The new lines in his face were deep, strained. 'You will come? I promise, I give my word. I know captivity. I would not ask demonstrations of gratitude.'
'I must not speak of this,' Madame said, quenching her wonder in apprehension.
'You. prefer to stay here?'
'No!' She took a deep breath, calming herself, relaxing her hands from clenched fists. 'No. But I must not speak of the future with you. If I did, I would hope, and if I hoped, Blaisse would know.'
Subtwo's face relaxed; his expression was almost a natural smile. 'Then we've said nothing. We'll say nothing until my ship is ready. Soon.'
They parted, neither making a move to touch the other. Madame left knowing that of all the difficult days of her bondage, the next few would be hardest.
Chapter 10
Gemmi expanded through Mischa's consciousness, laughing with delight despite having been forced to seek her out. Mischa cringed. 'No,' she said softly. 'Not now. Go away.' But she was speaking to herself, not to Gemmi. Gemmi could not understand.
Mischa stilled her mind, stilled her body, hoping Gemmi would lose her, and waited. Gemmi could be reliving old memories; they came sometimes, unbidden, and the child had no way of stopping them. But this was real: screaming, she found Mischa again and whimpered, telling her to come, afraid of being hurt.
Mischa had been expecting the summons, knowing at least one was inevitable before Subtwo was likely to leave Center. She had not worried about it too much; as long as she continued to keep her plans secret, everything should proceed as usual. But the command had come at the worst possible time.
'I can't come now,' Mischa yelled into her lonely room. 'I'll come later. Tomorrow. Go away.' Her voice echoing back and forth in Mischa's mind, Gemmi cried, and screamed again. Mischa knew that no reassurance but her own approach could calm her sister. She got up and pulled her cache from its hiding place, a fissure in the rock wall behind a tapestry. Under her jacket, the leather surface of the box of eyes was smooth against her skin. With the bag of lesser gems nestled in an inside pocket, she left her room.
Going down the hall, she met Jan. Greeting her, he smiled, but sobered
when he noticed her grim expression. 'What's wrong?'
'I have to leave.'
'What about tomorrow morning?'
'I'll try to be back,' she said. She would, but she knew there was no way of getting to the edge of the city and back by the time she was supposed to meet Subtwo. 'I can't help it, there's something I have to do.' Gemmi felt that she had stopped, and began to scream again. Mischa closed her eyes to concentrate on calming her. 'I'm coming,' she whispered.
Jan took her arm to steady her. 'Are you all right?'
She looked up at him. His pale eyebrows were drawn together with concern; Mischa realized dully around the screaming in her head that she wanted to ask his help. 'Yes,' she said, in a resigned exhalation of her breath. There was nothing she could ask him for. She started away.
'Mischa?'
She turned back quickly, impatient now.
'If I can help—'
She shook her head. 'No. Thanks. There isn't any way.'
After the regular tunnels of Center, the caves began to twist downward. Mischa's family, when it had been a family, had lived in the roots of the system, almost in the deep underground. As Mischa walked, Gemmi pecked at her, urging her on faster. Mischa neither sped up nor tried to push her sister away. Gemmi was not being beaten now. Their uncle had stopped that since the time he had made her sick.
Mischa sometimes hoped he would kill her.
Gemmi screamed at the thought of death. The fear swept Mischa like the taste of molten copper. The intensity of emotion shook her, but she recovered herself and soothed her sister until Gemmi only whimpered. Mischa leaned against the rough stone wall. Gemmi did not know what death was, but it frightened her; anyone in her range who died, she felt. Her perception of dying was so unfocused and colored by fear that Mischa could not tell what made her so afraid.
When Mischa stopped shaking, she continued, passing through the wellcell and the cool sound of running water, through a familiar tunnel in which fewer light-tubes burned every time Mischa returned. They wore out, and no one bothered to replace them. Now, at night, they barely glowed.
Mischa knew everyone who lived down here: as many different types as individuals. A few had had a life and lost it. Some had never had a chance, and many simply did not care. She spoke to those who noticed her. They grew angry at pity, so she never let it show; there was no point in hating them; and she could not feel superior. They were much too close to her.
Gemmi had forgotten her fear almost as soon as Mischa turned her thoughts away from death. The child gurgled with excitement and pleasure as Mischa came nearer, until the voice of her mind mingled with audible, garbled words. Mischa pushed at the clinging sour fog of her, but Gemmi just bounced back and laughed. Their uncle knew the signs of Mischa's approach.
'Hurry up.'
The door was left ajar for her to enter; she pushed aside the new, plush curtain beyond it. In a cave that always before had been dim, the light was dazzling. Her parents had not cared much about light, for they had been content in their own separate mind-worlds, growing more and more remote as the years passed, until one day Gemmi had begun to cry, so loudly and so desperately that both Mischa and Chris were drawn to her, to comfort her, to quiet her, somehow to make her stop screaming directly into their brains. She had reason enough: her parents were dead, and that must have terrified her, though the two dead faces wore expressions of peace. Mischa sometimes thought they had not so much died as pressed their existence to its logical extreme. She had seen so little of them in their life: she did not know what caused either's near-oblivion to reality. It could have been madness, withdrawal, apathy, or some capacity like Gemmi's for living in the minds of others. They had wandered about, seldom speaking, satisfying their biological urges, eating, sleeping, coming together for sex, neither bothering to suppress fertility. They and their children were cared for indifferently by the children's crippled uncle, supported first by Chris, then by Mischa.
Mischa's uncle: son of her father's father, of her mother's mother, half-brother to both Mischa's parents, who had not been related at all. A double half-uncle. He had never been happy, never been satisfied with subsistence rations. Since learning of Gemmi's power, his demands had increased, and lately accelerated. Now Mischa knew what he wanted the extra money for.
Bedecked in the style of Stone Palace, the old cave held soft cushions, tapestries, many lights. Delicacies, fruit grown outside, imported and expensive, filled a bowl on a low table. A companion lounged near the back of the single chamber, dozing or watching: one of the smooth, beautiful, sexless ones her uncle favored, but this one was classes higher than Mischa was accustomed to seeing down here. Classes higher, classes more expensive. Mischa knew the value of what she had stolen: not this
much.
Her uncle lay on a wide couch, dressed in a long, full robe that hid his crippled legs. In bizarre semblance of happy paternity, he held Gemmi cuddled in his lap. She nestled against him, content with any scrap of human contact. She was younger than Mischa but bigger, and beginning to mature. She wore only a shirt; no one liked the job of keeping her clean. The shirt had lost all its buttons, and its gaping revealed her breasts. The heavy chain on her ankle still secured her to the stone wall.
Mischa stood frowning, overwhelmed by the aura of wrongness. Only Gemmi, with her murmurs, broke the silence. The other children, the younger ones, were gone.
'Say hello to Mischa, Gemmi.' He smiled. His teeth showed, in the very center of his mouth, as though he
