The men I went there with were killed. Most of them in the first few years. We lost three hundred thousand men on Yeowe. They never talk about it. Two-thirds of the-veot men in Voe Deo were killed. If it was lucky to live, I was lucky.' He looked down at his clasped hands, locked into himself.
After a while she said softly, 'I hope you still are.'
He said nothing.
'How long has it been?' he asked, and she said, clearing her throat, after an automatic glance at her watch, 'Sixty hours.'
Their captors had not come yesterday at what had become a regular time, about eight in the mom-ing. Nor had they come this morning.
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With nothing left to eat and now no water left, they had grown increasingly silent and inert. It was hours since either had said anything. He had put off asking the time as long as he could prevent himself.
'This is horrible,' she said, 'this is so horrible. I keep thinking... '
'They won't abandon you,' he said. 'They feel a responsibility.'
'Because I'm a woman?'
'Partly.'
'Shit.'
He remembered that in the other life her coarseness had offended him.
'They've been taken, shot. Nobody bothered to find out where they were keeping us,' she said.
Having thought the same thing several hundred times, he had nothing to say.
'It's just such a horrible place to die,' she said.
'It's sordid. I stink. I've stunk for twenty days. Now I have diarrhea because I'm scared. But I can't shit anything. I'm thirsty and I can't drink.'
'Solly,' he said sharply. It was the first time he had spoken her name. 'Be still. Hold fast.'
She stared at him.
'Hold fast to what?'
He did not answer at once and she said, 'You won't let me touch you!'
'Not to me —'
'Then to what? There isn't anything!' He thought she was going to cry, but she stood up, took the empty tray, and beat it against the door till it smashed into fragments of wicker and dust. 'Come! God damn you! Come, you bastards!' she shouted. 'Let us out of here!'
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After that she sat down again on the mattress. 'Well,' she said.
'Listen,' he said.
They had heard it before: no city sounds came down to this cellar, wherever it was, but this was something bigger, explosions, they both thought.
The door rattled.
They were both afoot when it opened: not with the usual clash and clang, but slowly. A man waited outside; two men came in. One, armed, they had never seen; the other, the tough-faced young man they called the spokesman, looked as if he had been running or fighting, dusty, worn-out, a little dazed.
He closed the door. He had some papers in his hand. The four of them stared at one another in silence for a minute.
'Water,' Solly said. 'You bastards!'
'Lady,' the spokesman said, 'I'm sorry.' He was not listening to her. His eyes were not on her. He was looking at Teyeo, for the first time. 'There is a lot of fighting,' he said.
'Who's fighting?' Teyeo asked, hearing himself drop into the even tone of authority, and the young
man respond to it as automatically: 'Voe Deo. They sent troops. After the funeral, they said they would send troops unless we surrendered. They came yesterday. They go through the city killing- They know all the Old Believer centers. Some of ours.' He had a bewildered, accusing note in his voice.
'What funeral?' Solly said.
When he did not answer, Teyeo repeated it:
'What funeral?'
'The lady's funeral, yours. Here — I brought net A® 109 -A
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prints — A state funeral. They said you died in the explosion.'
'What Goddamned explosion?' Solly said in her hoarse, parched voice, and this time he answered her:
'At the Festival. The Old Believers. The fire, Tual's fire, there were explosives in it. Only it went off too soon. We knew their plan. We rescued you from that, Lady,' he said, suddenly turning to her with that same accusatory tone.
'Rescued me, you asshole!' she shouted, and Teyeo's dry lips split in a startled laugh, which he repressed at once.
'Give me those,' he said, and the young man handed him the papers.
'Get us water!' Solly said.
'Stay here, please. We need to talk,' Teyeo said, instinctively holding on to his ascendancy. He sat down on the mattress with the net prints. Within a few minutes he and Solly had scanned the reports of the shocking disruption of the Festival of Forgiveness, the lamentable death of the Envoy of the Ekumen in a terrorist act executed by the cult of Old Believers, the brief mention of the death of a Voe Dean Embassy guard in the explosion, which had killed over seventy priests and onlookers, the long descriptions of the state funeral, reports of unrest, terrorism, reprisals, then reports of the Palace gratefully accepting offers of assistance from Voe Deo in cleaning out the cancer of terrorism. . ..
'So,' he said finally. 'You never heard from the Palace. Why did you keep us alive?'
Solly looked as if she thought the question lacked tact, but the spokesman answered with equal bluntness, 'We thought your country would ransom you.'
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'They will,' Teyeo said. 'Only you have to keep your government from knowing we're alive. If you —'
'Wait,' Solly said, touching his hand. 'Hold on.
I want to think about this stuff. You'd better not leave the Ekumen out of the discussion. But getting in touch with them is the tricky bit.'
'If there are Voe Dean troops here, all I need is
to get a message to anyone in my command, or the Embassy Guards.'
Her hand was still on his, with a warning pressure. She shook the other one at the spokesman, finger outstretched: 'You kidnapped an Envoy of the Ekumen, you asshole! Now you have to do the thinking you didn't do ahead of time. And I do too, because I don't want to get blown away by your Goddamned little government for turning up alive and embarrassing them. Where are you hiding, anyhow? Is there any chance of us getting out of this room, at least?'
The man, with that edgy, frantic look, shook his head- 'We are all down here now,' he said. 'Most of the time. You stay here safe.'
'Yes, you'd better keep your passports safe!'
Solly said. 'Bring us some water, damn it! Let us talk a while. Come back in an hour.'
The young man leaned towards her suddenly, his face contorted. 'What the hell kind of lady you are,' he said. 'You foreign filthy stinking cunt.'
Teyeo was on his feet, but her grip on his hand had tightened: after a moment of silence, the spokesman and the other man turned to the door, rattled the lock, and were let out.
'Our,' she said, looking dazed.
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