Far edge of darkness, p.13
Far Edge of Darkness, page 13
Aelia dragged her thoughts away from the upcoming ordeal. She tried to peer out through the one of the holes in the wall, instead, to get an idea of where in the ship she was. She focused gradually on an oddly surreal sight. At some deep level of herself, she was certain she'd never seen anything quite like this, outside of illustrations. Sweating men sat in a long row that stretched away into the gloom. They groaned over long-handled oars to the booming rhythm of a drum she couldn't quite see. That explained the odd, rolling noise she'd heard on waking. They were propelling the ship, with someone beating time.
She peered through a different ventilation hole on the other side, expecting to see the same view—and froze in shock. A scarred, red-haired man lay curled up on a bundle of cloth, right outside her cell. He'd been chained hand and foot . . .
Rufus!
She hadn't realized she'd said it aloud until he stirred and glanced around.
"Wha—?"
Her tongue glued itself to the roof of her mouth. For a long, terrible moment, she was afraid she would burst into tears. She bit down hard on her lower lip to prevent it. Then she swallowed and whispered, "Rufus! It's me! Aelia."
He stared at her prison wall, then presented his back. Her eyes burned. He was afraid to talk with her. She closed her fists. Well, it is your fault he's here. If he hadn't been caught in her cell, attempting to show her a little parting kindness, Xanthus would never have had a reason to punish him. Rufus' presence could mean only one thing. She shut her eyes, overcome by horror. Rufus must hate her desperately.
She heard him swear under his breath, then, astonishingly, he scooted closer to the hole where she crouched. Without quite turning his face to look at her, he murmured, "I thought you might be on deck, with Xanthus."
She could just make out his face. He didn't look angry. That didn't seem possible. "Oh, Rufus, I'm so sorry . . ."
"For what?" He swung around to stare.
She started to cry and silently raged at herself for it. Somehow, she received the deep-seated impression she hated snivelly women. He must have heard her, because scarred fingertips poked through the hole to touch her cheek.
"Haaeee, doaant . . ."
The words weren't Latin, but they made strange sense. She frowned, trying desperately to think why they should, but it was too late. Whatever had briefly slipped out from beneath the darkness in her mind, it was gone now.
"I'm not crying," she lied.
He actually smiled. The motion crinkled the corners of his eyes and tugged on the hideous burn scar. "Good."
"Rufus, I—" She halted, trying to find the right words. "If there's any way I can help . . ."
The smile vanished. Skin along his temples tightened. "That wouldn't be very wise."
"I'm not afraid to escape. First chance I get. I mean that."
His eyes flashed in the dim light. Then he turned his face away, deliberately baring his scarred throat. "Aelia, that's what they do to slaves who run away. If they're lucky. Lots of poor bastards they kill as an example to the others." He paused. "The brand was supposed to be on my face. I lunged aside at the last instant or it would've been."
"I don't care." Her voice came out low and hard. "I'd rather die, than be raped again and again."
His breath caught. Anger flushed his face. He turned away and swore.
"Don't be stupid. What you're saying is plain crazy. Slaves don't escape their Roman masters, Aelia. Not for long. Too many available patrols and citizens on the watch for runaways. Wouldn't ever work. Just get me killed and . . . and God knows what he'd do to you. Just . . . just forget it, please."
"So you're just giving up?"
Eyes flashed like burning emeralds in the dim light. "I've been through what they do to runaways!" He visibly grabbed hold of his temper. "You're so damned delicate, it'd kill you. So just shut up about escape, would you?"
Aelia compressed her lips. All right. I'll drop it for now. But not forever, Rufus Mancus. Nowhere nearly forever.
Charlie was whispering again, head averted. "And . . . and I don't want them to . . . I don't want to watch them hurt you, the way they hurt me, knowing there's nothing I can do to stop them. Besides, there are other reasons I can't run."
How long had he been a slave, enduring this?
"What reasons?" she asked quietly.
He was silent so long, she didn't think he would speak again. Then, finally: "There's . . ." He had to stop. His throat moved sharply. "There's more to it than that. A whole lot more."
His face was ashen, his gaze determinedly avoiding hers. She studied him for a long time. She knew he was no coward. Not stupid enough to fight a hopeless fight, but no coward, either. Maybe he was afraid of spoiling her chances by coming along? No, he'd called her stupid for even thinking it and she supposed he knew a great deal more about it than she did. Aelia finally asked, very softly, "What is it, Rufus? What else is there?"
"If I run . . ." Again, the long pause, the hard swallow. "Bericus has my daughter."
Oh, God . . .
He was speaking again, bitterly. "Before I was crippled, I was a 'great' Circus champion. Curses on 'em all. . . . Popular as winged Mercury himself, for a while. Xanthus . . . he and Bericus had this idea they would . . ." Rufus looked away. "They wanted to breed me and sell my sons for huge profits."
It was so simple. And explained so much. She didn't know why she hadn't seen it sooner.
"I didn't catch on quite fast enough," he was saying. "When I tried to refuse . . ."
"Yes," she whispered, voice choked down by horror. "Oh, Rufus . . ."
"Don't. Please."
A man's pride'll make him push you away when he needs you most. Never let on, if you pity him. . . . She didn't have a face to match the half-remembered voice, but knew the unknown woman was important to her. Important and very, very wise. Again, an overwhelming sense of loss crushed her spirits.
Outside her cell, Rufus was turning away, closing her out of his own private hell. She had to draw him back before it was too late. "You're afraid he'll kill her if you run?" She managed that in an almost normal whisper.
He nodded mutely. Then, driving pain straight through her heart, he muttered, "He's already had six of the children he forced me to sire exposed to die. Deformed," he choked out. "Lead poisoning, I think. Most of 'em . . . most of 'em were born months too early, anyway."
There wasn't a single thing Aelia could say in answer to that. He seemed to understand her shaken silence.
She finally found her voice, although she scarcely recognized it. "Rufus? How . . . how old is she? Your little girl?"
"Lucania?" His already scarred features twisted in pain. "Not even a year old yet. She was the first one born."
Four years since he's been enslaved, then.
Rufus managed to choke out. "He's threatening to sell Lucania. Just to watch my face when she goes. He—"
Rufus halted. Aelia thought she knew why. Bericus was a monster. But she had no answers to give him. With her entire past a great, black void, there was nothing she could even think to say.
Without looking at Aelia through the ventilation hole, Rufus growled (voice deadly), "I think I'd almost rather kill her myself than watch what Bericus is capable of doing to her."
Aelia shivered. She didn't know what would drive a man to that kind of desperation—and was terrified Bericus was going to educate her, all too quickly.
The chains at his wrists clanked faintly. He glanced up, trying to catch her eye through the air hole. "You must realize, not only can I not save her, I can't possibly stop him from raping you. Or even me," he added bitterly, "if he decides that would whet his appetite."
Somehow, the idea of Rufus being held down and buggered was worse, even, than the thought that Bericus would rape her. She wanted to hurt Bericus, badly, for what he planned to do to her; what she'd do if he raped Rufus, she didn't know. Slip some poison into his cup, maybe. Slavery, Aelia was rapidly discovering, led to an ugly sort of pragmatism. She closed her hands and longed for a weapon, then frowned.
An image had come into her mind of a long, narrow shape propped in a bedroom corner, next to a wooden rack over which colorful quilts had been draped. Grandmother's room. . . . Her fingers twitched, wanting the rifle. . . .
Then the memory was gone. Only a throbbing headache lingered in its wake. She groaned aloud and scrubbed at her brow with the heels of both hands. "I've got to remember!"
Outside her cell, Rufus swung around unexpectedly. "I must go," he whispered. "Xanthus is yelling for me."
The strain in his voice came through despite the thick wooden panels separating them.
"Rufus—"
He paused without looking in her direction.
"Be careful."
He lifted his head a fraction, indicating agreement, then levered himself awkwardly to his feet and hobbled beyond her line of sight. The chains at his ankles rattled above the low groans of rowers and creak of oars in ungreased oarlocks. She sagged back against the wall and shut her eyes.
Please, don't let that bastard hurt him again. . . .
Whatever Xanthus had in store for Rufus, it would be mild compared with what Bericus would do to him. She thumped a fist against the planks and did some swearing of her own.
Somehow, they would survive this.
They had to. Rufus' fear was understandable, but Aelia would never give up on the hope of escape—for both of them. And neither could escape without help from the other. She would bide her time as long as she must.
But she was going to get out of this.
And Rufus and his kid were coming with her, whether they liked it or not.
Francisco's dissatisfaction came to a boil after watching Dan interrogate their intruder. The whole affair disturbed him, particularly Dan's order to drug McKee—and his insistence on finishing the interrogation alone. Francisco had trusted Dan Collins for a lot of years—ever since that rainy night in high school ROTC, multiple years and a seeming lifetime ago, when Dan had saved Francisco from drowning during a flash flood. He'd been more than pleased when their careers had brought them together again, after years spent in different parts of the world.
Francisco had never disobeyed a commander's orders. And Dan Collins was an extremely able commanding officer. Had been, anyway, during their first several months up here. But during the last three or four months, Francisco had grown more and more uneasy. The McKee affair brought home just how sharply Dan had changed. The Dan Collins he'd known would never have chained a man to a chair and tortured him.
All day it had gnawed at him, during his entire duty shift, afterward at the officer's club, where he found faces he didn't know and missed others that should have been there. Some of those new faces had dark, watchful eyes. He'd found himself wanting to glance over his shoulder, as though a two-way mirror had been slipped in without his noticing it. Francisco had left early, aware that the officers he did know were also subdued, not quite themselves, prone to fits of silence and uneasy glances at the strangers.
The whole day left a taste like skunk oil in his mouth. He didn't want more mysteries. He wanted answers. So, after staring at the dark ceiling in his quarters for about six hours, Francisco gave up. He got dressed and drove back to his office to start finding them. He started by pulling medical records on base personnel. The first thing he discovered was a discrepancy in the number of personnel supposedly assigned to the base. According to payroll records—he checked those by computer, to be sure—there were 527 people stationed here.
He had medical records for only 359. Who were the others? And why didn't he have files on them? A hundred sixty-eight discrepancies? That was more than a few too many to explain away by clerical error.
Then there was the very odd matter of several officers who had failed to report back to duty after weekend leaves. Wilkie and Gugliano had been killed in traffic accidents. Under ordinary circumstances, that wouldn't have aroused his suspicions. But two hit-and-runs in an area with a human population density lower than that of bald eagles . . . They'd occurred less than a month apart, too. That had started more sinister alarms ringing in the back of Francisco's head.
Another young officer, Jack Tozer, had supposedly rotated out to Korea. Again, nothing untoward in that simple fact. Except Francisco still had Tozer's medical records. That had merited further checking into. He'd searched everywhere, but had discovered no trace of a request to transfer them. He'd been so busy with a rash of illnesses and injuries, he hadn't found time, before, to find that odd.
He did now.
Francisco leaned back in his chair and frowned at Lieutenant Tozer's medical history, then dug through the piles until he found the phone book. St. Louis, where officers' records were kept, should be able to confirm Tozer's transfer and let him know where to forward the records.
When he dialed to send out a fax request, Francisco got a recording. "All circuits are busy. Please hang up and try your call again later. If you need assistance . . . "
Thoughtfully, he cradled the receiver and leaned back once more in his chair. It creaked slightly, gunshot loud in the stillness of early morning. Who could be tying up all the circuits at this hour? Francisco checked his watch. It was barely 5:00 a.m. He tried an intrabase call, dialing at random. It went through without difficulty.
"Gate Three."
"Just checking my phone. Thanks." He hung up without bothering to identify himself, then muttered half aloud, "Odd. And I'm tired of things around here being odd."
Francisco tapped Tozer's file with one dissatisfied fingertip, then set the file aside and considered Dan's file. The chair creaked again. He frowned at the innocuous sheaf of papers which represented Dan Collins' medical history since ROTC. There wasn't much in it. Dan was healthier than most horses. Francisco crossed his arms and pursed his lips, trying to puzzle through this. He'd stood up as Dan's best man when the lucky stiff had finally convinced Lucille to marry him. He'd managed to wrangle leave when their son, Danny, Jr., had been born.
Their kid was . . . what? Fifteen, now? The years had passed so quickly, he'd hardly noticed. A smile played at the edges of his lips as he recalled his arrival at the base. Lucille had remembered his passion for schnitzel. Danny's astonishing growth had called for a complete reevaluation of how he'd spent his own life during the past fifteen years. Maybe it was time to put down some roots, start a family. He'd found himself deeply envious of Dan's quiet happiness.
Then, four months ago, Dan had simply stopped talking to him.
In the ensuing weeks, his commanding officer had made a heroic effort to behave normally, but the quiet evenings spent chewing over politics and plans for the future had come to an abrupt end. And Dan's warm, comfortable way with others had turned cold as ice. New arrivals Francisco treated at the "fridge" referred to him as Old Man Winter.
Having been on the receiving end of Dan's inexplicable new personality a few times, himself, Francisco couldn't blame them.
Lucille and Danny had supposedly fled to Juneau for the winter. He hadn't seen them since Labor Day weekend, at the base picnic. Francisco sucked air soundlessly across his teeth and narrowed his eyes. Labor Day weekend. . . . The trouble had started shortly afterward. Danny and Lucille hadn't even told Francisco good-bye. When he'd said as much, expressing hurt and concern, Dan had nearly taken his head off.
And now Dan was losing weight, avoiding him, and—judging by the smell—drinking pretty heavily.
Was Lucille having an affair? Was Dan? Or maybe Danny, Jr., was in some sort of trouble or seriously ill. . . . He couldn't credit that; if he were, Francisco would have been the first person Dan and Lucille would have consulted. Drugs, maybe? Up here?
Yeah. Right. He'd as soon believe Frosty the Snowman wintered in Miami to catch a glowing tan.
When Francisco tried to call Juneau, he got the same recorded message.
"That's nuts," he muttered. "Who the hell lives up here to tie up all the circuits? Nobody for miles but the caribou and grizzlies. And the bears are asleep."
He picked up a pen and tapped it absently against the desk. All right. What else? He glanced surreptitiously toward a featureless wall, in the direction of the ugly, squat building at the far edge of the base. Francisco had no idea what went on inside that building. He didn't have the security clearance to know. He'd never crossed the threshold, never mind taken a gander at what was inside. All he knew was, a pack of civilian physicists with security clearance far higher than his had been holed up in there for months.
They'd arrived shortly after Francisco had, many of them with families. Francisco frowned. What about them? He hadn't seen some of them in weeks. That was more than odd; it was downright unsettling. He decided to check his file on Sue Firelli, out of curiosity. She'd come to him complaining of stomach pains. He'd diagnosed ulcers and put her on Tagamet and had been seeing her every couple of weeks since. But he hadn't seen her in a while and her prescription ought to have run out by now. He wanted to check the file, see what the date of her last visit was. But he couldn't find it.
Where in blazes was her file?
He double-checked the cabinet, then the scattered stacks and waterfalls of paper, but it was gone.
Francisco closed a lateral file drawer thoughtfully. He hesitated to go to Dan with his concerns. He shrank even further from talking to base Security. Francisco didn't like Kominsky. And most of the men he'd seen working Security details were strangers. The longer he thought about them, the more his back crawled. Those Security "officers" could well be some of the hundred sixty-eight people for whom he had no military medical records.
Who the hell were those hundred sixty-eight men? More to the point, did Dan Collins know who they were? And why—given the fact they were literally in the middle of nowhere, up here—why did Dan Collins have a twenty-four hour personal guard? Francisco hadn't missed the unpleasant little interplay between Dan and his bodyguard in the interrogation room, waiting for McKee.
