for a while. At last she heard chanting. Fleeing footsteps passed below. Then the wall of Incorruptibles appeared again. They were driving someone before them with improvised whips made from their belts. Thorn peered over the eaves to see more clearly and recognized their victim—Ginko, the heshe from the Garden of Delights, completely naked, both breasts and genitals exposed, with a rope around hisher neck. The whips had cut into the delicate paisley of Ginko’s skin, exposing slashes of red underneath.
At a spot beneath Thorn’s perch, Ginko stumbled and fell. A mass of Incorruptibles gathered round. Two of them pulled Ginko’s legs apart, and a third made a jerking motion with a knife. A womanlike scream made Thorn grip the edge of her rooftop, wanting to look away. They tossed the rope over a signpost and hoisted Ginko up by the neck, choking and clawing at the noose. The body still quivered as the army marched past. When they were gone, the silence was so complete Thorn could hear the patter of blood into a pool on the pavement under the body.
On hands and knees she backed away from the edge of the roof and climbed into her bedroom. It was already stripped; everything she valued or needed was in her backpack, ready to go. She threw on some clothes and went down the stairs.
Maya, dressed in a robe, stopped her halfway. She looked scattered and panicky. “Thorn, we’ve got to leave,” she said.
“Right now?”
“Yes. He doesn’t want us here anymore. He’s acting as if we’re some sort of danger to him.”
“Where are we going?”
“I don’t know. Some other planet. Some place without men.” She started to cry.
“Go get dressed,” Thorn told her. “I’ll bring some food.” Over her shoulder she added, “Pack some clothes and money.”
With her backpack in hand, Thorn raced down to the kitchen.
She was just getting out the dolly for the ice owl’s refrigerator when Maya came down.
“You’re not taking that, are you?” Maya said.
“Yes, I am.” Thorn knelt to shift the refrigerator out from under the table, and only then noticed it wasn’t running. Quickly, she checked the temperature gauge. It was in the red zone, far too high. With an anguished exclamation, she punched in the lock code and opened the top. Not a breath of cool air escaped. The ice pack on top was gurgling and liquid. She lifted it to see what was underneath.
The owl was no longer nested snugly in ice. It had shifted, tried to open its wings. There were scratches on the insulation where it had tried to peck and claw its way out. Now it lay limp, its head thrown back. Thorn sank to her knees, griefstruck before the evidence of its terrifying last minutes—revived to life only to find itself trapped in a locked chest. Even in that stifling dark, it had longed for life so much it had fought to free itself. Thorn’s breath came hard and her heart labored, as if she were reliving the ice owl’s death.
“Hurry up, Thorn,” Maya said. “We’ve got to go.”
Then she saw what had happened. The refrigerator cord lay on the floor, no longer attached to the wall outlet. She held it up as if it were a murder weapon. “It’s unplugged,” she said.
“Oh, that’s right,” Maya said, distracted. “I had to plug in the curling iron. I must have forgotten.”
Rage rose inside Thorn like a huge bubble of compressed air. “You
“I’m sorry, Thorn. I didn’t know it was important.”
“I
“I said I was sorry. What do you want me to do?”
Maya would never change. She would always be like this, careless and irresponsible, unable to face consequences. Tears of fury came to Thorn’s eyes. She dashed them away with her hand. “You’re useless,” she said, climbing to her feet and picking up her pack. “You can’t be trusted to take care of anything. I’m done with you. Don’t bother to follow me.”
Out in the street, she turned in the direction she never went, to avoid having to pass what was hanging in the street. Down a narrow alley she sprinted, past piles of stinking refuse alive with roaches, till she came to a narrow side street that doglegged into the park. On the edge of the open space she paused under a portico to scan for danger; seeing none, she dashed across, past the old men’s chess tables, past the bench where she had met Magister Pregaldin, to the entrance of Weezer Alley.
Signs of the Incorruptibles’ passage were everywhere. Broken glass crunched underfoot and the contents of the shops were trampled under red dirt shoeprints. When Thorn reached the Garden of Delights, the entire street looked different, for the building had been demolished. Only a monstrous pile of rubble remained, with iron girders and ribs sticking up like broken bones. A few people climbed over the ruin, looking for survivors.
The other side of the street was still standing, but Magister Pregaldin’s door had been ripped from its hinges and tossed aside. Thorn dashed up the familiar stairs. The apartment looked as if it had been looted—stripped bare, not a thing of value left. She walked through the empty rooms, dreading what she might find, and finding nothing. Out on the street again, she saw a man who had often winked at her when she passed by to her lessons. “Do you know what happened to Magister Pregaldin?” she asked. “Did he get away?”
“Who?” the man said.
“Magister Pregaldin. The man who lived here.”
“Oh, the old Vind. No, I don’t know where he is.”
So he had abandoned her as well. In all the world, there was no one trustworthy. For a moment she had a dark wish that she had exposed his secret. Then she realized she was just thinking of revenge.
Hoisting her pack to her shoulder, she set out for the waystation. She was alone now, only herself to trust.
There was a crowd in the street outside the waystation. Everyone seemed to have decided to leave the planet at once, some of them with huge piles of baggage and children. Thorn pushed her way in toward the ticket station to find out what was going on. They were still selling tickets, she saw with relief; the crowd was people waiting for their turn in the translation chamber. Checking to make sure she had her copy of Maya’s credit stick, she joined the ticket line. She was back among her own kind, the rootless, migrant elite.
Where was she going? She scanned the list of destinations. She had been born on Capella Two, but had heard it was a harshly competitive place, so she decided against it. Ben was just an ice-ball world, Gammadis was too far away. It was both thrilling and frightening to have control over where she went and what she did. She was still torn by indecision when she heard someone calling, “Thorn!”
Clarity was pushing through the crowd toward her. “I’m so glad we found you,” she said when she drew close. “Maya was here a little while ago, looking for you.”
“Where is she now?” Thorn asked, scanning the crowd.
“She left again.”
“Good,” Thorn said.
“Thorn, she was frantic. She was afraid you’d get separated.”
“We
Bick had come up, carrying their ticket cards. Thorn caught her hand to look at the tickets. “Alananovis,” she read aloud, then looked up to find it on the directory. It was only eighteen light-years distant. “Can I come with you?”
“Not without Maya,” Clarity said.
“Okay, then I’ll go somewhere else.”
Clarity put a hand on her arm. “Thorn, you can’t just go off without Maya.”
“Yes, I can. I’m old enough to be on my own. I’m sick of her, and I’m sick of her boyfriends. I want control of my life.” Besides, Maya had killed the ice owl; Maya ought to suffer. It was only justice.
She had reached the head of the line. Her eye caught a name on the list, and she made a snap decision. When the ticket seller said “Where to?” she answered, “Gmintagad.” She would go to see where Jemma Diwali had lived—and died.
The translation chamber on Gmintagad was like all the others she had seen over the years: sterile and anonymous. A technician led her into a waiting room till her luggage came through by the low-resolution beam. She sat feeling cross and tired, as she always did after having her molecules reassembled out of new atoms. When at
