He stood in front of the curtain that had fallen closed again behind him, not quite as large as a Rimilian but just as blond and blue-eyed. The haddin and swordbelt he wore were relatively recent additions, given to him after he had gotten to Rimilia. I knew him better as a coworker in the XenoMediation Bureau back on Central, but I also remembered the last time we’d seen each other—and knew I should never have trusted him.
“You seem to be over your upset now, Len,” I remarked, referring back to the time he also had reason to remember. “After we parted company I had the silly idea you might be avoiding me-especially since you didn’t show up to say good-bye before I left for Vediaster. I didn’t know then that you were probably just too busy making a report to be able to get away, so I spent some time worrying if you were all right. Silly of me, wasn’t it?”
“If you’re saying I owe you an apology, you’re right,” he answered, the grin gone but his eyes making no effort to avoid mine. “You scared me badly with that trick you pulled with my shield, but not for the reason you think. And you ought to know why Garth and I weren’t there to see you off, we had no choice about it. We both wanted to be there, but . . . ”
“But you let it slide because letting me know I had some friends wasn’t an effort important enough to make a fuss over,” I finished for him, seeing his flush and feeling the same in his mind. “Making that kind of a stand might have brought you too much in the way of attention, and then you might have had to explain what you were really doing there. Don’t worry about it, Len, I understand completely. We all have our priorities, but I can’t help wondering what more you would have had to go through in the slave kitchens in Grelana if you and Garth hadn’t been two of my higher ones. You probably would have been freed the next day anyway, so it couldn’t have been much . . .”
He stared down at me without saying anything, the protest in his mind dying away before it could be vocalized. Only someone who has been a slave can know what even one extra day in slavery means, and Len and Garth hadn’t had an easy time of it. Len’s light eyes were full of pain as he finally understood that his not being there to say good-bye was like my not being there would have been for him and Garth, but I was the one who had been stupid. Only in dreams can you trust other people not to betray you, and even if they do it doesn’t matter that much. When I turned my back on Len to show I’d said everything to him I cared to, I could feel the protest being reborn in his mind. It was almost as though I could see the hand he extended toward me, the unspoken attempt to apologize and ask to be forgiven, but his crying mind couldn’t find the words. Ashton, frowning, sent comfort past me with her own mind in an effort to ease him, but although I could also feel that she wanted to say something, it wasn’t her words that got said first.
“As you recall that much, wenda, you must also recall that the fault was neither Lenham’s nor Garth’s,” a deep voice came, calm but faintly disturbed. “It was I who commanded them to keep away, therefore is the responsibility for the doing mine. Should you feel the need to heap accusation and establish guilt, it is I who must be addressed. ”
“What’s he doing here?” I said to Murdock, who was half distracted and half upset, none of which showed on his face. “Why did you bother establishing this community in such an inaccessible place if you drag in every stray who comes along?”
“Terrilian, I’m sure you know by now that Tammad is no stray,” Murdock answered, looking and sounding very tired. “You should know as well that Lenham meant you no harm in his role as my agent, and was not permitted to tell you the truth despite his wish to do so. You are understandably upset by all the things you’ve learned and are about to learn, and are therefore striking out at everyone in reach. Perhaps it would be best if I had you shown to a room where you might rest.”
“I’m not in the mood to rest,” I denied with a shake of my head, more than eager to be away from all those minds I could feel behind me, but not about to let myself be chased off like a small, helpless animal. “You said you wanted to know what happened to me in the complex, and right now I’m ready to talk about it—which I might not be again. If you’re ready to listen, get rid of your pets. ”
“I will not be dictated to in my own house,” he answered, the coldness in his voice and eyes the only indications of the growl in his mind. His twisted body didn’t stir in its special chair, but in all other, more important ways, he stood straight and tall. “These people, like you, are my guests, and I will not have them insulted. You may either be shown to a room, or you may speak in front of them, and frankly I would prefer that you rested. You have hardly had an easy time of it, and . . . ”
“I’ve already said I’m not in the mood to rest,” I repeated, close to a growl of my own. “If you want everyone in the universe to hear this that’s your business, but I’m getting it said. After that, don’t ask me about it again.”
No one said anything else right then, or if they did I didn’t hear it. I was so-twisted tight and whirling inside, just as though there were something wrong with me, which of course there wasn’t. I looked down at my hands while Murdock’s-guests-brought themselves into the room and found places on the carpet fur, their minds making such a clamor I almost exchanged my curtain for a shield. Two women entered behind them, one with a tray of goblets and one with a pitcher containing drishnak rather than kimla. I could smell the spicy Rimilian wine as soon as it was in the room, and even knew the order in which the men were served. First Garth and then Len, then Dallan and Hestin—the healer from Vediaster—and lastly- I found myself wishing I could run somewhere and hide, but instead began speaking.
“After the incident with the figurehead director, I was taken to the main part of the complex,” I said, still staring at my hands as I took up pretty much from where I’d left off. “Everyone in sight told me what a shame it was that the conditioning hadn’t held, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t expected to do what the other women there did. I was put on display for their exalted male Primes, got chosen by one, but didn’t please him as much as I was supposed to. When he put a hand inside my clothes I slapped him, which amused no one at all. They apologized to him for having inflicted me on him, took me to a room where they caused me more pain than I’d thought it was possible to feel, then dressed me up and sent me back to the man I’d insulted. I was being given one more chance to please him, and if I didn’t do it I wouldn’t be given another.”
“Would they have killed you?” Ashton asked very quietly when I paused to sip my kimla. “It doesn’t make much sense going to all that trouble to kidnap someone and then simply throw them away if things don’t immediately work out. Can they be such fools?”
“They aren’t,” I answered, only right then realizing I’d shed my curtain for a shield after all. “You seem to forget that it wasn’t my mind they needed, but my body. All they had to kill was my mind, my knowledge of self, and then my body would do just as they wanted. I was so terrified at the idea I thought I’d do exactly what they told me to, but I seem to be incapable of acting intelligently in situations like that. When the man humiliated me I insulted him again, this time in front of everyone in the room, and they all went foaming at the mouth. It would have been finished for me right then and there—if the First Prime of the complex hadn’t stepped in to claim me.
“Kel-Ten made them all back off, and then he took me to his apartment,” I said after a very brief pause. “He wasn’t shy about helping himself to my use, but that wasn’t the main reason he’d exercised one of the privileges of his position to make me his. When we were in a place where we couldn’t be overheard, he told me he wanted to escape from the complex and was offering me the chance to go with him. He needed the help of another Prime he could trust in order to get out of there, and told me that if I agreed to go along with his plans, he’d key me awake.