"No. Please, no more."
"You must. We must. Once more and then gone forever. Trust me."
. . . The egg lands and the child stands stock-still, waiting for his mother to save him, weeping and holding out his arms as she runs toward him, picks him up, with the noise louder and louder and the dust swirling about them in the hot sun. She holds him close to her as she pushes obliquely through the tough, impeding stalks while the great orange thing moves on, cutter beams and carrying spikes and whirling knives at work. But the fifteen meters she must traverse are too far. She gasps and lifts the boy high and throws him, so that the green com plants and the orange machine and the blue sky all spin very slowly around him. He falls to the earth and the harvester rumbles past with the busy clanking of its machinery drowning out another noise that did not last very long . . .
"Oh, Jesus, I can still hear please no the machine stops and he comes and screams at me you murdering little animal Gary Gary oh my God no Daddy Daddy Mommy fell help her oh my God Gary you did it to save him and he killed you and it's his fault the murdering little animal no no what am I saying God my own little boy Steinie I'm sorry I didn't mean it oh God Gary Steinie . . . Daddy please keep me."
"He did. Stein."
"I know now."
"You heard it all? All that he said?"
"Yes. Poor Daddy. He couldn't help saying it. I know now. Angry and frightened and helpless. I understand. He shot the dog, though . . . But I don't have to be afraid. He couldn't help it. Poor Daddy. I understand. Thank you. Thank you."
Stein opened his eyes.
An unfamiliar woman's face was very near to him, sun-reddened round cheeks, a turned-up nose, intent indigo eyes set a bit too closely together. She smiled.
He said, "And I don't have to be angry at either one of us."
"No," Sukey said. "You'll be able to remember and feel sad. But you'll be able to accept it. No guilt or fear or anger about this part of your life ever again."
Stein lay without speaking, and she let her mind merge with his in a touch that admitted a sharing of his ordeal, bespoke her care for him.
"You've been helping me," he said. "Healing me. And I don't even know your name."
"I'm Sue-Gwen Davies. My friends call me Sukey. It's a silly sort of name . . ."
"Oh, no." He got up onto one elbow and studied her with an innocent curiosity. "You went through the auberge training program, too. I saw you, the first and second days I was there. And then you were gone. You must have passed through the gate ahead of our Group Green."
"I was in Group Yellow. I remember you, too. That Viking costume isn't easy to miss."
He grinned and shook sweat-touseled eflocks out of his eyes. "It seemed like a good idea back then. Sort of reflection of my personality . . . What are you supposed to be?"
She gave a self-conscious little laugh and toyed with the embroidered belt of her long gown. "An ancient Welsh princess. My family came from there a long time ago and I thought it might be fun. A complete break with my old life."
"What were you, a redactor?"
"Oh, no! I was a policewoman. A juvenile officer on ON-15, the last Earth colonial satellite." She touched her silver torc. "I didn't become an operant redactor until I got here. I'll have to explain about that . . ."
But he broke in. "I tried metapsychic treatment before. It never helped. They said I was too strong, that it would take a special kind of practitioner, one with commitment, to ever get down inside of me and root my mess out. And you did it."
She protested, "Elizabeth did all the preliminary lancing. I was trying to do it", her eyes slipped away from his, "and I bungled the job badly. Elizabeth did a marvelous fix and drained out all the really dangerous stuff that I couldn't touch. You owe her a lot, Stein. So do I."
He looked dubious. "Back at the auberge, me and my pal Richard called her the Ice Queen. She was a very cryogenic and spooky lady. But wait! She told us that her metafunctions were lost!"
"They returned. The shock of passing through the time-portal did it. She's a marvelous redactor, Stein. She used to be one of the top teachers and counselors in her Sector. She was master class. I'll never be so good, except perhaps with you."
Very carefully, he folded her in his huge arms. Her hair was long and black and very straight, with a simple grassy perfume from the Tanu soap. She lay against his bare chest, hearing his heart beating slowly, afraid to look into his mind in case the thing that she hoped for would not be found. They were alone now in the tower room. Even Elizabeth had disappeared when it became clear that the healing would be a success.
Sukey said, "There are things you have to know." She touched the silver torc about her rather plump neck. "These silver collars, your friend Aiken got one, too, and so have some other people who've passed through the portal, they make latent metafunctions operant. That's how I became a redactor . . . And there's an exotic race living here in the Pliocene along with us. They're called Tanu and they came here a long time ago from some galaxy light-billenia away. They're latents, too, and they wear golden collars that make them almost as powerful as the metapsychics of our Milieu. They look quite human except for being very tall and having mostly blond hair and funny eyes. The Tanu rule this place almost like the barons of the Middle Ages ruled ancient Earth."
"I'm beginning to remember," Stein said slowly. "A fight in a kind of castle . . . Are we still locked up in that place?"
Sukey shook her head. "They took us, you and me and a few others, down the River Rhône. We're on our way to the Tanu capital. This is a place called Darask, almost at the Mediterranean shore. We've been here for two days. Elizabeth helped the mistress of the place, who was having a hard time in childbirth, so we got to stay and fix you up and rest as a kind of reward. The river trip down here was pretty nerve-racking."
"So Elizabeth is here, and Aiken. Who else?"
"Bryan, from your Group. And another man, named Raimo Hakkinen, who used to be a forester in British Columbia. I think he was in Group Orange. And there's a Tanu man in charge of bringing us to their capital city. His name is Creyn and he seems to be some kind of exotic physician when he's not acting as a prisoner-escort. He healed all of the wounds you got in the fight, by the way, and without using any regen-tank, either, just something like plass wrapping and mind-power. The rest of your friends and the other people who were being kept prisoner in the castle were sent to another place hundreds of kloms north of here."
"What are they planning to do with us?"
"Well, Elizabeth is special, obviously, because it seems she's the only human in all of Exile who is operant without a torc I suppose they plan to make her Queen of the World if she'll stand for it."
"Jesus H Christ!"
"And Bryan, he's another special case. No torc on him, either I haven't discovered why, but the Tanu appear to think that they need an anthropologist to explain what all of us humans have done to their Pliocene society. Coming through the time-gate, you see. It's very complicated, but . . . well, silver-torc wearers like Aiken and me and Raimo, the ones with latent metabilities made operant, we have a chance to join the aristocracy of the Tanu if we behave ourselves. Ordinary people who aren't latent don't seem to be enslaved or anything, the exotics have some kind of small ape to do the rough work. The ordinaries that we saw were working at various arts and crafts."
Stein raised his hands to touch his own torc, then tried to undo it by twisting and pulling. "Can't get the damn thing off. You say it'll turn on my latent metafunctions? "Sukey looked stricken. "Stein . . . your torc . . . it isn't silver. It's some gray metal. You're not a latent."
A dangerous gleam came into the bright-blue eyes. Then what's my torc for?"
Her lower lip caught between her teeth. She reached out one hand to the metal around his neck. In a voice that was scarcely more than a whisper, she said, "It controls you. It gives pleasure or pain. The Tanu can use it to communicate with you telepathically, or they can use it to locate you if you run away. They ca
n put you to sleep, and soothe your anxieties, and program hypnotic suggestions and do other things, probably, that I don't know about yet."
She explained more about the operation of the torcs as she knew it. Stein sat, ominously quiet, on the edge of the bed. When she had finished he said, "So the ones who wear gray mostly do jobs that are essential or potentially vital to the exotics. Soldiers. Gate guardians. This boatman taking us down a dangerous river. And they do their jobs without rebelling, even though they're not turned into zombies by the damn torc."
"Most of the gray-wearers that we've met behaved normally and seemed happy enough. Our boat skipper said he loved his job. One of the palace people that I talked to here said that the Tanu are kind and generous unless you go against their orders. I . . .I expect that after a time, you simply do as they expect you to without any coercion at all. You're conditioned and loyal. It's really the same sort of socialization that takes place in any tight group, but the loyalty is guaranteed."
Very quietly, Stein said, "I won't be a goddam flunky for some exotic slave master. I came through the time-gate and gave up everything I owned to get away from all that. To be a natural man, free to do as I pleased. I can't live any other way. I won't! They'll have to burn out my brain first."
Eyes swimming, Sukey let her fingers stray to his cheek. Her mind slipped beneath his surface consciousness and saw that he was telling the simple truth. The obstinacy that had shut out every healer save the one who had loved him now stood unyielding before any notion of adaptation, totally rejecting the thought of making the best of a difficult situation. Stein would never bend to the Tanu. He would break. If they dominated him at all, they would dominate only his mindless shell.
Tears spilled, splashing onto the bed sheets and the wolfskin kilt that Stein still wore. He took both of her hands. She said, "It didn't turn out to be the world that any of us dreamed about, did it? I was going to find the tunnel leading to the hollow Earth paradise, to Agharta. Creyn said that the legends had to refer to the paradise his people founded here. But that can't be true, can it? Agharta was a land of perfect peace and happiness and justice. This can't be the same place. Not if it, makes you miserable."
He laughed. "I'm a hard case, Sukey. Thing'll be different for you. You'll get to join the high life. Be a Pliocene princess instead of just a Welsh one."
She pulled away from him. "I forgot one other important thing about this Exile world Human women . . . the Tanu undo our salpingzaptomy and restore our fertility. Their own women don't reproduce very well on Earth, and so . . . they use us, too. Some human women become Tanu wives, like the lady of this palace that we're in right now. But a lot are just used as . . . as . . ."
Stein drew her close to him again and wiped her tears away with a corner of the bedclothes. "Oh, no. Not you, Sukey. It won't happen to you."
Incredulously, she raised her face. He said, "Go ahead. Look deep inside. As long as it's you, I don't mind."
She took a shuddering breath and plunged into the new place, and could not help crying out when she found that what she hoped for did exist, all new and strong.
After he had hushed her and the pledge was sealed in both their minds, they completed the healing of each other in their own way.
Chapter Seventeen
Claude and Richard and Amerie could have slept for days, but with the sunrise came a distant howling of amphicyons angling up the ridge from the south, and they realized that the Tanu were going to do their utmost to prevent the escape of Felice, whose role in the massacre had doubtless been betrayed by some recaptured prisoner. The remnant of Group Green didn't waste any time trying to destroy traces of their camp but marched on not long after dawn, deflating their equipment and eating a scratch breakfast as they went. Claude had attempted to relinquish leadership to Felice, but she refused to hear of it.
"You've had experience in this kind of travel. I haven't. Just get us off this ridge as quickly as you can and down into thick woodland with a good-sized river. Then I think we'll be able to shake off the trackers."
They skidded and tramped and once even rappelled over a small cliff in their downhill flight, making better time when they found a dry wash that turned into a thin rivulet in the lower elevations. Trees crowded together and became taller, roofing over the widening stream and shading them from some of the sun's heat. As they splashed down the rock-clogged watercourse they startled big brown trout and fishing weasels that resembled pale minks. They took to the stream bank, first on one side, then on the other, in an attempt to confuse pursuit. Claude had them tramp an obvious trail up a tributary creek, relieve themselves to enhance the spoor, then double back in the water and continue wading down the original stream. It was becoming dangerously deep in places, broken with short pouroffs and stretches of white water.
Claude called a halt in midmorning. He and Felice were in good shape, but Richard and the nun sagged with weary gratitude. They rested on half-submerged rocks out in a backwater pool, straining their ears for sound of pursuit. They heard nothing but an explosive splat! a short distance downstream.
"If I didn't know better," Amerie remarked, "I'd say that was a beaver."
"Quite likely," Claude said. "Might be our old friend Castor, but it's more likely Steneofiber, a more primitive type that didn't go in much for dams but just dug holes in the . . ."
"Shhh," Felice hissed. "Listen."
Rushing water, birdsong, the occasional screeches of what Claude had told them was an arboreal ape, a small squirrel chattering its annoyance.
And something large clearing its throat.
They froze on their rocks and instinctively drew up their legs, which they had been dangling in the water. The noise was a guttural cough, unlike anything they had heard before in the Pliocene. The bushes on the left bank swayed slightly as an animal passed through and came down to the stream to drink. It was a cat, massive as an African lion but with large canine teeth protruding like daggers below its closed jaws. It muttered to itself like a dyspeptic gourmet after an overly lavish feast and took a few desultory laps. Its upper body was decorated with marbled polygons of russet edged with tan and black; these merged into dark stripes about the animal's face, and black spots on its underparts and lower limbs. It had whiskers of heroic proportions.
The breeze shifted and carried the scent of the humans to the drinking sabertooth. It raised its head, stared directly at them with yellow eyes and snarled, exuding the studied restraint of a creature in complete command of an awkward situation. Felice met its gaze.
The others were immobile with horror, waiting for the cat to spring into the water. But it did no such thing. Its belly was full and its cubs were waiting, and Felice's mind stroked its feline vanity and told it that the scrawny prey crouching on the rocks was scarcely worth a ducking. So the machairodus lapped and glared at them and wrinkled the bridge of its nose in a contemptuous one-sided snort, and at last withdrew into the undergrowth.
"It will take me five minutes," Amerie whispered, "to offer a Mass of Thanksgiving. And long overdue."
Felice shook her head with an enigmatic smile and Richard turned away looking superior, but Claude came to Amerie's rock and snared the gold thimble of wine and the flake of dried bread from the Mass kit she carried in the pocket of Richard's uniform. And when that was over they went on their way again, chopping a path on the bank opposite from that claimed by the sabertooth.
"It was so incredibly beautiful," the nun said to Claude. "But why does it need those teeth? The big cats of our time got along nicely with shorter ones."
"Our lions and tigers didn't try to kill elephants."
Richard exclaimed, "You mean those monstrous hoe-tuskers they tried to frighten us with in the auberge Tri-D's? Here?"
"More likely the smaller mastodons in these uplands. Gomphothcrium angustidens is probably the common sort. Hardly half the size of those rhinos we dodged yesterday. We won't run into deinotherium until we have to cross a swamp or a large river bottomland."
"Kaleidoscopic," the pirate growled. "Pardon me for asking, but do any of you aces have a destination in mind? Or are we just running?"
Claude said softly, "We're just running. When we've shaken off the soldiers and the bear-dogs, then there'll be time enough to make strategic decisions. Or don't you agree, son?"
"Aw, shit," said Richard, and began hacking at the stream-side shrubbery once more.
At last the brook merged with a large turbulent river flowing in a southerly direction. Claude thought it might be the upper Saône. "We won't follow this river," he told the rest of the Group. "It probably curves around to the southwest and empties into the lake forty or fifty kloms downstream. We'll have to cross over, and that means the decamole bridges."
Each Survival Unit was equipped with three bridge sections that could be married to produce a narrow, self-supporting span twenty meters in length that resembled a ladder with close-set rungs. Moving up the river to a point where the torrent narrowed between two craggy shelves of rock, they inflated and ballasted the sections, joined them, and swung the bridge over to the opposite bank.
"Looks kinda flimsy," Richard remarked uneasily. "Funny, when we practiced with it back at the auberge it seemed a lot wider."
The bridge was a good third of a meter in width and steady as a rock. However, they had used it to cross a still pond in the auberge's cavern, while here surging rapids and sharp rocks awaited below.
"We could inflate another bridge and lash the two side by side if it would make you feel safer," Amerie suggested But the pirate bristled indignantly at the suggestion, hoisted his pack, and lurched across like an apprentice tightrope walker.