And then, as suddenly, the crushing pressure was gone again; the weight slid from his chest. He lifted his head, as his vision came back, to see the convict who had been trying to strangle him sprawled on the ground beside him, twitching and white-eyed, as if he were having a seizure. And then the maddened eyes closed, and the body beside his own lay still.
Gundhalinu pushed himself up onto his elbows, gasping, every breath like acid going down his ruined throat. He heard the shouts and laughter fade away into murmurs of disbelief, questions, angry demands: “What happened?” “What did he do to him—?”
“I’m a sibyl.” He spat the words out, with the taste of a stranger’s blood. “I warned you.”
For a long moment there was near-silence. He got to his feet somehow, stood swaying. He saw Piracy, at the edge of the crowd, shaking his head. “Too much trouble,” Piracy mouthed silently. No one moved around him.
The ground shuddered suddenly; Gundhalinu lost his balance and fell. And then the inner wall closed in on him in a rush, like one creature with a dozen heads, half a hundred arms and legs, a thousand hands, knees, feet and fists. They stuffed his mouth with ash and gagged him with a strip of cloth, bound his hands and feet. He was pulled up, beaten, kicked, and dragged; passed from hand to hand, buried alive inside a moving mass of bodies until at last he came down hard on the blackened rim of a crater he had glimpsed from the landing field. He only had time to realize what he saw before he was forced, face down, into it. Black, reeking ooze covered his head, filled his eyes, his nostrils, his ears. He held his breath, praying to all the gods of his ancestors and the Eight Worlds as he felt himself sink deeper, as they did not pull him up and did not let him breathe and did not stop and did nothing at all but let him die….
“…come on, now, come on, come on you ungrateful shit, come back. Come on…”
Gundhalinu felt a tremor run through him, and was aware, with a kind of dreamer’s perversity, that he still existed inside the mass of bleeding, helpless flesh the mob had made of what had once been his body. He could not see, it was still as black as the foul drowning pool that was his final memory, and yet he heard someone speaking to him, a vaguely familiar voice reciting a kind of abusive singsong chant. It went on and on, as if the chanter believed he had the power to bring souls back from the Other Side. Gundhalinu moaned, realizing with the sound that he could, that he was no longer gagged or—he lifted trembling hands to his face—bound.
“Hey—” Hands closed over his as he would have touched his eyes. He fought, cursing, flailing blindly, until they forced his own hands back to his sides and held them there, strengthless. “You’re all right,” the voice said. “It’s safe now. Nobody’s going to hurt you—”
Gundhalinu went limp, lying as still as death again when the hands released him. He felt them move inward along his arms, setting off more pain at every touch; down his body, along the length of his legs. He was beyond caring whether it was meant as torture or molestation, or even a primitive medical exam; only caring that all he saw was blackness. “My eyes,” he whispered at last, when he found the courage to speak.
The hands moved abruptly to his head in response, lifting it slightly; fingers brushed his cheeks, his forehead, like birdwings. And suddenly there was light, dim and gray, more light, orange, white, agonizing light. He put up his hands again, with a cry; no one interfered with his movement this time as he covered his eyes with his hands, letting the light back in a millimeter at a time. Still the pain grew with the light, but he forced his eyes open, flooded with tears, to confront whoever held him now.
Piracy’s face swam into focus above him. Recognizing the face, he realized that he had recognized the voice too, all along, with some random fragment of his consciousness. He wiped his eyes, swearing in frustration as the tears went on streaming down his face.
“Let ‘em come,” Piracy said. “Helps clean that shit out of your eyes. They’ll heal up in two, three days, if no infection sets in.”
Gundhalinu let his hands fall again. He moved his head, the only voluntary motion he had the strength for; able to make out his own body, lying on a pallet bed, stripped of clothing, half covered by a rough blanket, covered with tar and bruises and cuts. His body was one continuous throbbing ache; he was glad that he could not see more clearly what they had done to him.
“You’re fucking lucky,” Piracy said; Gundhalmu gave a grunt of disbelief “You look like death warmed over, but you got no broken bones, nothing that won’t heal. They were gentle with you, considering what you are. Guess the blood virus scared them just enough, after all… . Not that they didn’t intend to kill you—”
“You saved me?” Gundhalinu asked. Every word seemed to take the effort of an entire sentence.
“Not me, Treason.” Piracy shook his head, his mouth curving up in a sardonic smile. “I told you you were too much trouble. It was him.” He gestured over his shoulder.
Gundhalinu blinked his eyes clear, forcing them to see beyond Piracy’s face, to make a second human shape take form in the shadows behind him. He realized that they were inside some sort of shelter, its walls reflecting the incandescent glow of a small radiant heater somewhere on the other side of where he lay. The second man moved forward, his massive bulk looming over Piracy until he seemed to fill the entire space of Gundhalinu’s vision. “This is Bluekiller. He saved you.”
Gundhalinu stared at the man. Bluekiller’s enormous, black-bearded face smiled, revealing yellow teeth. His eyes were like small jet beads, almost lost in the narrow space between the filthy snarls of his beard and hair. Gundhalinu could tell nothing at all about his expression. “Why?” Gundhalinu whispered.
A guttural mumbling emerged from the lips hidden inside the beard.
Gundhalinu shook his head, closing his eyes, unable to understand the man’s speech. He was not even certain what language the man was speaking.
“Because you’re a sibyl,” Piracy said.
Gundhalinu felt a sudden pang of gratitude, honed sharper by the brutal memory of the mob’s hatred. “Tell him I—”
“He can understand you.” Piracy cut him off. “He’s hard to make out because he’s only got half a tongue. It doesn’t mean he’s stupid. Don’t make that mistake.”
Gundhalinu opened his eyes, looking at Piracy, back at Bluekiller. “I learned … not to make that mistake … a long time ago.” He smiled warily, wearily.
Bluekiller muttered something, with an unpleasant laugh.
“That makes you unusual, for a Tech,” Piracy said. “Or for a Blue. I figured you’d have certain blind spots that don’t stop with your eyes… . But he doesn’t want your gratitude. He wants you to answer a question.”
Gundhalinu met Bluekiller’s inscrutable stare again, still reading nothing in it But the man leaned forward, catching his jaw in the vise-grip of a hand nearly as large as his face, making him cry out involuntarily. Bluekiller held his face immobile; more unintelligible speech poured out of the other man’s mouth.
“He wants to know about his family,” Piracy said, tonelessly. “He left two wives and eleven kids behind in Rishon City, over on the day side, when they sent him here. He wants to know what happened to his family. He wants to know now.”
Gundhalinu shut his eyes again, not knowing where he would find the strength to begin a Transfer; knowing that he had to, somehow. If he could only begin it, the inexorable energy of the sibyl net would carry him through. “Give me names… . Input—” he whispered, forcing his mind to focus on the response. He felt the sudden, vertiginous fall begin, as the bottom dropped out of his consciousness, and he fell away thankfully into the waiting darkness…