Jo Clayton: Shadowkill

I draw the double spiral to help you on your way

Mind your feet

My friend

Look neither to the right nor to the left

Go quickly and delight in what lies before you

Hoz’zha-dayaka lies before you

Garden of the Blessed

May Shizhehoyu Father of all bless you

My friend

Go quickly and do not keep remembering your brothers

Or your sisters

Do not keep remembering me

Go your way

My friend

Kikun felt his spirit go out of him, Mask, his other self. Mask danced in circles with Lissorn, a bit of ash wreathed in smoke. Lissorn ran beside him, golden lion, mane rippling, tail rippling. At first they ran the labyrinth together, then Lissorn drew ahead.

Mask slowed and slowed again; when Lissorn was gone, Mask melted into air and was also gone.

Kikun curled up on the fire-warmed mat and slept.

Dyslaera 2: Struggling To Survive And Get Away

Azram wrinkled his nose. “Achcha, Fray. You stink.”

Kinefray kicked at the door, yelled after the departing techs, “Bottoss! Jogin z’rafej!” He kicked the door again, shambled over, and dropped onto the plank bed beside his cousin. “What’s happening?”

Azram looked round the cell, scratched a claw through the scabby moss growing on the stone. “Gunk keeps growing.”

“Haven’t had you out?”

“Torture by boredom, that’s what it is. What’d z’rafej do to you this time?”

“Samples of every liquid I’ve got in my body. I’ve got more holes in my hide than a sandsponge. Rest and stress.” He yawned, stretched. “Wonder how come z’rafej they keep us together? I managed to get a word with… oh, ssst!”

“What?”

“Those bottoss z’rafej, they shit ticks every place we go.”

Azram extruded his claws, clicked them against the chains holding the bed to the wall. “Yeh? So what’s the prob, Fray? Anything you going to tell me, z’rafej already saw.”

“Oh. Yeh. Well, I got a word with Tolmant, z’rafej had him in for some the same tests I was getting, so he said I was the first of us he’d seen since the Hole, so I was just wondering, how come z’rafej keeping us together?”

“Don’t know. Don’t care. Any idea where we are or who’s got us?”

“Na. They wear those masks and stuff and they make sure we don’t get a look outside. None of us.”

“You and Tolmant had y’self quite a chat.”

“Yah. Set-up, you think?”

“It’s all a set-up here.”

“Yah.” Kinefray jumped to his feet, began prowling restlessly about. “Back and forth, all the time the same way. Nothing. Just walls. Stupid stone walls. Then the lab. Tube lights, cages, stress booths, tables. Like what we do, only this time it’s for people, not animals.”

Azram scratched at the stubble on his chin. “Animals,” he said. “That’s it, then. Getting ready to put the collar on us. Got to know the beast before you can control it. Or use it. Or hunt it.”

Savant 1 entered a note into his data pad. “One forgets they’re intelligent, with all that hair and claws.”

Savant 2 stopped and looked over his shoulder at the two young Dyslaera. “Intelligent? It’s debatable.”

Savant 1 snorted. “Less so than yours, if that’s the way you interpret evidence.”

“Ooooh-oooh, who got out on the wrong side today? You want a cup of kaff?”

“Maybe later, after I get through all these damn reports. What do those techs think we are, memory machines?”

“The boy said it, I’ll give him that. Got to know the beast before you can control it.”

Prisoner 2: Ginny Bows His Head And Plots Revenge

Another room. Ripely elaborate. Designed to be disturbing.

It was a long thin rectangle with a door in one of the narrow ends and a semicircular dais at the other with five throne chairs on the platform.

A guard in gray led Ginbiryol Seyirshi in and ordered him to stand within a black circle inlaid in the white stone of the floor with a double spiral black on white inside it. The floor was translucent, lit from beneath. The only other illumination was a cone of white light shining onto that circled spiral from a single spotlamp dropped from the high dome.

Black basalt walls were carved over every inch in deep relief, nude bodies winding in and out across it, none of them larger than a man’s thumb-here an orgy, there a harrowing of hell, in another place skeletons in a dance of death or crawling like maggots over heap on heap of skulls.

Crawling.

As Ginny shuffled in beside his escort, he found the walls lumpy and unpleasant; as he got farther into the room and saw them more clearly, the tiny writhing figures made him feel itchy, as if his own skin were crawling and pustulous. It didn’t help that he himself was unclean. After he’d done what they wanted, the Omphalites had shoved him into a filthy fetid box and left him there for five days. Left him to contemplate his helplessness and their power.

Logic said he should be rewarded for compliance and encouraged to continue his cooperation. They were using arbitrariness and illogic as a method of breaking him to harness. It was stupid. If they did manage to reduce him to a puppet, they’d destroy what made him valuable to them. He had found it easier and more effective to select his tools to fit the task. He might manipulate their weaknesses and strengths to make them do what he wanted, but he didn’t try to alter them. The failure with the girl was no mark against this system. He understood that failure now. It came from a lack of preparation. He had seized on what seemed like the Lady’s gift without giving himself time to study the girl and get to know her. Ignorance had defeated him. He would not let that happen again.

His jumpsuit was creased and stained, though he had managed to keep from soiling it with his wastes. Lice and other small-lives crawled through his hair and in the crevices of his body-he was convinced they were deliberately introduced into his stinkbox to help erode his self-esteem. He ached all over from the unnatural positions he’d had to maintain, he was dizzy from hunger and shaking from weariness, but he had control over himself still and he meant to do whatever he must to stay alive.

He stood on the spiral and waited for one of the five to speak to him. His shoulders were rounded, his eyes watery and blinking in that blinding light; wisps of his thin brown hair stood up in spikes, a dull halo about his smudgy little face.

The five men sitting on the throne chairs were bulky in their heavy robes, their faces lost in the shadow of their cowls. Their black-gloved fingers were weighted with massive silver rings, one or two on each finger and two on the thumbs; the gems in those rings were the only touches of color in the whole room, shimmering red, green, and blue with every movement of the hands.

The man in the center leaned forward. “Ginbiryol Seyirshi,” he said, voice distorted and amplified. “I am the Gran Chom of Mimishay.”

Seyirshi said nothing, just hunched his shoulders a bit more and bowed his head.

“You will be pleased to hear that we wish you to continue your work. Within certain bounds, of course. Omphalos will choose your targets and control your sales. You will be given considerable creative freedom, but your budgets and methods must be approved by this council.” The Omphalite stopped, waited for a response.

Seyirshi stared at the floor. Rage shook him, but he took care not to show it. When he had control of his voice and veins, he said, “What are my options?”