DeVore smiled tightly. "That's fine. But you'll let her go now, eh? You'll explain that it was all a mistake."
Peskova's mouth opened marginally, then closed without a sound. Bowing deeply, and with one last, brief look at the albino, he turned and left, to do at once what the Overseer had ordered.
"Why did you tell him that?"
DeVore turned and looked at Lehmann's son. He was eighteen, but he seemed ageless, timeless. Like death itself.
"To make him do as I say, not as he thinks he should do."
"And the woman?"
DeVore smiled into that empty, masklike face. He had no need to answer. The boy knew already what would happen to the woman.
THE MOON was huge and monstrous in the darkness: a full, bright circle, like a blind eye staring down from nothingness. Si Wu Ya looked up at it and shivered, anxious now. Then, as the rope tightened again, tugging at her, she stumbled on, the tops of her arms chafing where the rope bit into them.
Ahead of her Sung was whimpering again. "Be quiet!" she yelled, angry with him for his weakness, but was rewarded with the back of Teng's hand. Then Teng was standing over her, his breathing heavy and irregular, a strange excitement in his face. Groaning, the pain in her lower body almost more than she could bear, she got to her feet, then spat blood, unable to put her hand up to her mouth to feel the damage he had done to her.
Ahead lay the water-chestnut fields, glimmering in the reflected light from Chung Kuo's barren sister.
We are cursed, she thought, staggering on, each step sending a jolt of pain through her frpm ass to abdomen. Even Teng and Chang. Even Peskova and that bastard Bergson. All cursed. Every last one of us. All of us fated to go this way; stumbling on in darkness, beneath the gaze of that cold, blind eye.
She tried to laugh but the sound died in her before it reached her lips. Then, before she realized it, they had stopped and she was pushed down to the ground next to Sung, her back to him.
She lay there, looking about her, the hushed voices of the four men standing nearby washing over her like the senseless murmur of the sea.
Smiling, she whispered to her husband. "The sea, Sung. I've never seen the sea. Never really seen it. Only on vidcasts. . . ."
She rolled over and saw at once that he wasn't listening. His eyes were dark with fear, his hands, bound at his sides like her own, twitched convulsively, the fingers shaking uncontrollably.
"Sung. . . ." she said, moved by the sight of him. "My sweet little Sung. . . ."
She wanted to reach out and hold him to her, to draw him close and comfort him, but it was too late now. All her love for him, all her anguish, welled up suddenly, overwhelming her.
"Kuan Yin!" she said softly, tearfully. "Oh, my poor Sung. I didn't mean to be angry with you. Oh, my poor, poor darling. I didn't mean—"
Teng kicked her hard in the ribs, silencing her.
"Which one first?"
The voice was that of the simpleton, Seidemann. Si Wu Ya breathed slowly, deeply, trying not to cry out again, letting the pain wash past her, over her; trying to keep her mind clear of it. In case. Just in case. . . .
She almost shook her head; almost laughed. In case of what? It was done with now. There was only pain ahead of them now. Pain and the end of pain.
Peskova answered. "The woman. We'll do the woman first."
She felt them lift her and take her over to the low stone wall beside the glimmering field of water chestnuts. The woman, she thought, vaguely recognizing herself in the words. Not Si Wu Ya now, no longer Silk Raven, simply "the woman."
She waited, the cold stone of the wall pushed up hard against her breasts, her knees pushing downward into the soft, moist loam, while they unfastened the rope about her arms. There was a moment's relief, a second or two free of pain, even of thought, then it began again.
Teng took one arm, Chang the other, and pulled. Her head went down sharply, cracking against the top of the wall, stunning her.
There was a cry followed by an awful groan, but it was not her voice. Sung had struggled to his feet and now stood there, only paces from where the Overseer's man Peskova was standing, a big rock balanced in both hands.
Sung made a futile struggle to free his arms, then desisted. "Not her," he pleaded. "Please gods, not her. It's me you want. I'm the thief, not her. She's done nothing. Nothing. Kill me, Peskova. Do what you want to me, but leave her be. Please gods, leave her be. . . ." His voice ran on a moment longer, then fell silent.
Teng began to laugh, but a look from Peskova silenced him. Then, with a final look at Sung, Peskova turned and brought the rock down on the woman's upper arm.
The cracking of the bone sounded clearly in the silence. There was a moment's quiet afterward, then Sung fell to his knees, vomiting.
Peskova stepped over the woman and brought the heavy stone down on the other arm. She was unconscious now. It was a pity, that; he would have liked to have heard her groan again, perhaps even to cry out as she had that night when The Man had played his games with her.
He smiled. Oh, yes, they'd all heard that. Had heard and found the echo in themselves. He looked across at Sung. Poor little Sung. Weak little Sung. All his talk meant nothing now. He was powerless to change things. Powerless to save his wife. Powerless even to save himself. It would be no fun killing him. No more fun than crushing a bug.
He brought the stone down once again; heard the brittle sound of bone as it snapped beneath the rock. So easy it was. So very, very easy.
Teng and Chang had stepped back now. They were no longer necessary. The woman would be going nowhere now. They watched silently as he stepped over her body and brought the stone down once again, breaking her other leg.
"That's her, then." Peskova turned and glanced at Sung, then looked past him at Seidemann. "Bring him here. Let's get it over with."
Afterward he stood there beside the wall, staring at Sung's body where it lay, facedown on the edge of the field of water chestnuts. Strange, he thought. It was just like a machine. Like switching off a machine.
For a moment he looked out across the water meadow, enjoying the night's stillness, the beauty of the full moon overhead. Then he heaved the stone out into the water and turned away, hearing the dull splash sound behind him.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Casting a Spell out of Ice
KIM LAY on his back in the water, staring up at the ceiling of the pool. Stars hung like strung beads of red and black against the dull gold background, the five sections framed by Han pictograms. It was a copy of part of the ancient Tun Huang star map of A. D. 940. According to the Han it was the earliest accurate representation of the heavens; a cylindrical projection which divided the sky into twenty-eight slices—like the segments of a giant orange.
There was a game he sometimes played, floating there alone. He would close his eyes and clear his mind of everything but darkness. Then, one by one, he would summon up the individual stars from within a single section of the Tun Huang map; would set each in its true place in the heavens of his mind, giving them a dimension in time and space that the inflexibility—the sheer flatness—of the map denied them. Slowly he would build his own small galaxy of stars. Then, when the last of them was set delicately in place, like a jewel in a sphere of black glass, he would try to give the whole thing motion.
In his earliest attempts this had been the moment when the fragile sphere had shattered, as if exploded from within; but experiment and practice had brought him beyond that point. Now he could make the sphere expand or contract along the dimension of time; could trace each separate star's unique and unrepeated course through the nothingness he had created within his skull. It gave him a strong feel for space—for the relationships and perspectives of stars. Then, when he opened his eyes again, he would see—as if for real—the fine tracery of lines that linked the beadlike stars on the Tun Huang map, and could see, somewhere beyond the dull gold surface, where their real positions lay—out there in the cold, black eternity beyond the solar system.