again. “What’s your hurry? What are you trying to do?”
“Escape, Nathan. I don’t like being a prisoner. I’ve developed a real dislike for anything that holds me against my will.” And there was another reason. She had to be free when she saw Diut again. He had clearly demanded that much of her. He would want to move fairly quickly to free the Tehkohn captives and she was certain that he would want to see her before he freed them. But since she could not tell Nathan that, he would just have to think that she was being stubborn. “Do you want to try hypnotizing me?” she asked.
He swallowed the last of his tea and glared at her. Finally he shrugged. “I might as well. And we’d better try now before you’re too far gone.”
He tried—tried hard—and Alanna tried. Perhaps Alanna tried too hard. Perhaps she was simply afraid to let him have what appeared to be open access to her thoughts. She had too much to hide. He explained carefully that she would not be giving over control of herself, that she could not be influenced to do or say anything against her will. She tried to accept this, but some part of her did not believe him. She could not relax. She could not accept his suggestions.
“You will feel confident of your ability to live without the meklah,” he told her over and over after going through the motions of putting her under. “You will feel no need of the drug.”
And she thought, Yes I will.
“You will be relaxed and without pain.”
No I won’t.
And so on. The failure was hers rather than Nathan’s. But by the time the session was finished, she was too uncomfortable to care. She got up without a word and went to her room. Already she felt tired and hounded by the meklah products she could see and smell around her. She was not much more than normally hungry, but her memory and imagination made it seem worse. Nathan’s suggestions had caused her to remember just how bad her first withdrawal had been. She considered the irony bitterly. She was probably the only person in the colony whose combination of perversity and past experience made the technique she had suggested more a hindrance than a help.
Time crawled by. She found herself thinking of Diut, feeling glad that he could not see her as she was now, as she would be shortly. When he saw her again, the ordeal would be over and he would be able to speak more than his few illegal words to her. She would be clean. Not that her situation was directly comparable to that of a Tehkohn captured by the Garkohn, and not that Diut was subject to every rule that bound other Tehkohn. He could hardly have spoken more with her before Jules anyway. But still, addiction was a shameful stigma in his culture. An addict who did not withdraw as quickly as possible could not expect to remain in favor with him. She was surprised to realize how important that had become to her—that she keep his favor. She had expected him to suffer in comparison with Missionary men—men of more human appearance. He had not. She could no longer see him as the monster he had once appeared to be.
He would return for her as well as for the Tehkohn captives. She was certain of that. And he would kill Natahk both because Natahk was too dangerous to be left alive, and for another more personal reason. As she withdrew, she would think of Natahk dying as Tien had died. Natahk, who was the reason for her past suffering and for the suffering she faced now. She would think of it while she could think.
After a while her awareness of time grew distorted. She seemed to move too quickly, or in slow motion. She lay down on her bed and before she realized it, she had fallen into a meklah dream. A bad dream this time. The nightmare of her first withdrawal.
She could feel the cold sand beneath her and hear the convulsive gagging of those Missionaries who had tried to eat the meklah-free mountain food that the Tehkohn had left them.
There were Garkohn huddled silently around the mound of their yellowed dead, waiting for their own deaths. They maintained what dignity they could until their senses left them. Then they groveled unknowingly with the Missionaries in the filth on the floor.
Alanna remembered searching for the door, finding it too late. Remembered the two Tehkohn who lifted her like a sack of grain and threw her back into the cleansing room. Remembered hatred. Remembered landing on someone who groaned and tried feebly to crawl away. Remembered the pain of awakening once and finding her head pillowed on a yellowed Garkohn corpse. Remembered crawling away sickened, dragging herself to a Missionary man and finding him equally dead. Remembered terror and fury that she should be abandoned in such a place—she who was not dead.
The entire experience was there, replayed in seconds, or in hours. Alanna did not know which, but it held her, gripped her. It threatened to replay again and Alanna strained away from it. The present flickered before her, stable for a moment. Her bed, her room, shadowy figures nearby.
Then heavy gluey sleep sucked her away from them. Sleep held her tarlike, though she tried to waken. She could not open her eyes. She struggled, not knowing whether her struggle was physical or mental. She fought and seemed to hear animal sounds around her. Her own voice gibbering.
She awoke sweating and vomiting and choking. Her body heaved convulsively again and again and again and there were moments when she was aware of being covered with her own filth.
And there was the pain. The agony that would not stop. As though her body, having been denied the meklah, had somehow begun to consume itself.
She trembled, convulsed, trembled…
She was aware briefly of other people with her, staring at her. She felt her breath ragged, knife-edged against a throat already raw from screaming. Her voice was a mere husk of itself, her tongue dry, thick, choking. Remembered anger exploded anew within her at the one responsible for her ordeal. Natahk. The one who would pay. She could hear her own voice, a harsh whisper, cursing.
Over and over again, waves of pain, convulsions, pain…
Peace.
Someone was wiping her face with a damp cloth. She opened her eyes—was surprised to find that she could open them—and saw that it was Neila. Disoriented, she tried to think. Was it only a few moments ago that she had left her foster mother in the other room?
“How long…?” She could only mouth the words; her voice was gone. But Neila understood.
“Four days.”
