Jo Clayton - Fire in the Sky

“Leave the room.” The mesuch’s voice had a weary impatience as if he spoke to really stupid animals. “Leave the room. Leave the room now. Walk down the corridor till you reach the first open door, go through it. Leave the room. Leave the room now.”

Wet and shivering, they turned into the new room to find towels there, gray soft rags with an acrid herbal odor and voluminous white garments hanging from hooks shoulder high on the wall. Brion rubbed his hair dry enough so it stopped dripping into his eyes and sending driblets of water down his neck. He dropped the towel on the table where he’d found it, took down one of the garments. It was a loose sleeveless smock that reached his knees and left his legs and feet bare.

He’d barely gotten it on, was still tying on the cloth belt when the mesuch’s voice sounded, startling him as it seemed to come from the air. After a minute he remembered that was the way it was before.

Sorry. I forget. He said that to Temuen a while ago. When was that? A while ago.

I know. Takes some like that. Temuen said that to him a while ago. Temuen…

“Leave the room. Now. Leave the room. Turn to your left. Do not go back the way you came. Turn to your left. Keep walking until you are told to stop.”

Obediently, Brion shuffled down the corridor until the voice stopped him beside a door.

“Put your hand on the yellow oval.”

It was a pale spot, seemed more brown than yellow to Brion, but he wasn’t going to argue the point. When he set his hand on the spot, the door slid open.

“Step inside.”

He shied as the door slid shut behind him, cutting him off from the others.

“What is your name?”

“Brion.” His mouth quivered. He wanted to ask what was going to happen, but he couldn’t get his tongue around the words. His body was beginning to lose the smoke; his fingers twitched, and a tic pulsed beside one eye.

“Brion. This is your room. Do what I tell you and you will know how to use its functions.”

There were more yellow ovals scattered about. One brought a bunk bed sliding from the wall. One a toilet. One opened a hole in the wall he was told would have food for him at the proper time. The one that pleased him most opened a narrow door that led into a small square patio. There were four concrete benches set against the windowless walls that enclosed the place, a tree and a fountain in the middle, a hideous squat thing, but at least there was moving water in it. As if the builder that made this ugly heap had designed the bare minimum for folk who need green and sky to stay alive.

He shuffled to one of the benches and sat down. A moment later more doors opened and the others came out to join him, sitting silent, staring at the fountain and the single finger of water rising to dance with a grace that damned its surroundings.

Teдrall was the youngest of them, the most impatient. She pushed gray-streaked brown hair back from her square bony face. “Why? I thought we were dead. This is almost as bad as dead, but not quite. Why are we alive?”

Brion stared at her a moment, then his face crumpled and he started crying. She was there instead of Temuen. Temuen was dead.

Though there was no answer that first day to Teдrall’s question, the following days gave them ample reason. They were questioned, poked, prodded. Samples were taken of all their body fluids. They were laid out on tables, lights shone at them, they were drawn through long machines. Do this, do that, they were told. And they did whatever they were told, moving like cabhisha before the nipping and barking of a herd dog.

For the first tenday they were given no smoke to drink.

Sulantha died on the third day, falling against Brion as they walked about the bleak garden.

He wept for a moment, then forgot why as soon as her body was removed. He was flashing in and out of awareness. His body ate and slept and moved about, but most of the time he only knew that when one of the mesuch guards slapped his face to wake him from his trance of nonthinking. By the end of the tenday, even this barely reached him. He spent most of the time sleeping in the sun in the patio, curled up knees to chest, Camach and Teдrall nestled beside him.

On the eleventh day he woke in his cell and found a bowl with fragments of husk on the floor beside the cot, smoke rising in blue white twists. He dropped off the edge of the cot, sprawled on the floor, his face close to the bowl as he sucked in the smoke.

When he woke from the trance, he went outside and sat on his bench, watching the water dance. There were drawbacks to awareness. Grief and pain and anger churned in him. He thought about opening a vein. He also knew the mesuch would not permit him to die on his own time. He thought about Sulantha. Thought she was luckier than she knew. Her soul was free and would be rebodied in a quieter time. He didn’t think about Temuen, turned his mind away whenever the image of her flickered behind his eyes.

Teдrall came out. Her eyes were red and wild, her plain face made plainer by a scowl. “Do you know what they’re doing?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “We’re test animals. They’re using us to figure what the husk does. They’re using us to find a way of growing husk. Like Keteng breed cabhisha for their hair and their meat. Do you hear me, Brion? Do understand what they’re doing?”

Brion blinked at her, then he nodded. “Yes.”

“We’ve got to do something.” She waved away his warning. “Cha oy, I know they’re listening. What does that matter?” She turned as Camach came slouching out, his eyes seeing things in the otherwhere. “Cama, do you know what they’re doing? Listen to me, do you know?”

His body shuddered and his gaze shortened till he was looking at her. He said, “They told me to tell you, they’ll be coming for the three of us this afternoon. More tests.”

“Oh.”

MedTech First Muhaseb shifted in his pulochair and looked nervous as he waited for the Ykkuval’s attention.

Hunnar was leaning back, eyes closed, hand waving to the lively stomp that Ilaцrn coaxed from his harp.

Ilaцrn watched that hand and brought the stomp to an end when he saw the movement go ragged and lose even an approximation of the beat. He segued into pale background paste that Hunnar could ignore. He would have pushed it longer if he’d dared; he didn’t want to see Muhaseb’s pictures, his stomach still burned from the last time. He leaned his head against the wall and closed his eyes though he knew he would open them later when the picture show began.

Hunnar’s chair hummed as he swung to face the med-tech. “You said you had a report.”

“Yes, O Ykkuval. You asked us to keep you informed on progress as we made it.”

“And?”

“Ah mmm, this phase was rather more mmm incomplete than we liked, however, we do have sufficient date to make the next phase more successful.”

“Incomplete?”

“Ah mmm, unfortunately the subjects had to be dispatched before the series was complete. We have mmmm taken them apart and examined the pieces…” His mouth twitched into a sour smile. “Mmmm, boiling jam from spoiled fruit as it were. Would you prefer to examine the conclusions first or do you wish to see the process develop?”

“Skip the beginning. I want to know why you wasted the subjects I had my guards collect for you.”

“Mmmm. Yes. I must repeat, O Ykkuval, our experience in this sort of exploration is minimal at best. We are trained to deal with illnesses and injuries among the work force and must proceed from the most general of principles in this study. If you will watch the screen. Scenes from the day in question. We had deprived them of the smoke for a tenday and observed a growing disconnect from reality until sometimes they failed to respond even to the most intense of pain stimuli. Examination of body fluids and cells taken from various organs indicate what seems to be mmmm a nearly complete integration of the drug with the cell structure so that deprivation leads to a shutting down of most functions. The oldest of the subjects, a female, suffered a massive disruption of the brain on the third day and died. As I said, the others were shutting down more completely with each day that passed and would probably have followed the woman into death if we had continued the deprivation for a second tenday. While testing to destruction would be of some value, it was determined to begin a new phase, if you will observe the screen, O Ykkuval.”