“Freedom,” the slave whispered, trembling even harder. “We will now be made to know freedom. I will fetch the others at once. ”
He released his two-armed grip as he began to turn, but he still kept one arm firmly around me as he got ready to go back to the others. I was his and not about to be turned loose, but suddenly Dallan was there, taking his arm off me and stepping between us.
“No!” the slave cried, trying desperately to pass Dallan, but although he was nearly the l’lenda’s size it was as though a half-grown boy fought with a man. “Please! The female is mine! ”
“The woman is free,” Dallan told him, still speaking gently even as he kept him from reaching me again. “She is free and therefore cannot be claimed as a slave by you. When you, too, are free, you may present yourself to her as one free person to another. ”
“I may do such a thing?” the slave asked, still upset but somewhat diverted. “I shall be free, and I may present myself to her?”
“Indeed you may,” Dallan assured him, patting his shoulder as he urged him toward the darkened far end of the corridor. “And the others may do the same with other wendaa. Let us fetch them now, so that you and they may be fed and begun upon the road to freedom.”
“Yes, let us begin,” the slave agreed, filled with a fearful enthusiasm, and as they made their way up the corridor I backed a few steps in the opposite direction, stumbled and nearly fell as I turned, then ran as fast as I ever had before in my life.
I have no memory of the corridors I passed through, but there must have been quite a few of them. The first thing I do remember is coming to a pair of open terrace-doors, stopping a moment to drag in uncounted, painful gasps of air, and then plunging wildly through them. Outside it was a warm, bright early-afternoon, with very few people around and an air of peace overlying everything. I stopped again to look around, the sweat dripping down my face and spotting my shirt and breeches, my heart pounding, and slowly it came through to me that I’d left the palace at a point near the stables. I was panting and still wanted to run, but I forced myself to a more normal pace and that way covered the rest of the distance to where the seetarr were kept.
It was much dimmer inside the stables, but the boy had no trouble seeing me. He came up anxious to be of service, terribly proud of his new green haddin and uncollared neck, and in just a few minutes I had a seetar complete with saddle and bridle. I had to use a block to mount him, but once mounted he responded well to my mind and carried me to the nearest gate. The guards there were startled to see me riding through all alone, but before they could protest or try to come with me, I was already across the open stretch and moving into the city streets.
It took me awhile to find the main street that led out of the city, but once I did I followed the road a short distance before finally turning off into a quiet stand of trees. A small breeze moved the leaves overhead as I dismounted, and my seetar snorted in contentment at having been allowed to stop in such a pleasant place. I sat down in the grass in front of one of the white-barked, narrow-boled trees, folded my legs in front of me, then buried my face in my hands. The urge to run was still inside me, and I didn’t have to wonder why.
“I almost did it,” I whispered to myself, so sickened and horrified that I couldn’t picture ever being tranquil again. “Because he thinks he loves me, I almost let him claim me. When he puts his arms around me, it felt good.”
And that was the part that tortured me the most, the fact that the slave’s arms had felt good. Tammad hadn’t said that he didn’t love me, but how do you give up someone you love? I needed to be loved, needed it so desperately that I’d almost been ready to accept it from a man with the mind of a child, but he wasn’t the one I wanted to love me. I wanted the man I loved to love me, but honor and duty meant more to him than I did. He was better off without me, I knew he was, but that didn’t work in the reverse no matter what I’d said to Dallan. I needed him more than I needed my life, more than I needed my eyes or mind or heart, but the disease called honor had come between us, an incurable disease.
I was crying by then, the sort of crying that comes from a hurt that simply won’t stop. The man I loved and needed didn’t love or need me, at least not as far as I could see, and there was no other way to look at it. Once he rode away his memories of me would begin to fade, until one day I would be gone entirely, replaced by whatever woman he banded next to laugh with and make love to. I loved him too much to do anything but wish him happiness with her, more happiness than he’d found with me. As for myself, I’d made that decision some time ago; all I wanted was the nothingness of the end of life and the end of pain. The loneliness seemed to hurt more than ever, more than it had before I learned what it was like to live without it.
I leaned back against the narrow tree with my eyes closed, my knees raised to support my elbows, my hands to my now-aching head, my body shuddering from the crying. Being all alone is not the same as being lonely, which you can be even if you’re not all alone. I suppose it’s easier to take if you’re big and strong, but I wasn’t big and strong and didn’t want to be. All I wanted was—
I heard the twig snap at the same time I felt the startlement of my seetar, and it was all I could do to keep from sending my mind out. Very few things are able to startle an animal as large as a seetar, and if one of those very few things was close by, I didn’t want to chase it away. I had come close to being killed by something once and it had been horrible, but the worst part had been touching its mind. If I made sure not to touch its mind it should all be over before I knew it, me getting what I wanted and a wild beast getting a good meal. I wanted that trade with everything in me, but I still began trembling when my seetar rumbled a warning and backed off just a little. It was coming closer, it had to be coming closer, and then it was
I couldn’t feel much of anything and I couldn’t move or open my eyes, but somehow I had come partly awake. It was strange to know that that was what being dead felt like, and then I became aware of someone speaking.
“ . . . lucky can you get?” an unfamiliar male voice was saying. “There we were, all ready to gas everyone in that palace to get her, and she practically stumbles into our laps.”
“We wouldn’t have known she was that close if I hadn’t checked the transponder you were supposed to be watching,” another male voice countered, sounding annoyed and shorttempered. “Did you at least remember to turn her off after giving her the gas?”
“Are you kidding?” the first voice demanded in outrage. “Of course I did. You don’t think I want an awakened Prime anywhere near me, do you? Even if we don’t bring her out of it before we get back to Central, I’m happier with this one turned off.”
“We’re not taking her back to Central,” the second voice said, this time sounding faintly distracted. “Our employers decided some time ago that they needed her in their special program, but that barbarian they loaned her to refused to give her back. Now we have her whether he likes it or not, and she goes straight to New Dawn.”
“What’s on New Dawn?” the first voice asked, full of curiosity but beginning to fade out just a little. “I thought it was a frontier world with nothing but savages.”
“It’s a frontier world with open spaces, savages—and the special-project breeding farm,” the second voice answered with a chuckle, also sounding a good deal fainter. “They raise the best of the male Primes there, and also give them the best of the females they want bred. She won’t be ready for it for a little while, but they’ll be after her as soon as they see her. I wouldn’t mind doing it to her myself.”