Outer Bounds: Fortune's Rising (23 page)

Joel looked her straight in the
eye and softly said, “Do I look like I give a damn at this point?” 

Magali released him suddenly.  In
that moment, watching the disinterested lifelessness on his face, Magali
recognized Joel’s boredom for what it was.  He had given up.

He no longer cares,
she
thought, horrified. 
He’s gonna provoke them until they kill him.

Joel flicked another tadfly off
of his blood-crusted hand and returned his attention to the Director.  Loud
enough for the women in the guardtowers to hear, he said, “That kid goes in
there and picks you one nodule—just one—and you’ll have enough to pay for his
meals—as well as his house, his kids, and his clothes—until he’s ninety-five. 
So yeah.  You’re a goddamn greedy bitch and the rest is bullshit.”

The Director smiled at him, and
Magali forgot to breathe under the cruelty she saw there.  “Ferris,” the Director
said, “he’s already confessed to his crimes, hasn’t he?”

“Yes, Director,” they said,
together.

“You
beat
them out of me,
more like,” Joel scoffed, still looking utterly bored.  “I didn’t do half those
things you accused me of, and you know it.”

The Director smiled at the
smuggler, and again Magali felt the urge to step away from him.  “Ferris, does
a man need to be able to speak in order to harvest Shrieker nodules?”

That made Joel stiffen.  His
entire wiry body seemed to go statuesque, like it was made of glass.  His bored
façade cracked, and Magali could see the fear in him.

“No, Director,” the robots said,
as one.  They continued, “There are three mute eggers in formation as we speak,
Director.”

Oh no,
Magali thought,
glancing at the stitches in Joel’s scalp.  Anna had told her of the horrible
things that the Coalition could do to citizens with chips.

The smuggler’s entire body
remained rigid under the Nephyr’s self-satisfied smile. 

“Aside from Runaway, here, all
you eggers are dismissed to start the Harvest.”  Leisurely, the cyborg left her
place in front of the gathering and walked toward them.  Eggers hastily got out
of the way, clearing a path until the Director was standing in front of Joel. 
This close, Magali fought the urge to back away.  The Director was taller than
she appeared at a distance, at least six feet, though even she had to cock her
head to see into the smuggler’s face.

Seeing them square off, Magali
knew she should leave, that should get in line with the other eggers shuffling
toward the mines, but she couldn’t tear her eyes from Joel’s skinny form,
standing tall despite the bruises.

“Tell you what, Runaway,” the
Director said as the eggers quickly hurried around them to get to the mines. 
The cyborg reached out and settled her glittering hand upon his skinny arm. 
Magali saw Joel flinch, his eyes dropping warily to where her inhuman fingers
touched him.  “I’ll let you beg for your voice, Joel.  If you’re convincing
enough, I’ll let you keep it.”

Joel reddened and looked away. 

“Not going to beg?” the Director
asked, after a moment.  She sounded delighted.

“Please,” Joel whispered.  He
flinched as he said it, as if the words had stung his soul.  Immediately, his
lips tightened with anger.

“Please, what?” the Director
mocked.  “And get on your knees.  I’m finding it irritating looking up at you.”

Joel didn’t move.

The Director tisked.  “Ferris?”

“Yes, Director,” the robots
asked.

The Director waited, one eyebrow
raised, watching Joel with amusement in her eyes.

Joel gave the Director a look of
such hatred it made Magali’s disgust for Colonel Steele pale in comparison. 
Slowly, as if on stilts, Joel got to his knees.  Magali saw the shame in his
face and felt rising fury at the Director for what she was doing. 

On his knees, Joel remained
silent.   

“You may proceed to beg,” the
Director reminded him.

For almost a minute, the parade
ground was silent except for the distant shuffling of naked eggers and the
pounding of Magali’s heart.

Finally, in a voice barely loud
enough to be heard, Joel said, “Please don’t take my voice.”  He refused to
look up, his good fist clenched at his side, the knuckles white, the arm
shaking.

“But you’ve already confessed,”
the Director said, conversationally.  “You’re slated to execution tonight, at
the hands of my friends.  The only reason I can see to spare that annoying
tongue of yours is if you want to entertain us with your screams.  Is that what
you want, Joel?  To entertain us?”

Joel looked at his maimed hand. 
He took a breath.  Held it.  For a long time, the smuggler didn’t speak. 

Say it,
Magali willed him,
anguished,
You know she’ll do it if you don’t.  You know she will.

After several more long moments,
the smuggler finally looked up and said, “We both know you’re going to do it
anyway, so just hurry up and get it over with, if that’s what your infected
pustule of a soul desires.”

The Director laughed.  “Get up.”

Joel stood up.  The bored
expression was back.

Stepping close, the Director
said, “I hear another noise out of you before the Harvest is over and I’m going
to have Ferris mute you.  Permanently.”

Red-faced, the smuggler looked
away.

The Director grabbed his chin and
forced it back around to face her.  “Understand?” she said.  The Nephyr’s face
glittered in the camp floodlights, her lips twisted in a cruel smirk.  “Not a
sound.”  When Joel didn’t respond, she tapped his cheek with her gold-filigreed
index finger and tisked.  “Acknowledge me, Runaway, or I might change my mind.”

Spite oozing from his gaze, Joel
nodded.

The Director smiled, malice
lining her face.  “Good.”  Still holding his arm, she reached for Joel’s
wounded hand.

The smuggler jerked it out of
reach and stepped back, the broken ends of his metal shackles jingling against
the dusty ground.  His eyes were riveted on the Director, the bored façade once
more stripped away, leaving raw fear in its place.

The Nephyr tisked.  “I never said
you could step out of formation, Runaway.”  She grabbed him and jerked him back
into line.  Then, even as Joel struggled to resist, the cyborg easily pried his
wounded hand from behind his back and took it in her own.  Instantly, Joel went
utterly still.

For a moment, the Director held
the smuggler’s maimed hand gently, like she were cradling something fragile. 
Joel’s eyes widened and his nostrils flared as he panted through his nose, but
he kept his teeth tightly gritted. 

Stop it,
Magali thought,
her heart beginning to pound in her ears. 
She can’t do this.

“You’re so quiet,” the Director
said, ignoring everything but Joel.  “That’s so unlike you.”  She tenderly
stroked his hand with her circuit-covered fingertips.  Finally, she smiled, and
it left a cold spot against Magali’s spine.  “Infected pustule, eh, Runaway? 
Is that what you think?”

Joel shook his head, eyes
glistening in the floodlights.  He was breathing too fast, like a terrified
horse. 

Magali opened her mouth to say
something, but fear choked it off.  Without Anna, she was just another
frightened egger.  What could she do against a Nephyr?

“I asked you a question,
Runaway.”

Joel clamped his eyes shut.

A moment later, the Director
chuckled.  Then she squeezed.  Standing as close as she was, Magali heard his
delicate finger-bones crack and pop.  Even though he never opened his mouth,
Magali heard Joel scream as he fought the Nephyr’s grip.  He crumpled over the
Director’s arm, hitting it, sobbing through his nose, eyes squeezed shut
against tears.

The Nephyr continued to hold him,
easily supporting his weight with one arm.  “Did you say something, Runaway?” 
Even as the smuggler sobbed into her arm, the Nephyr turned to the nearest
robot.  “Ferris?  Did Runaway Joel just break our verbal contract?”

“He made a noise, Director,” the
robot said.

Hearing this, the Director
patronizingly shook her head at Joel.  “And I thought we had an understanding.” 
She took her victim by the chin again and lifted his face to hers.  “Now I’ll
just have to get Ferris to mute you.”  Her inhuman fingers tightened on his
jaw, until the skin under his three-day-old beard was white, and she smiled
again as Joel whimpered.  “Or, on second thought, maybe I’ll just do it
myself.”

Magali couldn’t take it anymore. 
Even without Anna to help her, Magali knew she had to do something.  More
loudly than she intended, she said, “What you’re doing is illegal.”

The Director turned to give
Magali a puzzled smile—the look of a zookeeper who suddenly realized one of her
chimps had spoken to her.  “What?”

“I’ll refer you to Section
Fifteen of the Mandatory Lifeline Act,” Magali said, surprised that the words
were flowing out of her, feeling almost as if she were hearing them from a
distance.  “There are three paragraphs in there that should interest you.  Each
one refers to the penalties a government official can face if they are found to
be abusing their power over the citizenry using a government lifeline.”

The Director’s smile cracked. 
“Who are you?”

“Magali Landborn,” Magali said,
spurred on by the whimpering creature clinging to the Director’s arm.  “My
sister wasn’t the only one who read the Consolidated Galactic Encyclopedia.” 

The glittering skin around the
Director’s mouth paled.  The cyborg gave Joel a nervous look, then released the
man’s chin as if he had caught fire.

Anna scared her,
Magali
thought, stunned.

At the Director’s widening eyes,
she added, “You should really let him go.”  She gave her best imitation of
Anna’s psychopathic stare.

The Nephyr flinched under the
assault, and for a moment looked like a starlope caught on a landing pad.

Scratch that,
Magali
thought,
Anna scared the
shit
out of her.

Then,
But I’m not Anna.

In that instant, as quickly as
the Director’s fear had come, it was gone.  “Wait.”  The Director snorted, and
there was a new cruel confidence to her voice.  “The Lifeline Act.  He
forfeited those rights when he tore out his own lifeline twenty years ago.” 
She glanced back at the whimpering smuggler, a thin smile on her lips.  “Didn’t
you, Joel?”

Magali’s mind screamed at her to
run into the mines and hope the Nephyr forgot about her.  Instead, loud enough
for even the retreating eggers to hear, she said, “I promise you you’re going
to find out, if you continue to break the law.”

All around them, glittering faces
jerked to look at them.

The Director’s smile faded and,
for a long time, the Director’s sharp brown eyes merely watched her. 

Under the Nephyrs’ gazes, Magali
felt like a moth under a magnifying glass, the tip of a pin poised to skewer
her abdomen.  She tried desperately to keep her terror in check. 

The cyborg’s gaze hardened. 
“You’re shaking, girl.”

Oh no,
Magali thought, her
heart thundering in painful arcs through her chest under the Director’s gaze. 
She squeezed her hands into fists, willing her knees to stop trembling.  Anna
would have helped her, now, but Anna wasn’t there.  Before she could regain
control over her own terror, Magali dropped her eyes.

The Director smiled, and there
was a viciousness there that made Magali cringe.  “Not so confident without
your little sister, are you, brat?” the Director said.  Then she cocked her
head, as if coming to a sudden, pleasant realization.  “Landborn, eh?  That
would make you the girlfriend.  You like fucking him so much…perhaps you’d like
to join him?”  The cyborg returned her attention to Joel, who still clung to
her arm amidst sobs.  She regarded his hunched and broken form with distant
curiosity.

“What do you say, Joel?  Should
she share your fate on the rack tonight?  Seems a fitting end to a couple of
collie lovebirds.”

Hunched over the arm that held
him, Joel said nothing, struggling to keep his sobs under control.  The entire
camp seemed to hold its breath.

Into the silence, one of the
robots said, “I’m sorry, Director, did you say you wanted me to mute him?”  His
voice was pleasant.  Utterly emotionless. 
Like he’s asking if she wants a
damn pizza.

Watching Joel whimper, the Director’s
face stretched in a smile.  “Sounds like an excellent idea, Ferris.”  She gave
Magali an amused look.  “Unfortunately, I didn’t find his begging very
convincing.”

“No!” Magali cried.  She lurched
forward reflexively, but Joel had already gone board-stiff, his face going
slack.  Magali’s hand tightened on her prybar and a sick feeling welled up in
her gut. 

Still holding the smuggler by his
wounded hand, the Director leaned in until her head was almost touching his. 
Near his tear-stained face, she whispered, “Let’s see you be a smartass now,
Joel.”  Then she released him, to crumple in a heap on the dusty ground.

Magali tore her eyes from Joel,
who had curled into a fetal position, his sobs coming out as uncoordinated
rasps of air, and focused on the Director, who stood over him with a pleased
expression. 

The Director noticed Magali’s
horrified look and smirked.  “Your little sister really was the brains of the
operation, wasn’t she?  The Lifeline Act…  Are you actually stupid enough to
think you could bluff me?  I should take your tongue just for the insult.”

And Magali knew she would.

The Director took a step toward
her.  Magali stumbled backwards, terror clawing at her lungs.  A Nephyr
casually shoved her back onto the line—right into the Director’s grasp.   The
Director grabbed her and, as if she were a doting grandparent, casually
buttoned the top clasp of her studded egger’s glove.  Magali froze, terrified
of looking down lest she lose sight of the monster in front of her.  This
close, the Nephyr’s inhuman body seemed to pulse with a cold, powerful energy
that sucked the warmth right out of her skin.