Captives of the Flame by Samuel R. Delany (best mystery novels of all time TXT) 📖

her in." She touched the two buns of white hair on the sides of her head, breathed deeply, and straightened in the chair, as two doors opened at the other end of the room.

Two blocks had been set up in the middle of the room, about four feet high and a foot apart.

Alter stumbled once, but the guard caught her. They walked her between the blocks, which came to just below her shoulders, spread her arms over the surface and strapped them straight across the tops at the biceps and wrist.

The Queen smiled. "That's only a precaution. We want to help you." She came down the steps of the throne, the heavy jeweled rod cradled in her arm. "Only we know something about you. We know that you know something which if you tell me, will make me feel a great deal better. I've been very upset, recently. Did you know that?"

Alter blinked and tried to get her balance. The blocks were just under the proper height by half an inch so that she could neither stand completely nor could she sag.

"We know you're tired, and after your ordeal with the barbitide—you don't feel well, do you?" asked the Queen, coming closer.

Alter shook her head.

"Where did you take my son?" the Queen asked.

Alter closed her eyes, then opened them wide and shook her head.

"Believe me," said the Queen, "we have ample proof. Look." She held up the photographs for Alter to see. "My son took these pictures of the two of you together. They're very clear, don't you think?" She put the pictures back in the quilted pocket of her robe.

"Aren't you going to tell me, now?"

"I don't know anything," Alter said.

"Come now. That room had as many cameras as a sturgeon has eggs. There are dozens of hidden switches. Somehow the alarms connected with them didn't go off, but the cameras still worked."

Alter shook her head again.

"You don't have to be afraid," said the Queen. "We know you're tired and we want to get you back to the hospital as soon as possible. Now. What happened to my son, the Prince?"

Silence.

"You're a very sweet girl. You're an acrobat too?"

Alter swallowed, and then coughed.

The Queen gave a puzzled smile this time. "Really, you don't have to be afraid to answer me. You are an acrobat, isn't that right?"

Alter nodded.

The Queen reached out and slowly lifted the triplet leather necklace with its scattering of shells in her fingers. "This is a beautiful piece of jewelry." She lifted it from Alter's neck. "An acrobat's body must be like a fine jewel, fine and strong. You must be very proud of it." Again she paused and tilted her head. "I'm only trying to put you at ease, dear, make conversation." Smiling, she lifted the necklace completely from around Alter's neck. "Oh, this is exquisite ..."

Suddenly the necklace clattered to the ground, the shells making an almost miniature sound against the tiles.

Alter's eyes followed the necklace to the floor.

"Oh," the Queen said. "I'm terribly sorry. It would be a shame to break something like this." With one hand the Queen drew back her robes until her shoe was revealed. Then she moved her foot forward until her raised toe was over the necklace. "Will you tell me where my son is?"

There was seven, eight, ten seconds of silence. "Very well," the Queen said, and brought her foot down. The sound of crushed shells was covered by Alter's scream. Because the Queen had brought down the scepter, too, the full arc of its swing, onto Alter's strapped forearm. Then she brought it down again. The room was filled with the scream and the crack of the jeweled scepter against the surface of the block. Then the Queen smashed Alter's upturned elbow joint.

When there was something like silence, the Queen said, "Now, where is my son?"

Alter didn't say for a long while; when she did, they were ready to believe anything. So what she told them didn't do much good when they had time to check it. Later, unconscious, she was carried into the General Medical building wrapped in a gray blanket.

"Another fish poison case?" asked the clerk.

The man nodded. The doctor, who had been there when Alter was removed from the hospital, had been working steadily for six hours. When he unwrapped the blanket, he recognized the girl. When he unwrapped it further, the breath hissed between his lips, and then hissed out again, slowly. "Get this girl to emergency surgery," he said to the nurse. "Quickly!"

In the Devil's Pot, Tel had just gotten over a case of the runs which had kept him away from food all day. Feeling hungry, now, he was foraging in the cold storage cabinet of the inn's kitchen. In the freezing chest he found the remains of a baked fish, so he got a sharp knife from over the sink, and cut a piece. Then the door opened and the barmaid came in. She was nearly seventy years old and wore a red scarf around her stringy neck. Tel had cut a slice of onion and was putting it on top of the fish when the barmaid ran forward and knocked the dish from his hand.

"Ouch," Tel said, and jumped, though nothing had hurt him.

"Are you completely crazy?" the woman asked. "You want to be carried out of here like the rest of them?"

Tel looked puzzled as Rara entered the kitchen. "Good grief," she declared. "Where is everybody? I'm starved. I started selling that homebrew tonic of mine that I made up yesterday, and around noon, suddenly everybody was buying the stuff. They wanted something for cramps, and I guess my Super Aqueous Tonic is as good as anything else. I couldn't even get back to eat. Is there some sort of epidemic? Say, that looks good," and she went for the fish.

The old barmaid snatched up the dish and carried it to the disposal can. "It's poisoned, don't you understand?" She dumped it into the chute. "It's got to be the fish that's causing it. Everybody who ate it has been carried off to General Medical with cramps. Lots of them died, too. The woman who lives across the street and me, we figured it out. We both bought it from the same woman this morning, and that's all it could be.

"Well, I'm still hungry," Tel said.

"Can we have some cheese and fruit?" asked Rara.

"I guess that's safe," the woman said.

"Who was carried out?" Tel wanted to know, looking back in the cabinet.

"Oh, that's right," the barmaid said, "you've been upstairs sick all day." And then she told him.

At about the same time, an observer in a scouting plane noticed a boat bearing prefabricated barracks foundations some sixty miles away from any spot that could possibly be receiving such a shipment. In fact, he had sent a corrective order on a typographical error concerning ... yes, it must be, that same boat. He'd sent it that morning through Communication Sector 27B. They were near the shore, one of the few spots away from the fishing villages and the farm communes where the great forest had crept down to the edge of the water itself. A tiny port, occasionally used as an embarkation for the families of emigrants going to join people in the city, was the only point of civilization between the rippling smoke-green sea on one side and the crinkling deep green of the forest tree tops on the other. The observer also noted that a small tetron tramp was about to dock also. But that transport ship ... He called the pilot and requested contact be made.

The pilot was shaking his head, groggily.

The co-pilot was leaning back in his seat, his mouth opened, his eyes closed. "I don't feel too ..." The pilot started, and then reached forward absently to crumple a sheet of tin foil he had left on the instrument panel, in which, a few hours ago, had been a filet sandwich that he and the co-pilot had shared between them.

Suddenly the pilot fell forward out of his chair, knocking the control stick way to the left. He clutched his stomach as the plane banked suddenly to the right. In the observation blister, the observer was thrown from his chair and the microphone fell from his hand.

The co-pilot woke up, belched, grabbed for the stick, which was not in its usual place, and so missed. Forty-one seconds later, the plane had crashed into a dock some thirty feet from the mooring tetron tramp.

CHAPTER VIII

There was a roaring in the air. Let cried out and ran forward. Then shadow. Then water. His feet were slipping on the deck as the rail swung by. Then thunder. Then screaming. Something was breaking in half.

Jon and Arkor got him out. They had to jump overboard with the unconscious Prince, swim, climb, and carry. There were sirens at the dock when they laid him on the dried leaves of the forest clearing.

"We'll leave him here," Arkor said.

"Here? Are you sure?" Jon asked.

"They will come for him. You must go on," he said softly. "We'll leave the Prince now, and you can tell me of your plan."

"My plan ..." Jon said. They walked off through the trees.

Dried leaves tickled one cheek, a breeze cooled the other. Something touched him on the side, and he stretched his arms, scrunched his eyelids, then curled himself into the comfortable dark. He was napping in the little park behind the palace. He would go in for supper soon. The leaf smell was fresher than it had ever.... Something touched him on the side again.

He opened his eyes, and bit off a scream. Because he wasn't in the park, he wasn't going in to supper, and there was a giant standing over him.

The giant touched the boy with his foot once more.

Suddenly the boy scrambled away, then stopped, crouching, across the clearing. A breeze shook the leaves like admonishing fingers before he heard the giant speak. The giant was silent. Then the giant spoke again.

The word the boy recognized in both sentences was, "... Quorl ..."

The third time he spoke, he merely pointed to himself and repeated, "Quorl."

Then he pointed to the boy and smiled questioningly.

The boy was silent.

Again the giant slapped his hand against his naked chest and said, "Quorl." Again he extended his hand toward the boy, waiting for sound. It did not come. Finally the giant shrugged, and motioned for the boy to come with him.

The boy rose slowly, and then followed. Soon they were walking briskly through the woods.

As they walked, the boy remembered: the shadow of the plane out of control above them, the plane striking the water, water becoming a mountain of water, like shattered glass rushing at them across the sea. And he remembered the fire.

Hadn't it really started in his room at the palace, when he pressed the first of the concealed micro-switches with his heel? The cameras were probably working, but there had been no bells, no sirens, no rush of guards. It had tautened when he pushed the second switch in the jeweled dolphin on his bedpost. It nearly snapped with metallic panic when he had to maneuver the girl into position for the retina photograph. Nothing had happened. He was taken away, and his mother stayed quietly in her room. What was supposed to happen was pulling further and further away from the reality. How could anybody kidnap the Prince?

His treatment by the boy who told him about the sea and the girl who taught him to fall pulled it even tighter. If the Prince were kidnaped, certainly his jailors should not tell him stories of beautiful mornings and sunsets, or teach him to do impossible things with his body.

He was sure that the girl had meant him to die when she had told him to leap from the roof. But he had to do what he was told. He always had. (He was following the giant through the dull leaves because the giant had told him to.) When he had leapt from the roof, then rolled over and sprung to his feet alive, the shock had turned the rack another notch and he could feel the threads parting.

Perhaps if he had stayed there, talked more to the boy and girl, he could have loosened the traction, pulled the fabric of reality back into the shape of expectation. But then the man with the black hair and the scarred giant had come to take him away. He'd made one last volitional effort to bring "is" and "suppose" together. He'd told the man the story of the mine prisoners, the one cogent, connected thing he remembered from his immediate past, a real good "suppose" story. But the