Part 9 (1/2)

Inside, he knew-but on the surface, no part of his Braxin self would admit that something psychic had touched him, marking him.

But that child . . . that G.o.d-blessed child! He knew what bad form it had been to leave the Sharing, but to continue once a woman (or girl, he reminded himself) had partic.i.p.ated went against everything in his Braxin nature. Where did she come from, anyway, and what was she doing there? Had he mistaken the custom somehow? Only Bloodletters could come to the Sharing, and only male Darians could do the Hyarke.

More than that was wrong. As surely as something buried deep inside him knew that he had been touched and examined mentally, some part of him also knew the purpose of that examination. He was being hunted. (Why did he keep using that word, rather than sought, or chased, or uncovered? Why did ”hunted” just seem right?.) The source of the knowledge was, of course, hidden from him, but the hunch was so strong that he had decided to trust it.

Braxi had not responded to his plea for help. It had surprised him at first, but then he realized what a fool he'd been all along to trust the Braxana. He'd figured that as long as he was serving their purpose he was safe-that was the way to deal with them, wasn't it?-but either he'd been wrong in the first place or had simply ceased to be useful.

He was not bitter. He was angry at himself, but not bitter. For perhaps the first time he saw with open eyes the game they'd been playing. He thought they'd been manipulating each other when in fact he had done exactly what they'd wanted and received nothing for it.

He wished that he were home again, to carry out his original plans. But they would never let him return. Or maybe they would, to see what scorn his new body would receive, to be amused while an ”alien” tried to stir the ruling race to rebellion.

They had trapped him perfectly and now he knew it.

There was nowhere for him to go and nothing he could do. The transmissions from Braxi would come whether he was there to receive them or not, and someday sheer chance would favor Azea and he would be discovered. Fear ate at him now and he had no way of bettering it. For the first time ever he came to terms with the crippling folly that the Social Codes were. Fear was a Valid Emotion, a useful warning sign, a crucial limitating factor in the struggle for self- preservation, and he had never learned to suppress it. Now, when he had to, he didn't know how. The Braxin in him wanted to enjoy the last of his life-for he knew now that an end was coming soon, and an unpleasant one-but fear para- lyzed him and in his depression he could seek no pleasure.

For the first time he noticed how many more humans there were at the Hyarke, and saw his first Azeans there. And that child . . . something was wrong inside when he thought of her, something that made him cold and afraid, but he couldn't bring it to the surface of his mind to a.n.a.lyze it. He kept trying to convince himself that it was paranoia, but he had never been paranoid. That more than anything told him how wrong things really were.

He tried to leave Dan under his own power. That was when he discovered that all ports were being monitored, and just short of surrendering his identification he turned and fled the transport center.

He was scared. And rather than live scared, he decided to act-even if nothing constructive could be done. It was the waiting, more than anything, that was killing him.

10.

Torzha lay still upon the Darian bed, dressed in her white under-uniform, immobile in her concentration.

If I were a Braxin (she asked herself for the thousandth time), where would I be now?

I would be at the Hyarke, or in some place connected with it. I would view the rest of Dorian society with scorn and avoid it entirely. I would convince myself that I respected the Bloodletters as true men, because their ritual reeks of barba- rism and the Braxana venerate barbarism. But deep inside I would have a warrior's scorn for any system that regularly kills off half of its most skilled fighters.

I would fight in the Hyarke, obviously well. But no matter how well I fight, no matter how often I survive, the very nature of the Hyarke defies Braxin tradition.

1 am not willing to die to serve my people. I am willing to die if the odds of doing so are the price of my amus.e.m.e.nt- they counted on that when they sent me. But the odds in the Hyarke are never better than fifty percent, and the system of challenges can force me to fight when I would rather not do so. I will fight. I will find pleasure in fighting. But I am not willing to fight continually, to risk constant involvement.

Something pulled at Torzha's awareness, crying for attention, but she couldn't grasp it. Determined, she continued her reasoning.

I must have an excuse for non-partic.i.p.ation. A Bloodletter is expected to respond positively to any challenge. It would be awkward to have to explain my reason every time, hence my excuse must be an obvious one.

She paused.

If I were injured, I would not have to compete.

If the injury were obvious, no one would challenge me.

But-here's the catch. Say I feign a broken arm. dress it with cast and sling as is the local custom, since Dari won't have anything to do with extrastellar medicine. I'm here to pick up on the military frequencies; therefore I have the equipment to do so. It can be found. I have to hide it someplace, returning to it periodically. That might be noticed. I don't want to be immobilized by anything, in case I need to act to save myself. Thus a cast is undesirable. I would need something which would not actually hinder movement, yet which would imply inability to partic.i.p.ate in the Hyarke. . . .

It came to her suddenly and she sat up, startled by the memory.

The Bloodletter who left the Sharing had been bandaged on his right hand.

She pictured the Circle as she had seen it. He stood in anger as he watched the child partic.i.p.ate, his hand bandaged over finger-splints as if it had been broken.

If it were his dominant hand, then he was badly handicapped. Any Darian- any human, for that mattter, would immediately a.s.sume this to be the case- especially the Azeans, who had made right-handedness a genetic standard centuries ago. But if his left hand were dominant, as was the case with most Braxins, then the bandaging would be a mere nuisance. . . .

She reached for her half-jacket with one hand and the visiphone switch with the other.

”Get me the Governor,” she ordered. ”Quickly.”

11.

When morning came, he moved. He had dreamed of traps, their jaws set with gleaming teeth, and had awakened in a sweat of fear and desperation. Leaving his possessions behind, he had bolted forth from his apartment and out into the street. And not a moment too soon. His last view of the building, as he turned a corner out of sight, was the flash of a white uniform approaching its door.

They had come for him.

He ran the streets, turning where there was a concealing alleyway, trusting that they would think he had done the fastest thing and taken public transportation in his flight. He did not know where he was going until his pounding feet took him there. Yes, the Records office-his instincts had been good. There would be hostages there aplenty, and a building full of files the government would not want destroyed. He might yet make it through this. . . .

He was not challenged at the door, though there were guards, nor did anyone question his presence as he bolted up the staircase to the most important offices.

He was a Bloodletter. They did not even question him as he forced them from their work, and although they gave him questioning glances as he herded them into an inner office and locked the doors about him, no one sought to stop him.

Savdi! he swore, thinking of the stupid, harmless herd animals of his homeland.

They were all savdi, and worse- were there no men on this planet?

Fifty office workers were his hostages-common Darians who were of no particular use to anyone. Yet the Azeans, ruled by their self-righteous defense of all human life, would not dare to drag him forcibly from his chosen citadel lest he hurt them. And of course, the local political situation made things even more favorable for him than they would be otherwise.

Contrary to appearances, Varik had no illusions as to his fate. What he did intend was to chose the manner of his dying. Not for him a crawling surrender to the white-haired enemy, nor the pointless gesture of suicide. If he had to die, he would do so in a blaze of glory. All the better if in doing it he could shatter Azea's tenuous hold on this planet and drag its diplomacy down with him. That was a Braxin death!

He paced nervously, incessantly. Surely the news was out by now! He went on the local frequencies himself, transmitting a distress call no local would actually have made. Azean Security could put two and two together-couldn't they? They knew who and what he was, that was clear. Wouldn't they realize, when they heard of a Bloodletter barricading himself in this building, what had happened?

The noise of the Darian streets had been a regular background to his thoughts since early morning. Now, suddenly, he noticed a difference. The hum of native life had subsided into a whispering near-silence, in which only an occasional foreign voice was noticeable. The clattering movement of local vehicular activity had ceased and even the music which played from a store across the square was lowered, then silenced. Varik was reminded of the unnatural quiet of animals before disaster, an a.n.a.logy all the more apt in light of his opinion of the Darian natives. He moved to the nearest window and adjusted it until he could see out.

A crowd was gathered about the building, a veritable sea of native life held at bay by white-clad Security personnel. Ripples of protest and anger pa.s.sed from one side of the crowd to the other, but no one dared to raise his voice in the stillness which Azean authority had imposed.

Varik picked out recognizable figures at the crowd's periphery. Governor li Dara-that miserable excuse for an overlord!-was deep in conversation with someone from the military. Who he was Varik didn't know, but his blue and white uniform spoke of stellar service and command position and. . . .

Varik looked more closely.

Female, he swore softly.

The Azean in conversation with the Governor was indeed a woman-it was so hard to tell, with that race! Varik's contempt for li Dara doubled. Was there anything a woman could say that would change the situation?

He saw her reach to her side for a communicator and he turned his own receiver to the standard Azean frequency. He would hear what she had to say; he did not intend to answer.