“I hear. Quale Yabass?”
“You can start forward with them, but don’t hurry, we’ve got to see what’s happening with the other squads. Anything comes up; give us a yell, Adelaar will keep an ear tuned to you. Questions?”
“That seems to do it.”
“Hanifa,” Quale looked down at the Diver. “Anything you want to say?”
Her eyes were fixed on the screen. She was frowning; when he spoke, she shook her head impatiently. “Get on with it.”
“Gotcha. Adelaar, Play Sector next, then the Sleep Sector.”
The green lines of the schematic flashed again onto the main screen and flickered through cross sections as before. Then the lines were gone and a Pleasure Field filled the screen, roughly oval and somewhat larger than the chamber outside the Bridge door, a cheerful, bright-colored space broken into smaller and larger areas, irregular shapes partly open to the main arena, a combination of bistro, gymnasium, orgy-drum, sensorama, and less-dedicated spaces that catered to assorted individual quirks and kinks.
The mat in the gymspace was littered with flaccid dreaming bodies and the two squads assigned to that area were busily trotting in and out of the Pleasure Field carting in more of them, men and women, crew and support, some naked, some dressed in fantastic costume, some in uniform, some in grubby overalls. The men and women doing the carting looked sweaty, but exuberantly carefree; the grimness she’d marked in them when they marched on board the tug was still there, but only as a ghostly background to the present pleasure. Despite their visible weariness, they were shouting ribald jokes at each other, trading insults and speculations about the activities of the bodies they carried. As far as Aslan could tell, no one had been killed, no one injured badly enough for the wound to show. No bandages, no bruise, no scrapes.
Quale turned to Adelaar. “Sound?”
“Ready.”
“Tazmin Duvvar. You round somewhere? Akkin Siddaki?”
Laughter, whoops, hill-and-grass raiderband salutes to Elmas Ofka that quickly degenerated into obscurely idiomatic barbs aimed at Quale and the Bridge party, (Aslan scribbled rapidly, getting the essence of the more interesting insults, the hill-and-grassers were famous for the inventiveness of their invective), two of Elmas Ofka’s isyas shouted more intimate greetings, drunk on victory as much as wine; ordinary proprieties stripped away, they floated on a cloud of euphoria.
One of the older raiders moved apart from the rest, set his hands on his hips and roared the others to silence. “Varak, go get Tazmin. What you want, Quale Yabass?”
“We were getting bored sitting around up here, started wondering what was happening in the other sectors. Looks like you’ve pretty well cleaned up your area. Any problems?”
Akkin Siddaki waited until Tazmin Duvvar pushed through the gathering Hordar and reached his side. “Quale,” he said. “Wants to know if we’ve got problems.”
“Cartage mainly,” Tazmin said, “these kokotils were drunk, drugged, or screwing their brains if any out; it was like shooting fish in a barrel. If you could dig up some transport for us, it’d save a lot of sweat.”
Akkin nodded. “We’ve got most of the ship people transferred here, there’s some whores and some of the kitchen crew still laying where they fell, maybe a dozen, not much more than that. Like you see, there’s quite a pile of them. There’s a transtube outlet just off this chamber. We could stuff them in that if you’ll have the yabass Adelaar program the tube and arrange a welcoming party; you’ve got the holding space ready yet?”
“It should be by the time you’re finished. Adelaar just got here, she’ll take care of that once we finish this survey. Pels, see what you can find for transport.”
“Right. Soon as I can get access. Adelaar?”
“When we finish this, I’ll free some lines for you.”
“Quale Yabass?” Akkin Siddaki leaned forward, his dark face intent.
“About ten minutes, if I had to make a guess.”
“That’s not it. I’ve got a brother in the Sleeper squad, how’s he doing?”
“We haven’t checked that one yet, it’s next on our list. There was some trouble in the Drive area, one wounded, a raider from the west coast, I think. I don’t know how serious. Want me to get the name?”
“When you get a minute.”
“Right. If anything comes up, give a yell. Adelaar, Sleepers.”
A few minutes later a short stretch of dimly lit corridor took up most of the screen. Empty. Silent. A short distance from the eyepoint a small oval crystal touched with honey-amber the lifeless neuter colors of the walls and floor. The doorway below the crystal gaped open. The light inside the room was a ghostly grayish yellow that merged seamlessly with the light in the corridor.
The eyepoint moved, dipped into the sleeping cell. Four bodies on the floor.
The eyepoint dropped to hover over the nearest. It swept from head to toe, raced back to the nape of the Hordar’s neck and focused on a hexagonal black spot half-obscured by a strand of hair.
Elmas Ofka bit a cry in half. After a minute she said, “Dart.” Her hands closed over the back of Pel’s chair, tightening until it creaked under the pressure of her fingers. “All of them?”
The eyepoint continued to move. It searched the other three, centimeter by centimeter. It found more darts. It swept out, sped to the next occupied cell and dived inside.
Elmas Ofka saw Jirsy’s startled, frozen face and stopped breathing for a long frozen moment. Then she shrieked with rage and grief, grabbed at her hair, tore loose hanks of it; Lirrit Ofka screamed, clawed at her face, her nails scoring bloody lines in her flesh. Then Karrel Goza and Jamber Fausse were there, holding them, confining their struggles, muffling their cries, letting them bite and kick and scratch, accepting the pain as part of sharing the grief, a grief that grew more bitter as the eyepoint moved on and they saw the other dead, as Karrel Goza saw his cousin Geres sprawled in the Y-branch.
Aslan watched and automatically noted her impressions on the pad; she felt uncomfortable about writing while this was happening, she’d known little Jirsy Indiz and liked her; nonetheless, she wrote. The isya phenomenon was endlessly interesting. She hadn’t understood before this how powerfully those bonds operated once the isya was formed; the strength of it was suddenly made visible for her; the pain of the severance was apparent in the violence of the women’s reactions. Her stylus flew across the battered page. More than kin, she wrote, closer than lovers. Karrel Goza seeing his cousin’s body, wept, face red, anger and grief. None of this self-mutilation, this loss of control. The difference explainable by isya bonding? Or by culturally determined sex role differentiation? Sex roles complex here. Women powerful/powerless. Huvved/Hordar very different, their ideas about women. Suggest someone come, study isya phenom. Trakkar je Neves? Her subject, yes. Contact, see if interest. Outsiders reaction isya hysteria revealing. Consider. History of? Personality differential? Profession, its effect on…
Quale leaned against the console, his face shuttered. He was looking away from the women, shut off from them by something in his past or in his character that washed out the flashes of strength he could show and left him looking oddly empty, as if he were so tired of living that he’d lost the ability to feel either joy or pain.
Adelaar looked over her shoulder, distaste her most visible reaction. She went back to what she was doing. Jaunniko called you one icy femme, Mama, maybe he was right. No, that’s wrong. We’ve clawed at each other often enough; I can’t accuse you of lacking passion, Mama. You’re just not interested in other people’s passion.
The Rau’s ears twitched, closed in on themselves like fingers making a fist. He kept working.
Elmas Ofka went suddenly quiet. She sucked in a breath, in and in and in, the soft sound seemed to last forever, to mute the other sounds on the Bridge, then she let the breath out. Again out and out, a long rasping sigh. She pushed against Jamber Fausse’s arms. He dropped them and stepped back. “Lirrit!” Her voice was sharp, demanding.