Madame to hope, at least, that the rumors might be true. The underground people returned to sampling bits of food and making faces not altogether disgusted. With the ease and intuition of long experience, Madame picked out their leader. The slender red-haired woman was sitting on one of Clarissa's velvet cushions. Saita sat near her, head down, as the slender woman spoke to her gently and gravely. Clarissa's attendant, the new boy, hunched in a corner and shuddered when anyone approached.
Madame spoke, hardly able to believe what she saw. 'My Lady. Valdrienne?'
Madame remembered when Val had been driven out: a skinny little awkward child, bright, her arrogance shattered by the discovery that she was different from her siblings and cousins, different, and therefore less
than human. She looked up, and their recognition was mutual.
'There aren't any masters anymore. Will you call me Val?'
'Are we free?'
'Yes.'
Madame saw that Saita was crying, silently and stilly. 'The child.' She did not know what to say about Saita, who had been forbidden knowledge of anything and everything but obedience, self-effacement, and the giving of sexual pleasure. 'Her family had no future but poverty before they sold her. All her pride is based on that. She is a child.'
'I know,' Val said. 'But only because they forced her to be. She can still grow, with the rest of us.'
'I do not wish to be discourteous.' Using titles was such an ingrained habit that she found it difficult to stop. 'May I leave?'
'It isn't necessary to ask.'
Madame stood another moment; for so many years she had asked, and asked if other services were necessary, and bowed, and feared those she served. She looked down at her hands: her own hands, now, the third finger of the left hand a little crooked from her twisting the slave ring off as she grew. But it slid off easily now, leaving a mark. She held the ring out. 'Will you. give this to Blaisse?'
Val smiled. 'Of course.'
Madame threw down her whip. 'I never used that.'
'I know. I remember.'
Madame lifted her head. 'Good-bye.' She turned and left Blaisse's palace. I am not 'Madame' anymore, she thought, and the knowledge was the sunlight she had not seen since she was eight years old.
She entered Subtwo's quarters and found them empty. Suddenly she doubted what she had done: Subtwo had gone to the underground, but the underground people were here. She imagined him dead, bloody and broken at the foot of some cliff, lost, gone. She touched the arm of his chair, and knew no way to turn.
His suite was not as he had left it. A bit of furniture displaced, a closet door ajar, a few of his favorite things missing, not clumsily stolen by one of the invaders, but carefully chosen. He must have been here, and gone.
Why shouldn't he leave? she wondered. I never responded to him... but he seemed to understand why I could not, though I wanted him .
She moved through the rooms until she reached the communications console and saw the destruction: the fused controls, the melted screen. She was afraid again, for a moment, but the only odor was of vaporized plastic: no seared-meat death-smell. Someone had wrecked the device as a precaution, or as a warning. Perhaps he had tried to contact her.
She heard footsteps and raised her head, hoping.
'Where are you—?' Subone stopped just inside the doorway. 'Where—?'
'He is not here.'
Subone groaned. 'Hikaru, that barbaric child, the freaks—they forced him!' he cried. 'They— Has the ship taken off?'
'The ship. ?' She fell silent, clear in her understanding of what had happened. Subtwo was escaping from Subone, as much as Jan Hikaru and Mischa were escaping from earth. And if Subone caught them before they got away, he would be able to stop Subtwo, she had almost no doubt of that. If Subone caught them, he could return Subtwo to a kind of slavery as profound as her own had been. She faced Subone quietly, waiting for a minuscule vibration, a trembling of the city's matrix that would build and climb and quite abruptly cease, as a ship fought free of gravity. But no sound came, and no vibration: Subone's quarry still were earthbound, vulnerable.
He lunged forward and grabbed her wrist, hard enough to hurt her, crushing the velvet of her sleeve between his fingers. 'Tell me!'
She remained silent, staring past him. She had never been flogged, but she had been prepared, every day, to endure it and survive it, knowing the people who owned her too well to think she could avoid it forever. She was as prepared to endure pain now that she was free.
Subone shook her, wrenching her shoulder. She was as unused to looking up at anyone as she was to meeting a free person's gaze, but she had to look up at Subone, and she met his fury, her face set and hard.
'I have no time!' he cried, and flung her across the room. She felt herself falling, a sharp blow, and that was all.
The blockhouse was silent. Subtwo carefully packed his belongings into a protective case. The outside winds must have died down since he came to Center, for the whining no longer penetrated the thick walls, but the sand could still drift and float and insinuate itself into delicate mechanical places. When he was finished Jan and Mischa had already put on suits, while he was still only in his coverall.
'Hurry up,' Mischa said. Jan simply sat on the corner of one of the work-desks and crossed his arms. Even after the fight in which Jan had easily defeated Draco, Subtwo had thought of him as mild and peaceable; he had never seen the young man look so grim as now.
But Subtwo ignored the grimness and Mischa's impatience. He was elated, yet disconsolate. The satisfaction of having rid himself of Subone was incredible, but he had also lost Madame. he could only hope that she would remain in the Palace until he could return. He was afraid something would change by then: Madame could believe he had left without even thinking of her, or, worse, she could become the focus for one of Blaisse's incomprehensible rages. He could destroy her, and no one would ever know or care. Except Subtwo.
Revenge and grief, he realized, are for the benefit of the living only; the dead are beyond such actions and feelings. Revenge and grief were not what Subtwo sought.
'I must come back, you know,' he said without turning.
Mischa hesitated, and then he heard her sigh. 'Subone—'
'Not Subone!' He cut himself off. Mischa had no reason to be certain he had cut oft the crippling relationship with his pseudosib. 'No, not Subone.'
'Mischa kept her part of the bargain,' Jan said. 'You might at least uphold yours with a little grace.'
'You don't understand.' He felt himself blushing, fiery red from collar to hairline. He had never blushed before. It was impossible to say what he meant. 'Because I'm free, and I might be able to give freedom as well.'
'What are you talking about?'
He knew that his oblique conversations angered people, but in this instance he could not be more direct. 'You made me leave.' She'll think I didn't care, he thought.
'We haven't left yet,' Mischa said angrily. 'We never will if you don't hurry.'
'But—'
'All right! I don't care, you can come back if you want, you're crazy. You have to take us where we tell you, first.'
He nodded, and lifted his suit and helmet from their hook.
'Leaving without me, brother?'
Subone, filthy and tattered, half-naked, stood in the entrance of the blockhouse. Mischa had the lance out, aimed at him, but he ignored it. 'How could you desert me, brother?'
Subtwo knew the regret was false: it overlaid triumph and amusement. He stared at his pseudosib for what seemed a long time. The similarities he had seen between them were gone, eradicated; had any remained, they would have been hidden by the filth and the uncombed hanging-down hair and the awful smile.
'You began the process,' Subtwo said. 'You pulled yourself away from me.'
'No,' Subone whispered. 'We are still the same.' He stepped toward Subtwo slowly, gazing quietly at him, his dark eyes deep, deep. 'The link is there. I feel what you feel.'
