Outcasts (6 page)

Sparkles of starlight passed between the clouds, mottling
Gryf with a third color. He lay face down on the smooth stone, hands flat
against it, cheek pressed to the rock. Kylis knew how he felt, drained,
removed, heavy.

“Kylis... I never slept before like this.”

“I won’t go far.”

She hoped he heard her. She sat cross-legged on the wide
rock beside him, watching slow movements of muscle as he breathed. His roan
eyelashes were very long and touched with sweat droplets. The deep welts in his
back would leave scars. Kylis’ back had similar scars, but she felt that
the marks she carried were a brand of shame, while Gryf’s meant defiance
and pride. She reached toward him, but drew back when her hand’s vague shadow
touched his face.

When she was certain he was sleeping easily, she left him
and went to look nearby for patches of the green antibiotic mold. Their supply
was exhausted. It was real medicine, not a superstition. Its active factor was
synthesized back north and exported.

Being allowed to walk away from Screwtop, however briefly,
made remaining almost endurable, but the privilege had a more important
purpose. It was a constant reminder of freedom. The short moment of respite
only strengthened the need to get out, and, more important, the need never to
come back. Redsun knew how to reinforce obedience.

Kylis wandered, never going very far from Gryf, looking for
green mold and finding the rarer purple hallucinogenic slime instead. She tried
to deny that it tempted her. She could have taken some to Gryf — she
almost did — but in the end she left it under the rocks where it
belonged.

“I want to talk to you.”

She spun, startled, recognizing the rough voice, fearing it,
concealing her fear badly. She did not answer, only looked toward the Lizard.

“Come sit with me,” he said. Starlight glinted
on his clean fingernails as he gestured to the other end of an immense uprooted
fern tree. It sagged but held when he sat on it.

As always, his black protective boots were pulled up and
sealed to his black shorts. He was even bigger than Jason, taller, heavier, and
though he had allowed his body to go slightly to fat, his face had remained
narrow and hard. His clean-shaven scalp and face never tanned or burned, but
somehow remained pale, in contrast to his deep-set black eyes. He licked his
thin lips quickly with the tip of his tongue.

“What do you want?” She did not approach him.

He leaned forward and leaned his forearms on his knees. “I’ve
been watching you.”

She had no answer. He watched everyone. Standing there
before him, Kylis was uneasy for reasons that somehow had nothing to do with
his capacity for brutality. The Lizard never acted this way. He was direct and
abrupt.

“I made a decision when sensory deprivation didn’t
break you,” he said. “That was the last test.”

The breeze shifted slightly. Kylis smelled a sharp odor as
the Lizard lifted a small pipe to his lips and drew on it deeply. He held his
breath and offered the pipe to her.

She wanted some. It was good stuff. She and Gryf and Jason
had used the last of theirs at the end of the previous set, the night before
they went on different shifts. Kylis was surprised that the Lizard used it at
all. She would never have expected him to pare off the corners of his aggression
out here. She shook her head.

“No?” He shrugged and put the pipe down, letting
it waste, burning unattended. “All right.”

She let the silence stretch on, hoping he would forget her
and whatever he wanted to say, wander off or get hungry or go to sleep.

“You’ve got a long time left to stay here,”
he said.

Again, Kylis had no answer.

“I could make it easier for you.”

“You could make it easier for most of us.”

“That’s not my job.” He ignored the
contradiction.

“What are you trying to say?”

“I’ve been looking for someone like you for a
long time. You’re strong, and you’re stubborn.” He got up and
came toward her, hesitated to glance back at his pipe, but left it where it
was. He took a deep breath. He was trying so hard to look sincere that Kylis
had an almost overwhelming urge to laugh. She did not, but if she had, it would
have been equally a laugh of nervous fear. She realized suddenly, with wonder:
The Lizard’s as scared as I am.

“Open for me, Kylis.”

Incredulity was her first reaction. He would not joke, he
could not, but he might mock her. Or was he asking her an impossibility,
knowing she would refuse, so he could offer to let her alone if Gryf would
return to the tetras. She kept her voice very calm.

“I can’t do that.”

“Don’t you think I’m serious?”

“How could you be?”

He forced away his scowl, like an inexperienced mime
changing expressions. The muscles of his jaw were set. He moved closer, so she
had to look up to see his eyes.

“I am.”

“But that’s not something you ask for,”
Kylis said. “That’s something a family all wants and decides on.”
She realized he would not understand what she meant.

“
I’ve
decided. There’s only me now.”
His voice was only a bit too loud.

“Aren’t you lonely?” She heard her words,
not knowing why she had said them. If the Lizard had been hurt, she would revel
in his pain. She could not imagine people who would live with him, unless
something terrible had changed him.

“I had a kid — “ He cut himself off,
scowling, angry for revealing so much.

“Ah,” she said involuntarily. She had seen his
manner of superficial control over badly suppressed violence before. Screwtop
gave the Lizard justifiable opportunities to use his rage. Anywhere else it
would burst out whenever he felt safe, against anyone who was defenseless and
vulnerable. This was the kind of person who was asking her for a child.

“The board had no right to give him to her instead of
me.”

He would think that, of course. No right to protect the
child? She did not say it.

“Well?”

To comply would be easy. She would probably be allowed to
live in the comfort and coolness of the domes, and of course she would get good
food. She could forget the dangerous machines and the Lizard’s whip. She
imagined what it would be like to feel a child quickening within her, and she
imagined waiting to give birth to a human being, knowing she must hand it over
to the Lizard to raise, all alone, with no other model, no other teacher, only
this dreadful, crippled person.

“No,” she said.

“You could if you wanted to.”

So many things she had discovered about herself here had
mocked her; now it was a claim she had once made to Gryf: I would do anything
to get out of here.

“Leave it at that,” she said quietly. “I
don’t want to.” She backed away.

“I thought you were stubborn and strong. Maybe I made
a mistake. Maybe you’re just stupid, or crazy like the rest of them.”

She tried to think of words he would understand, but always
came up against the irreconcilable differences between her perception of the
Lizard and what he thought of himself. He would not recognize her description.

“Or you want something more from me. What is it?”
She started to say there was nothing, but hesitated. “All right,”
she said, afraid her voice would be too shrill. Somehow it sounded perfectly
normal. “Tell Gryf’s people to set him free. Get Jason a parole and
a ticket off-world.” For a moment she almost allowed herself to hope he
had believed her offer was sincere. She was a very good liar.

The Lizard’s expression changed. “No. I need
them around so you’ll do what I say.”

“I won’t.”

“Pick something else.”

For an instant’s flash Kylis remembered being taunted
like this before, when she was very small. Anything but that. Anything but what
you really want. She pushed the recollection away.

“There isn’t anything else,” she said.

“Don’t hold out. You can’t bribe me to let
them go. I’m not a fool.”

He needed no officially acceptable reason to hurt her. She
knew that. Fear of his kind of power was almost an instinctive reaction for
Kylis. But she whispered, “Yes, Lizard, you are,” and, half-blind,
she turned and fled.

She almost outran him, but he lunged, grabbed her shoulder,
pulled her around. “Kylis — “

Standing stiffly, coldly, she looked
at his hand. “If that’s what you want — “

Even the Lizard was not that twisted. Slowly, he let his
hand fall to his side.

“I could force you,” he said.

Her gaze met his and did not waver. “Could you?”

“I could drug you.”

“For seven sets?” She realized, with a jog of
alienness, that she had unconsciously translated the time from standard months
to sets of forty days.

“Long enough to mess up your control. Long enough to
make you pregnant.”

“You couldn’t keep me alive that long, drugged
down that far. If the drugs didn’t kill it, I would. I wouldn’t
even need to be conscious. I could abort it.”

“I don’t think you’re that good.”

“I am. You can’t live like I did and not be that
good.”

“I can put you in the deprivation box until you swear
to — “

She laughed bitterly. “And expect me to honor that
oath?”

“You’d have children with Gryf and Jason.”

This was real, much more than a game for the Lizard to play
against Gryf. He wanted her compliance desperately. Kylis was certain of that,
as certain as she was that he would use his own dreams to help fulfill his duty
to Redsun. Still she could not understand why he felt he had some right to
accuse her.

“Not like this,” she said. “
With
them — but not
for
one of them. And they wouldn’t make
themselves fertile, either, if you were a woman and asked one of them to give
you a child.”

“I’m quitting. I’d take him out of here. I’d
give him a good home. Am I asking that much? I’m offering a lot for a
little of your time and one ovulation.” His voice held the roughness of
rising temper.

“You’re asking for a human being.”

She waited for some reaction, any reaction, but he just
stood there, accepting what she said as a simple statement of fact without
emotional meaning or moral resonance.

“I’d kill a child before I’d give it to
you,” she said. “I’d kill myself.” She felt herself
trembling, though it did not show in her hands or in her voice. She was
trembling because what she had said was true.

He reacted not at all. She turned and ran into the darkness,
and this time the Lizard did not follow.

When she was sure she was not being watched, she returned to
Gryf’s rock in the forest. Gryf still slept. He had not moved from the
time he fell asleep, but the gray rock around him gleamed with his sweat. Kylis
sat down beside him, drew up her knees and wrapped her arms around them, and
put her head down. She had never felt as she felt now — unclean by
implication, ashamed, diminished — and she could not explain the feeling
to herself. She felt a tear slide down her cheek and clenched her teeth in
anger. He will not make me cry, she thought. She breathed deeply, slowly,
thinking, Control. Slow the heartbeat, turn off the adrenaline, you don’t
need it now. Relax. Her body, at least, responded. Kylis sat motionless for a
long time.

The heavy, moist wind began to blow, bringing low black
clouds to cut off the stars. Soon it would be too dark to see.

“Gryf?” Kylis touched his shoulder. He did not
move until she shook him gently; then he woke with a start.

“Storm’s coming,” Kylis said.

In the dimming starlight, a blond lock of Gryf’s hair
glinted as he rose. Kylis helped him up. Dead ferns rustled at their feet, and
the sleeping insects wrapped themselves more closely in their wings.

At the edge of the forest Kylis and Gryf picked their way
across a slag heap and reached the trail to the prisoners’ area. A faint
blue glow emanated from their shelter, where Jason sat hunched over a cold
light reading a book he had managed to scrounge. He did not hear them until
they climbed the stairs.

“I was beginning to get worried,” he said
mildly, squinting to see them past the light.

“Gryf was sick.”

“You okay now?” Jason asked.

Gryf nodded, and he and Kylis sat down in the circle of
bioluminescence that did not waver in the wind. Jason put his book away and got
their rations and water bottles from the locker. The stalks Kylis had picked
were by now a bit wilted, but she gave them to Gryf anyway. He shared them out.
The meal was slightly better and slightly more pleasant than most at Screwtop,
but Kylis was not hungry. She was ashamed to tell her friends what had
happened.

“What’s the matter?” Jason asked suddenly.

“What?” Kylis glanced up at him, then at Gryf.
Both were watching her with concern.

“You look upset.”

“I’m okay.” She leaned back gradually as
she spoke, so her face was no longer in the light. “I’m tired, I
guess.” She searched for words to put into the silence. “I’m
so tired I almost forgot to tell you we’re all on night shift.”

That was good enough news to change the subject and take her
friends’ attention from her. It was even good enough news to cheer her.

Later they returned to the hiding place in the forest and
slept, lying close with Gryf in the middle. In the distance the sky flashed
bright, then darkened. Only a faint mutter reached them, but the lightning
revealed heavy clouds and the wind carried the sound closer. Kylis touched Gryf
gently, taking comfort in his deep and regular breathing. Lightning scarred the
sky again, and seconds later thunder rumbled softly. The wind rustled dry
fronds.

Gryf stroked Kylis’ tattooed shoulder. He touched her
hand and their fingers intertwined.

“I wish you could get out,” she whispered. “I
wish you would.” The lightning flashed again, vivid and close, its
thunder simultaneous. Jason started in his sleep. During the brief flare Gryf
looked at Kylis, frowning.