“They returned. The shock of passing through the time-portal did it. She’s a marvelous redactor, Stein. She used to be one of the top teachers and counselors in her Sector. She was master class. I’ll never be so good, except perhaps with you.”
Very carefully, he folded her in his huge arms. Her hair was long and black and very straight, with a simple grassy perfume from the Tanu soap. She lay against his bare chest, hearing his heart beating slowly, afraid to look into his mind in case the thing that she hoped for would not be found. They were alone now in the tower room. Even Elizabeth had disappeared when it became clear that the healing would be a success.
Sukey said, “There are things you have to know.” She touched the silver torc about her rather plump neck. “These silver collars, your friend Aiken got one, too, and so have some other people who’ve passed through the portal, they make latent metafunctions operant. That’s how I became a redactor… And there’s an exotic race living here in the Pliocene along with us. They’re called Tanu and they came here a long time ago from some galaxy light-billenia away. They’re latents, too, and they wear golden collars that make them almost as powerful as the metapsychics of our Milieu. They look quite human except for being very tall and having mostly blond hair and funny eyes. The Tanu rule this place almost like the barons of the Middle Ages ruled ancient Earth.”
“I’m beginning to remember,” Stein said slowly. “A fight in a kind of castle… Are we still locked up in that place?”
Sukey shook her head. “They took us, you and me and a few others, down the River Rhône. We’re on our way to the Tanu capital. This is a place called Darask, almost at the Mediterranean shore. We’ve been here for two days. Elizabeth helped the mistress of the place, who was having a hard time in childbirth, so we got to stay and fix you up and rest as a kind of reward. The river trip down here was pretty nerve-racking.”
“So Elizabeth is here, and Aiken. Who else?”
“Bryan, from your Group. And another man, named Raimo Hakkinen, who used to be a forester in British Columbia. I think he was in Group Orange. And there’s a Tanu man in charge of bringing us to their capital city. His name is Creyn and he seems to be some kind of exotic physician when he’s not acting as a prisoner-escort. He healed all of the wounds you got in the fight, by the way, and without using any regen-tank, either, just something like plass wrapping and mind-power. The rest of your friends and the other people who were being kept prisoner in the castle were sent to another place hundreds of kloms north of here.”
“What are they planning to do with us?”
“Well, Elizabeth is special, obviously, because it seems she’s the only human in all of Exile who is operant without a torc I suppose they plan to make her Queen of the World if she’ll stand for it.”
“Jesus H Christ!”
“And Bryan, he’s another special case. No torc on him, either I haven’t discovered why, but the Tanu appear to think that they need an anthropologist to explain what all of us humans have done to their Pliocene society. Coming through the time-gate, you see. It’s very complicated, but… well, silver-torc wearers like Aiken and me and Raimo, the ones with latent metabilities made operant, we have a chance to join the aristocracy of the Tanu if we behave ourselves. Ordinary people who aren’t latent don’t seem to be enslaved or anything, the exotics have some kind of small ape to do the rough work. The ordinaries that we saw were working at various arts and crafts.”
Stein raised his hands to touch his own torc, then tried to undo it by twisting and pulling. “Can’t get the damn thing off. You say it’ll turn on my latent metafunctions? “Sukey looked stricken. “Stein… your torc… it isn’t silver. It’s some gray metal. You’re not a latent.”
A dangerous gleam came into the bright-blue eyes. Then what’s my torc for?”
Her lower lip caught between her teeth. She reached out one hand to the metal around his neck. In a voice that was scarcely more than a whisper, she said, “It controls you. It gives pleasure or pain. The Tanu can use it to communicate with you telepathically, or they can use it to locate you if you run away. They can put you to sleep, and soothe your anxieties, and program hypnotic suggestions and do other things, probably, that I don’t know about yet.”
She explained more about the operation of the torcs as she knew it. Stein sat, ominously quiet, on the edge of the bed. When she had finished he said, “So the ones who wear gray mostly do jobs that are essential or potentially vital to the exotics. Soldiers. Gate guardians. This boatman taking us down a dangerous river. And they do their jobs without rebelling, even though they’re not turned into zombies by the damn torc.”
“Most of the gray-wearers that we’ve met behaved normally and seemed happy enough. Our boat skipper said he loved his job. One of the palace people that I talked to here said that the Tanu are kind and generous unless you go against their orders. I…I expect that after a time, you simply do as they expect you to without any coercion at all. You’re conditioned and loyal. It’s really the same sort of socialization that takes place in any tight group, but the loyalty is guaranteed.”
Very quietly, Stein said, “I won’t be a goddam flunky for some exotic slave master. I came through the time-gate and gave up everything I owned to get away from all that. To be a natural man, free to do as I pleased. I can’t live any other way. I won’t! They’ll have to burn out my brain first.”
Eyes swimming, Sukey let her fingers stray to his cheek. Her mind slipped beneath his surface consciousness and saw that he was telling the simple truth. The obstinacy that had shut out every healer save the one who had loved him now stood unyielding before any notion of adaptation, totally rejecting the thought of making the best of a difficult situation. Stein would never bend to the Tanu. He would break. If they dominated him at all, they would dominate only his mindless shell.
Tears spilled, splashing onto the bed sheets and the wolfskin kilt that Stein still wore. He took both of her hands. She said, “It didn’t turn out to be the world that any of us dreamed about, did it? I was going to find the tunnel leading to the hollow Earth paradise, to Agharta. Creyn said that the legends had to refer to the paradise his people founded here. But that can’t be true, can it? Agharta was a land of perfect peace and happiness and justice. This can’t be the same place. Not if it, makes you miserable.”
He laughed. “I’m a hard case, Sukey. Thing’ll be different for you. You’ll get to join the high life. Be a Pliocene princess instead of just a Welsh one.”
She pulled away from him. “I forgot one other important thing about this Exile world Human women… the Tanu undo our salpingzaptomy and restore our fertility. Their own women don’t reproduce very well on Earth, and so… they use us, too. Some human women become Tanu wives, like the lady of this palace that we’re in right now. But a lot are just used as… as…”
Stein drew her close to him again and wiped her tears away with a corner of the bedclothes. “Oh, no. Not you, Sukey. It won’t happen to you.”
Incredulously, she raised her face. He said, “Go ahead. Look deep inside. As long as it’s you, I don’t mind.”
She took a shuddering breath and plunged into the new place, and could not help crying out when she found that what she hoped for did exist, all new and strong.
After he had hushed her and the pledge was sealed in both their minds, they completed the healing of each other in their own way.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Claude and Richard and Amerie could have slept for days, but with the sunrise came a distant howling of amphicyons angling up the ridge from the south, and they realized that the Tanu were going to do their utmost to prevent the escape of Felice, whose role in the massacre had doubtless been betrayed by some recaptured prisoner. The remnant of Group Green didn’t waste any time trying to destroy traces of their camp but marched on not long after dawn, deflating their equipment and eating a scratch breakfast as they went. Claude had attempted to relinquish leadership to Felice, but she refused to hear of it.