There was no air in the room. On the other hand, perhaps it was the hanging upside down that did it. Aubry’s diaphragm was exhausted. He was gasping for breath in a manner that utterly terrified him, or would have, except that he was somewhere beyond terror. His leg bled, and a trickle of blood ran down it and into his mouth.
“Who are you?” James Danessh said. He was speaking in pidgin English, and Aubry found it difficult to understand some of it.
Other aspects of the conversation he understood very well indeed.
He hung upside down in a room that felt as cold as a meat locker. He was dizzy, and tired, and in so much pain that he could barely think. His circulation was gone.
“Cut him down,” Danessh said.
Aubry tried to brace himself, tried to relax, and it meant very little. He crashed into the ground shoulders first, and barely managed to get his head out of the way.
“Cut him loose,” Danessh suggested.
They did. There was no circulation. No blood to his limbs. Despite the pain, Aubry wanted nothing more than to curl up and go to sleep. Two men, almost as large as Aubry, hauled him upright, and one of them drove a fist into his gut.
“I think that you will talk to us,” the first one said. The second agreed, heartily, and slammed a fist into Aubry’s gut to demonstrate the practicality of the suggestion.
Aubry tried to move. He tried to steady his breathing. He knew a dozen ways that he could have killed both of these men. They were clowns, with soft bodies to match their blows, which ordinarily wouldn’t have bothered him more than gnat lashes.
But he was so tired. And hurt. And cold. And all he wanted to do was sleep.
So tired.
His world flashed red as another fist smashed into him, and he sagged.
The second man looked up from his work. “Excuse me,” he said, and slammed his fist into Aubry’s face.
“Nullboxer? Shit. I could have killed him at his best. Now, he is a nothing. Step back. Stand him up.”
Aubry fought with himself, momentarily shaken out of his dream. Wasn’t there any strength at all? There wasn’t, and he felt as weak as a baby. But …
But he feigned complete torpor, allowed himself to seem weaker still, and weak to the point where they not only had to stand him up, but hold him up, as if he were dead. And as he did he concentrated all of his strength in one leg. His right leg. Still not enough strength. Then just in his right foot. There was a slight tingle of light if he concentrated that precisely. And then he managed to feel as if the strength in his body were a thick, viscous syrup, and he concentrated the entirety of it in his right toe. The rest of his body was a thing of numbness and death … but there was a spot of light in that darkness. The big man stepped forward, and with the greatest effort of his life Aubry sent that single point of light arcing into the juncture between his tormentor’s legs. The moment of contact was electric in intensity.
Oh …
It felt so good to have that moment, as if it was something long denied him. To see the flash of surprise on the fat, flabby face. To see the eyes start out from their sockets, to see the hands fumble to the crushed and ruptured genitals, and watch him bend over …
To see the thin stream of vomit. Then there was a sound like a bell, ringing against the side of his head, and all was darkness.
Danessh glared at the man with the ruptured testicles, and shook his head. “You are a fool,” he said. The man could not answer. He was far too busy cupping himself, and perhaps bemoaning the loss of his sex life.
“Perhaps we are all fools.” He nudged Aubry Knight’s senseless form with his toe. “There is much here that I do not understand.” He watched his breath form frozen puffs in the cooler, and shuddered, drawing his thick woolen coat tighter across his thin shoulders. “And I’m not certain how much time we have to understand it.”
Aubry awoke in the cell. It was, perhaps, a little warmer. He curled onto his side, and there was not enough heat for him to feel that he could move. He was dying, and it didn’t seem to matter much. He had done all that he could to protect his family. To regain his honor.
And more than that no man could do.
Golah, senior guard at Daglia Prison, was used to many things, but there was an unaccustomed sense of excitement in the air.
There had been many official visitors, and the vidphones were still humming. Everyone wanted to see, or speak of, the man in the security cell.
There was a sense of excitement. This had, in some way, been a coup over the hated PanAfricans, and the sense was that there would be a way to turn it to their advantage.
It wasn’t the same as holding the member of a royal family, or even an ambassador, or something of that kind.
But what happens when you hold a man who attempted to assassinate a head of state?
Attempted? As yet, there had been no further word on Swarna’s condition.…
Golah lit a cigarette and looked out at the desert. There could be a garden there, if they had the technology to make it bloom. The Jews and the Ibandi had done it. And there could be benefits …
He lit another cigarette, inhaling deeply, never realizing that it was his last.
Two miles away, two men and a woman met, shaking stones from a leather cup.
“Whose task will it be, siblings?” Ni said.
“Should we even go? He allowed himself to be taken,” Roku reminded them.
“Any man can be taken,” San said. “He was in a foreign land. He had no training in such things. He was betrayed. Surrounded by enemies. Still, he performed superbly.” She lifted her head, almost sniffing the air. “I think it likely that he endures torture superbly.”
The bones rolled out, and tumbled to a rest in the sand. Go took his turn, rattled them, and sprawled them out.
The bones came to a rest. Go smiled. “It is mine.”
The four of them shook hands in a curious four-way clasp.
“The honor is yours, my brother.”
“It is mine.”
“Have a good death.”
Clouds had stolen the moon, and the wind off the desert was a low, moaning thing.
Golah thought about another cigarette. He craved it. He knew that he was killing himself, slowly, but in his considered opinion, the taste of another cigarette would be worth its infinitesimal reduction of his life span. One should live for today, he mused. The future took care of itself.
He shook a cigarette out of its pack, then looked down and saw the dot on his chest. He said “Oh …” a moment before the bullet slammed into his breastbone, a single .22 slug that tore through bone and cartilage and delivered a ghastly load of hydrostatic shock to his system. He was dead before he hit the ground. The guards in the other towers died next, one after another. In more advanced environs, they would have had more armor, more protection. But they were poor, and had endured a lifetime of indignities owing to that simple fact of birth. In the final analysis, death was just one more.
A shadow moved away from the periphery and toward the front gate.
The guards in the outer towers were dead. Now it was time. Moving toward the front gate was a curious figure, blocky and yet somehow lithe. He was an essential contradiction, simultaneously almost comical and immensely dignified.
He leveled his arm at the gate.