In Solitary (13 page)

We had climbed the ramps now and were on the high vat walls and I stopped and looked at him sharply.

‘You mean the revolution?’ I said.

‘Correct. Your little revolt will prove to the Klees that humans are nasty little animals to be put down, once and for all. I’ve had my eyes on your absurd scheme from the start and I must say it’s going rather well …’

I smiled now and said, ‘You’re doing this on your own – or with your Stringbrother. Certainly not with the sanction of any of the Klees. All I have to do is speak to someone in authority.’

‘If you can get to see anyone in authority,’ he mused, ‘yes, perhaps – but then, you’re not known here on this continent are you …?’

He was right. No one would listen to the ravings of an unknown human and take his word against a visitor from Brytan. I would be laughed at, even granting the fact that I found an audience willing to hear me.

‘You’re a very cunning creature Endrod.’

‘I know. Infuriating isn’t it? But it’s the first time I’ve really had the chance to hit back since your father was executed – and this time I want the blow to be felt by all mankind.’

He paused, looking over into the sludge and I was tempted to push him – but Endrod was better with his wings than most, and would merely have glided to safety, thus scoring again.

‘I would guess that your friend,’ he said, turning to me again, ‘is at this moment instructing a large native of the islands to gather recruits for the insurrection, when he comes with several hundred others to reinforce the large tower. I have already been approached by this male human with regards to an additional mating performance when I visited your nest of conspiracy some time ago – I have of course persuaded my military friends that we should grant this request.’

‘Very magnanimous of you,’ I retorted.

‘Yes,’ he agreed, still complacent. ‘It is isn’t it? But then I’ve always had a generous nature.’

‘Why?’

‘My peculiar human,’ he stared up at me, ‘who will soon be dust – you know why. Because that is when
they will attack. I assume they will attempt to overpower some of the Soal aircraft crews at the mating and then head for one of the mushroom towers. Quite a neat little plan really. Anyway we’ll soon see, won’t we. I must remember to keep you locked up while the natives are repairing the tower – you might try to get word to your compatriot.’

I threw in a quick and hopeful question. ‘Aren’t you going to have me executed then?’

‘Why yes, of course,’ he replied, and my heart sank. He was playing his psychological games with me. ‘Just as soon as we arrest the girl. You can watch her go first if you like – see, I am generous with you Cave.’ This was the first time he had used my name to my face for as long as I could remember. He must have been enjoying himself immensely.

‘You must understand me,’ he continued. ‘I am not interested in your death – all I ever asked for was revenge. Ultimately you will have to die, but first I must see you suffer and I must take delight in your humiliation – otherwise, where is the revenge? To kill you now would ruin everything I have dreamed of for many mouths. All you would be, is dead – and I would be left unsatisfied. Compare it to a sexual climax between humans – I must have my loveplay first to take the final thrust to a pitch of ecstasy.’

So it appeared Endrod had all the answers – and they were the right ones even though one of them at least had been arrived at by accident, for when Tangiia had asked for a reward in the form of an additional mating it was because the big Polynesian wanted to see Peloa again – not because it would provide a legal excuse for Stella’s troops to muster on the shores of the enemy. Tangiia had not known about Stella’s plans for him at the time Endrod had visited the island.

I was taken to my cell when Endrod finally tired of crowing over my fallen circumstances, and I stayed there for many days without seeing anyone except the guard. Endrod had heard about Reandeller and her mayflies and was delighted with the idea – that mayflies should remind me to live each day as if it were my last. He sent me the cage daily after obtaining a supply of nymphs from the seacraft, he said to remind
me that at any time he could order my execution. The tactics were weak for he had already spoken out his heart and I knew that I would remain alive until Stella was eventually plucked from her dream of conquest. The peculiar thing was I hoped that it would be soon. I was reconciled to dying – after all, if the Soal drugs had not been available I would have died anyway, and lying on my sickbed I had had time to consider what the world had to offer. I loved two women, both of whom had been taken away from me. I hated being alone – and that was exactly my fate if I was allowed to live. To my mind death and loneliness cast the same shadows, with one difference – one is aware of one’s loneliness. I preferred the oblivion of death to the experience of loneliness. A month in a sandstone cell nearly deranged my mind, and the bodies of the mayflies collected in the dust to mark the passing of the days – I kept them in a corner of the room. Endrod’s psychological torture was far superior to Reandeller’s original inspired game – for though his original reason for the mimicry had been invalidated by his promise to keep me alive, there was a second, more subtle, attack at my mental defences – he never sent more than a single mayfly at a time. Just one solitary insect, that flitted around the inside of the wire skull, probably wondering if all that time employed in reaching imago was worth the effort.

Once I tried crushing the cage, but another appeared the following morning as I guessed it would and that kind of retaliation only gave Endrod the satisfaction he craved – it showed that he was reaching inside me.

Endrod’s determination to make me suffer mentally was not left at driving me insane with solitude. He came to my cell one morning just after I had finished eating. I had had a sparse breakfast of meat and wild corn, and was preparing for the weekly wash I gave myself in my drinking water – a habit that was hard to break since Stella had drummed into me the belief that dirt bred germs, and, despite what was good for the Soal, germs were harmful to humans if allowed to collect in large colonies about the skin or local environment.

I heard the sheet metal door slide back and Endrod appeared just outside the entrance. He stayed there because
the temperature in my cell was not thermostatically controlled and no Soal took chances of that kind. Though the short term danger was not as serious as they liked humans to believe, for I knew that those that had been caught in a quick temperature change could be revived in a thermochamber if they were taken to one within a reasonable time.

‘I trust you are keeping well?’ he mocked, employing the phrase my father often used to greet the Soal he served. I must have looked a pathetic sight with my long, matted hair and beard, stiff from dirt and sweat, and my skin filthy and covered in small sores. It was only by establishing a joint friendship with my guards that I managed to have my waste removed from the cell. Not that Endrod would have been concerned about a few faeces lying around the place – but Stella would have approved of my diligence.

‘Have you taken her yet?’ I asked as casually as I could. For all my silent hours of reconciling myself to my fate, I was still very much afraid.

‘Not yet – give them time, the mating is not for several days. Your native friends have only just finished repairing our tower for us. I’ve come to take you for a walk – I’m sure you need one, it’ll be good for your health.’

‘Solicitous all of a sudden, aren’t we?’

‘Not both of us—just me. You care nothing for the state of
my
health,’ he mocked.

I snarled. ‘You’re wrong there Soal – I care very much about the condition of your health – if only I had the means at my disposal to bring about the condition I would wish for you!’

‘I’m sure you know what you mean, but I have no time for prattle – come with me.’

I hesitated and he turned and repeated the order. ‘Come!’

This time I obeyed. We were accompanied by my guard, across the hardbaked ground to the edge of the accommodation area of the city, and into the mosaic of narrow streets that ran like multi-coloured rivers between tightly-packed spires and domes – all single or double storey here. The city was downwind for the prevailing breezes from the sludge tanks so that their odours blanketed the buildings. I filled my
lungs several times which obviously amused Endrod but he said nothing.

I was eventually taken to a small eggshaped building and sat on a stool in a dark room. Endrod sent the guard outside and then began flicking some switches at the back of the room. I wondered what was going to come next. Endrod was not the type to take pity on me and my solitude and decide that I deserved some entertainment.

It was entertainment – of a sort. I was shown an aerial film of Tangiia’s island. Some of the colours had had false brilliance added to distinguish the objects from the background scene.

‘What are the red spots?’ I asked.

Endrod readily answered me.

‘Those are human people – and this broken blue patch here – that’s the aircraft you stole from the mudflats. It has been covered in rocks to try to break up the shape – to camouflage it I believe the word is … Not a very good job you must admit.’

I stared at the screen. ‘But there’s at least a dozen or so red dots.’

Endrod smiled. ‘Ah, well, they’re getting confident as time goes by. And the female human – what’s her name?’

‘Stella …’

‘Yes, Stella – she has to train those red dots into officers you see, and that’s one thing that can’t be done by proxy. They also have to be taught to use the aircraft – no doubt you trained the woman while escaping from the mudflats?’

I nodded.

‘And now she’s passing on her sparse knowledge to others – telling them how the disc drums will make wisps of gas out of Soal bodies.’ His leathery palms were on my shoulders now and his rank breath hit me full in the face. In that instant I was tempted to smash both my fists into his foul skull and have done with it, but I knew that the moment I moved, even just a twitch, he would be three metres away. He might have been smaller than me but he was twice as fast moving.

‘Well it won’t be long before you’re both together again and just so you don’t forget how she looks …’ he went back to the projector.

The camera angle moved and then zoomed in for a close up of a human. It was Stella, full face, and I
gasped. Her eyes were dark-ringed pits of light – the light of fanaticism – and her cheeks had hollowed to make her look witch-like and hard. She was waving her arms at someone and shouting – silently on the screen – and the order was driven home with a stabbing finger and what seemed a sharp reprimand. The picture faded.

‘How did you take those?’ I asked, my insides full of yearning for the girl.

‘Does it matter? If you must know … a pilotless craft about half a centimetre in length.’

‘Can I go back to my cell now?’ I had seen enough. Endrod observed that he had scored another victory by reaching inside me and crushing my heart with his coldblooded, psychological tactics.

‘You can return to your room – but before you leave perhaps you would like to know that you have a visitor.’

I looked into his eyes to see if he was tormenting me further.

‘No,’ he said. ‘You do have a visitor. An insignificant Soal that has been ordered out of his father’s house in disgrace. His crime was trusting a human with a weapon – need I continue?’

Hope sprang to my breast.

‘Lintar,’ I breathed.

The early morning sun thrust itself through
the slits in the high walls and spotlighted the old wooden beams above my head. Stare at something long enough and it becomes interesting. I fixed my eyes on those worn stalwarts of the roof and after a while began to see an artistry in the pitted texture of their surfaces. They became small, individual worlds which I compared, one against the other, to relieve the long days of boredom. The insects of Endrod no longer bothered me – they lived and died unnoticed by my eyes. It was now the wood that lay claim to my attention, and its inroads of scars and its various craters. There was a pastime in considering the manufacturers of those craters. Birds? Insects? Man? That led me to wondering who had made the building – it was of human, not Soal construction – and for what purpose. It reminded me of the humans that had built everything of box-like shapes on the volcanic island. Perhaps we had all, once upon a time, followed this religion I had discovered? My escape into the wood was interrupted by the sound of the door opening.

Some moments later the guard beckoned from the open doorway and I trudged, blinking, towards the light. She had come at last: the redness of the morning sun found colourful contemporaries in her hair as she stood, some ten metres away, between two Soal. Two? And I only warranted one guard? She must have given them a lot of trouble. Then I looked more keenly and recognized one of them – it was Lintar and he was talking rapidly to Stella, who appeared by her frown to be mildly irritated by what he was saying. Then
they saw me and the conversation stopped. Stella looked surprised, whether at my appearance or because she had not been told that I was alive and well, I had no idea. But, on recovering, gave me a small tentative wave. I smiled back, encouragingly. She was people and I needed these. Not too many – just enough to talk to without becoming uninterested. There was a slight breeze blowing and it cooled my skin after the hot cell, causing me to shiver. My guard looked at me sharply and then, as if remembering I was a human and not a Soal, turned quickly away. Soal were not concerned with sensible temperatures, only actual, for their feathers were able to cope with the variations in sensible temperatures that light winds and small changes in humidity created.

Stella was then ordered to walk towards the accommodation area, probably to see Endrod, and she looked at me doubtfully. I nodded – we would be together soon enough. No sense in antagonizing them and risking a split. She did as she was told, walking with her head held high and defiant. Lintar came towards me.