Tain awoke to faint dawnlight through the window. It seemed to her she'd dreamed continuously, dreams in part violent but not nightmarish. She couldn't remember their content. Crablike, she worked her way across the floor to the pail, after some difficulty relieved herself, then refastened her field pants and crept back to her mattress to sink immediately again into dream-filled sleep. When next she awoke, it was daylight, and someone was unlocking her door. As it opened, she raised her head to look.
A hard-faced man peered in at her, like the others bushy browed, his close-shaved jaw and cheeks blue against brown. He snapped an order over his shoulder in a voice as sharp as a laser knife, as hard as steel. Another man she hadn't seen before scuttled in to remove her ankle irons; her day jailor, apparently. When he'd put the irons in a pocket, he reached down, grabbed her wrist, and jerked her roughly to her feet, only to be lashed by the tongue behind him. Hand flinching away from her, he yelped his reply, then motioned her to the door.
She went, confused but not just now feeling threatened, feeling much better in fact than she would have imagined when she'd been brought there. The dreams had helped, she thought. She couldn't remember what they were, but she was sure they'd helped. She stepped outside into early-morning chill, though the sun was up. The hard-faced officer's uniform was tailored, its creases as sharp as his voice. He had an aide with him, his uniform less elegant but also sharply pressed. Low on both dark foreheads was a small laser tattoo, a tiny star artistic and precise, distinct by daylight even on their dark skins.
The officer spoke to her in Standard that was accented but easily understood, his voice brusque but not harsh. "I am here to take you to General Saadhrambacoora. You will there have an opportunity to bathe and eat." He examined her not quite insolently, his eyes taking in her long legs. "You will also inform the general if you were forced to copulate with anyone here."
She nodded, then shivered, this time from cold, and he turned to the man who'd freed her feet, his voice once more a whiplash. Again the man yelped a reply, and left at a run.
The officer led off toward a small floater parked in a nearby opening, surrounded by shelter tents that, from their size and appearance, seemed to be for officers. The aide steered her by an arm, firmly but not roughly. Before they reached the aircraft, the jailor had caught them with a jacket, which the aide draped over Tain's shoulders.
She found herself saying "thank you," and wondered why. The aide helped her into the staff floater, seated her, and moments later the craft took off.
When the radio message ended, Saadhrambacoora sat back in his chair with a grunt of relief. The prisoner was alive and seemingly sound, even though a woman. Or perhaps because she was a woman. He turned to a lieutenant who stood white-faced by the door.
"You realize, I trust, that if anything had happened to her, if she'd been killed or rescued, I'd have broken you to private, had you flogged, and assigned you to a penal platoon."
The general's words had been delivered quietly, coldly. The young officer felt faint. Penal platoons were used in the most dangerous situations, their men to be shot on the spot for any failure, or even slowness, to obey orders.
"As it is," Saadhrambacoora went on, "I am transferring you to the 1st Rifle Battalion for assignment as a platoon leader. Perhaps you will learn something about good sense there. If you don't, one of those little boys may cut your throat. Tell Sergeant Major Davingtor to prepare the transfer form. I will read and sign it."
He watched the man leave the room. Idiot, he thought after him, and turned to his computer with its accumulation of messages and reports. After all the emphasis I put on obtaining a prisoner—with all the emphasis the commodore has put on it—to leave her overnight in the field where she'd be subject to murder, even conceivably to rescue . . . And all on the idiotic grounds that my sleep should not be disturbed!
He shook his head. Families who raised sons to such uselessness, then used their influence to get them staff positions, were no longer noble, and should be stripped of title and land. But in this day and age . . .
He focused his attention on the screen, on the work awaiting him. It would be a few minutes before she arrived; then allow an hour for her to bathe and eat. A prisoner of such rarity and value, of such interest to the commodore, must be delivered in good physical and mental condition—as good as possible. But he had no doubt at all that Major Thoglakaveera was handling things properly.
He'd keep his own questioning brief, and find out what if any punishments to battalion personnel were called for. And what rewards were appropriate; she was, after all, alive and ambulatory.
Lotta sat in the jungle with her legs folded in a full lotus; she'd been like that for hours.
She'd awakened from sleep abruptly, the night before, aware that something had happened to Tain, and had found and melded with her without leaving the tent. Then, when Tain had gone to sleep, Lotta had withdrawn and gone back to sleep too. She had to be asleep herself to help someone dream; so far as she knew, there was no other way of doing it. The next time she woke up, she remembered little about the dreams, any more than if they'd been hers. She only knew she'd been there, guiding.
Briefly she'd melded with Tain again, then with Saadhrambacoora. Now she was with Tain once more, accompanying her outward 55,000 miles.
As reflected by his three-syllable surname, Bavi Ralankoor's family were gentry, not aristocrats. An exceptional record in secondary school had gotten him into a professional college. Where, given the conservatism of some professors and academic administrators, he'd had to be very good to pass, much better than if he'd been noble. And his opportunities for advancement in the fleet had ended at lieutenant commander. He was proud of what he'd accomplished though, and seldom troubled by the limits which birth had laid on him.
Still it made him a bit nervous to have the commodore watch while he worked, particularly with this prisoner, from whom much was hoped for. Strapped to the interrogation seat, she'd said nothing at all out loud, though she'd given him some interesting monitor reads. He could always, of course, apply a drug. And while neither responses nor readings were reliable under the drugs, they could provide valuable leads for further questioning, and in the long run rather exact information. To get explicit answers, pain or the threat of pain, with punishment for lying and rewards for the truth, were often quicker. Or so the manual said. But an occasional subject became tenaciously recalcitrant under such treatment. While a few were said to show an impressive ability to lose consciousness under pain or even the threat of it, a sort of escape mechanism.
He'd probably end up using a drug on her, he decided, but there were a few more questions he wanted to ask first.
He turned to the commodore. "Sir, I'd like to take her to the conference room and question her about the apparatus there."
The commodore nodded without speaking, his broad face expressionless, and they all left together, a mixed procession. Ralankoor led, his two assistants wheeling the interrogation chair with the prisoner still strapped into it, the two marine guards walking alongside. The commodore, his aide and orderly brought up the rear. An elevator took them two levels up.
When Tain saw the teleport, the monitor betrayed her reaction. Ralankoor turned to Tarimenloku. "She's afraid of it," he said, then looking at her again, keyed on the translator and pointed. "Are you afraid of that?" he asked; the terminal spoke the question in Standard, in a decent facsimile of Ralankoor's own voice.
Again she said nothing, but the monitor screen did.
"Do you know what it is?" he asked.
She shook her head, her first voluntary response.
"My instruments tell me you do," he said, and the reading of fear became stronger.
Fear. Of what, specifically? Deviating from standard interrogation procedure, Ralankoor took a shortcut, a shot in the dark. If it didn't work, no harm would be done; if it did, it could save considerable time. "If you do not tell me everything we want to know," he said drily, "I will have you wheeled onto it, and turn it on."
Again the monitor responded strongly. Tain turned to the man and for the first time answered him, her words issuing from the terminal in Klestronik. "You're playing with me," she said. "You know if you put me on it, you'll learn everything anyway."
He looked thoughtfully at her, then at the teleport. "Of course we will. But it is painful. I give you an opportunity to tell us without it."
His attention was on her face now, instead of on his instruments. Her expression showed distrust. "Painful?" she said. "Why do you play with me like that? What can you gain from it? The truth machine is not painful."
"Commander," Tarimenloku interrupted, and turning to look at him, Ralankoor put the translator on hold. "Can you operate it?" the commodore asked.
"I have read the labels—those that are complete words: Power. Activate. That's all."
"Put her on it!"
"Yes sir." Ralankoor felt vaguely ill at ease, and thought of trying it on a crewman first. But the commodore did not tolerate having his orders questioned. He eyed the mysterious "truth machine"; the cumbersome interrogation chair was clearly too wide for the platform, so after activating the translator again, he took a small, palm-sized instrument from his belt and held it in front of her.
"Do you know what this is?" he asked.
She shook her head.
"It is a neural whip." He thumbed the setting, pointed it at her, and squeezed the trigger. She yelled, recoiling at the pain. "And now," he said, "you know what a neural whip is. At its lowest setting. It can be much worse. My assistants are going to release you and place you on the truth machine. If you do not cooperate, I will show you what a high setting is like, and then we will tie you and you will go on the truth machine anyway."
He released her restraints himself, then his men helped her to her feet and walked her to the apparatus, gripping her arms. She stepped onto the platform, holding back a bit, her face ashen. At the control panel, Ralankoor pressed power. A small red light came on. He wasn't sure what it meant; sometimes apparatus required time to reach full operational status, and often this was indicated by a light coming on, or changing color. After some seconds the red light went off and a green light came on. He looked at the prisoner; she was staring at it, trembling visibly. He pressed the activate switch, and the red light began to flash. She started to moan, to shake more strongly. Admirable! Clearly she had a very strong ethic not to tell what she knew.
"She is holding back, sir," said one of his assistants. "She doesn't want to go."
"Force her!"
They pushed, and suddenly, taking them by surprise, she lunged forward into the gate.
And went berserk, bounding from the platform with a wild coarse howl, crashed blindly into the commodore's aide, sending the man sprawling, then charged into the conference table, rebounded, still howling, staggered, lunged, and fell over a chair onto the deck, where she lay thrashing and kicking. Ralankoor, recovering partly from his shock, ordered the security detail to hold her there, then strode to the comm to call the chief medical officer.
Holding her wasn't easy; his assistants had to help the two marines. Tense, avoiding the commodore's eyes, Ralankoor could only wait helplessly for the doctor to get there. The howling had changed to shrieks, which were worse. The prisoner's body arched and writhed, her limbs jerking in the grasp of the men who held her; they had all they could do to control them. The reek of her made Ralankoor ill.
It occurred to him to shut the apparatus off, but when he turned to the control panel, its lights were dark. He pressed the switch anyway, his hand shaking a bit. In the three minutes it took the chief medical officer to arrive, the prisoner's violence hardly slackened. The CMO administered a sedative, and when the prisoner had gone slack, looked at Ralankoor as if to ask what in Kargh's name he'd done to her.
Then the commodore stalked out without a word, followed by his shaken aide. Ralankoor wondered what this would mean to his career.
An hour later, in the clinic, the CMO stood observing the prisoner's vital signs on his monitor panel. She would probably survive, he decided; he'd been uncertain for a while. He wasn't at all sure what she'd be like when she regained consciousness though.
It was evening. The sides of Romlar's command tent were rolled down, and a field lamp was on low, lighting it dimly.
For Lotta it had been a long day, a long night and day, and she'd given her report slumped in a canvas folding chair. "Apparently something went wrong with the teleport after they used it," she said. "Even its power tap seems to be dead."
Romlar nodded. "You mentioned the flashing red light. That's a warning—of what I can't even guess. Maybe not to use it without a program cube; something like that."
She nodded. "I disconnected from her when she decided to do it; being melded when she looped through was not something I wanted to experience. Then I melded with the intelligence officer. Didn't think about it, just did it. I'd never realized I could switch like that without coming back to my body between times."
She stood up and rotated her shoulders. "After they sedated her, I melded with the commodore for a while. He's scared to death of the teleport now, though he'd never admit it, even to himself. He's glad it's out of order—had it hauled to a storage compartment where they keep a lot of broken down components of this and that. Told his chief engineer not to touch it, that SUMBAA would take care of it. SUMBAA's a computer on Klestron; apparently some kind of master computer."
Her eyes focused on Romlar again. "Next I melded with the doctor. He thinks she's going to come through it. Then I melded with her, and I think he's right. Probably it's partly having recovered from it once before, and partly the work I did with her afterward, the sessions we had."
Lotta got up. "I'm going to go check on her again. Then I'm going to catch some sleep."
Romlar got up too. "Sounds good. Give me another report in the morning."
In the clinic on board HRS Blessed Flenyaagor, Tain Faronya awoke from nearly eighteen hours of unconsciousness. Awoke stiff, sore, and hungry, but surprisingly cheerful, as if something good had happened. She didn't remember that she was Tain Faronya, or where she was or how she'd gotten there. Wasn't even aware that anything was missing. It was almost as if she were a clean slate. Even quite a bit of her vocabulary was gone, although she hadn't missed it.
Lotta stayed in her mind for a time. Then, with a sense of loss, she withdrew and went to bed.