Braxi-Azea - In Conquest Born Part 35

This is why I try not to wake up screaming.

Despite all this speculation, it was more than likely that I would go to my dissolution without ever unveiling the mystery of my past. But then He came . . .

ah, I shudder to think of it! . . . and the world changed in an instant.

He had come back from the War for a time. Who can say why? There are as many Conditional Peaces as there are stars in the Braxin sky; perhaps one of them encompa.s.sed his region, his command, or his ships. Maybe concern for his House brought him back to his native moon, or repairs on his vessel made it possible for him to leave the front for a vacation. Who can say? I had been sent forth on some errands that day, and was running behind schedule. As I hurried down a lunar thoroughfare, anxious to reach my House at the appointed time, my thoughts were not upon the road. And so it was I ran into him, and the impact sent me sprawling.

My first reaction was fear. Almost all the residents of Zhene were high-born.

What would my punishment be, for daring to inconvenience a Braxana? But then I looked up, and saw Him, and the fear gave way to wonder.

It is not enough to say that he was beautiful, for beauty is common among the Braxana, and I had long ago become accustomed to it; judging between the Lords of Braxi would be like judging between the G.o.ds themselves. But I was used to my Master's features, harsh and unyielding, twisted by years of anger. Had a slave inconvenienced him as I had just done to this stranger, rage would have quickly deformed his features into a hideous mask. This man showed no anger, sought no vengeance. He even seemed-could it be?-amused by the encounter.

"On your feet, woman." I struggled to obey, feeling the heat rise to my cheeks.

Praise the G.o.ds for my alien skin, which hid my blushes in its darkness! His presence unnerved me in a way I didn't understand, yet which was not unpleas- ant. He stepped closer as he looked me over, and touched a gloved finger to my face, tilting it upward until I looked directly into his eyes. His delicate nostrils flared, and I was as uncomfortable as always with the awareness that the Braxana sense of smell, animal-acute, can pick out a thousand chemical messages which other humans cannot consciously detect.

Whatever he saw in me pleased him, for he smiled.

"Whose are you?" he asked me.

A voice out of memory-it startled me, made the words slow in coming. "S ...

Sechaveh's, Lord." I saw his medallion, corrected myself: "Kaim'era."

"And your name?" His voice was rich, melodic . . . and familiar. An island of memory in the wasteland of my past. Stunned, I choked out an answer. "Venari, Kaim'era."

He looked me over, and I trembled. With heat? With fear? Yes, and with a thousand other reactions that had no place in my present life. "Forgive me ..." I began.

"Does he take pleasure with you?"

My face burned in shame. "No, Kaim'era."

"Ah. Predictable, given Sechaveh. But a waste." His fingers caressed my face, brushed my neck and breast, left fire in their wake. "I'll borrow you for the night, if he agrees. Would that please you?"

I could feel my legs shaking, and wondered how long they would support me. "I ... as you wish, Kaim'era."

"Tell him, then. I'll come to him tonight, to make a formal request. To taste what he doesn't have the sense to desire."

A moment more, I knew, and I would surely collapse. "Your name, Kaim'era?

Who shall I say-"

"Zatar."

The name was familiar, a fragment from my missing past. Stunned, I nodded, bowed, backed carefully away from him. My only hope was that my legs would support me long enough for me to get away safely.

He wanted me! I exulted, as I broke into a run for home. And beneath that a growing certainty: I knew him before.

I was punished when I returned home; my Mistress saw to it personally.

Sechaveh demands perfection from his women, a curious thing from a man who considers women by their very nature incapable of perfection. That day it suited his whim that the more primitive physical tortures be applied, and so I was whipped soundly, and rather than recover soon after, as more modern punishments allow, I was forced to take my bleeding flesh to bed with me and learn to live with the pain. I did not speak to him of Zatar; I would not mix such pleasure-or promise of pleasure-with the torment of Sechaveh's service. And I was afraid that his name, like all other fragments of memory that had returned to me, would be cause for further "treatment."

But I dreamed of him. How I dreamed! That marvelous face drew close in illusion, and, free of my pain in a world of my own devising, I reached for him.

The mystery of Man was to be revealed to me, a mystery that concerned me even more than that of my ident.i.ty. But even as my hands reached for him, I awoke with a suddenness that told me I had not done so by accident.

There were voices in the distance, coming from the forehall. Loud voices, and hostile. I crept from my mat and looked out into the hallway adjoining my sleeping quarters; no one was about. With care I crept toward the central House.

The closer I came, the more I could hear of what was transpiring.

It was him; the timber of his voice had awakened me. Again I was struck with its familiarity. I held my breath as I listened.

". . . and done with this nonsense," he was saying.

"This 'nonsense,' as you put it, is my own affair. According to the bargain we made-"

"Informal."

"But binding! She is my slave, Zatar-and for the million I've paid out, she'd better remain so. I don't want her tasted."

"That is the most senseless-"

"I don't have to explain myself to you. We made a bargain. It cost me enough that it should be kept. The woman is my property and I don't want her tasted.

That is my pleasure, and like it or not it has precedence over yours. I've listened to your request. I've heard your arguments. The answer is no."

My heart was pounding. A millon? Had he paid a million sinias for me, or spent them doing . . . what?

Their anger spent, they were too quiet for me to hear them. I stayed where I was until the footsteps sounded on the wooden flooring, until the door shut and locked behind him. Alone. I was alone again, as always.

I will not have her tasted.

He had wanted me.

I leaned against the wall, ignoring the pain from my whip-scored back, eyes shut tightly against the flow of tears that I felt was imminent. The nights I had lain awake tormented by doubt-the days I had wasted on futile questions! No man had wanted me. No man had ever wanted me. Suddenly that was revealed to be, no, not the natural state of things, but the result of countless bribes and maneuverings. Why, Kaim'era Sechaveh-why?

I forced myself to return to my room, to close myself away in that s.p.a.ce that was my only refuge. I managed to choke forth a single word; if two had been required, I don't think I could have managed them.

"Mirror."

The appropriate s.p.a.ce glossed over with reflected light. I stood before it. With trembling hands I let my shift fall over my shoulders and drop from my body.

How many times had I looked myself over, wondering what was so wrong with me that I had never inspired a man's desire, or even received one's anonymous l.u.s.t? Now it was with a different eye that I saw myself.

Was this body so displeasing? I ran my hands over it and had to answer: no.

There was nothing wrong with me that wasn't also wrong with other women. That is to say, before the Braxana, what alien or commoner can be beautiful? We are all flawed when compared to them. But as alien humans went, I was well- proportioned-if not generously, nevertheless sufficiently for a man's interest. Yet in the fifteen zhents of my current ident.i.ty no man had wanted me, demanded me, or, as happens so often in the ranks of slaves, simply taken me.

And now I knew this was no coincidence. To be sure, I had suspected it.

Chast.i.ty is alien to Braxin society, but still one is hesitant to imagine a conspiracy of such an immense scale as was active here. Had he bribed every man on this moon to leave me alone-and was that why I had always been kept on Zhene, never taken to surface? I was chilled by the truth as the pieces fell into place. On the moon there would be a limited number of men, all of them settled in Braxana Houses or themselves of the Master Race. Such could be bribed, and clearly had been so. Oh, toward what end had he designed this misery!

I sobbed myself to sleep And dreamt.

Golden hands dancing over controls labeled in an unseen tongue. The glory of the Void without obstruction, the perfection of planned action becoming reallity.

A hand on my shoulder.

I turn about suddenly-who could be here with me, sharing my dream and my death and my loneliness?

Zatar.

Not right, not right. Something about him doesn't belong here, and I shield the controls with my body as if he would harm them. He tries to draw me to him; I am torn between my sworn duty and the fire which suddenly burns to life in the private recesses of my body. Sparks begin to play across the control board. I scream: "No! Not yet!" The end is too early, too early! I try to break free of him, to smother the growing flames, but his grip is firm and his caress undeniable.

The fire grows about us, in me. I am screaming, and cannot say just what is the cause of it.

I awoke. By my side sat a figure dressed in sleeping-robe and nightgloves. It took me a moment to recover my bearings, and to identify the figure as Sil'ne, Sechaveh's Mistress. My heart still beating wildly, my face flushed with the heat of my dream, I tried to pull myself together.

"I heard you cry out," she said quietly. "The dream?"

I nodded, then shook my head no. "A dream. Not that one." I shivered with the force of unaccustomed falsehood; a day ago I would not have dared lie to her.

"Tell me."

I feigned embarra.s.sment; it was close enough to the truth. "I dreamed of Zatar,"

I whispered.

"Ah." She stood. "They're allies, you know. Things may change. . . ." She looked closely at me, no doubt noting the signs of frustrated longing which were written all over me. "Do you need to be drugged?" she asked.

"No," I said meekly. "I'll be all right."

"Sechaveh wouldn't like to be awakened."

I shuddered. That had happened once, and I had barely survived his wrath in the morning. "I know, Mistress. I'll be careful."

She watched me for a moment as though a.n.a.lyzing my own reaction to those words. I had lied but evidently lied well; with a nod at last she left me, and the darkness-and the longing-closed in again.

In the morning I was summoned before my Master.

I trembled as I approached the door to his library, where I had been instructed to meet him. "Venari," I whispered. The computer digested that and then parted the door.

I entered, eyes lowered, and abased myself. He watched in silence, then rose from his seat behind the library console and walked over to me.

In size and power he towered over me. "Kaim'era Zatar has requested you."

I looked up hopefully. It was the first deception I had ever practiced upon my Master; he must never know that I had overheard their confrontation.

He smiled, an expression not without cruelty. "My answer was no."

Realizing that he had called me here so he could relish my disappointment, I let the anguish of the night before wash over me again. The misery, the fear, the uncertainty-it was all mine once more. My expression, reflecting that inner turmoil, pleased him immensely. He waited a short while longer in silence, making it clear to both of us that I did not dare defy him.

At last he turned from me. "Go back to your work."

I did so.

I dreamed the new dream often after that, but I learned not to cry out in my longing as I had once learned not to cry out in fear. Both could be fatal in this House and I had no wish to die. Sil'ne questioned me occasionally but seemed satisfied that I hadn't dreamt of the golden egg again, which seemed to comprise the sum total of her concern. At night I tried to sleep long enough to know the consummation of Zatar's embrace, to have that satisfaction, if nowhere else, at least in my dream-state-but the anguish and memory a.s.sociated with my desire never failed to awaken me, and my last thought was never of him, but of the golden egg whose very meaninglessness was painful to me.

So my life pa.s.sed for many, many days.

It was Sil'ne's custom to change our duties periodically, so that from time to time we would be working different parts of the House and its grounds. I think she did this partly to save us from Sechaveh, for he never knew quite where to find us when wrath overtook him; by the time she had fetched us he had usually calmed down somewhat. He hated her for it, but he hated her for everything: she was a woman, and therefore an enemy. If he could have done without her services he would have; Braxana custom being what it was, however, he didn't have that option. The balance between them was extraordinarily tense: she, determined to maintain an acceptably traditional House, he, determined to vent his whims upon that ent.i.ty regardless of consequences. I would rather have died than be in her gloves.

Some time after Zatar's visit-but no more than tenths later as far as my soul was concerned, for I dreamed of him nightly-I was a.s.signed to the forehouse.

There, while picking up after an emotional and somewhat messy business meeting, I heard a bit of conversation from the outer hallway that burned itself immediately into my awareness.

". . . your Azean doing?"

"As I planned. Did you antic.i.p.ate otherwise? I have no doubts-"

A door hissed shut as they entered a conference chamber, and the House's automatic soundproofing concealed the rest of their conversation. I listened for a while longer, in case they should emerge again, but eventually I was forced to return to my work, and ponder their words in silence.

An Azean in Sechaveh's House? I could not imagine it. Why would one be here?

Where would he be kept? What use would be made of him in this private place, that could not be accomplished better elsewhere? Even Sechaveh's penchant for torture seemed too trivial a use to make of one of the enemy. A captured Azean would have useful military information, wouldn't he? Why would he be sold-or given-to one individual?

The question distracted me from my work, and in the days that followed I realized I was going to have to do something about finding an answer. Surely the matter was simple enough; I had only to ask the House computer for whatever information it had on the matter, and work deductively from that point. I waited until one day's work took me into the library, bided my time until all others had left the room, and approached the console.

Sechaveh's House, I instructed it. Population statistics, by race. Such information should be available even to a slave.

After a moment it answered me.

POPULATION OF THE HOUSE OF SECHAVEH.

FREE/HIRED/ENSLAVED CATEGORIZED BY (DOMINANT) RACE OF.

ORIGIN.

(HUMANS ONLY).

BRAXANA, PUREBRED 1.

BRAXANA, OTHER 14.

BRAXIN, COMMON/MIXED 397.

ALDOUSAN 54.