CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
They are lost like slaves that sweat,
and in the skies of morning hung
The stair-ways of the tallest gods
when tyranny was young.
-Gilbert Keith Chesterton, 'Lepanto'
D-100, Suakin, Sudan
Adam could feel the armed guards on the other side of the curtain that hung in the coral-framed door. He couldn't see them, generally, nor even hear their bare feet most of the time. They almost never talked when on duty. But the fact of their presence, that he could feel even when no other indicator said so.
The room outside of which the guards kept watch was a cubicle of about three meters on a side. Once, when Suakin was still a busy port, it had had plastered walls. The plaster had long since fallen off, except for a few stubborn little traces here and there. It was also an interior cubicle, windowless. What light there was came from bare bulb, run by a generator Adam could hear whining in the distance. Warmth, when needed, came from a light blanket and the slave girl, Makeda. She and he lay under the blanket, on a foam rubber pad with a sheet. A few times a week the girl took the sheet out and washed it by hand, early in the morning.
Adam couldn't be sure how long it had been since his capture. At least fifty-seven days that I've counted. But he'd spent enough time sedated or-since arrival here-genuinely ill, that it might easily have been seventy-five or even eighty. Labaan, in any case, refused to tell him, and Makeda didn't know.
'It would just upset you, and for no good end,' his captor insisted. 'Trust me that you will not be going home any time soon. And if you ever are released, what you return to will not be what you think of as home.' Not after my chief finishes squeezing. 'So try to be happy-as much as you can-in the life you have here, or wherever else you may be brought.' The enemy tribesman had seemed to Adam to be almost regretful as he'd said the words.
Adam had to admit that, within certain limits, they'd tried to treat him decently. He credited Labaan for that. Certainly some of the latter's underlings would have been happy enough feeding Adam to the sharks that came in close to the round island's edge on every quadrant. He was well fed, even gaining a little weight back after his descent into some kind of the twitching awfuls a couple of weeks ago. They took him out for exercise twice a day, always being careful to point out a shark's fin, could one be seen. He followed along, in awkward short steps, imagining trying to outswim the fins while manacled.
While the sharks only came to most of the island's edge sometimes, in the east, where the opposite shore was closest, they were always there, their fins clustered thick enough to walk from one to the other. Adam could see land on the other side of the water, a bare thirty meters away. Almost, he felt he could jump such a short span. He knew he couldn't, of course, and with the manacles about his ankles even the less so. The sharks, in any event, were thick at that point of the compass. Perhaps they were fed there by the two guards that likewise seemed always on station there.
The chain they used on his ankles to keep him from running or swimming chafed. And it would ooze red blood if I were to try to swim through the sharks.
A doctor checked in on him every few days, the better to ensure his physical well being. The exclusive use they'd given him of Makeda went a long way to seeing to his other needs, physical and otherwise.
Purchased by Labaan's brother, Bahdoon, Makeda was an Ethiopian captured in a slave raid when she was a young child. The girl was about fifteen years old now, as near as she could guess, and virginity was but a distant memory. So, too, distant was the memory of her childhood religion, Christianity. Adam found it both moving and pitiful the way Makeda tried to hang on to barely remembered scraps of her faith. In looks she was much like Maryam, tall and slender, more fine featured than the African norm, and with the high forehead typical of Ethiopians, Eritreans, and some of Adam's own people.
For all her tender years, Makeda was deft in bed in a way Maryam had probably never even dreamed of being. Whether she took any genuine enjoyment of the act Adam had to doubt. The fine scars across her buttocks suggested she was performing only, like any trained animal. And somehow the passion of her throat never seemed to reach her eyes.
Outside of bed, however, and in the day, she was rather a different person, bright and charming and even funny. Nor was she so timid as to prevent her from laying into the guards fastening Adam's chains about him. 'Look at the boy! See the raw red meat you've made of his ankles! How do you think your chief will feel if he gets an infection and dies?'
Not that they'd listened to her, at least not until she'd enlisted the doctor's support. After that, while the chains hadn't been loosened much, they'd permitted her to wrap the ankles in soft, clean cloth beforehand. It helped, some. It also increased the amount of free chain by perhaps all of an inch. Adam still had no hope of running or swimming with it on.
And no hope of getting out of this room except with it on. And, since they only give me plastic utensils, no chance of tunneling through these coral blocks.
He'd tried that, of course. His little white plastic spoons had made no impression on the coral whatsoever. Not that the coral blocks, which were basically limestone, were all that hard. They were just harder than cheap plastic spoons and fingernails.
He rolled over and spooned himself to Makeda's warm back, one arm going over her and his hand seeking out a breast to cup. She wriggled backwards against him. Awake or asleep? he wondered.
'I'm awake,' the girl answered the unasked question. She might not have much cared for the act of bedding, however carefully trained she'd been to do it well. But she much preferred being the property of one to being in the common pool. If Adam wanted her, he could have her.
'You get out on your own, Makeda,' Adam whispered. 'Do boats ever come to the island?'
'The only one I've seen is the supply boat that comes from the south,' she whispered back. 'There are fishing boats, but they tie up along the rim of the bay, or sometimes at the causeway that connects the island with the mainland. The ones that tie up on the causeway do so past the guards. Are you planning an escape?' she asked, a tinge of hope creeping into her voice. 'Take me with you; free me, and I'll do anything in my power to help.'
'I would take you with me,' he answered back. 'As far as I'm concerned, you are free and the men holding you here do so illegally.'
'I am free, you say,' she whispered back. 'And if I told you I didn't want you to fuck me anymore?'
Adam shrugged. 'Then I wouldn't.'
'Really?'
'Yes, really. You are your own person, to choose for yourself. If I've hurt you or angered you so far, I am sorry.'
Makeda twisted her head half way around. 'And you'll take me with you, if we can escape.'
'Yes, of course.'
She twisted around inside his enveloping arm. Her own went around him, the left one pushing its way between body and foam mattress. 'In that case, pick a hole, any hole.'
***
Labaan walked softly, on bare calloused feet, across the smoothly polished blocks that made up the floor. The guards at Adam's door were smiling when they saw him. One lifted a finger to his lips, indicating Labaan should be quiet. The finger then pointed at the portal, through the blanket covering of which emanated sounds of youthful passion. Labaan, likewise, smiled.
Poor children, he thought, go on and make the best you can of the bad situation fate has dealt you. I was certain, he congratulated himself, that I picked the right slavegirl for you, Adam. If you two can find love together, perhaps that will make the fact of your status more tolerable to you both. And don't forget, boy, if you impregnate her and she becomes ‘the mother of a child' that will be a big step up in her status right there. Almost free, in fact. For whatever ‘freedom' might mean to a woman in our world.
