Chung Kuo - The Marriage Of The Living Dark Part 12

Meg leaned towards her, strangely aggressive. "Even Ben doesn't know where I am."

Catherine laughed. "Of course he does. He watches you." "Watches ..." Meg stood up abruptly and went to the window, throwing it open, her eyes searching for something. There was a moment's tension in her and then she seemed to slump, as if defeated. Her head fell forward, her chest rising and falling agitatedly. Then she turned, looking back at Catherine, angry now. "He has no right!"

"Maybe not, but..."

"Tell him to leave me alone. Hasn't he done enough already?"

"He needs you, Meg."

Meg shuddered, a fire of indignation burning in her. "No. Let some other poor b.i.t.c.h cook his meals and keep his bed warm. I did it long enough."'1 didn't mean that" 'Then what do you mean?"

"I mean ..." Catherine closed her eyes momentarily. "It's like there's only half of him there."

'The self-indulgent, selfish half, you mean?"

Catherine hesitated, then nodded.

"So whafs new?"

Catherine blinked, surprised by Meg's harshness. She had expected something other than this. "He hurt you, didn't he?"

"Thaf s not the point. He always hurt me. Always. If s hurting others I won't put up with. When he started working with that man ..." "DeVore?"

Meg nodded.

"He won't stop, you know. Even if it kills him. He won't be told what to do. Not by you or anybody."

"I know."

"But if you love him ..."

Meg exploded. "What in G.o.d's name has that to do with anything!" Catherine looked down, then put out her hands towards the fire's warmth. '1 just thought you might be a check on Ben. A brake against the excesses of his nature."

Meg was silent. The crackle of the fire and the wind from outside - for a moment these were the only noises in the world. Then she sighed.

"I can't help you, Catherine. I can't"

"But he needs you."

"Maybe so, but he made his bed, now he must lie in it" "And that1 s your final word?"

Meg looked up, staring directly at the distant camera eye "Thaf s my final word."

"Whafs the matter, Daniel? Don't you want to run things here? Don't you want to be a boss?"

The voice came out of the darkness of the dormitory.

"Go to sleep, Tom."

HOMECOMING.

"Don't you?" another voice said, taking up the question. "Things would be better here if you did."

"Yes," someone else said, "things would be different if you were boss." Daniel sighed inwardly. If he had thought they would leave him alone, he had been wrong. He had tried to avoid trouble -to live a quiet life - but they wouldn't let him. He was a hero now, and every little p.r.i.c.k and c.o.c.ksucker wanted either to raise him up or pull him down. "Let me sleep," he said, but he knew they would not leave him be until they had an answer. They were all too excited. Word of what he'd done to Raeto had gone around the camp in minutes. The boys had talked of nothing else all evening. Schutz, it was said, was livid.

He would not, perhaps, have minded so much, had he not known now just how diseased it all was. Yes, and he knew now who that came from. He makes us in his image.

"Daniel?"

"Yes?"

"Why won't you be boss?"

He hesitated, then, knowing that they would not be satisfied until he had explained it to them, turned and sat up.

"Tom, get a light I need to talk to you."

Candles were brought and lit In their faint, flickering glow, they gathered about Daniel. A hundred, maybe two hundred boys in all. Orphans, every last one of them, taken from the streets by The Man and brought here to the camp. Daniel took a long breath, then, looking about him, began. "Listen to me carefully. Things are not as you think they are. If s all an experiment..." "An experiment?" Tom asked, his blue eyes staring moistly up at Daniel in the candle-light.

"Yes. An experiment in enhanced evolution." He raised a hand to fend off questions. "I know you don't have a clue what I'm talking about. Evolution. If s a word from before the Time of Cities. They told me. In the cells. They...

showed me what was happening. You see, if s make-or-break time, and not justin Eden. The whole of mankind is being tested - broken on the wheel. And The Man ..."

Daniel s.h.i.+vered, remembering suddenly his one and only meeting with The Man.

"The Man is using us."

He could see from the blank stares they were giving him that they didn't understand.

"Using us?" Tom asked.

Daniel looked down. How, in a word or two, could he express the depth of cynicism he had sensed, the unfathomed malice he had glimpsed in The Man's dark eyes? How could he possible articulate in words that would bring it alive to their imaginations, just how vile The Man's great scheme for them was? Using. That was all The Man was capable of. Not sharing or giving or enhancing - not in any sense other than in making a weapon better - but using. The same way Raeto would have used him.

Cleaners. The Man was making them all into a race of "cleaners" - of little a.r.s.e-lickers and c.o.c.k-suckers. Using them. Debasing them in the name of testing them. Humiliating them. Making their lives living h.e.l.ls. Daniel stared out at the sea of expectant faces, then shrugged. "Okay," he said.

"If that1 s what you want, I'll be boss here. But on my terms, right?"

"Righff" came the resounding answer as several hundred faces broke into a single beaming smile "Commander Horacek!" Schutz said, beginning to get up out of his seat, shocked to see his Commanding Officer there in the doorway of his office. "If I'd known you were coming ..."

"You'd have shat yourself."

Horacek looked about him disdainfully, his black and melted face registering disgust. "I hear you've had an unfortunate incident." Schutz swallowed. Who'd told him? Who, among his officers, was the little sneak?

Or were they all in Horacek's pay?

"I was just making the report," Schutz began, gesturing vaguely at the papers on his desk "You should have called me, at once."

Schutz bowed his head. "Yes, sir."

"Is the boy all right?"

"The boy?"

"Mussida. Did any harm come to him?"

Schutz blinked. Just how much did Horacek know? "No, I ..."

"Were you behind it, Schutz?"

Schutz glanced up. His senior staff were behind Horacek, filling the corridor outside, witnessing his humiliation.

"No, sir."

"I think you were behind it I think you thought to yourself that if Mussida had an accident then maybe he'd be moved out of here and then he'd no longer be your responsibility, that"s what 7 think."

Someone had told him. Told him everything. Raditz, perhaps. Indeed, now that he thought of it, Raditz had probably set him up.

"No, sir," he said, knowing that he had no choice now but to bluff it out. "No?" Horacek sat down on the edge of the desk. The very proximity of him made Schutz's flesh creep. Horacek was like something that had crawled out of an oven. "Are you sure about that, Commandant?"

Was this a test of some kind? Did Horacek have a tape of that earlier meeting?

Schutz weighed things up, then shrugged.

"I may have... I don't know ... suggested my feelings on the matter. But I gave no order. Mussida was in my charge. He was my responsibility." "Precisely."

Schutz felt himself squirm under Horacek's direct gaze.

"Do you realise what care The Man has put into raising the boy?" Schutz kept his thoughts on that to himself. If caring was trying to have the boy killed five times, then The Man cared hugely for the boy."Yes, sir." "Then I'd say that, at the very least, you have been ... negligent, Schutz." The word was like a slap. No, it was worse than that - it was like a cold hand closing over his exposed t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es. Schutz felt suddenly very very vulnerable. Horacek was so utterly unpredictable.

"Well?" Horacek prompted.

If he said no, that would be a contradiction of Horacek, and Horacek would not like it But if he said yes, it would be an admission of his negligence, and neither Horacek or The Man liked any failings in their inferiors. It was a cla.s.sic no-win situation.

Schutz chose what he thought was the least bad of his options.

"No, sir."

Horacek's silence was awful. He got up and came around the desk, until he stood at Schutz's shoulder. Schutz could feel his breath on his neck - could smell the foul odour of its corruption.

(IT II.

Horacek's right hand clamped about his throat, choking off the word. An instant later, Horacek's left hand joined it, the two hands attacking Schutz's windpipe with the ferocity of two wild animals.

Schutz's arms went out, feebly trying to reach behind him, a strange sound somewhere between a wheeze and a howl of pain escaping his grimacing mouth. His eyes bulged - literally bulged - in his face and his whole head seemed to go a strange, bruised colour. And still Horacek squeezed. In the doorway, Schutz's staff looked on, both fascinated and horrified by the sight And as Schutz fell lifeless to the floor, a collective shudder went through them, as if they had all just o.r.g.a.s.med at once. Horacek looked across, businesslike again.

"Raditz, you're in charge now."

Raditz snapped to attention. "Sir!"

"And Raditz?"

"Sir?"

"Remember what you've seen, neh?"

There was meat in the soup the next day, little chunks of it

Daniel took a spoonful of the steaming broth, then spat it out pus.h.i.+ng the bowl away abruptly. At once everyone at the long table stopped eating and stared at Daniel.

"Out," he said, distractedly, as if talking to himself. "We've got to get out onto the streets. We've got to see whaf s going on." "They won't let you," one of the older boys said.

"No?" Daniel said, meeting the boy's eyes defiantly, forcing him to look away.

"Then Raditz can tell me that to my face, can't he?"

He stood, looking about him. "Who's coming with me?" At that many looked down, not wis.h.i.+ng to meet his eyes, yet Tom and several others - the older boy among them - got to their feet "Well?" Daniel asked, turning to look about the dining hall. "Anyone else? Or are you all s.h.i.+t-scared?"

Slowly, one by one, they got to their feet, until every last boy in the dining hall was standing.

There were no guards - the boys guarded themselves at meal-times - yet someone in the kitchens, seeing what was happening, pushed through the back door and hurried off, meaning to warn Raditz.