Fire in the Sky

2

Ilaцrn closed his eyes so he wouldn’t see the faces of the lab techs, but he couldn’t close his ears because he had to keep playing that chertkum noise that Hunnar considered music. He couldn’t stop hearing them talk about the plundering of his world, his people, because the Keteng were as much his people as the Fior.

“… the organics involved are extremely complex. We don’t have the facilities for a full investigation. Nor, I’m sorry to say, the expertise. It’s much more Yarak’s sort of thing. Would you know if…”

Hunnar grunted. “Classified.”

“Ah. Ta’ma. We’ve put the Drudges you sent us through a number of tests. If you will follow on the screen. Yes. This pair we put through a saturation test. We kept them for a week in a sealed chamber. There. You see the haze? They were hm in smoke you might say for a full week at a level just below suffocation. Then they were strangled and autopsied. We have examined cell structure insofar as we were able, we are somewhat limited since there has been little need for more sophisticated instrumentation hm none beyond that necessary to maintain the health of hm our techs. If the Ykkuval could hm… No? I will go on.

“The female Drudge was pregnant. It is one of the reasons she was chosen. We examined the fetus and are reasonably certain the smoke is not teratogenic. As to the adults, there seems to be little effect on the structure of the brain and none of the other organs show any stress. However, I must remind you that this is a very short-term study and effects could be too subtle for us to notice. We are arranging a long-term study with smaller doses, with your permission five years would be a suitable length for this project.”

“Leave your proposal on my desk, I will consider it later.” His claws click-clacked on the wood. “In the meantime, I’ll have Memur send his men out to collect a sampling of the local Cousins addicted to the stuff. You can put them through your grinder. Surely at least some of what you learn will have application to Chave. We are, after all, a branch of the Cousins, however much some of us like to forget it.”

“A branch that has diverged rather significantly from the others, by your leave, Ykkuval. Nonetheless we will appreciate the addition to our knowledge. If you will look at the central bank of four screens, you will see the results of our second study. We selected a second pair of Drudges, one male, one female to study the pleasure factor, to determine what happens to the mind when one breathes that smoke. We made this a separate experiment because the probe alters conformation when employed as extensively as we intended to use it this time. We wanted to be sure the physical stats were not corrupt.”

Ilaцrn’s eyes came open when he heard the word probe. Despite his misgivings he stared at the screens, his fingers plucking absently at the strings, falling into an old exercise, one he’d played so often when he was a boy he knew the trick of it without needing his mind at all. There was an ache in his loins that distressed him; it made him feel soiled, his soul compromised beyond redemption. He’d been dreaming recently about the probe sessions with Hunnar and more than once come half-awake to plot how he could force another probing without betraying half the Bйluchar left on Melitoлh. He wanted those orgasms again, that total plundering of self, wanted them with a passion greater even than any he’d shared with his sioll. And despised himself for all of that.

He fixed his eyes on the screens. If he couldn’t participate, at least he could watch.

“You will find, O Ykkuval, that the visuals are both interesting and disturbing. We have censored nothing, but naturally the flakes will be put in your hands for disposal as soon as this presentation is complete. No copies have been made. We begin with the female subject.”

Two of the screens expanded to fill the wallspace. The Drudge was stretched on an examining table, wide straps about her arms and legs, another crossing over where her waist would have been if she’d had much of one. She had broad shoulders and hips, a thick layer of fat between muscles and skin hiding her bone structure and making her look like an ugly rag doll. A lab tech in white with a breathing mask that obscured most of his face came into view carrying the probe crown. He set it on the bed, gave the woman’s shaved head a hard polish with a cream he took from a small jar. When he was satisfied, he placed the crown on her head, taped it down and began a series of tests.

Sensing Hunnar’s impatience, Tech First Muhaseb said hastily, “We left all that in place on the flake so that you would see that it was done properly. Indeed we have done no editing at all of what follows. What the probe finds will appear in the second screen.”

Thick yellowish smoke boils up from a bowl set on a tripod beside the head of the female Drudge. The heavy features of her face begin to twitch. She fights against the straps, turns her head restlessly from side to side for several minutes, as if she were a riding beast trying to shake off a pesty persistent fly. After a few minutes of this her movements grow more violent. A masked attendant appears in the image, draws up a broad strap, passes it over the lower part of the woman’s face, draws it tight and locks it down, then retreats from view. The woman struggles a moment more, then shudders and lies still. Her eyes open but her inner lids stay deployed and her eyes glisten in the rage sign of both sexes of the Chandavasi. Her body jerks and twitches for several minutes, then the smoke seems to get to her at last and she lies quiet for a few moments, her hands open and close several times, then curl into fists. Her outer lids droop lower until her eyes are glistening slits. After a moment she begins to pant, her legs move under the strap, her knees try to come up, to spread… nothing nothing nothing nothing Murky colors swirl in slow turgid whorls, coil along the edges of the screen, eddies of color about a pool of ink. The blackness is still, then lights begin flashing erratically, brilliant, near blinding light, like a strobe at a light show. A shape slowly takes form in the broken blackness, a misshapen woman, tiny then swelling until the image fills the frame and is thrusting against the edges as if by sheer power of rage and will it would burst free. This image shrivels suddenly into a small ancient baby with a huge distorted head and limbs atrophied until they are little more than boneless tentacles. This happens at the exact moment when the strap tightens across her mouth and chin. The ancient infant begins to melt as if it were cast from wax and left beside a fire. The runny wax begins to coil into a whirlpool, bits of the wizened form still recognizable, an eye slides past, a horribly distorted mouth, an ear, a breast like an empty sack with a huge brown nipple. The shapes melt into the mud-colored whorl and for a brief while the frame holds only ugly others and dirty reds. Then another form begins to…

The images in the dream screen grew murky, muddled, a birthing scene with the cord wrapped about the bloody infant’s neck, strangling it, shifting to increasingly violent sexual imagery, violence the woman directed at herself and at the males in her fantasies, all of them techs and admins, one of them a distorted but clearly recognizable version of Hunnar. The sounds of breathing in the Ykkuval’s conference room quickened, went raspy. Ilaцrn kept his eyes on the screen, he didn’t want to look away, he didn’t want to see their faces, knowing they would be echoes of his own.

Both screens went suddenly dark.

Tech First Muhaseb cleared his throat. “At that point the subject began having um aaa physical difficulties. It was deemed appropriate to bring this portion of the study to a close for the moment. She was taken from the straps, her um convulsions dealt with, then she was placed in an observation cell. We have been following her recovery, testing her mental state such as it is. So far there seems to be no physical damage from the smoke session, though the effect on her psyche is less easy to quantify since we won’t put the probe on her again until she returns to her baseline stats.”

He coughed, fiddled with the sensor board a moment, shrunk the blank screens, and brought up the other two. “The male Drudge had an equally um aaah disturbing but quite different reaction. There is a um point to be stressed here. It is quite likely that the history and personality of the subject interact to determine the content of the fantasies.”

The left screen held the image of the same observation theater as before. The male Drudge was an anatomical study, each muscle group clearly delineated, the heavy bones in his face prominent in the typical Drudge mask. His hands and feet were thick with rough dead skin as if he’d glued cork pads to them. The tech went through the process as before, oiling and polishing the knobby head, settling the crown in place, taping it down. He pulled his breather mask into place, emptied a specimen pac of shredded husk into the brazier by the Drudge’s head and set the fibrous pile on fire. Then he stepped back, moving out of view.

The Drudge lies still, only the twitching of his eyelids and the slow rise and fall of his chest to show he was alive. He doesn’t try testing the strength of the straps, though his eyes keep sliding round to the no longer visible tech. The smoke from the brazier thickens over him, he is holding his breath, but used air explodes out of him and he gulps in a lungful of the smoke. His mouth stretches wide, he is screaming, though there is no sound recorded on this flake, unlike that of the woman. His face is suffused with blood, his chest is vibrating as he pants faster and faster as panic seizes hold of him. Like the woman he turns his head from side to side, the movements increasingly violent, then he jerks his head loose from the strap, lifts it as high as he can and slams it down on the headrest. As he lifts it again, the tech rushes into the viewfield, jerks the strap taut. The subject tries to scream but cannot. His body surges against the straps, then collapses in on itself. The smoke is very thick now, swirling about the subject whose breathing has steadied; he is limp, pacified, deep in the spell of the drug… nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing a stirring in the greenish black ground as if something is trying to take shape nothing nothing the screen goes white, branching black patterns race from edge to edge, smaller and smaller patterns until the whole screen is black. White patterns start in the upper left corner and race outward, downward until the white has overlaid the black. The screen pulses black to white, again, again, eye-straining flashes timed to the pants of the subject. Then there is an explosion of harsh primary colors, jags of red stabbing into splotches of green, pinwheels of yellow with razor-edged arms slashing across both… then the colors and forms vanish or rather mutate into a pastoral scene with an extremely idealized but recognizable male, the subject, striding across the grass, sword in hand shining copper and silver in the sunlight. He is walking toward a woman who is also idealized, but recognizable…

“That…” Hunnar watched a moment longer. “He dares… I’m right, isn’t that the Bashkan’s youngest daughter?”

“Ah um yes, I’m afraid it is. And it gets much worse as the fantasy progresses. There are references to you also, O Ykkuval. Um aaa, you will definitely not appreciate the subject’s thoughts about you. They are um aaa highly subversive. Of course there isn’t the sliver of a chance he would ever act on such dreams. Remember, this is a Drudge.”

“A dead Drudge.” He glanced at the screen, scowled as he watched the image bowing before the woman, laying his sword at her feet, moving to unsheath a sword of another sort while she was unfolding like a flower before him. “Stop that now. I don’t care to see more.”

“Certainly, O Ykkuval.” The screens went black. “We will be dissecting both subjects in the near future after we’ve put them through some psychological tests so we can test the mind state after continued use of the drug against the baseline tests we took at the beginning of this investigation. Do you wish the personal reports to continue or would a flaked notation be acceptable?”

“Flakes have a way of sliding through cracks in security. The personal reports will continue. This is to remain on Samlak status, forbid to all eyes but mine.”

“It will be done.”