Flesh and Gold (21 page)

What insects need blood to make eggs fertile?? Woman of the sea, blood red like a fetus, herself a kind of fetus, pregnant with a . . . too damned many pregnancies. Either one or both of us is crazy
.

“I,” said the Lyhhrt. “We.” The lights went out and Lebedev knew that the Lyhhrt was crazy. Before panic could sweep him he felt the pressure of the Lyhhrt mind penetrating his impervious net, saying:
:Neither one of us is crazy. I
am angry.:
The lights came on again, and the Lyhhrt regained control of his voice and said, “We are operating now on my personal emergency electrical system. No one else can reach us until I restore the main one. I am not angry at you.”

Lebedev wondered if the door was locked.

“The door is not locked. If you are so exceedingly fearful of me you may leave.”

“I'm going. Thank you for your care.” Lebedev stood up, took thought for an instant and added, “Thank you for saving my life.”

The Lyhhrt did not move. “If you should wish to repay me in any way for saving your life, you might choose to stay and hear me out for a moment.”

Lebedev wavered on one leg and sat down again.

“Thank you. You do not trust me, but you must know that I warned the woman, Jacaranda Drummond. I knew what she came here for, but not what was to happen to her, I never betrayed her. The ones who recognized her and arranged her murder are no longer here.”
Dead
, the tone of voice said. “Her life was not thrown away but used very well to save someone else's—for a while, at least. Now you may go. I am running out of time.”

“Tell me about that someone else.”

“Is it safe to trust you, Lebedev?”

“You must judge that.”

“I must trust someone and I have no one else.”

Lebedev waited.

“If I do this now I have never taken such risks in all that I/we remember of time. You must promise to give me your life.”

“I'm damned if I'll die for you, fellow,” Lebedev said.

“I did not mean for me. Someone else—two of them. I meant that you must risk your life for them.”

“If you mean the swimmer—I don't understand you. Aren't you working for Zamos?”

“For and against. Hurry, I have only a few moments before the techs discover I have turned off their power. Will you risk your life for the swimmer?”

“I have been risking it since the moment I stepped through Zamos's doorway.”

“Is that a yes? I suppose so.” He paused, and his imaging eyes rested on Lebedev for a long moment.

“Look here, then.” The emergency lights turned down but did not go out, and the section of wall above the work table slid aside to display a vid screen showing the interior of the tank.

For the first and only time, Lebedev saw Kobai. She was floating listlessly in the center of the tank, making only enough motion with hands and tail to keep from sinking to the bottom. She could not see either of the watchers, but turned to face the camera as the Lyhhrt engaged her mind.

“Is that what Zamos has been calling an animal?” Lebedev heard the thud as Kobai thumped a fist against the screen with such eye-sparking fury that she pushed herself backward half way to the other wall.

“She doesn't think she is.”

“What is she then, Lyhhrt?”

“Pregnant. The summit of Zamos's creation and the first of her kind: a fertile clone.” It seemed to Lebedev that the Lyhhrt said this with as much pride as if he had created her himself. “Mother of slave nations, perhaps, Lebedev. In herself as an individual quite useless: the need for aquatic workers is very small. But what can be learned when she and the baby are . . . examined, you might say, can be applied to others. Strong body, matures in three-fifths of the time your species does, life expectancy—not much perhaps for this
one, but will likely be a good for whatever new type may be developed. Gestation period five thirtydays—she is beginning to show a little.”

“She does not seem to have slave mentality.”

“That can be built in. Yes. Zamos has all he needs, but we do not have much time, no more than a thirtyday.”

“For what?”

“To take her and us out of here.”

Lebedev swallowed and stared. He whispered, “How can you be working for and against Zamos? What has all this to do with the egg-layer and the blood sample?”

“I will tell you everything eventually, but now I must reconnect the power, it is the point of noon, and your games table is about to open. I will protect you, Lebedev, but if you are to help me you must remain here and deal skambi, Lebedev. You must deal skambi.”

:You Iron Man Out-there, what do you do to feed this Baby that's swimming in my sea? Do you give it more rotten dead-oyster and dried-up sea-smik that you pay for and bring here? That little tiny One? I hope it got to be tiny to come out of me. Tell me, Iron Man, do I get to die so it can feed off me? Is that what you are keeping me for, to make a meal for that One? Is that why you call me an animal?:

:By the Great Ideator, is that what you truly believe, Kobai?:

:I got nobody here to tell me different.:

:You have me! I would never call you an animal I was making it clear to someone else that you are not. If we needed more food we would bring it in, but it's not necessary yet. You make food in your body to give the baby when it's small.:

:I do?:

:It is called milk, and comes out of your teats, through the nipples, those pointed things on them.:

:Is that what they're for? I thought they were just something for men to hold on to.:

:Whatever men may think to do, giving food is what your teats are made for. You can see that your breasts are beginning to swell and your nipples too, and soon they will run a little.:

:That will hurt a lot when that New One bites my teats with his teeth!:

:It may hurt from being sucked but not from biting. The baby is born without teeth. They grow inside his mouth the way he is growing in you.:

:You say that is a him I have growing in here.:

:Yes, it is.:

:And who does he get to make the in-out with? Is that supposed to be me? There is no one else like me here.:

:No, that is unhealthy both for you and your future children. I can't be sure what will happen.:

:I don't think it looks too healthy for me and him right now, Iron Man.:

:Kobai, I am your friend and you are alive today.:

SEVEN  

Shen IV:
Ned Zella and the O'e

Ned Gattes pushed the foam plugs into his nostrils and let the tech press his face into the mold; the plastrine was soft and warm, like a smothering pillow. Ned liked a little fear, there was a spice to it, a bright flavor: the first pop of blood in the arena, a moving shadow in an alleyway when he knew just where the knife was coming from, going to bed with Manador. Not the kind lodged under his breastbone among the Spartakoi, in the Palace of Knossos on Shen IV. He did not know who was holding the knife here, what cloak the smiler was hiding it under.

The pillow pulled away, the flick of a tentacle dismissed him and while he threw the plugs down the disposal the next gladiator took the step that tugged at the line drawing forty others into the Mask Room.

Through the polarized window the afternoon sky of Shen's fourth world still hit three walls of masks with a blue-white glare. Outside it Knossos lay half sunk in rock on the
edge of the sea along five kilometers of stone jetties; the sea heaved and tossed beside them, thick with salt, and all of the buildings' towers and crenellations hid water stills and rain basins; beneath the endless maze of malls in the depths of the Palace there were a thousand artesian wells. There was nothing but lichenous vegetation in the rocks and beyond them a desert covered with vast stretches of tough ground-trees that grew ankle-thick and tangling, and could not be crossed except with huge treaded vehicles. The Palace was a haven of deeply guarded privacy. Too guarded for Ned Gattes.

The sun beat down demoniacally; the air refrigerators thudded like monsters' hearts under the shields of thick polarized glastex and could never make the atmosphere quite comfortable in this upper level where the fighters practiced in public for small bettors. Even so, Ned would have been content here under the high ceilings and their hanging fans, in all the noise of machetes clashing, children screaming, and fighters yelping in pain or triumph if he had been allowed to enjoy it in peace.

He paused to stare at the masks while he wiped bits of plastrine from his hairline. Whores, pugs, and bouncers, many long dead, stared back at him eyelessly. The newest masks taken from the young and living were pale ivory, and as they aged rising in their rows toward the ceiling they yellowed like old bones; it seemed to Ned that their features hardened and twisted with time. Most of the actual faces had been reconstructed before their impressions were taken, some not for the better, and others had gone to their deaths much worse. Jacaranda, who cared little for her looks except to please Manador, had never been so much as blemished.

In one of the lowest rows he recognized Zella's young rounded face, a softer one than Jacky's, and thought his own scarred mug would look odd beside it. Zella was sitting on
a bench in the corridor outside waiting to lead him to setups. She had been waiting at his door when he woke, and sitting near him at breakfast and noon dinner.

Now she was beside him, putting a hand through his arm.

Four cold fingers in the crook of his elbow.

She had been watching him, how he moved. He was really nervous, really working to stay calm. But he'd been hardly half awake when he was attacked, then knocked down in the melee, and after that discovered the fearful death of a friend on that pornopic. It was because of the flurry of new-dog arrivals that all those events hadn't been given much attention; not many people had seen them, and he wasn't in a hurry to report them, either. That woman who had been killed, Jacaranda, was she another spy? She didn't look like somebody caught up in a gambling ring . . . if she was, the Kylkladi had certainly taken care of her.

No more did Ned look like a spy for gamblers, with his grafted jaw and the scar running from his left ear around to the first vertebra below the nape of his neck. And he was too wide awake now, and shy of her. Wary. Not one to jump into her bed and make himself familiar. It looked to her as if he was trying to get away rather than worm himself in. She wondered what he did know. She wondered if that death scene, with its Kylkladi, had not taken place in a Zamos brothel . . . the thought gave her a shiver.

Ned was giving her a curious glance that was chilling in its own way.

With an effort Ned twisted his mind away from danger and set at Zella with the sham chebok. He did not really like the chebok; it was too easy to imagine the spikes slashing him. No other weapon, except for the outlawed morning-star, affected
him this way, and he had worked to use it with skill only because it was Jacaranda's specialty.

Zella's style was different from Jacaranda's, her attitude something of an enthusiast's, fresh and a little unwary. He had known pugs like that, both men and women, and a few whores too, young ones; some had even been wise enough to get out of the business before they got old and twisted.

Perhaps she found it just possible to read his mind as he was thinking this. One pass when he did not follow through as hard as he should her eyes sparked, and she fetched him a clout with the buckler that rang changes in his head. On the rebound he caught her with her chebok injudiciously positioned like a burr between her body and her own buckler; he gave her a light tap that did not hurt her, but her fury at herself drew blood to her face.
God damn you Ned Gattes, I was living my life here working at what I do best and you come and everything is turned over in one day!

They exchanged speculative looks.

“Yer too damn polite, Ned.” The coach reached up to whack his shoulder hard with a broad palm. Gobo was very short, long-armed, and hairy; he looked like the result of an only too-successful mating of ape and human.

“Not up to full strength,” Ned said, doing a little shadow-box-dance to show he was trying.

“Not good 'nough,” Gobo was saying, when the clogs came rattling across the floor, and Ned saw Zella freeze. He thought he could feel the prickling at the nape of her neck.

The clogs paused, and she and Kati'ik, the personnel manager, caught eyes for a sharp moment.
Those claws scratching, scratching down my body like that murderer was doing with her!

For that moment he thought he could read her mind in her eyes.
Whatever you want, no! I haven't screwed it out of
him! He was upset, just left me and went to his room! Did you want me to rape him the first night? Leave me alone, alone!

The
klok-klok
receded and Gobo sniggered. “Guess y' wouldn' wanner be in a ring with that'n.”