They were very young and frightened. I had to lie to them. I said it would do them no harm. No harm! Do you hear me, Dannerman? I told them it would do them no harm! And I do not know what became of them. Since the Horch came I have not seen them, or Perjowlsti. Perhaps they were killed in the fighting.”
She turned away from me and was silent for a moment. I thought she might be weeping, if Docs ever wept. I reached up and touched her shoulder. I hadn’t forgotten about the vivisection, but I couldn’t help feeling compassion. I said, “I’m sorry, Pirraghiz.”
She said, “Yes,” her voice muffled. When she turned around, the great cow eyes were dry, and her expression was less angry. “I too am sorry,” she said, “for what will happen to your own species.”
I straightened up. “My own species?”
She nodded with the great head, her hat flopping ludicrously. “You will serve them too, if they wish it.”
Something was tasting very bad in the back of my throat. I did my best to repress it. “What would they want us for?”
“I do not know, Dannerman, but-“ She thought for a moment, then sighed. “Have you ever seen the warriors of the Others?”
I remembered a half-dissolved corpse of a Bashful I’d seen in our escape. “No. Yes. I mean, I’ve seen a dead body, but-Wait a minute! Are you trying to tell me they’d make Bashfuls out of us?
“I do not know what a ‘Bashful’ is”-I had used the English word-“but to use you to fight their battles for them when there is occasion for fighting, yes. I think so. It is known that your species is good at wars and violence. Was that not the reason for your own work before you were captured?”
I was aghast. “No! We won’t let that happen! If we’re going to fight, we’ll fight them!”
“Of course you will, Dannerman,” she agreed somberly. “As I suppose we did, all those years ago. Even now, sometimes- you see, the control channels are very effective, but they are not perfect. If one of us finds himself surrounded by a kind of wall of metal mesh-I do not know the name for it-“
I guessed, “A Faraday cage?”
She shrugged. “Perhaps. In such a situation the controls are weakened. Then we have enough volition, sometimes, to try to fight back. But we do not succeed. As soon as that happens the others of our own kind who still belong to the Beloved Leaders come at once, and recapture us. Or kill us. They have no choice, just as I had none when the Beloved Leaders caused me to cut the flesh of your conspecifics.”
She gazed down at me searchingly. “It is not only persons of your own species that have been vivisected in that way by us. You are only the most recent. The same has been done to members of every captive species-the Wet Ones, the Shelled Persons, the Tree-Livers, even the captive Horch. Even to my own people. And in every case-“ She broke off, looking at me in a different way. “What is it, Dannerman?”
She had puzzled me. “What do you mean, ‘captive Horch’?”
She looked at me with surprise. “But I thought you knew. What did you think Djabeertapritch was?”
I blinked at her. “A Horch, of course.”
She sounded impatient. “Certainly he is a Horch, but until the other Horch captured this base, he was a prisoner, too. He and all his nest, Dannerman. Look, you can almost see the farms they cultivated, just past these trees. They were kept here since their ancestors were captured, long ago, for study and, yes, to be experimented on, just as your people were.”
That was unexpected news. I had thought of the Horch simply as Horch. They were conquerors. I
had not imagined that Beert himself had once been a conquered.
I stared through the tangled vegetation toward where Pirraghiz had said Beert’s people still lived. I couldn’t see anything that looked like farms, but I knew what I had to do. I had to try my best to avert that horrible prospect of a subjugated Earth, and the place to do it was not here.
I turned to Pirraghiz. “You said Beert’s village was out there?”
“The nest of the formerly captive Horch is, yes.”
“All right. I’m as well as I need to be, and I want to see Beert. I’m going there now.”
She did not seem surprised, only thoughtful. “I do not know if he will be at the nest. He may have called from the base.”
“I’ll wait for him.”
“You do not know the way, Dannerman. You have never been there.”
“I’ll find it.”
“It is a long walk. I am not sure you are yet strong enough for that-“
I didn’t let her finish. “That’s my problem,” I said, but she finished anyway.
“-so I will carry you there myself.” And she did. Hoisted me up into the crook of one of her great arms, and trotted away.
PART FOUR
The Nest
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Dopey had always preferred being carried by a Doc to walking. I could see why. Pirraghiz held me comfortable and secure, and the ride, despite those elephant legs of hers, was rapid and just about jolt-free.
As we left the beaten path to cross over into Horch territory, she had to push her way through wet brush. Considerately she pushed the soggy branches away from me with one or another of her spare arms. Then, as we passed that invisible dividing line where weedy trees gave way to shrubs, we were in Horchland.
The difference between the two compounds was the difference between wilderness and civilization. Behind us was jungle. Ahead, neatly cultivated cropland. We came out onto a dirt road that bordered a couple of hectares of green stalks of grain, shoulder-high-I don’t mean Pirraghiz’s shoulder, of course. Between the rows two snaky heads popped up to stare at us in astonishment. Pirraghiz paid them no attention, but turned left on the road and loped along.
Although the road was dirt, it was smooth and almost rutless, even after the rain. Obviously the Horch were careful about keeping their place tidy. A kilometer or two ahead I could see something that looked like a huge, six-sided barn, but before we got there I heard a whirring noise from behind us. Pirraghiz didn’t bother to look behind. She just moved courteously over to one side, allowing a vehicle to shoot past us. It was a three-wheeled cart, a little like the one Beert had used when he rescued me from the interrogation chambers. That one had had a motor, though; this one was pedal-driven by its occupant-one of the Horch who had gawked at us from the cropland, I supposed. He lay flat on his back, feet pumping at the pedals as fast as he could, while his neck swayed back and forth between staring at us and watching the road ahead.
As we got closer to the barnlike structure I could see that it was a kind of wickerwork tenement, four or five stories tall, with porches jutting out at every level. Some of the porches were enclosed in coarse screens, others open to the sky. I could see figures on some of them, perhaps taking the air. The whole thing looked like something some tribe of aborigines might have built for themselves out of willow withes and bamboo, in the days before the European colonizers came along with their whiskey, guns, row houses and syphilis.
It was the biggest structure in sight, but it wasn’t the only one. I began to see sheds nearby, and a couple of peculiar trees, all circled by little clusters of flowering bushes for decoration. The trees were branchless until near the top, where they spread out in a crown like royal palms. The most peculiar thing about the trees was that they were all bent at a sharp angle from the ground up, and all at the same angle. There was something that looked like a wicker band shell-people were moving around it- and, as we moved toward one side, behind the main building a smaller structure appeared of a wholly other kind. This one wasn’t wicker. It was made of the same glossy ceramic stuff as my former cell, though this was pinkish in color. A pair of the Horch Christmas trees were industriously unloading some sort of equipment to take inside it.
I wasn’t pleased to see them there, but Pirraghiz paid them no attention. She set me down carefully. “Wait, Dannerman. I will see if Djabeertapritch is here.”
She left me standing in a plot of damp, spiky grass; I suppose the Horch equivalent of a front lawn. There were low wicker benches scattered around-unoccupied- and a few smaller trees with buttercup-yellow blossoms. Although the robots weren’t paying any attention to me, I was uncomfortable in their presence. I walked a little way around the great house to get out of their sight. When I looked up the woven-sapling side of the building, I discovered that someone was looking back at me. Three or four of those snaky heads were peering over the side of one of the porches. I waved, but the only response I got from them was to pull hastily back, some completely out of sight, one still staring at me with just the nose and eyes showing.