CHU LI HAD EXPERIENCED ONE BIG SCARE ON THE way to the spaceship. Just before boarding, they were all required to clear security by placing both hands on a plate and looking through a binocularlike eyepiece. He had been sure that the other three would leave without him once the machine, which was definitely linked to Master System, identified him not as Chu Li but as Song Ching.
But the machine had not. Incredibly, it positively matched eye- and fingerprints with Chu Li and showed a picture of the disguised Song Ching on the security monitor. The success at the checkpoint was as startling and disturbing as failure would have been. He knew that the system was hardly infallible, but nobody could fool Master System to this degree. It was unthinkable. The only explanation possible was that the gods themselves had intervened.
Captain Sabatini was correct that the ship was not intended to take off from the ground except in emergencies; it was impossible to imagine how it had ever landed there. The passenger cabin was boarded by going sideways through an open air lock, then into a room that contained twelve huge, plush chairs with oversized backs in three rows of four each. The ship was not completely vertical but at a forty-five-degree angle that was certainly as unmanageable. A network of planks was laid inside so that people could enter.
Chu Li was carried in by a very large guard who looked like a retired wrestler, then placed in one of the far chairs in the front row. He sank so deeply into the chair that he feared being smothered, and the network of belts and webbing that strapped him in made it impossible even to move.
Deng was carried in next, placed in the rear seat farthest from the door, and similarly fastened in. The two girls were placed in the front and rear seats nearest the air lock, but so restricting were the bonds that Chu Li could not turn to see which one was in his row.
Sabatini entered, managing the entire mess with acrobatic skill that made it look not only easy but normal. He went down—back—beyond the last row and vanished; they didn’t know where and could not look to see.
The captain was in one of the two rooms that were in the rear of the compartment, seated in a chair that could be maneuvered electrically by controls at his fingers and was surrounded by screens and instrumentation. His own webbing would hold his body tight but allowed his arms total freedom. There were straps through which he could slip his hands for total security when necessary. He put on a small, light headset that had a tiny microphone on a rigid loop in front of his mouth.
“Captain to pilot. Prepare to clear and close all outer doors. Internal systems on,” he instructed calmly.
Up front there was the distant sound of warning sirens. As the planks were hastily withdrawn, the air locks—first the outer, then the inner—were closed and sealed automatically, and the passengers were left with only the light of the red signal above those doors and the very dim emergency lighting system to see by. Not, of course, that there was anything to see.
Then, with a whine, the lights came on full inside, restoring some sense of normalcy. There was a sound of air blowing in from all sides, and they felt their ears pop several times.
“Switch to passenger intercom, then prepare for launch,” the captain ordered. Then he changed his tone, and his voice blared from the overhead speakers.
“Good evening. I know you’re uncomfortable, but this will last only a short while. We are now eleven minutes from launch, and it will take us about forty minutes to reach orbit and activate the gravity. We’ll then have a little time to get comfortable for the long haul. There will be a second sustained engine firing from orbit, but that won’t feel like very much in here, and all it will really require is that you sit down and keep a seat belt on. This is the rough part. You’ll feel at first like some big hand is pushing you completely through the seat until you can’t bear it anymore, and it’ll sound and feel like the whole ship’s shaking to pieces, but don’t worry. That’s normal. After a little bit, you’ll suddenly find that pressing weight gone, and you’ll feel like you don’t weigh anything at all, which will be more or less true. There’s a monitor hanging from the ceiling up front and center which will show a view from the stern. Enjoy it. This is the only planetary lift-off you’re ever likely to experience.”
He switched back to his business channel. The computer took readings on the prisoners and showed the results on a screen to his right, but he didn’t pay attention. If their blood pressure didn’t go through the roof, they’d be all right.
“Chu Li!” called the girl three seats to his right.
“Here. Is that you, Chow Dai?”
“Yes. Chu Li—I am frightened. I do not like this kind of flying ship.”
He tried to reassure her. The fact was, he wasn’t the least bit frightened of the ship or the takeoff. It was what would come after, on the days out there, that caused real fear.
“It is just a ship, in many ways like the ones that sail the rivers.”
“I am far more worried by his saying that it was the only such experience we’ll ever have,” Deng Ho shouted from the back. “This will be just a lot of shaking and noise.”
“It is the waiting!” Chow Mai added from her rear seat. “I wish they would just do whatever it is they will do!”
Suddenly the ship trembled, and they found themselves being raised so that their backs were down and their feet were forward. It was most uncomfortable. Then the lights and power switched briefly off, then on again, and there was a tremendous whine from somewhere deep inside the ship that grew in pitch and intensity. The whole world seemed suddenly to begin shuddering and shaking; there was vibration but no real sensation of moving. Chu Li’s eyes went to the monitor, and with a start he saw the entire spaceport complex framed there, growing smaller by the second, until it was lost in a view of steppe and desert. Only then did the great invisible hand Sabatini had warned about really begin to come down on them.
The weight was crushing and terrible, and the two girls screamed. It lasted only a few minutes, but it seemed like hours. All four felt as if all the air was being squeezed out of them.
The pressure ceased so abruptly that the transition made them dizzy with relief. They experienced no real discomfort except some popping ears, but when Chu Li again had the wits to look at the monitor, he saw nothing familiar there, only a vast expanse of blue and white. Within a few minutes there were browns and grays down there as well; it was almost as if they were looking at some model, some relief map of a strange place. Chu Li had expected something more dramatic, such as the world as a ball growing ever smaller, but this was just indistinct nothingness.
The ship shuddered a few times as it made small mid-course corrections, but these were brief and caused no real sensations at all, just a steady vibration throughout the ship and a low whine coming from somewhere in the rear.
At least they were sitting upright again, Chu Li thought with some relief. Still, it had been somewhat of an anticlimax to him; he had expected lift-off to be longer and far more extreme.
Now there was a gentler sense of acceleration that slowly built but did not grow very far. A buzzer sounded in the rear, then Captain Sabatini was walking comfortably forward, still wearing the headset. He checked each of them in turn, finally reaching Chu Li.
“All right, we have only a short time to do this, so listen closely and do just what I tell you,” he said loudly. “I’m going to release the restraints on you one at a time and put on more comfortable ones. I don’t want anyone trying anything. With this headset I can control a good deal of what it’s like in here, and I do it in a language none of you know, so don’t think you can grab it and start shouting orders. It will go very hard with anyone who gives me any trouble at all.”
He pressed something between Chu Li’s legs, and the intolerable belts and webbing loosened, then were reeled into the seat. For a brief moment, Chu Li was free and unrestrained, but he knew this was not the time to try anything. They didn’t know enough yet, and there were many aspects of this ship that didn’t fit the model and schematics in his brain.
“Stand up,” the captain ordered, and Chu Li did, feeling oddly light and slightly off balance. Sabatini gave a command in some very strange sounding tongue, and a small compartment in the wall opened. Removing what looked like a belt fastened to a thin but tough chain, he attached it around Chu Li’s waist under his tunic. He repeated the procedure with each of the others in turn, then passed out some prewet towels to the two girls, both of whom had thrown up on takeoff.
Chu Li examined the restraint. The chain held him and would not slip either up or down more than a few centimeters, yet it was not tight or particularly uncomfortable. At the back was a small box that was both a lock and a piece of electronics which adjusted for comfort but also tightened in response to any attempt to move the chain too far. There was even enough give to pull out some chain and actually rotate the body loop, bringing the box around to the front, but it still could not be removed.
“All right, now, here’s the situation,” Sabatini said. “The restraint you each wear contains a length of chain sufficient for you to reach all the parts of the cabin you need to get to. It is smart and will automatically adjust in or out depending on where you want to go. The one thing you have to remember is that the chains will not allow themselves to be crossed. That avoids tangles but will take some getting used to. Any problems and I can have those chains drag you all the way to the wall and hold you there. You can’t imagine how fast you can find yourself slammed against the wall. Right now, just bring out a little chain and bring the box forward, then sit down. We can’t get comfortable yet.
“Now, I want to run through a few basics. You have gravity here, but it is only seventy percent of what you’ve been used to, so you’re going to find maneuvering difficult at first. Just remember that if you weighed fifty kilos on Earth, you weigh only thirty-five here. You also fall at seventy percent the usual speed if you happen to trip. Questions?”
There were many, but none were asked.
“All right, then. If we all do our part to be nice, then those chains will be all that is needed. You’ll get so used to them that in a day or two you won’t even think about them. You’ll sleep with them, eat with them, go to the bathroom with them. However, rest assured I have other restraints if you cause me troubles, many of which are neither smart nor comfortable. Later I’ll have clean clothes for you, and I’ll show you how to get rid of your body wastes and where and how showers are done here. For now, I want you to use the regular lap and shoulder belts on your seats and remain there. We have another boost coming up, although nothing like the last one, and then it’ll be smooth as silk for the rest of the journey.”
The second burst, when it came, was accompanied by the same noise and vibration as the takeoff, but the giant’s hand was a pale shadow of its old self, nor did it seem so long.
Still, Chu Li worried. What sort of new clothing? Would his secret have to come out right away, before he’d had time to prepare the others? And, of equal concern, what sort of man would they send who could nursemaid four condemned prisoners for forty-one days in close quarters? So far he had been almost too nice and polite. They were, after all, not paying passengers, and this was no luxury cruise.
The passenger cabin, as Sabatini called it, was a marvel in itself. With a few commands in that strange tongue and the manipulation of some hidden controls, the chairs vanished deep into the floor and were replaced by large reclining leather seats that could go all the way down to become quite comfortable beds. These chairs swiveled a full hundred and eighty degrees and were placed at equal distances around a polished laminated table. The rear of the cabin was empty, providing perhaps six by nine meters that could be used for walking or other exercise, and there were three doors in the back wall. From watching Sabatini’s comings and goings, the passengers guessed that the center door led to the next area back in the ship, the right-hand door led to Sabatini’s own private cabin, and the left-hand one opened on a room that seemed to be filled with complex electronic gear. A thick red line was painted on the floor about a meter in front of the doors, and past that the chain would not go.
Forward of the table and chairs there were also three doors. The center one, they were told, led forward to the next area and was doubly dangerous, since it opened onto an inner air lock and seal, and no areas forward now contained air. A red circle on the floor in front of the door again proved to be the chain’s limit. The door on the left, however, was the toilet, and that they could enter.
The other door led to a shower, or at least what Sabatini called a shower. There was a small outer area for putting down clothing, then what looked like a huge plastic tube with one side cut away. When one stood in the center of the tube, the open side closed, and one was almost engulfed by a tremendous stream of liquid. The shower had three cycles, which left the bather dry and very clean.
For the first two days out the boredom was broken only by occasional explanations from Sabatini. The new clothing—white, loose-fitting cotton pajamas—allowed Chu Li to maintain his fiction a while longer, although Deng Ho was beginning to look at him curiously. Chu Li knew that the time was coming when he could not avoid revealing his secret, but he could not bring himself to do it—not yet.
Sabatini was generally not in the passenger cabin, occupying himself elsewhere. This gave them some initial breathing room and allowed for some expert examinations. Chu Li could find no routine visual monitoring devices in the cabin, though it appeared that Sabatini could watch them from either of his rooms through some special plates. The speakers were certainly two-way, but there were only two of them, and they were easily avoided. It was possible to have private conversations by having one pair talk loudly near the speakers while the other pair spoke in whispers.
“You have seen the place now. What do you think?” Chow Dai asked Chu Li in such a circumstance.
“This room is customized far beyond what this ship usually has,” he told her. “It is possible that it is used to carry important people as well as prisoners. That might also explain the lack of monitors and recorders. Both of the rooms in back are also not standard. I particularly do not understand that room full of gear or that headset he wears. This ship is totally automatic, with a self-aware computer for a pilot. What could he be doing from that room? And what is forward? I do not know how far up we are in the ship, but if that middle door is an air lock, then it shows no indicators like the ones on the sides and no seals, either. There is air up there, at least for one more room. I know there is. Why? And where are the space suits? They should be in a compartment off this room, yet there seem to be no compartments except the small ones that manage these chain devices and the ones that deliver our food and drink on the little trays and dispose of the waste. Much of this does not make sense.”
“The food is strange, too,” she noted.
“It is foreign devil food, but it serves. This is not a Chinese ship. What about these chain things?”
“The box is easy to fool. Chow Mai and I have already found two ways to make it loosen up enough to slip the whole thing off. The doors have simple electrical locks. I know the combinations now from just observing the captain, but they are almost identical to the locks on the toilet and shower. We could break them if we had to.”
“I thought you’d need some tools for that.”
“We have them. He never missed the two we required when Chow Mai took them from his pack. The problem is his headset. It really can override—we have watched him—and the tongue is impossible.”
He nodded. “I must know more about the ship. When he sleeps, you must show me how to slip this bond and help me enter that mystery room with all the electronics. We must know everything before we move.”
They were all supposed to sleep at the same time, but their chains were left free in case they needed to use the toilet. No matter how hard he tried, Chu Li could not manage the simple maneuver to fool the box, but Chow Dai slipped hers and then freed him. Chow Mai and Deng Ho remained in their beds, quietly on watch.
Chu Li would have liked to explore the rest of the ship, but whenever Sabatini had opened the rear door, a distant bell had sounded; until they could somehow mask that alarm, they couldn’t risk it. In any case, the mystery room was their primary target.
Chow Dai did not want to chance using the combination. Instead, she skillfully bypassed the combination board and sprang the lock with two small and nearly silent pilfered electronic tools. When the door swung back, Chu Li kissed her and entered the room.
The place was an electronic wonderland situated around a single command chair. Much of the equipment was unfamiliar, though he recognized some machines and could guess at the functions of others. There was a small mind-print machine and a large number of cartridges, which were numbered in the Arabic system rather than labeled. The machine itself was far too simple for psychosurgery; more than likely it was there so that Sabatini could instantly learn other languages he needed or be updated on ship changes and modifications. Monitors showed schematics of the ship at this level and probably could display other levels in response to the correct commands. One thing was certain: The areas of pressurization and atmosphere, which were outlined in blue, extended far aft as well as forward of the cabin they were in. The artificial gravity, however, appeared limited to the passenger compartment and a much larger compartment immediately behind it—almost certainly the live animal transport area of which the captain had spoken.
Unfortunately, too much of the information on the monitors and even the labels was useless, written again in that unknown script. Chu Li looked longingly at the mindprint machine and cartridges. Somewhere there was probably the language he needed, but which one? He certainly didn’t have the time to learn them all.
Still, there was far more equipment here than any human companion on this ship would require, even more than would be needed for any conceivable human intervention. It was more like the kind of compartment required for someone to run the whole ship—but that was done by computer.
The only logical explanation struck him with the force of a blow. Song Ching’s father had already known that there was a human override built into the ships. Suppose Sabatini really was the captain? Suppose the computer pilot was not independent but his subordinate, subject to him? He remembered the complex helmets in the illegal tech cult’s fortress laboratories. They had built them from scratch and had assumed that they would have to hardwire the connection. Suppose that was what the omnipresent headset was really for? Sabatini was running his own ship!
He turned back toward the door only to see it suddenly shut with a speed and force he’d never before seen on a door. He tried to open it but could not. He was stuck in there!
“You just stay right there and don’t touch a thing!” Sabatini’s voice came over a small speaker in the console. “I will tend to you as soon as I have tended to your friends, and I will be far gentler to them if you just sit in the chair and relax until I come for you.”
There was no malice in his tone, but Chu Li had no doubt that the captain would not hesitate to carry out his implied threat. There was nothing to do but sit and try to figure out as much additional information as he could from what he could see.
After an eternity, the door opened and the full cabin lights flooded the compartment. Sabatini, dressed in shorts and a T-shirt, stood there with a small weapon in his hand. He had his small headset on as well. “All right—time to get out now,” he said casually. “And I was beginning to wonder if this would be a boring trip. All right—out! Now!”
When Chu Li emerged, he found both the girls kneeling on the floor, their chains reattached, their hands bound behind their backs, and their ankles secured. Chow Dai gave him an expression that was filled with both hurt and apology. Deng Ho was still in his chair, strapped to it by hand and leg cuffs and unable to move.
Chu Li looked at the weapon in Sabatini’s hand. It was a very small thing of red plastic with a gauge on its handle, a small button for a trigger, and a metallic point where the barrel ended.
“I’ve already demonstrated the stinger to your girl friends,” the captain warned. “If you’d like one, I’ll be happy to give it. This little line here shows the amount of power it’ll put out in a room this size. Right now it’s set for a debilitating shock. Halfway and it’ll knock you out for a couple of minutes. All the way up and it might stop your heart.”
“I believe you,” Chu Li responded hollowly.
“All right, then—over here. Chain on. That’s it. Now—hands behind your back. Good.” Chu Li felt pressure and found his hands held by very firm handcuffs that allowed no real give or play at all. “Now—on your knees.” He did so, and two stiff leg cuffs were also locked into place. He faced the two girls on the opposite side of the open space.
Sabatini relaxed. “Now, I told you I could be mean if somebody tried to take advantage of me. I figured you might be pulling something, covering talks with other talks and whispering campaigns, and I knew from the records that the girls were experts at locks. When I sleep, I put the alarms on all these doors so they sound in my cabin. I just decided to see what you were up to.”
Chu Li understood now how it worked. The captain switched on the alarm, and when it rang and awakened him, he had merely to grab his headset to find where the trouble was and who was causing it. He then simply commanded the door to shut, overriding the lock, then took the others with his weapon.
“All right—it was one slip,” Sabatini said almost kindly. “If I was mean and nasty or even smart, I’d just leave you all like that for the next thirty-nine days but pull you all to the wall with the box behind your back like your hands and feed you like animals from trays. Or send you back to the animal cages, maybe. But that’s only because this sort of stuff puts me in a real bad mood. Now, if somebody got me in a better mood, I might actually forgive and forget.”
He walked back over to his open cabin door, reached in, and brought out a rather nasty-looking straight knife. Then he muttered something into his headphone, and abruptly both women were jerked back to the wall and slammed against it. Since the chain emerged from a point in the bulkhead above their waists, it had the effect of suspending them slightly, leaning forward because of their bound hands, barely touching the floor with their toes.
Sabatini went over to Chow Dai. “You’ve got an ugly face,” he told her, “but I’m curious about the rest of you.” Using the knife, he cut away her pullover and her pants and flung them to one side, leaving her hanging there by the chain, naked. She did, in fact, have quite a nice body, but something made the captain stop and command the chain to come out a bit. He caught her and turned her around to face the wall.
Chu Li gasped, and Sabatini was almost equally appalled. Chow Dai’s back was a mass of welts and scar tissue almost from the shoulders to the buttocks. “Holy—somebody really did a job on you, didn’t they, beautiful?” he commented. He lifted her up, then put her back on the floor in the kneeling position. “You stay there. Let’s see if your sister got the same treatment.”
She had. If anything, Chow Mai’s scars were worse. The evident brutality was so gross and unexpected that even Sabatini hadn’t been prepared for it. He put the sister back down in the kneeling position on the floor as well.
“Well,” the captain muttered. “Nothing about that in the record. Damn it, you girls wouldn’t be any fun at all.” He paused a moment. “But then, hope springs eternal, doesn’t it? There’s lots of things not in the official record.” He turned and stalked back across the room. “Isn’t that right, Mister Chu?”
Now it was Chu Li’s turn to be suspended against the wall and slowly have the clothing cut away as the others watched. Everyone except the captain seemed shocked, surprised, and amazed at what was revealed. Song Ching, after all, had been genetically designed for perfection. Nor were there any marks on this body, not so much as a scar or blemish.
“Now, that’s more like it,” Sabatini proclaimed lustfully as he put Chu Li back down in the kneeling position.
Chow Dai’s mouth seemed permanently open in amazement, all embarrassment from her own exposure pushed aside. “Chu Li—you are a girl! But—how is that possible?”
“I’d like to know that one myself,” Sabatini put in. “My manifest says you’re a boy, you’ve got a voice to match that, and you passed a Master System identity check as a male.”
So here it was. He knew he could not be mystical; the Chow sisters would accept it, but Deng Ho—who could only stare in wonder, not a little lust on his face as well in spite of his bindings—and the captain would never buy it. He had worked out a story, though, that explained the facts even if he didn’t know if it was really possible. He’d been refining it for days.
“It is none of my doing,” he lied. “They—changed me. A surgeon and a psychochemist. But they never completed the job. They changed me from a boy to a girl, but you can tell from my voice, my ways, that they never changed me inside.”
“The outside does just fine by me,” Sabatini noted.
“But why would they do such a thing?” Chow Dai asked him.
“They were remaking me to replace somebody. Somebody important who was sent down for work but who had power enough to fake it. Song Ching, the daughter of the chief administrator. They had no other use for me, and they decided I was about her size. I had no choice. But they were fooled near the completion of their goal. Orders came from somewhere that I was to be sent here. They could not change the orders, and they could not give someone else my prints and patterns, so they had to send me.”
“Rat—is that really you?” Deng Ho asked in wonder.
“Deep inside, my cousin. I am sorry. They fixed me so I would not know myself what had been done until the day I left, when it wore off.”
“Oh, I am so sorry, Chu Li!” Chow Dai cried. “Why did you not tell me when you knew?”
“Sooner or later I was going to tell you,” he replied honestly. “I—I just cared for you, Chow Dai. I am a man in a woman’s body. I feel as a man feels, as I felt before they did this to me. You have your scars, and you were pleased that I looked past them, but how could a normal woman look past this?”
Sabatini had let the touching scene go on. He was somewhat fascinated himself by all this, particularly when the name Song Ching had been mentioned. The reason they had all been forced through an extra and complete security check was that Song Ching, the daughter of the chief administrator of the China District, had been reported vanished from a maximum security area. He knew the powers those butchers had. They were perfectly capable of turning a worthless kid into a duplicate of this girl and maybe turning this girl into something else, somebody she’d disposed of and then replaced, or maybe even somebody outside China.
Her story held together. For a moment he thought she might be the real Song Ching, although why anybody’d pull strings to be sent to Melchior was beyond understanding, but the fact that she’d passed the security exit test as a boy named Chu Li made her story ironclad. Briefly he considered not turning her over at Melchior but bringing her back and passing her off as the real one, which would save a lot of asses and earn him some real powerful friends, but by this time they’d run security checks up the rear and the plot would be easily exposed—which would only send him back to Melchior—this time in chains and one-way.
The captain looked her over. “Well, kid, they did a really great job. No scars, no nothing. Perfect. I think you got to get used to being a girl no matter what your head says. They threw away all the old parts, anyway. I think maybe you ought to learn what it’s like to be a girl these days Uh uh! Careful! You can’t do anything but sit.”
Chu Li had attempted to lunge forward in anger at the captain’s words, but it had been fruitless.
“Now you sit and listen,” he continued. “You’re property and you got a great body and you are being sent to hell. They’re going to love you on Melchior. A slightly incomplete job but an expert one, just up their fields of interest. They’ll study you, pick your brain and chemistry apart, then they’ll have what they want. Then they’ll complete the job and make you somebody’s present. Since you look like this Song Ching, they won’t want you anywhere where her father would notice, but they’ll find a bunch on Melchior in a region where chief administrators never even look and stick you there, all right, only you won’t be interested in machines or escape anymore. It won’t hurt anything to start now, and it might put me in a good enough mood to forget this little incident.”
“I will never dishonor myself so!” Chu Li spat. “Perhaps they can make me as you say, but then I will not know my shame. I will fight you even if I fail!”
“Chu Li! You must not!” both sisters said at once. “Look at our bodies! And it was to no avail! The price is great enough without adding more!”
“You do not know what it is like,” Chow Dai continued alone. “You cannot. But can’t you see, under that smile of his he is one of them! No different from the ones who did this to us?”
“Listen to her,” the captain urged. “She’s right, you know. I can be quite—creative, within my charter.”
“Never!” Chu Li exclaimed. “To me it would be a perversion as well as an assault! What does it matter to me if you do things to this body? It would be better for me if you did make it less beautiful!”
“You’ve got a point,” the captain admitted. He thought for a moment, then said something in his language into the headset. They waited, not knowing what was going to happen, and he seemed both relaxed and patient. Finally the rear center door opened, and an emergency medical unit appeared.
“Now, I don’t want all the bother of keeping you shackled or caged all the time, not if I can help it,” he told them, again sounding casual and almost friendly. “There are many ways around it, but I’m still in a bad mood, having been awakened and all that. It seems to me the heart of this—incident—are our two locksmiths here. I can’t see that doing a little more to them here is going to change anything on Melchior, either. Seems to me that if you don’t have any thumbs or index fingers, you won’t be stealing things and picking locks anymore, will you?”
“No!” Deng Ho cried out. “They have suffered enough, you monster! You cannot do this!”
“He won’t do it,” Chu Li responded. “He has to deliver his cargo undamaged.”
“Oh, of course I will,” the captain assured them. “They don’t mind a few things like that. They understand. See, you of all people should know that those types can grow back things like missing fingers and the like if they feel the need. Look at what they grew out of you!”
Chu Li’s spirits sank as he realized the truth of that, even if they hadn’t really grown anything on him. The two girls’ faces were masks of terror. “All right, you serpent. What do you want of me? To ravish my body? Is that the price?”
“At the start, yes. Now I want more. I want cooperation. Enthusiasm. It will be a long trip yet. I want a servant. Someone who will do exactly what I say without needing restraints. If I don’t cut their fingers, I must leave their hands where they are. Makes it inconvenient for them to eat, so they must be fed. I want a mistress who will do my bidding without even thinking about it.” He drew the little pistol. “Hesitate, argue, or fail to please me in any way for the next month and you’ll feel this.” He fired at the torso.
Chu Li had never felt such pain, and he cried out.
“Betray me, fail to do my will, or act or even speak with them about acting in any way against me and it will cost your girl friend’s sister her thumbs. Twice and your girl friend loses hers. As for the fat boy on the chair, if he gets out of line in any way or is involved in anything at all I don’t like, I’ll bring this little thing out, and then I’ll be the only whole male on this ship. Understand?”
The Chow sisters looked pleadingly at Chu Li. “All right,” he said. “I will do whatever you say.”
There was a nearly immediate jolt from the little gun that again produced agony. “From now on, your name, the only name you will answer to, even to your friends here, is Slave. And you will call me Master or Honorable Captain. My slave here will refer to herself as a she at all times, and so will you all—only the feminine will be used when referring to or speaking to her. I want her to get a basic truth through her head once and for all.
“Additionally, all of you will bow in my presence, and you, Slave, will kneel to me, head bowed, anticipating my desires. To prevent more thefts, all of you will go naked until we arrive at Melchior, and as extra insurance our two sisters will continue to have their hands bound behind their backs—unless the slave, here, fouls up and they lose sufficient fingers to be a threat no longer. What do you think of that, Slave?”
“Whatever you command, Honorable Master,” Chu Li responded, teeth clenched but head bowed.
Sabatini went over to him. “I know what you’re thinking, but I plan to change that. You see, you’ve lost everything. Everything but your honor and your dignity. I will strip those from you. You’re the only one of this bunch who really has any. That’s why you are the leader. Before the end of this voyage, you will break.”
He sighed and dismissed the medical robot, then went back to his cabin for a moment. He emerged soon with a set of U-shaped devices, then unlocked all chains from Chu Li and commanded her to lie flat on the floor in a particularly embarrassing position. The four restraints descended to hold down her arms and legs. Then he began removing his own clothing and weapons.
He made the rest watch in anguished silence as he first performed the ultimate indignities upon their companion. He was deliberately brutal about it, but he clearly was enjoying himself.
Sabatini kept his slave apart from the others in a small, dark closet barely four meters square and only a meter and a half high. The only light came from a small grill right at the top of her box. She could not see out, and the vibrating compartments at the rear of the cage masked any noise or movement outside. She would be there for long, horrible periods, then suddenly taken out and checked over to see how she reacted. Sometimes he didn’t like the slightest thing and shoved her back. She was allowed to see her friends only in his presence, and then she had to speak to them servilely and in a very loud voice. Infractions were met with deprivation of food, water, and bathroom stops.
Clearly he wasn’t neglecting the other three. Deng Ho seemed lost most of the time in a world of his own, while the two girls were vacant, listless, and resigned.
He no longer restrained her when mounting sexual attacks, but he was even rougher and more brutal and demanding. Early on, he’d left his shock pistol on a table near his bed in the cabin where he had her, and she had gotten it and fired it at him, over and over. He had just laughed. He had removed the little charger and deliberately left it there. He then actually handed her his knife and invited attack, but she lost the knife and her footing before she made the fist real move. Then he had worked her over with just his hands, leaving painful bruises that did not show on her skin, and raped her, before tossing her back in her hole to be wakened every hour or so for an extremely long period but denied food, water, and bathroom.
His treatment so brutalized her that when he finally let her out, she was so sincerely servile, so letter perfect, he let her sleep. Her behavior after that remained so perfect that he began easing up, slowly but progressively. He cleaned the closet and disinfected it. He let her shower. He gave her good food. A few more very minor slips brought renewed punishment, but they were the last gasps of resistance. She found it increasingly difficult to think of anything but the ship, her duties, her behavior, pleasing him. After a bit longer, the only thing that mattered to her was pleasing him. He continued to leave weapons and other things of interest to the old Chu Li around, and if she saw them at all, she did not even think of picking them up or using them.
She began to hope that she would be so useful, so obedient, so perfect that he would not think of turning her over at Melchior but would retain her on the ship. He obliquely encouraged this idea, then released her forever from her closet and allowed her to rejoin the others. She was not, however, to have any private conversations with any of them.
The other three had been faring only a little better, with routine deprivation and punishments by Sabatini’s pistol. It was what he had done with, and to, the one they’d known as Chu Li that was the telling blow. If the strong, educated one could be broken so completely without even any technological aids, then there was no hope.
When they were twenty-three days out, although they’d lost all track of time, Deng Ho committed suicide.
It had not been easy, but it had certainly been well planned. He did it in the bathroom by wrapping his waist chain excess around his neck and then somehow getting it caught up in the toilet-flushing mechanism. It must have been an agonizingly slow strangulation, yet he had resisted all impulses to stop it and had not cried out, even at the last.
The act shocked all three of the remaining prisoners, and it really irritated Sabatini. He had spent so much time on Chu Li that he’d really neglected to keep close watch on the others, and particularly on the quiet chubby boy who had never really given him any trouble. He actually felt a little sorry for the kid, but he was more upset that perhaps this was only the first. He doubted that Chu Li would try it; she was too anxious to keep in good with him in the pathetic hope that he’d keep her aboard—if he could, he would, but they’d never allow it. Instead, he now had a black mark, and he needed a good line to get out of it.
He decided that a burial would be a nice gesture. He had no desire to build up any more resentment. And so, after speaking some words, he’d taken the body to the port center air lock, where the other three could watch, and placed it respectfully inside. He was even indulgent to their reactions. “You may say farewell and whatever prayers you wish for him,” he told them.
“If you please, Honorable Captain,” Chow Mai said, somewhat more animated than she’d been in a long time. “Where will he go now?”
“Normally, you would enter the air lock in a pressure suit and then pump all the air out before going into space. I’m keeping the air inside, and I’ll pump the pressure way up. Then, when the outer door opens, he will be launched into space by the escaping air. He will drift in space forever.”
Chow Mai, who had always liked the boy, had a few tears for him. “That is good,” she responded, almost to herself. “He will become one with the stars, a constellation in the heavens.”
The two girls both said prayers and farewells, but Chu Li stood back, silent. She had found the body of the boy and had seen the grotesque face and distorted, popped eyes. It was a haunting grotesquerie worse than anything yet experienced in this horror odyssey.
The two sisters stepped back, and Sabatini made certain that the body was arranged in the air lock.
Something snapped in Chu Li’s brain. The compassion of the innocent Chu Li who had been killed; the haughty pride of Song Ching, reduced and violated; the relative innocence of the two sisters, punished all out of proportion to their crimes; the cruel, calculating Sabatini who personified the system’s least common denominator; the quiet innocence and inner despair of Deng Ho, who chose to die a slow, agonizing death rather than see or accept any more . . .
“No,” she whispered under her breath. Sabatini didn’t hear it, but the two sisters did, and they looked at each other, then at her, not quite knowing what was about to happen but ready to assist. Chu Li moved up behind the captain silently. He was a good fifteen centimeters taller than she and far stronger, but she knew that this was the moment. Risk it now, and perhaps lose, or be a slave forever and deservedly so.
With one motion she jumped, grabbing the headphones from the captain’s head and striking his face with the little microphone. As he was still turning in shock and surprise, she gave him a push forward with all her adrenaline-pumped might. He staggered, but a hand caught the side of the air lock door.
The two sisters, hands still tied behind their backs, ran at him and butted him in the midsection with their heads. He grunted and fell backward into the air lock, almost on top of Deng Ho’s body. He recovered quickly. “Why you little bitches! I’ll—” he bellowed, but Chu Li had already begun to swing the door shut on him. When he saw what was happening, he rushed against the door, and all three girls lent their bodies to pushing it closed. It was fury versus desperation, and desperation won. The door shut with a hiss, and Chu Li, while still pressing against it, managed to turn the wheel that locked it.
“I don’t care what you do—put your feet in it if you have to—but don’t let him turn it back from that side!” she shouted to the sisters, then ran to the panel. Sabatini was lazy; she knew he would have preprogrammed the sequence, but she had to find the right control and throw it. The sisters were having a hard time holding the wheel by backing against it and gripping it with their hands as best they could, but the safety lights kept flashing yellow, green, yellow, green.
There were only five buttons, and she pressed each of them in turn, but nothing happened. She knew the sisters were weakening and that he would soon get that door open. She kept pushing the buttons in desperation, one after the other, hoping to catch the right button at the right point. It had to work. It just had to.
The red light suddenly came on, and a bell sounded. Sabatini stopped for a moment, and through the small glass window they could see his expression of desperation. He pounded, swore, then renewed his attack on the lock, but now Chu Li was on the wheel. The whole procedure took perhaps forty seconds, yet it seemed like years.
Since it was a pressurized burial, the outer door opened pretty quickly.
Deng Ho’s body moved right out, but Sabatini grabbed hold of the wheel. His body was horizontal, his hands gripped the wheel, his face was pressed in fear against the viewing port, but the air was exhausted in an instant, and the artificial gravity plunged him back down.
Chow Dai, exhausted, slumped to the floor, followed quickly by her sister. “Do you think—you can close—that outside door?” she managed to ask.
“Not yet. Not for many minutes,” Chu Li responded. “I do not know if someone can live in space with no air, but I do know that no one can hold his breath for more than five minutes. We will give it ten.” She sank down, also exhausted. Her arms and shoulder muscles ached, and she felt as if she’d sprained both wrists. Still, it had been worth it. That one moment of stark terror on Sabatini’s face was payment for much inflicted misery, brutality, and indignity. Deng Ho’s gesture had not been in vain.
Chow Dai crawled over and gave Chu Li a kiss. “Welcome back,” she said.
“Not for long, but I do not regret it. We have killed him, and the ship will know it. The gas should come at any moment.”
Chow Dai looked disappointed. “I had forgotten about that. I suppose that was why he was so confident. Foreign devils have no idea of what honor is. Still, it would have been nice to have won completely.”
Chow Mai listened, thinking. “It would seem to me that if this gas was coming, it would have come by now. Either it is not going to come or he is not dead.”
Chu Li felt a new shot of energy and stood up. “You are right.” She looked through the air lock window and saw the interior, still lighted. She could not see the area right by the door, but there was no sign of anyone or anything in the air lock, and the outer door was definitely open, the alarm bell still ringing. There was certainly no air in there, and she knew that space had to be very cold, yet there was something nagging at her brain, troubling her.
Gravity. They had weight here, even if they felt lighter than back home. The whole section had gravity, including the air lock. Sabatini clearly had not been sucked out with the air, although it had been close. Why was there now no body slumped down, hands frozen to the wheel in a death grip?
The ship had been elaborately and illegally modified, and there were all sorts of compartments and gadgets built into the walls. Might there not also be some sort of emergency compartment in the air lock? She couldn’t see how a body could stand a vacuum, even for a few moments, but what if it could? There was better than two meters of air lock. Something had to be inside those thick walls.
“We must find something to jam this door. Before we close the outer door, which will automatically flood the compartment with air, we must jam the wheel so it cannot be opened from the outside. He might be alive in some rescue compartment there. We must examine as much of the ship as we can to make sure such a one cannot otherwise reenter the ship.”
If he was in there someplace, he’d be in a small, probably dark compartment much like a closet, with some sort of breathing device but little in the way of food and water for more than a day and certainly no bathroom. The only way to make certain, though, was to risk keeping the outer door open, jam the inner, and somehow make contact with the ship’s pilot.
She reached down and picked up his headset. She had not brought honor, glory, or dignity to herself by serving him, but she had always been observant. Now she thought she could imitate his odd, animal-like growls that commanded some of the locks. The headset had been bent out of shape, but it did not appear damaged. She put it on, although it was too large for her head, and spoke one of the commands in his language that she knew overrode the electronics room lock.
The door opened, and to her surprise she heard a growling, unintelligible response in the earphones. For a moment it startled her, and she wondered if there were others aboard in areas they had never seen, but then she realized that it was the computer pilot.
She had spotted something in the electronics room long ago that was the first priority, and that was a complete electronics and mechanical tool set. It was almost too heavy for her, but she got it out and open, and the Chow sisters were able to tell her which tool to use. Shortly the girls’ hands were free, although the cuffs themselves remained as oversized bracelets. One of the waist chains they wrapped through the spokes of the air lock wheel, then secured it with a small hand-held welder to the base of the nearest chair.
They were all tired and aching but far too excited to sleep. Chu Li checked the schematic of the ship’s passenger level on the monitor. “If I read this correctly, then the whole level is pressurized—has air, that is, that is fit for us—except this area all the way in the rear. Those double lines front and back are air locks, but if this color is air, then they are not active. Shall we go see?”
She opened the center door with a command in that strange language, and a bell sounded distantly—but nothing else happened. She was almost relieved to hear the response coming from the earpiece; it confirmed her belief that it was the computer responding and not anyone else.
They went along a narrow corridor, then Chu Li stopped. “This was my home for those long times,” she told them gravely, pointing to a lower storage closet. “After just one week in there, you would sell body, soul, and honor to anyone who would keep you from going back.”
As Sabatini had warned them, animal cages filled the huge storage area, all designed for just about anything that could be imagined and some that were beyond imagining. The cages were empty this trip and apparently newly cleaned and reinforced. Beyond them were a large number of sealed containers, all labeled in a language or code none of them could understand, fitted together into vast clumps for useful storage. The path between was so narrow, they had to go single file.
The compartment narrowed until they emerged at an air lock. As she had expected, the light was green. When they opened it, the noise of great motors was almost deafening, but Chu Li finally got the courage to enter and walked the short distance to the far door. Peering through the window, she gasped, then continued to stare, fascinated. “Come! Look!” she called. Nervously, the two sisters joined her.
Before them was a second enormous cargo room. Larger than the first and filled with containers, it was spinning around at a dizzying pace.
“Why does the room spin?” Chow Mai asked Chu Li.
She thought for a moment. “I’m not sure. I seem to remember from very long ago—her memories—something about this. Ah! I think I know, but there is only one way to know for sure. Do you notice how light you feel?”
Only then did they notice how little gravity they felt here.
“I do not think the room spins at all,” she told them. “I believe that it is we who are spinning. You must trust me on this, for it is far too complex to explain, but spinning is how many spaceships make gravity in space.”
“We are not spinning!” the sisters responded in unison. “That room is!”
“There is only one way to find out, and if I am wrong it is a dangerous one. It is to go in there. See that net stretched there? I think you jump and grab on to that and then use the handholds to go on.”
“No. It is too dangerous,” Chow Dai responded. “What does it matter who is spinning? There is nothing in there that we can use.”
Chu Li was disappointed but had to agree. Without her, these two were lost in the technology of this vessel, which to them was incomprehensible and magical. Now was not the time to see what weightlessness was like.
Reluctantly, she turned and led them out through the container corridor, past the cages and the closet, and back into the passenger cabin. She was somehow relieved to find it just as they had left it.
She looked again in the electronics room and at the mindprint machine and its numbered cartridges. “That machine makes you learn things you do not know or be things you are not,” she told them. “It is how the captain learned our language so well. I fear that we will have to try them and see if one has the key to speaking to the ship.”
“But would that not be in his true language?” Chow Dai asked. “Would he have something to teach his own native tongue in there?”
“I doubt if the pilot computer speaks the captain’s language. All such computers are produced by Master System in factories peopled only by machines. They speak their own language, a language of numbers, on a level humans cannot possibly comprehend. The way humans talk to them is by a shell, a pretend environment where what the computer speaks is translated into a human tongue and where human language is translated into machine. These ships are built according to standards that existed long ago, in the times of our ancient ancestors, and those outside of Earth continue to use those ancient languages.”
“But it could have been changed to any, could it not?” Chow Dai persisted.
“It could, but I do not think it was. I have heard the captain curse many times, and it is a truth that one tends to curse in one’s native tongue. His curses were equally unintelligible, but they were in a softer, more melodic tongue than the one used for opening the doors. It is a harsh, nonmelodic, almost machinelike language, an ugly tongue. It is there. It must be there. Otherwise we will arrive at Melchior anyway, just without the captain. I worry about what might be on some of the others. There are close to forty cartridges here, and only nine spaceports on all of Earth, so a captain would have need of only the nine languages of the Administrative Centers for each spaceport. I know nothing about the other worlds, but even if we give them nine or ten, it still leaves half the cartridges unexplained.”
“But if we must, we will try them all and see,” Chow Mai said pragmatically.
“I fear we must, yet I do not like it. Anything may be programmed by a master mindprint machine on those cartridges. Things that change your mind, your memory, everything. Some of these might be traps for the unwary, just in case ones like us got to this point. Even if not, these are to be taken sparingly, and never more than one a day, to avoid confusing and muddying the mind. We do not have thirty-eight days.”
“There are three of us,” Chow Mai pointed out. “Each of us could try one and see. Perhaps fortune will smile. If not, we try again, then wait to see if anyone has troubles. We have nothing to lose. Just hours ago we had lost all hope and you were in his power.”
“You are right,” Chu Li responded. “Let us begin now, for when we sleep this time, it will be long and deep. Perhaps we can at least find some pattern to their arrangement. I can read the numbers, although they are in a foreign system. That type of number is used in all computer work. One of us will take the number one, which is an odd number and at the start. Another will take thirty-eight, an even number at the end. The third will take nineteen, an odd number in the middle. Then ten, twenty, and thirty. Then we will see if we can find a pattern. Beware, though. It does more than teach; it changes the mind. I am a living example of that.”
“I will go first,” Chow Mai said, “because you will have to show us how it is operated.”
“It is quite simple. Just sit in the chair there and relax. No! Do not put the headset on as yet! Not until there is a cartridge in the system. To do so would cause brain damage. Now—watch. Number one in just so, and only this way. Wait for the small green light there. So! Now you may put on the headset, and I will adjust it.”
Chow Mai seemed almost disappointed. “I feel nothing.”
“You will. Now, put your head back on the rest and close your eyes. When I push this activator, it will begin. Push it again and it will stop, so if we see something terrible happening it can be halted by being quick. Otherwise it will run as long as it runs, and you will be awake yet as if asleep. Ready? Chow Dai—you should push the activator.”
Chow Dai hesitated a moment, then pushed it. The green light changed to amber, then to flashing red.
Suddenly Chow Mai said, “It asks a question in my head. A single word I do not know.”
Chu Li thought a moment. She hadn’t even considered password protections for a setup like this, “Answer with the same word as it asks, only give it as a statement,” she instructed Chow Mai. “No need to say it. Just think it.”
Chow Mai looked confused but sat back, closed her eyes, and did as instructed. The program started running, and Chu Li breathed a sigh of relief. With a computer she was sure she could break any password, but she needed the password to get to the computer. This computer’s password, however, was the default: “password.”
The machine ran for a nervous half hour with Chow Mai showing no visible reaction, then switched off. Chu Li lifted off the headset. “Remember never to remove the cartridge until this is first removed,” she said.
Chow Mai opened her eyes dreamily and saw the worried expressions of the others. “Do not worry, my sisters, for I am well,” she assured them, and wasn’t quite certain why they seemed even more upset.
“Chow Mai—do you understand me, your twin?”
She did understand, although it took some concentration to reply. Her first efforts were a hopeless mixture of two languages that could not be mixed, and it took a while before she was able even with difficulty to switch comfortably.
“It is Arabic,” Chu Li explained. “One of the Center spaceport languages. I have heard it spoken, although I do not know it. It is not the language of the ship, this I know. It will be difficult for her to sort one from the other for a while, but she will be able to separate them as time passes. This is good. One is a language program. If thirty-eight is not, we will try number two, perhaps. Chow Mai—go. Lie. Down. Yes.”
Still feeling a bit dizzy and confused, Chow Mai went out and collapsed into one of the chairs. Chu Li removed cartridge one and replaced it with number thirty-eight, then got into the chair and put on the headset. She nodded at Chow Dai, then relaxed. The sister pressed the activator.
Number thirty-eight proved to be a highly technical program about the ship itself and paid particular attention to the restraint system, locks, and other protective and safety devices. It was not designed as language-specific but searched in the mind of the user for the right words and terms; if such terms were not present or possible to construct, one simply didn’t understand all of the program. Song Ching’s technological center Mandarin, however, was more than adequate for the task.
She awakened feeling elated and recovered quickly, thanks to her long experience with such devices. She removed the headset and saw Chow Dai just coming back into the room. The girl was apologetic. “I am sorry. When I saw you were in no distress, I went to see how Chow Mai was getting on. I did not think it would be so short.”
“Long enough,” Chu Li responded. “That was a technical tape, the last probably made to date. It makes many references I cannot totally get because they are obviously referring to past modifications, but I know now how much of this operates. I know the restraint systems, the alarms, the door and hatch combinations, and much more. I even know what many of these instruments here do, and what the numbers mean. I know, for example, that those two numbers compared mean that we are about sixty percent of the way to Melchior, but I also know that we have under a week before we come under traffic control that will be able to sense if we deviate from our planned course and raise alarms. We do not have much time if we are to take control of the ship unnoticed.”
“Shall I take number two now?”
“No. I am used to it, and the technical orientation did nothing to me. Let us see just how far the languages go.” She chose cartridge number ten, then inserted it in the machine in place of number thirty-eight. “I will do this one as well. There should be one of us around with her wits about her, and you are it. Your turn will come in due course.” She replaced the headsets and lay back. “When you are ready.”
Chow Dai pushed the activator, then waited. This time Chu Li was not quiet but started to breathe hard, then to moan and thrust. Her hands went to her crotch and seemed to be doing something, but it was unclear what. What was clear was that this was not a tape like the others. Fearful, particularly of the sounds from the chair, Chow Dai pushed the activator off.
Chu Li came down very, very slowly and seemed almost disappointed when she realized that she was no longer switched in. She opened her eyes and looked at Chow Dai; her expression, though foreign to Chu Li’s nature, was one Chow Dai had seen before in unpleasant circumstances.
Chu Li had been connected only a couple of minutes and so was able to regain control, although her body trembled slightly. “It was—” she gasped, breathing hard “—a sex tape. A very graphic one. I was—a man—in the body of a man—amidst a horde of foreign, exotic women. All were naked; all were there for my pleasure. I was to choose one and do as I pleased. It was such a feeling of power, of dominance. I am—was—highly aroused.”
Chow Dai did not comprehend the depth of the experience, but she understood the reason for such a cartridge and why Chu Li had responded to it. “Now at least we know where our honorable captain got his urges so readily and what he must have done to amuse himself when no one else was aboard.”
“Yes, I think so. I had heard that such things existed, but I had never experienced one before. The images are like memories, like reality. It is as if the scene actually existed for me in the past, and whichever girl I chose I would have bedded. To the mind, there would be no difference between the reality and the illusion. I feel the desire to go back and complete it, but I dare not. Even now I feel the urge to grab you and make mad, passionate love to you.”
Chow Dai felt relieved and smiled. “Is that such a bad thing?”
“To me, no. I have wanted it from the first. But to you it would be perverse.”
“No. What the guards did to us was perverse. What Sabatini did to you and to us is perverse. Nothing done in love that harms no one can be perverse. You are half man, half woman. That is enough.”
They used the bed in Sabatini’s cabin, the scene of much of Chu Li’s violation, but it was different now, and afterward they fell asleep, exhausted more by the events of the day than by their own final efforts.
The next day Chu Li, feeling better than she ever had in her whole brief incarnation, decided to tackle things for real. Chow Mai hit another of the pornographic male-oriented cartridges but was not affected in the same way Chu Li had been. Rather, she seemed to have shifted mentally from the male point of view to that of the females in it, and although they stopped the program quite early, she wound up not only very, very turned on but also nonaggressive to the point of total passivity. She also, for some reason, pleaded to have her chains put back on, but they decided that the effects would wear down in a while and ignored her requests.
There were a number of other languages, including one cartridge that seemed to have no particular effect on Chow Dai other than to improve slightly her grammar and vocabulary. They decided that it must have been Mandarin Chinese.
They also discovered many more programs on shipboard design and construction, mathematical tables, basic celestial navigation, and computer module design and operation. One showed the complete interconnect between Sabatini’s command module in the rear and the computer pilot, confirming Chu Li’s suspicions that this was one of those very ships where Master System was not in charge. And, as suspected, there were some traps.
The machine clicked off, and Chow Dai removed the headset and waited for Chu Li to come out of it. The cartridge had seemed uneventful to the observer and had taken the normal amount of time, so there had been no reason to think anything was wrong. Finally, Chu Li came around, then sat up and looked around, almost panicking.
“What’s the matter?” the sisters asked in unison. “What has happened to you?”
“I have been stung,” she told them. “I have spent a half hour in a pleasant dreamworld, and now I wake up to find a nightmare.”
As they watched, concerned, she looked around vacantly, then tried to get out of the chair and stumbled, holding on to it for support.
“There is only darkness,” she told them, a pained tone in her voice. “I am blind.”