x
AND A TIMELESS TRACK SHE FOLLOWED."206Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡvpdqsb8P0i
206Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡuB7n0Dtyf8
206Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡU1cRmW6z2M
206Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡb70Pg8eQYD
The melancholy lyric of the star-sailor's ancient lament left something resembling consciousness----unasked for and unwanted---in its wake.
Naked and befouled, bleeding from twelve insults, Zakh Sorokin, shattered inside and out by what had happened to him, sprawled where he had been thrown upon the flesh-cutting gundeck floor mesh, hard against the heavy caliprette of one of the adventurer Zilvagabond's great kinergic projectiles. For the time being, he'd been left to himself. What more, after all, could be done or taken from him? The hurt boy had no way of kn owing, although by now the knowledge would not have surprised him, that this place where he lay in pain and anguish was considered the least-comfortable, least-desirable spot in all the vessel to sleep. The weakling dregs among her crewbeings gravitated here, where he had been tossed as human trash, used up and thrown away---though too well he realized he would be used again, and soon.
Despite all that had happened to him and would doubtless happen again, it was a kind of sleep he slept, although it also bore resemblance to the drug-induced delirium he'd suffered in his own warm, safe bed, what seemed to him like centuries ago. In his pain-fringed and fitful periods of waking, the major effort his mind made was to blot out every memory it had ever contained, for not one stayed among the lot, no matter how bright and colorful, no matter how inspiring and cheerful, no matter how filled with love and warmth, no matter how long ago, which had not been rent and soiled like himself.
Given what he considered the greater sufferings of his dead father, his brothers, and his friends, it would have shamed him to be caught in the belief that he had been singled out for persecution. It was not within the compass of Zakh's character to count his losses, yet they weighed upon him, waring away his resistance to despair. Already half-orphaned with the loss of his mother, Gabdrakhimovishin Bogandov Sorokin, he had, in a briefer and more recent span, been deprived of his hero-father, the legendary warrior Eugene "the" Sorokin; also, his two kindest friends, Mistress Maria Petrovka, tutor and sister-to-be, and Terrible Yvan Dragomilov, mentor and partner-in-crime. He had lost his lifelong home, the Holdings upon Genrich, and his beloved pet Zero. His brothers, Eugene and Adam, had been taken from him by the exigencies of what amounted to war. Moreover, through a heinous act of betrayal, he had lost his name and his inheritance. Had anyone demanded of him yesterday what else he had left to lose; he would have answered "nothing." Now he knew better.
Despite himself, he did remember. His clearest, cleanest memories were most recent, days spend in the forest which he had thought horrible to live. Casting lots with his brothers, he had come to an hour he had believed the beginning of adventure. Instead, it had been a doorway into hell.
Having decided upon their separate, complementary courses of action, Eugene and Adam had helped him drain the remaining power from one of the exhausted purge-riders into the other. The elder brothers would depart upon foot, one for the nearby rebel hills, the other for the Sorokin Holdings. He had bidden them farewell, waved with a reckless gaiety feigned only in part for the sake of their mutual and desperate resolve, and ridden out of the forest, leaving them to their own fates.
Evading Zaytseva's Cossack searching parties had proven easier than expected. Too few had been assigned for the task. He suspected, or at least hoped, that to some degree their energies were being occupied by his mother's people---the beginnings of violent persecution had been another tale told between the lines of the repeated, demanding lasercasts----now that the Great Bargain wrought by his father was abrogated. Neither the Cossacks nor their officers had seemed much gifted with intellectual acuity to start with. Knowing they had means of detecting the heat of his rider and his own body, Zakh had risked traveling by day. For whatever reason, the risk had worked.
During the long, cold, lonely nights Zakh forced himself to sleep under the soft light of the moonring in nightmare-ridden intervals while his machine soaked up the ambient radiation which powered it. The chief cleverness of its irreproducible design lay not in the energies it could absorb---infrared, ultraviolet, visible light, solar radio, cosmic rays, even stray neutrinos---but in the use to which it put such subtle fluxes and potentials, bending and altering them so that each particle somehow sought its metaphysical opposite and was consumed in annihilation which drove the craft's suspending and propelling fields. The purge-field rider was neither as efficient nor as powerful as the bigger droilodka. The latter could absorb as much power, each moment, as it used. In part, this was a measure of nothing else than the relative surface areas the two exposed. For each hour's travel, Zakh was required to give his machine another of rest, which, in truth, he needed himself.
The climate changed by gradual increment. Temperatures rose and fell again. One kind of bird or animal was replaced by another better able to prosper in each area he entered and, with all possible rapidity, left behind. All about him, stage by imperceptible stage, the deep blues and greens of the temperate zone began to pale as he crossed invisible lines of latitude and began to climb into the equatorial mountains, retracing the earlier, eventful voyage of the droilodka until finally, and without incident, he passed through the roadcut in the highlands, still unreadied after the dual avalanche which had happened there, and had emerged onto the bleak plateau beyond.
In all, it had required another week to reach the unmanned, isolated cluster of ulsic-automated fabrications which he, at least, would never again refer to as Elizavetaburg. Having arrived, he discovered evidence that many starships had called here and departed. Each of the farflung corners of the landing star, with its own heavy tackle, metal bright with unaccustomed wear, had been employed not once but often. The soulless townlet was left littered by the comings and goings of hundreds of wedding guests, their servants and guards, invited to visit Genrich to witness happier events that had proven the case. Now all that remained, aside from litter, was a single thrumming lubberlift cable, anchored to the center of the star, as it had been when he and his brothers had first come to meet their father. Somehow, Zakh must get aboard the starship it was connected with and see whether any help was to be found among its passengers.
The plain stretched endless before him. No bird sang. A chilled and arid prairie wind riffled the sea of gray-yellow mosses which, even in this sere, lifeless place, kept the naked soil of Genrich from ever being seen. Examining, in the lucy absence of the lubberlift, each service shed in turn, Zakh found one of the answers he sought. Zaytseva had not been altogether preoccupied with consolidating his political and military position. This was a farm planet, a working planet, but not a rich planet. Continuous, concentrated effort must be expended to wrest even a modest profit from it. Zakh now knew how to get aboard whatever starship hung above his head and the equator at the end of the long cable which vanished into the zenith. The biggest of the utility buildings had been stacked to its ribbed, translucent ceiling with big crates of native Genrichian sirleafs. The lubberlift could not carry all this bulky cargo in one load. In probability it had been used watch-and-watch since the departure of the other starships and might return at any moment.
It was the work of but a few frantic minutes, to employ the toolkit from his purge-rider, to pry open one of the sturdy plastic crates and to hollow out a hiding place among the musty produce for himself. The rider he concealed---sore, in certain places, as constant riding had made him, he patted its mesh-metal flank in a gesture of regretted farewell---in a building which had been emptied already and might not be inspected when the lubberlift rode down again like a giant legless web-spinner. Securing the hinged top of the crate, once he had crawled deep inside, was a more difficult matter. Knowing it would be handled gently, he had no fear it would open by accident. The sirleafs he lay among were perishable, fragile, an expensive delicacy offplanet.
Wrapped in the overpowering musky odors of his home planet, drained in body and spirit by weeks of anger, effort, and terror, Zakh slept within the crate, not waking until, an uncalculated time later, he felt it being shuffled and rocked toward the star. Comments and curses, shouted orders, muffled by the crate and its contents, came to his ears without meaning. For a while after the movement stopped, he could not sleep, suspended as he was between the fear of being discovered and the excitement of traveling into the Deep as he had so long dreamed of doing. How he wished he could see out! No such provision had been made, however, and the smooth, cable-guided voyage in the lubberlift, prolonged and anticlimatic, the profound humming of the cable itself, lulled him back into a deep and healing state of unconsciousness.206Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡYzB4ZNODxF
206Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡP74VWT1qGv
206Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ4wiZgF0cbd
206Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡrGwJ6YAUA0
"Well, well! What have we got here?"
Zakh leapt from dreamless stupor into panic and pain. The voice shouting into his upturned face was rough-timbered and raucous. Someone had him by the hair, prying his head backward against protesting muscles in his neck. He was blinding, or nearly so, by the agony of it. The only light, an eerie shadow-flickering of blue, emanated from the purge-field, playing at reduced power along the interlocking mesh which constituted the fabric of the vessel.
"Harhar!" Another ugly voice laughed at him, milder only by comparison, its source invisible, and with even less pity in its lower-class tone than the first. "I doublethink someone thoughtful has sent us a treat, Vanya!"
Zakh's head swam. He felt like throwing up, a reaction to intoxicating vapors exuded by the fungus he'd hidden himself in. He'd fallen asleep with his tokarev-weapon in both hands, wrists locked between his knees. Now, hands tingling and limp, he tried to bring the pistol up, to point it at the first voice, but it was snatched away, tearing his fingers. Hearing it clatter, far away, against some meshed metallic surface, he reached for the hand entangled in his hair, prying at the fingers. The knuckles were like knots upon a tree limb.
"None of that now, sweetheart!" The first voice admonished him in a terrifying mockery of tenderness, ignoring his most energetic efforts to break free as insignificant. "Roast my hide, Rodya, if it's not so!"
The volume of the voice changed, as if the speaker's head turned aside. "Whaddya say, Voya old pal, can me and Rodya take a rest-break here?"
From a far corner of wherever-they-were, a third voice called to the others. "Upon condition you'll share this unlooked-for-bounty, Vanya. Finders-keepers, share and share alike, I always say. Hmmm....what a moment while I square away this list. What have you and Rodya fond for us?"
The sound of angry exhalation came now, carrying to Zakh's outraged nostrils the smell of something rotten. Between the darkness and the pain, the scared boy still could not see, but he could hear. The banter was gone from Vany's tone as he called back, "By your command, Mister Von Baumbach---field take your eyes!" The second phrase was spoken under the breath. "But you'd better make haste before I toss this delicious titbit to the deckgunners!"
Pain unlike anything which had preceded it seared through Zakh's scalp as he was hauled from the crate by his hair and dashed to the deck. Something hot and heavy landed atop him, knocking the breath out of him. A weight upon him squirmed, settled itself, and the nightmare started in earnest.
Hurried, cruel hands stripped him of his clothing. Excepting the antique weapon taken from him and cast aside, Zakh carried nothing valuable about his person. Upon Genrich, currency was exchanged by village Genrichians in market-trade. An oligarch's son had no use for it. Nor, unlike inhabitants of other planets, in particular, the capital world Romanova, had he ever worn jewelry. This angered the men, for their usage of him grew more violent with the discovery.
Things were done to him, the unlikeliest of outrages, obscene acts forced upon him which he had never thought possible to human bodies. Afterward, had he been inclined to tell another of it, words would have failed him. It seemed to go on forever.
When the three were through with him---at least for the present, they kept telling him with laughter, threatening even as they used him to use him again---his body had no secrets left for them. No part, no square line, no skin fold, no opening, remained to himself, unviolated. At the time he thought it ludicrous, given the searing torment he suffered, the indignities they put him to, that the most objectionable thing about them were the noxious smells which told him they had not washed themselves for a long time, if ever. He had never known, had never been told, neither by Maria nor Terrible Ivan, that men did these things to one another. Or did they reserve them for young boys?
Some analytical portion of his mind which had remained sane---or become more insane than the rest---was turning this question over when he lost consciousness at last.
It would be a different Zakh Sorokin who awoke.
206Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡdGdIypFgpX
206Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡfRdUiXAsgR
