Mischa drank sparingly from her flask. The water soothed her sore throat, which hurt less than before she had slept. Nearby, Jan returned his notebook to his pocket. He was covered all over, even his hair, with a dry gray dust of lightcells. Mischa brushed at her own sleeve, but the dust remained.
“Can you talk?”
“Oh… yeah.”
“You sound better.”
“What did you write?”
“That I didn’t like this place.”
“There’s another on the other side of Center,” Mischa said. “Not quite so far from the city. I used to go and look and wish the rockets were for people instead of bombs.”
“That would have been better all around.”
A soft sound whispered back and forth. Mischa moved to the entrance of the small alcove they had chosen as a hiding place for its view of the elevator. Jan had heard the sound too, and came to stand beside her. They watched in silence as the door slid open, and a single naked man stepped out.
“Is that—?”
Mischa could understand Jan’s uncertainty, for Subone and Subtwo were very much alike in form. Their faces had both changed recently, but this man’s face was smeared with dirt and filth. “It’s Subtwo,” Mischa said. She had no doubt of that.
He did have hair on his body, after all, but only around his genitals, not on his arms or legs or even under his arms. The small and insufficiently modest dark diamond made him seem faintly ridiculous.
“He must have fallen…” Jan’s voice trailed off. “He’s alone. His raiders broke.”
Or they were hiding and waiting, but Mischa could catch no drift of deception in Subtwo, only barely repressed hysteria.
Subtwo moved slowly, gazing about. In the center of a square marked by missiles at its corners, he halted. His gaze moved slowly from the base to the tip of one of the graduated shafts, pausing at the symbols on its sides, hesitating at its summit. Then he spun, around and around, eyes wide open and head straight, with no attempt to avoid dizziness.
“He can’t be thinking he could use them.” Jan’s voice was low and taut with disgust.
Subtwo stopped his solitary dance. It did not seem to have affected him, for he walked without a stumble to one of the missiles, and reached out hesitantly, gently, to touch its metal flank.
“Subtwo!”
Jan started, gasping, and grabbed her arm. Her hoarse voice reverberated, each echo more distorted than the last.
Subtwo jerked himself around, laser lance ready, but he could not find his quarry. “Who is it?”
“It’s me and Jan Hikaru, of course,” Mischa said. “Who did you think?”
“Ah,” he sighed, and Mischa thought, but could not be certain, that the sound meant an instant’s regret. If it did, the instant passed, and the regret with it, leaving only rigid anger. The muzzle of the lance wavered back and forth, searching.
“I don’t want to kill you,” Mischa said. “All I ever wanted was to get away from here. Before Subone—”
“There is only him and me,” Subtwo said.
“But it’s all one-way. It’s always you doing what he wants.”
Subtwo hesitated, and when he spoke was betrayed by the abrupt belligerence of his tone. “Come out! I refuse to speak to shadows.”
“Throw away your weapon.”
Subtwo laughed.
“It’s useless,” Jan said. “You can’t take the chance of using it here.”
Subtwo’s good humor did not lessen. “Ah, generalists,” he said. “You know a little about everything, but not enough about anything. Do you think I could trigger a fusion reaction with a pocket laser?”
“You could break the case of the fission trigger,” Jan said. “These are bombs, not generators. Old ones. Dirty ones.”
Subtwo lowered the lance and backed away from the nearest missile. Knowing approximately how the bombs worked, Mischa saw he was afraid of stray radiation, though the triggers might be too many half-lives old even to explode.
“I haven’t got any quarrel with you,” Mischa said again. “Why do you always have to fight for Subone? Where’s he?”
“You should know. You attacked him.”
“I hardly scratched him—that was weeks ago.”
Subtwo’s expression changed to a strange kind of uncertain pity. “Your mind is disarranged,” he said. “You and your friends attacked and wounded him yesterday, the day before. And killed one of our people.”
Mischa glanced at Jan, who looked as puzzled as she felt. “What’s he talking about? He can’t mean the looker Crab got.”
“I doubt it,” Jan said. “Subtwo may prefer machines to people, but he doesn’t confuse them.”
“Nobody ever attacked anybody down here,” Mischa called.
“You lie.”
But Mischa felt the uncertainty again. “Maybe it’s somebody else who’s lying,” she said, to see what would happen.
“Stop this. Bring on your freaks. I am prepared to face them.”
“Don’t call them that!”
“What should I call them?” Subtwo asked, quite sincerely.
“They’re people just Like us. They’re not here, Subtwo, they hide when anybody from Center comes around. They were gone before you even got close.”
“They wounded Subone, and they have killed.”
“Don’t you ever doubt him? Are you so close you know everything he’s thinking all the time?”
“I used to be…”
“He lied to you.”
“If he lied… he mutilated himself. He murdered…”
“He’s changed,” Jan said. “He’s changed, and so have you.”
“I will not speak to shadows…”
Mischa stepped out of the alcove. Jan tightened his hand on her arm, then let her go, hesitated, and followed her. She walked to Subtwo and looked up at him. “Then speak to my face. Tell me you know he’s never lied. Tell me I ever lied to you.”
Subtwo looked down. Mischa reached out and drew the pistol away from him. He tightened his grasp on it, lifted his head, meeting her gaze steadily, pleading. Mischa held on, thinking she had miscalculated Subtwo completely, but he did not try to pull back. “You must do one thing,” he said. “If you do, I will cooperate in all things. My people will surrender to my order, and no one will oppose you.”
She waited in silence.
“You must promise not to kill him.”
Mischa scowled. “Why do you keep protecting him?”
“You came to me so you could leave earth. I will take you. No one else can fly you through the storms. Without our ship, Subone will be stranded here. That is… a considerable revenge.”
Jan moved up behind her, putting his hand on her shoulder. “Give him that much,” he said softly, with pity. “You’ve got his pride.”
This serves his wishes well, she thought. “All right,” she said finally. “I won’t unless he makes me.”
Subtwo released the pistol.
o0o
The pseudosib refused to return to Center the way they had come; even threats, Mischa could see, would not change his mind. Having explored the missile base on the other side of Center, she did not take long to find other exits. She thought the one she chose would allow them to pass behind Subtwo’s people undetected. She was not very worried about meeting them: she believed they would surrender on Subtwo’s order, or, at least, she believed he thought they would. Jan concerned her more, for he had held off his exhaustion much too long. As they reentered the caves and paused to let their eyes adjust to the dimmer light of Jan’s flash, Mischa leaned against the clean gray tunnel wall beside him. “You want to stop and rest for a while?”
He smiled. “Sure. But if I stop now I won’t move for two days. That’s more time than we can take.”
“Yeah.”
“You’re glowing.”
“You, too,” she said. The lightcells, in their dry form, were faintly luminous. Mischa glanced at Subtwo, who hunched down against the opposite wall, arms wrapped around naked legs, in a posture of abject misery. His skin gleamed softly in reflected light, as though he were oiled; only his hair retained the lightcells’ glow.
“A halo on Subtwo just doesn’t fit,” Jan said. “Let’s get going.”
o0o
Mischa and Jan walked together, supporting each other; Subtwo walked mechanically, staring at the floor except when it was absolutely necessary to raise his head: for difficult trails, chasms, narrow ledges.
They stopped only when they could walk no farther, and then not for long, though when they found a clean stream they paused to bathe: even Subtwo immersed himself in the undistilled, unfiltered water with Mischa, Jan, and the fishes. All during the journey Mischa waited to hear or feel any hint of Subtwo’s people, but she was too tired to reach out for them, and the time and distance passed slowly but steadily, until finally they reached the indeterminate region where the underground began to blend into the outer tunnels.
“Jan, look—”
He raised his head, reached up, pushed his hair off his forehead. “What?”
“There.” She pointed.
He squinted, turned out the flash, blinked, and finally smiled. “Light-tubes?”
“Yeah.” The tubes were blinking and dimming with approaching night, but they signaled the last lap of the journey.
“I wouldn’t trade them for some sunlight, but they’ll do for now.”
They proceeded, but after a short way Mischa thought she could hear faint sounds behind them. She turned half-around. A few steps beyond, Jan halted.
“Listen.” They heard, faintly, the echo of a tapping or clattering, very familiar. Then Mischa felt a faint exclamation of greeting and joy. “Crab?” She ran back into the darkness. The beam of Jan’s flash lanced past her and picked out Crab’s form in starker shadows as he galloped forward, blinking his protruding green eyes. Mischa fell on her knees and hugged him. “Crab, did you run away? What about Val?” But Crab was so excited that his mind was in complete turmoil; she could get no information from him at all. He grabbed her hand and pulled her the way he had come.
“No, we can’t go back—”
She saw a small group of lights at the other end of the tunnel, coming closer. Soon she could see their bearers: a forlorn group of Subtwo’s raiders, some carried on stretchers, some helped along by their comrades, stripped of their machines and their equipment. And after them, the underground people.
Val walked at their head. In leather and silk, with her incredibly fine scarlet hair standing out around her head and a laser pistol held loose in one hand, she looked fierce and wild and beautiful. The other underground people, guarding the bedraggled raiders, looked uncomfortable, yet proud.
“Hello, Mischa.”
The group behind her stopped; Subtwo’s people put down their burdens and sank to the ground.
“Hi, Val. Hi, Simon.”
Simon only nodded.
“Crab was worried about you,” Val said defensively. “He wouldn’t eat or sleep and he tried to come up after you, but he couldn’t handle the raft.”
“I’m glad you came,” Mischa said.
“Why? You didn’t need our help.”
“Because now you know you don’t have to run if anyone ever tries to drive you out again.”
“But they prove nothing.” Val gestured derisively at the raiders. “We didn’t fight them, we just picked them up by ones and twos, like mushrooms. They panicked.”
“But Center couldn’t send anyone who would do any better.”
Val frowned, shaking her head, and glanced toward Jan for support. “You’re sensible. You explain to her.”
Jan shrugged, not with indifference but with amusement. “I guess I’m not so sensible. I think she’s right.”
“Tell me,” Val said, “tell me, and don’t flatter us, if what you have just said is true.”
Mischa wondered why Val was asking for reassurance, whether she needed justification for what she had led the others to do, whether she needed reinforcement for self-confidence or a strengthening of new reactions toward the people of Center. “It’s true,” Mischa said. She could not explain the differences between Center and the deep underground; it seemed to her that independence and initiative had disappeared from the city: that people ran in gangs or lived in families and used the ties to steal from or hurt each other; or that they lived all alone, in fear. “It’s true,” she said. “It’s like Center is killing itself and eating itself, but you’re still alive.”
Subtwo passed Mischa, ignoring her, ignoring Val, dully approaching his people, looking from one tired face to another, holding himself stiffly so he would not sway and touch their filthy clothes. He paused at each stretcher, gazing briefly at the faces, until he came to the last, which was covered. Hesitating, he seemed to draw on some unfamiliar inner strength, even hope; he pulled aside the corner of the blanket. Mischa recognized Draco, his chin smeared with dry blood. Subtwo, with anger and relief and disappointment in his expression, turned on them.
“Draco is dead. Have you killed Subone as well?”
Val faced him. A chill prickled across the back of Mischa’s neck, along her spine: archaic reaction to Subtwo’s tone and to the sight of the hair at the base of Val’s neck standing straight up. “We killed no one,” Val said, her tone low.
Wordlessly, Subtwo motioned toward the stretcher.
“He has no wound from us. He breathed glass dust, like these others he was guarding.”
“So you killed him.”
Val said, very quietly, “He was already dead.”
Subtwo took a deep, audible breath. “And Subone?”
“If he was in the underground, he is still there.”
Subtwo looked over his shoulder, back at the long, dark tunnel. “He was to wait for me to return. He will not know where to go.”
“You wandered around down there for him,” Mischa said, irritated. “Let him wander around for you. He’ll probably even find his way back.”
“He always… needed me.”
“He doesn’t need you anymore! How often are you going to let him make a fool of you?”
Subtwo did not answer and Mischa did not push him any more. “Val,” she said, “Jan and I made a deal with Subtwo. We’re leaving earth. Will you come with us?”
“No.”
Crab gripped Mischa’s hand, sad-feeling, understanding that she was going away. Mischa knelt beside him.
“You don’t have to say good-bye quite yet,” Val said to them. “It’s dark in Center now. We’ll come a little farther.”
o0o
“Mischa, come!”
Mischa cringed, physically, at the shock of Gemmi’s intrusion into her mind. No, Mischa thought, no, not now, all I needed was a few more hours. But Gemmi did not understand, she never understood; she pulled and called Mischa more vigorously, frightened by her resistance. Crab felt her too, and crouched down surprised, gripping Mischa’s hand so tightly it hurt.
Subtwo was a double image before her. For an instant, Mischa thought that Subone had magically arrived and would convince Subtwo again that she and Jan had to be murdered. Her vision cleared. The group passed her and Mischa followed, nearly staggering, Crab creeping along beside her.
Jan dropped back. “What’s wrong?”
She stared at him blankly.
“Mischa, come!” Gemmi bubbled through her mind, a brook, a stream, a flooded river. Mischa squeezed her eyes shut. When she opened them again Jan seemed to have moved away, two Jans staring at her, eight Jans reaching for her, and Mischa was looking at the world through a clear, faceted jewel that split and spread and altered light and images. Then, with every step she took toward him, the images clicked back to half their number, a quarter, an eighth, and Jan stood beside her all alone.
“It’s Gemmi,” Mischa whispered, “it’s Gemmi, she’s calling me, they’ll never let me go…”
“We’re almost there,” Jan said. “She won’t be able to follow you off earth—”
“I don’t know… she never gets any weaker.”
“You’ve never been able to get very far away,” Jan said. “Try, Mischa. Hold on just a little longer.”
“All… right…”
Jan put his arm around her shoulders, supporting her physically and with his deep, calm presence.
But she knew she would never get away; she had never really had a chance, not for all her dreams, for all her defiance. She saw Val and Simon and the others watching her curiously and with concern, but they were all very far off and could not reach or help her. Gemmi sensed that Mischa was not coming toward her, and she began to shriek and scream. Every step Mischa took seemed to be through quicksand, in which she would drown if she faltered or fell. She felt tears streaming down her face; she could hear nothing. The world blurred and spun. She pulled away from Jan; her knees and her palms hit stone. “I’ve tried to fight them before,” she said. “Don’t you think… I’ve tried… ?” She spread her hands flat on the hard rock. “I can’t come,” she whispered. “Not now…” She heard Jan’s voice, and Val’s, and even Simon’s, explaining, arguing, discussing, and finally Subtwo said, “She must be let go, or she will go mad instead,” and Mischa thought that he alone might understand how strongly she was being commanded.
She heard a loud crack, like something breaking or rocks falling a great distance, and everyone but Gemmi receded. She tried to get up; she thought they were leaving her.
She felt Crab’s mind touch hers, and she fought even him. He pushed her identity to the edge of her brain. She could not spare the concentration to understand him. He was standing by her head, holding both her hands, sending little tendrils of thought toward her like bits of spiderweb. Gemmi felt Crab too, and drew back in fear of the never-before-encountered. But Crab lured her gently out again with the convolutions and precipices of his consciousness. For a long, long time, they stayed that way, Mischa watching half-insensible as Crab and Gemmi played. Mischa thought she heard a ship take off: she thought Jan had left and Val had gone back to the deep underground; Chris was dead, and she was all alone again, except for Crab and Gemmi, forever. “It isn’t fair!” she cried to them, enraged. “Crab, I thought we were friends!” And suddenly he seemed to understand what all this meant to her, with an implosion of intuition that allowed him to untangle, for a split-second, the confused sensations of his mind. Mischa felt him draw on the power of her fury and reach out—as if his spirit were shaped like his body, with sharp claws—and pull her with him until she could see Gemmi more clearly than she ever had or wished to; in that split-second Mischa could see all that Gemmi could see: a mosaic of every consciousness in Center. But neither she nor Crab could stand it; they drew back, and the total melding was over. But Crab stayed near Gemmi; Mischa saw what he was searching for and pointed it out. He reached for it. “Wait, no,” Mischa said. “That one first.” He reached through a maze of connections and snapped a single thread.
Gemmi’s pain vanished with the destroyed synapse. For the first time in her life, she did not hurt: her body could no longer hurt her, nor could the ugliness she could not shut away.
Crab cut the second synapse, and Gemmi disappeared.
Mischa sat up slowly, shaking her head. Expecting to see a bare corridor, and Crab, and no one else, she was astonished that everyone was still there, standing in a circle around her.
“How long… ?”
“Ten seconds, maybe,” Jan said.
“I thought you had all gone. It seemed like days.”
Jan knelt down beside her and brushed the hair from her forehead with his fingertips.
“She’s gone,” Mischa said.
“Crab wouldn’t let us near you.”
Crab clicked his claws together and Mischa remembered the loud snap: his sound of warning. “We did something to Gemmi’s mind,” Mischa said. “She can watch and see, but she can’t call anymore. And she can’t be hurt…” She shuddered, and Crab squeezed close against her side. She could feel his amazement at what he had seen: so many people, all at once, each individual a different shade, a different hue, some whole, some shattered, some weak, some strong—
“Subtwo,” Mischa said, “Subone’s coming back. I could see him.”
“Returning? No, he was wounded. He is resting, or he is dead.”
“He’s coming.” She knew that if she reached for him she could touch him again, coming closer, amused by his victory over his pseudosib, and always ready to slip back into a rage that would drag Subtwo into his battles.
“You say that to reassure me,” Subtwo said. “So I will keep our bargain, whether he is dead or not.”
Feeling light and dizzy, as though she had fasted for several days, Mischa let Jan help her up. “Believe what you want.” She had no energy left with which to argue. Near her, his instant’s flash of comprehension gone, Crab hardly remembered what they had done. He had thought only to help Mischa, and that he had achieved; but had they helped Gemmi? She was cut off from all experience but what she saw from others. She could no longer be hurt, but she could be crippled, maimed, killed. She can’t be hurt. Mischa repeated that to herself, trying to convince herself that nothing more need be done. If the child were disfigured by beatings before their uncle realized Mischa would never return, if Gemmi were scarred and made ugly, she would not know it, any more than she knew now that she was beautiful. If she died, what guilt could there be? Mischa had willed her death a thousand times.
Mischa could have abandoned Gemmi when Gemmi could command her, but now it was impossible. The fine philosophical distinctions evaded her. Perhaps only the situation had changed; perhaps Mischa herself was different. She only knew for certain that she could not leave Gemmi where she was. She started down the tunnel.
“Mischa—where are you going?”
She turned back. She had not exactly forgotten that the other people were there; they simply had no connection with what she had to do now. Jan looked completely mystified, but she could not stop to explain. “I can’t leave her,” she said. “I can’t just let her die.” She turned and ran, away from Center, away from Stone Palace, away from the ship.
o0o
Her uncle’s niche seemed much farther away than it actually was. Mischa was panting, her throat fatigue-raw, when she finally stopped before the new curtains and pulled them aside.
“Ah,” her uncle said, putting down a delicate goblet. “Very good. Very fast. You’ll have to do as well from now on.” Gemmi lay on her pallet, smiling and cooing.
“There isn’t any from now on,” Mischa said.
He raised his eyebrow and glanced at Gemmi, who began to cry. But Mischa only sensed a dim distasteful aura, directly from her uncle. She ignored it, and nodded to the paid companion lounging in the back of the cave. “You can go back to Center now.”
The companion pushed back a lock of heavy golden hair, stretched, moved to take advantage of highlights on smooth pale skin. “Are you paying?”
“I was. No more.”
The companion shrugged, stood up, and moved languidly toward Mischa’s uncle.
“Wait a minute!”
“Go on,” Mischa said.
The companion kissed her uncle on the lips and left the cave.
“What do you think—”
“You can’t do anything to me anymore.” She went to Gemmi, who reached toward her, still sobbing. Suddenly their uncle sucked in his breath, a long, shuddering gasp of terror.
Mischa glanced around. “It’s only Crab. Your nephew.”
“Gods…”
Crab sidled up to Mischa, leery of new people but interested in Gemmi. He took her hands and the child quieted, wide-eyed. Mischa picked up the long chain that fastened Gemmi to the wall.
“Where’s the key?”
“The key.” He said the words with little inflection, still staring at Crab. “The key?” Recovering himself, he smiled, he laughed. “There is no key. When did you need a key? I poured acid on the lock.”
Mischa bent over the heavy shackle. The acid had achieved its purpose, filling the lock with crusted metal salt, perhaps weakening the mechanism, but making it impervious to picks. “You think you’re so smart,” Mischa said. She had never been able to speak that way to him without the knowledge of certain punishment. The new knowledge, that he could not punish her anymore, gave Mischa no pleasure at all. She felt only pity.
She drew Subtwo’s laser lance from beneath her jacket. She would have preferred to free Gemmi completely, but that would have to wait. The beam bit into the metal and stone, flinging out bits of molten material. With Crab hiding behind her, Mischa threw a blanket over Gemmi, shielded her own eyes, and fired again. The chain rattled, falling loose.
“Now what?” His voice was contemptuous. “What will you do with her? You still need me to take care of her—”
“I don’t need you for anything. You needed me and Chris, but you couldn’t admit it, so you had to try to make us both your slaves. And that’s why he’s dead.” Partly, she thought. Because you pushed us too hard, and I pushed him harder. She looked down at Gemmi, who was as beautiful as Chris had been, but as empty as he was toward the last. The child was unhappy, reflecting the anger and hatred all around her. Mischa soothed her own thoughts and tried to make even ordinary things beautiful in her mind. With the hot end of the chain tied into the blanket, Mischa half-lifted and half-carried her sister toward the doorway. Gemmi was a large and healthy child, bigger than Mischa, unable to stand, awkward to move. Crab tried to help.
Their uncle tried to struggle up, but his legs failed him. “You can’t just leave me!”
Mischa ignored the cry.
His voice rose in panic. “How do you expect me to live?”
Mischa glanced back, pitying him, until the pity dissolved in bitterness. “Beg,” she said.
o0o
Jan followed Mischa away from Center. He was too tired to run. When Mischa turned a corner and went out of sight, he could still see Crab, but soon even Crab outdistanced him and he was alone in the corridor again, following blindly, hoping the tunnel would not branch.
He did not react when a hand grasped his shoulder. He was too tired even for surprise. He simply stopped, and after a moment turned, to see, with relief, that Simon had come after him. They continued together. Anything could happen now, with Val and the others guarding Subtwo and his raiders. The underground people were terribly vulnerable to public outcry, even in this sparsely populated section of the city’s outskirts. If a mob were raised against them, they would be trapped between it on one side and Subone’s group on the other; and Subtwo would be bound to his bargain with Mischa only by his word. Jan knew he should have stayed with the others, but he did not want to leave Mischa to a confrontation all alone.
The dimming lights at the far limit of Jan’s vision sparkled in his fatigue, and he had an odd feeling of observing but not comprehending. Simon was a blur at his side. Jan stared down at the stone floor, watching his feet move one step, another.
Simon grasped his arm again; Jan stopped obediently and glanced around, blankly, until Simon shook him and pointed.
A hundred meters ahead, Crab stopped his headlong gallop toward them, lumbered a few steps back the way he had come, stopped again, and waited, moving a few steps this way, a few steps that.
He led them down the tunnel, and into a branch that Jan thought he himself would have passed, a narrower, dimmer place with a musty, fetid smell. A few minutes later they met Mischa, carrying and dragging a young girl with her. The child was half-naked and her movements were uncoordinated, reflexive, aimless. Seeing Jan and Simon, Mischa stopped. The stress of fatigue and frustration was plain.
“She never learned to walk,” Mischa said. “She never could.”
Simon bent down and picked up the dragging end of the melted chain.
“I can get that off,” Mischa said. “I just need a little time.”
“We haven’t much time,” Jan said.
“We will free her.” Simon threw down the chain and picked Gemmi up easily. “She is one of us.”
o0o
The Circle was very quiet, as though hibernating until its patrons came back from their quest. The few people who saw the raiders and their captors, and recognized what they saw, stopped, and backed into shadows, and crept quickly away. Gradually, the path before Mischa and the others became more and more deserted, as an electrified current of knowledge passed before them.
The underground people drew closer together, fearing what they had never seen. Crab held Mischa’s hand, watching, interested in all the new places they passed. Jan continued doggedly forward with no resiliency left in his step at all, and Val walked with Simon, her nervousness increasing, but her pride and her confidence restored. She spoke occasionally in a voice too low for Mischa to hear, and once Simon answered. Subtwo led the group, still naked, for he would not touch the ill-assorted filthy garments his people had to spare.
Why Val and the rest had decided to enter the city was still a mystery. They were curious, but Mischa sensed more purpose in their actions, a purpose that overcame their fear.
Subtwo stopped before the closed door of the pseudosibs’ section of the Palace. This was the first time Mischa had ever seen it shut, and she imagined that it might not open, that someone inside had been warned they were coming and closed them out. But Subtwo unlocked it with his voice and they entered. Mischa secured it again behind them, but there was no way to lock Subone out.
When she turned back, Subtwo was facing the small group, blocking the corridor. “How do I know our bargain has not already been broken? How do I know he is not dead?”
“He’s alive! If we don’t hurry, he’ll be here.”
Subtwo did not move except to lower his head, glaring; he would renege if he was not sure his pseudosib was alive.
“Call him, then,” Mischa said. “He’s near, he must be around antenna leads.”
Subtwo scowled more deeply, suspicious, but unable to find deceit in her suggestion. He led the way to his quarters: through the long, carpeted halls, past a residence wing, in which the raiders were locked, disarmed but with access to food and medicine. They did not even protest. In the foyer, the light-fountain sparkled brilliant white. The underground people followed, into the paneled corridor that led directly to Subtwo’s rooms, touching strange things gently; they seemed to have no need or desire to take or destroy. In Subtwo’s workroom, they stood in a tight group, like small creatures who had blundered into the interior of a machine.
Subtwo sat down at the console, slowly, almost reluctantly. “If I cannot reach him, our agreement is void.”
“I never lied to you,” Mischa said.
He turned on his equipment. They heard static, scrambled Family chatter, channels of sensory input, as Subtwo scanned the frequencies for a clear calling band.
He called, paused, called, paused, and the response returned. “Is that you? Where are you?” Subone’s voice: he sounded surprised.
“I am in our quarters.”
“At the Palace! But—”
“Where are you?”
“Coming home. But you—”
“You were to wait for my return.”
“I felt stronger—we decided—never mind me. Did you—?”
“I found them.”
There was a hesitation, as of surprise. “Good!” Subone exclaimed. “Excellent! I knew you would avenge me, brother.” The tone was not one of satisfaction in revenge, but of gloating in power. Mischa heard it; everyone in the room heard it: even Subtwo. He raised his hand as though to smash it down on the controls, wavered, and slowly closed his fingers into a great fist.
“We are no longer brothers.”
As Subone’s voice, in confused protest, spilled from the receiver, Subtwo turned it off, very, very carefully. He faced the people in his quarters as though they all were honored guests. “He will return soon. We must hurry.”
He seemed, to Mischa, as afraid as she was that Subone still could influence him, but now, at least, he was certain of the motives.
“Then let’s go.”
That infuriating, tolerant expression slipped over his face. “In a moment. Is there nothing you want?” He let his gaze wander over the room; he walked to his desk and touched bits of equipment.
“No, nothing. Nothing at all. Except to leave.” She was becoming exasperated with him, and dreading that he would, in the end, delay until Subone arrived. Her fingertips brushed the sculpted handle of the lance. Jan turned her a little. “Give him a minute,” he said. “I want to get a few things too, if they’re still in my room.”
She acceded, reluctantly, not really wanting to let him go alone, he looked so tired, but afraid to trust Subtwo, afraid everything would fall apart again. She sat on the floor and put her arms around Crab, telling him slowly, gently, that she was leaving, right now, not in his indeterminate and unimaginable personal future. He had seen—and understood, for an infinitesimal bit of time—what she was doing and why, and though the understanding had faded, he retained the memory of it. He did not try to convince her to stay.
Val padded over to them. “Is Crab going with you?”
“He’s going wherever you and Simon go,” Mischa said. “But I don’t know what to tell him.”
“We haven’t changed our minds. We’re staying here.”
“Will you be all right without Subtwo as a hostage?”
“We’ll be all right. Don’t worry.” Her eyes smiled; her aura sparkled with excitement.
Mischa leaned down to Crab again. He was, after all, very young, and preferred events to go as he pleased. In the end, she told him she would try, someday, to come and see him again. When she looked up, the underground people stood around her. “Now it’s time to say goodbye,” Val said.
Mischa stood up. “Good-bye, then.” She hugged Val and Simon. “Good-bye, Simon.”
“Good-bye, Mischa.” He gripped her hands hard, claws retracted.
“Be careful.” She embraced each of the others, wishing them well.
“When you get to the Sphere,” Val said, “tell them we are still alive. Tell them not to send their renegades here anymore. Tell them our children should not have to be born crippled.”
“I will. I promise.”
Silent and strange, they left her alone with Subtwo.
Still naked, and of all his possessions only a microcomputer and two library input banks neatly stacked behind him, he was sitting at his console, moving his hands among the controls of his links to the Palace intercom, flipping the image from camera to camera.
“What are you doing?” Mischa cried it out; guiltily, startled, he pushed himself away from the console. Mischa needed no more proof for her suspicions. She smashed her fist against the master power control and fused the panel with the laser lance.
“I was only trying to… contact someone.”
“I’ll bet.”
“Not to call for help—”
“Come on. I want to get Jan.”
“But I must—”
“No!”
He gazed down at the ruined console, at the blank, gray, depthless screens. “But she will think I did not care…”
“Hurry up!” Mischa did not listen to him; she had no patience for his petty intrigues and affaires, and the despair she felt from him would have to wait for any sympathy: she believed it to be because he was leaving Subone.
Shoulders slumped, Subtwo crossed the room, found one of his blue-gray coveralls, and put it on while Mischa fumed impatiently.