that lent an almost mystical atmosphere to the scene.
He lay down in the sand, and she settled more or less atop him, propping herself up enough so she could see the stars.
In many ways, she had changed less than she thought. She had genuine affection for Joshi, and he for her. But Joshi was, in the end, part of her project, one designed as a means to gain independence from others. Dependency she hated more than anything else. She had never been dependent for very long on anyone, and the state to which they’d reduced her was intolerable.
But her brain had compensated for most of that; if she lived long enough, one day it would redress the balance.
But it was only coping. Mentally and emotionally she had acclimated to her physical condition and limitations, but never had she abandoned the stars, the great swirling gulfs that shined so brightly all around her on nights like this that you could almost leap forward into them. So close, so visible—and yet, so far.
That was where she belonged, and she never gave up.
First you must descend into Hell. Then, only when hope is gone, will you be lifted up and placed at the pinnacle of attainable power…
But hope was never gone, she thought to herself. Not while she lived. Not while the stars shined so.
Joshi turned his head upward a little, looking out at the northeastern horizon.
“Look!” he said. “You can see your moon!”
She lowered her gaze toward the horizon. It was there, a large silvery ball looking unreal and out of place, like a huge chunk of silver.
Surely they’re all long dead now, she told herself. All but Obie—poor, isolated Obie. The computer had been much more than any self-aware model she’d ever known. Obie was the son of Gil Zinder, and regarded himself that way. His own tragedy was that self-aware personality; how lonely he must be, she thought.
Lonely. That was an odd term for her to use, she thought. All her life it had been her normal condition, except for those few years of marriage. And yet, she was better off than Obie now. She had Joshi, and the tribe.
After a while the salt spray from the incoming tide started to reach them, and clouds obscured the view, so they got up and headed back to the compound.
“The Trader’s due in some time this week, isn’t it?” he asked her.
She nodded. “I hope they brought the bio references I asked for, and those books on seine fishing techniques, too.”
He sighed. “The fishing stuff I can see—for the tribe, anyway. Got to keep the faithful faithful and all that. But what’s all this interest in bio? You know we’re a race of two, sterile. If we weren’t, we’d have had some by now.”
She chuckled. The logistics of that had been a real tangle, since their sexual equipment was not in the best places, but it had been accomplished. She wondered whether her renewed appetite for sex after so many years of abstinence was due to middle age.
“Well, I’m sterile, anyway,” she responded. “Even if I weren’t, we’d have Glathriel children. But there may be ways, somewhere. I’ve seen crazier experiments in genetic manipulation. It might be too late for me, though; I’m getting too old for that sort of thing.”
He snuggled up to her. “You’re not too old for me. A little frazzled and fat and big-assed, but I like ’em that way.”
She snorted mock-contemptuously. “You just say that because I’m the only woman you’ve got. Besides, I know about that sacrificial virgin bit you’ve been working on the tribe.”
He laughed. “I had a good teacher,” he pointed out. Then he grew serious. “But I’m not a Glathriel. Not any more. Not ever that I can remember. I’m a Chang and you’re a Chang and nothing can alter that.”
That pleased her. They went back into the sleeping compound together, and Mavra felt confident that, before she died, once again she would control her own destiny and manage her own fate.
But destiny had always controlled Mavra Chang.
Dasheen
Ben Yulin was nervous. Yaxa weren’t very welcome in Dasheen, not since the days of the wars, when peaceful, agrarian Dasheen had been dragged into the Northern campaign by his presence and the Yaxa’s insistence.
The Dasheen were minotaurs; they numbered about eight hundred thousand at the moment, only eighty thousand of whom were males. Their large, thick-bodied, muscular shapes were coated with fine fur; their heads, those of streamlined bulls: immense, almost neckless, with short snouts, broad pink noses, wide brown eyes, and tremendous curved horns.
From the males’ view, the only worm in Dasheen’s apple was the fact that Dasheen bulls lacked the ability to digest calcium directly, causing a deficiency that could only be counteracted by the milk of the females.
The Yaxa had arrived at the great farm unannounced, panicking the cows. Its great wings cast a tremendous shadow across the fields of oats and wheat, like some great, multicolored predator. It landed near the main house—a huge structure that included silos, storage facilities, quarters for Yulin’s 117 wives and daughters, and his own quarters.