"And living a lie was supposed to make me feel good?" He paced nervously, three steps up, three back-the
length of his new domain. "In the circumstances of slavery and endless rape? Of course it was. We were out in that damned desert to die, Kaylla. Would you have wanted to spend those last weeks knowing who I was? What I'd done to you?"
"You're a coward, Staffa kar Therma."
He shrugged helplessly. "Then I am a coward. At least, for once in my life, I attempted to be a considerate one. "
Kaylla slammed a fist against the resilient side of the crate. "Thrice curse you, Star Butcher, don't you know you're the embodiment of everything I loathed in life?" Her expression twisted. "I cared for you! Came to love you! Out there in the sand and the heat, you were all that was good and decent! Why? How? Damn you, for playing me for a fool!" She jerked her head away, tears streaming down her face.
Staffa hung his head, an emptiness in his gut. "I can't change the past."
"Oh, the irony of it," Kaylla continued. "After all the years I spent hating you with all of my heart and soul, I'm condemned to be locked away with you in this damned hell." She turned red-rimmed eyes on him. "I'd rather be dead in the sand with Koree and the rest."
A long silence passed.
He lifted an eyebrow. "I saw you talking to Nyklos. What did you tell him? He seemed… indecisive."
She shifted, taking an insulated wrap and pulling it around her shoulders. "Bruen had reservations. Your life or death were left at the discretion of either Nyklos or Tyk1at. The Seddi have dedicated themselves to your assassination-spent years working on it." She stared absently into the corner of their small cubicle. "Nyklos asked me what to do. He needed to make a decision before Skyla showed up at the warehouse. It would be very easy, you see. They'd tell Skyla you were wounded in the fighting at the Internal Security building. When she bent down to look at your wound, she'd be shot in the back. I… I told Nyklos to let you live."
Staffa looked at his scarred hands, dirty again after the Ily's office. "You don't sound happy with your flight from
decision." "I suppose not." She filled her lungs, making a clicking noise with her tongue. "I'll never forgive you for what you did to Maika. To my…. I… I can't." Her mouth worked. "And I can't help but think of you in the desert. You were so kind to Peebal. You killed Brots… Anglo…. Saved my life so many times."
Staffa chewed his lip as he stared at his hands.
"So I don't know what to do with you," Kaylla continued, voice quavering as she hugged herself. "I wonder if you are the same despicable demon who burned my planet to cinders, who commanded the men who raped me, sold me into the collar, and brutally murdered my husband and helpless children."
"I am that man."
Silence lay on them, oppressive, suffocating.
The ship moved, the tug of acceleration growing stronger by the second. Staff a shifted to put his back against the same wall as Kaylla. In a matter of time they'd have to shift again to make a new section of crate into the floor. He plucked at the combat armor in his hands.
He filled his lungs and sighed. "I suppose I should call you Stailla Kahn. You—"
"No!" she snapped, fire in her eyes. "Never use that name with me. That woman is dead! DEAD! She died on Maika one horrible day three years ago. Me, I am Kaylla Dawn. I will continue to be until the day I die."
He nodded acceptance. "And I am not the Star Butcher. He died with the Praetor one day on Myklene."
"And I suppose you can't wait for his to be celebrated," she hissed. "Can they recount your deeds of blood and death? Are you willing to listen to the entire litany?"
"I know what sins I've committed."
"Sins," Kaylla sneered. "Sins are committed against God."
"Yes, sins against God. Crimes is a better word for my actions against men. I can't undo the past, Kaylla."
"No, you can't, can you?" She cocked her head, an uneasy expression pinching her features. "What can you do, Staffa kar Therma?"
"Change the future. Perhaps I'll know after I talk to your Magister Bruen." He bent his head in thought. "The Seddi are most remarkable. Who would have thought they had infiltrated so highly into the Etarian Secret Police?"
"We survive by learning, Staffa. To know, to think, is the greatest of all weapons."
He pursed his lips and swung his legs around as Kaylla moved the energy unit to the new "up." He stripped off the robe Ily had given him and donned his familiar gray.
From the satchel he took his weapons and belted them about his waist, then
checked his blaster for full charges. The energy pack which supplied the vacuum helmet collar read full where it hung on his belt. Skyla hadn't overlooked a thing. She'd even enclosed a clip for his hair.
"I have a lot to leam," Staffa added, "if your Bruen will teach me."
Her expression had gone stony at sight of his gray armor. "He will. I think." Then she shook her head, as if to drive some horrible thought away. "What do I do with you, Staffa? I know what you've done. Yet, I can remember that wretched sewer. I can remember Peebal and Brots, and the sight of Anglo dying so miserably in the sand, I can remember the kind words while we walked toward death in that Etarian hell. I can remember you pulling me into the pipe, keeping me sane, holding me.
"For that, I can mitigate your guilt. In the other reality, Maika will bum freshly in my mind until the day my soul sends its energy to God. The horror of watching my husband, my loving husband, stand there and erupt into pieces of bloody flesh, lives. LIVES!"
Staffa stiffened.
"I saw it all, Staffa, while your gore-spattered animals crawled onto my body to pant and paw and ejaculate inside me. I had a good view while ttiey mauled me. Gagged as I was, I couldn't cry out. I watched each of my children as they lined up. Nathan trying to be brave, Isalda, fortunately too young to be raped. She cried at first, holding her brother's hand, and then they erupted in pink mist, Staffa. So much for love and dreams, eh?"
She closed her eyes tightly, twisting the cloth of her robe into a strained knot. "I bore them Star Butcher." She sniffed. "From my womb. Can you understand what that means? Can you understand the investment a mother makes in her children from the time they kick in her belly until they. they…"
Staffa closed his eyes, breathing deeply. / can't take this. I CAN'T take this! The strains of depression began to sift through his mind and his thoughts became cottony.
From a pouch in the robe, Staffa pulled a shimmering of golden metal. The weight of it felt cool and reassuring in his hand. A thing of beauty in so vile a universe.
"I promised I would hand this to you when you were free," he whispered numbly. The welling emptiness of his soulexpanded.
She didn't extend her hand, but eyed him hostilely. "What… what is it?"
Staffa sighed and set the necklace on the featureless duraplast between them. "You asked me to keep it safe." Painfully, she closed her eyes and reached for Peebal's
necklace, pressing it against her cheek, heedless of the hot tears that spilled down her face.
Staffa turned away and pulled himself into a ball in the corner of the crate while conflicting emotions flooded his brain. The depression built, terrible, draining his energy and resistance.
Why am I living this? What's the purpose? All I bring is suffering… suffering…. His fingers traced the lines of the blaster. With it, he'd killed so many. What more fitting end than to finish butchery with this very weapon?
He could feel the deep-space cold on the other side of the syalon-endless, greedy to suck away their fragile supple of light and life. Out there, beyond the tough material of the crate, the restless dead waited while their fingers plucked at the latches, the murmur of their damning voices barely audible to his ears.