Califia's Daughters (29 page)

She did not scream again, made no noises other than the choking sounds of expelled breaths. Her silence may have accounted for the misjudged blow that finally rendered her unable to crawl back up to the chair, as an increasingly irritated guard, tired of being limited to her victim's extremities and growing annoyed at Dian's lack of response and dogged return to the seat of torture, slapped once too hard. After Dian hit the floor that time, she did not get up again.

“HOW CAN MY ARRIVAL HAVE FAVORED MY
ENEMIES AS WELL AS MY FRIENDS?”

T
WENTY-FOUR

D
IAN WOKE SLOWLY.
A
WARENESS BEGAN TO UNFOLD IN
tendrils, one by one, delicate tendrils requiring careful consideration. Breathe. In. Out. The air tasted warm: inside air. And the light: gray under the slits of her eyelids. Dull, distant sunlight, not electricity, or oil, or candles. Which meant there was a window nearby, although why this should be of interest did not occur to her. Next, some minutes later, emerged a sense of smell, bringing the evocative odor of freshly ironed linen. Home. Cleanliness. Mother. Then the harsh tang of something medicinal, farther off but pervasive. Two senses, smell and light, linked her to the world, and after a while a third. Hearing brought the muffled sounds (
blankets
, she thought,
pulled high—I am lying in bed
) of people, of distant conversation, and of feet moving in a large building. Everything muffled, feeling slightly drunk, feeling—no, oh, no, mustn't feel, don't want to feel, don't move, breathing is enough. Breath by shallow breath she grew more awake and knew that she was about to open a door and walk into a black room in which a cougar crouched, waiting for her to walk in, to wake up.

And then, sudden as that cougar's pounce, a nearby door slammed and, with the involuntary wince of reaction, every abused muscle in her body seized up tight. Instantly she was lying on a bed of fire, knives were sliding into her arms, her thighs, stabbing over and over, and even though it was essential, so utterly vital
(why?)
that she not scream, she could not help the short chuffs of breath that leaked from her closed throat, short, breathy near-moans. She was only dimly aware of feet and a voice, the blankets being pulled back, and a sharp prick on an otherwise pain-free hip, then the blankets being draped carefully across her taut and quivering body.

“Try to let the muscles relax,” said a voice in her ear. “The shot will help, but let them go soft. Concentrate on your breathing. If you go limp, you won't hurt as much. Relax.” The voice continued in this vein for several minutes, counteracting the tense
huh, huh
of her breathing, and finally, just as she was becoming dreadfully certain that she was going to have to shriek to rid herself of this awful tightness and agony, the spasm let her go, as suddenly as it had taken her, and she lay limp and trembling and drenched with sweat.

“Good. Now, don't move for a little while.” There was a rustle and the scrape of a chair on floorboards, and a shape moved into her vision. A dark, round face looked at her with something of the detachment of a doctor, tempered with a healer's empathy. “Good morning. Though I don't doubt you've had better ones. My name is Margaret. Your baby's still in place, and by tomorrow you'll just be in pain. Nothing broken but blood vessels and skin. Today we'll drug you a bit to take the edge off and let you sleep. In a few minutes I'll get a couple of people to help me shift your position so you don't lock into a statue. By tonight you might be able to move a little on your own without going into spasms.”

Whatever had been in the needle, it was fast working its way through Dian's mangled nerve endings, dulling them and leaving her to float, a torso without extremities. She made an effort with her mouth, which was a peculiarly unwieldy shape, and got out a sound which was meant to be “Tomas” but only puzzled Margaret. Her jaws ached, her cheeks and lips were swollen, her tongue felt as if she had bitten it, and a tooth was loose, but she finally pushed out an intelligible syllable.

“Dog.”

“The dog? He's certainly healthy, though I don't know if the door will stand if you're still in bed tomorrow. We gave him some food, but he hasn't eaten it yet.”

No, thought Dian muzzily, he won't take food from a mistrusted stranger, but he has a whole tub full of water; he'll do. God, I'm tired, and with that she fell asleep.

The light was of a different quality when Dian woke again, a late-afternoon light that came through the curtains, illuminating Margaret and the book she was reading. This time it was a true awakening, not slow unrelated tendrils, and she took great care not to move. After a minute Margaret looked up, somehow determined that the slits of Dian's eyes were focusing on her, and rose from her chair.

“Welcome back. Let me get you another shot and then we can move you around a little.”

“No.” It came out without the consonant, but the intent was clear.

“You'll have to move, you'll stiffen like wash on a line in January if you don't.”

“No shot.” Shoh.

“You don't want a shot?”

“Huh.”

“Oh, don't be stupid, girl. Or did you enjoy that spasm this morning?”

“No shot.”

“Okay, you try it if you like. But if you start seizing up again, I'll inject you whether you want it or not. I have to answer to the Captain for your health.”

“Where?”

“Where? Where is the Captain, you mean?”

“No.”

“Where are you? This is your room, child, one of them. Or didn't you know? You passed your initiation. You're an Angel now, honey. You're one of us.” Dian squinted to see the woman's face more clearly, wondering if she'd heard a thin edge of bitterness to the words, but the room was too dim, her eyes too swollen to focus. Margaret changed the subject. “Do you think you could swallow something? You haven't eaten anything in nearly twenty-four hours, and if it goes much longer I'll want to put a drip in your arm.”

“Yes.” Yesh.

“You want to try now?”

“Yes.”

The next couple of hours were a period of infinitely slow movements and intense concentration, using her mind's self-control to keep her body from feeding back into its own pain. The closest she came to losing it was when two black-clad guards—Angels—came in her door looking eager, but they radiated only a habitual and general menace, and none toward her specifically. Instead, they gently lifted her up and carried her off to a room down the hall and, under Margaret's watchful eye and snapping tongue, let her down into a long wooden tub filled with a warm, slightly pink, gelatinous substance. Margaret positioned Dian's head on a cushioned rest, turned down the lights, and left her.

The slimy gel was both unpleasant and comforting. It was eerily alive, seeming to echo her pulse as its buoyancy wrapped and massaged her injured flesh and drew out the pain and the heaviness. It was also remarkably conducive to the beginnings of rational thought: about Angels and Captains who sat watching in cool speculation to judge how a woman took to being beaten bloody; about the experience the Angels had in inflicting pain without permanent damage, and the care they took in healing the pain afterward. And about the initiation process itself, which she intuitively knew was not completely finished with her.

In half an hour Margaret returned to stand at the foot of the tub with her hands on her hips. Now that the swelling around her eyes had begun to go down, Dian could see the woman more clearly. She was dressed in the same flat black as the other Angels, but she was an entirely different physical type, smaller than the Captain or any of the other Angels Dian had seen, but more than the height difference, she struck one as being delicate and round. The only hardness in her was in her mouth and the merely muscular strength in her hands and arms.

“Better, isn't it?” she asked Dian.

“Much.” Her lips could even form a resemblance of the
M
. “What is this?”

“You've never been in a restoration bath before? Surely they must have them in Meijing.”

“I ‘as never hurt in Meijing.”

“Meijing was after you got those scars on your chest, then. That explains why they healed so badly. What was it?”

“I ‘as a kid. A game called Stakes and Ladders. Someone pushed me off a ladder, and there was a stake underneath.”

“I've heard of that game,” said Margaret slowly.

So had Dian. The areas where it was played, far to the south of the Valley, tended to have disastrously high rates of birth defects; the lethal game was one way of ensuring that the slower children never made it to breeding age. Coming from the sort of area where children played Stakes and Ladders would explain much about the person Dian was trying to be while in Ashtown.

“This stuff feels alive,” she commented. Her words were slurred, but Margaret either had a good ear or was accustomed to deciphering speech from swollen mouths, for she understood immediately.

“It is, more or less. It's a culture, like yogurt or something, but I don't really know if it's the organism or the heat and texture or the electrical current that does the job. All of them, I guess. We turned down the heat and the power for you, because of the baby. You can have another half an hour, and another hour in the morning.”

“Have to see Tomas. My dog.”

“Tomorrow. Captain's orders. He's fine, we threw the clothes you were wearing into the room, and he's scratched them into a pile and is lying on them. He still isn't eating, though.”

“He won't, not ‘less I give it to him.” This would probably not be true forever, considering Tomas's age, although Culum might well have starved rather than take food from an untrusted hand. Still, it was better to give the impression that she was irreplaceable, for now.

“Well, he won't starve before tomorrow, and he's drinking from the bath. Half an hour,” she reminded Dian, and left her.

At the end of it Dian could stand unaided under the hot shower, but her bad leg crumpled and she would have fallen had not her Angels caught her, gently, under her arms. Back in her rooms she ate a bowl of eggy custard, which Margaret fed her since her fingers could not close on a spoon, and drank a cup of hot, thick soup that was laced with something, for her sleep was unnaturally deep and lasted until dawn.

Breakfast, too, consisted of milk and eggs, and she commented on the fact to Margaret.

“Do you have hens that lay through the winter here, or do you reserve eggs for people with sore teeth?” The words were only slightly slurred this morning, she was pleased to hear.

“Angels always have eggs,” Margaret answered ambiguously. “More?”

“Thanks.”

A different pair of Angels appeared to carry her to the gelatin bath, stiffened as she was by a night's immobility, but afterward she walked back, limping heavily and leaning on Margaret's shoulder but nonetheless under her own power. At her door she noticed a small metal plaque screwed to the wall next to the doorknob, saying:

DIAN
C

Margaret opened the door for her, and although she felt like going to bed she steered an uncertain path over to the sofa instead and eased her body cautiously onto the edge, leaning back. Margaret followed her in, closing the door behind her.

“If you sit like that you'll find your arms ache. Rest them on a pillow. You should also keep your legs up as much as you can, they'll heal faster.”

“What's the
C
mean?”

“C? Oh, on your nameplate. That's your rank.”

“Is that the lowest?”

“Not quite. Ds clean the toilets and haul off the dead bodies from the practice rooms.” Dian thought she might be joking, but it was hard to tell.

“How do you raise your status? What letter are you? If that's not prying.”

“I'm a B1, one step short of A4, and you raise your rank by making the Captain happy.”

“Somehow I thought that might be the case. Now, about Tomas.”

“First food, then you have some business to attend to, then the dog. You are hungry?”

“I am hungry.”

“Some crumbly bacon?” Margaret grinned wickedly, and she was instantly transformed into a gamine in unlikely clothing, impossible not to respond to. “Nice crunchy buttered toast with raspberry jam? A small steak?”

“Jesus and Mary,” Dian groaned, “you are an evil woman. There's nothing wrong with my taste buds—you have bacon?”

“Of course, and it's goood, all salty and crisp and chewy, to sink your teeth into.”

“Egg custard. And in a week's time I'll tie you down and stuff some down your throat.”

Margaret bounced out the door and leaned back in.

“Sausages,” she crooned. “A juicy apple. Crisp hash-brown potatoes.” The door closed, and most of the room's energy left with her.

Dian gave herself two minutes and then forced her unwilling body to stand upright. These were her rooms; she would see them under her own power. This was the living room, with sofa, two soft chairs, and footstool upholstered in an inoffensive if uninspired rough brown cloth, low table in front of a fireplace that was laid but not lit, and a desk and chair next to a window. She hobbled over and pushed the drapes aside with the back of her hand, to look out onto—a surprise. It was a large garden—a small park, actually, a totally enclosed rectangle comprising a couple of acres of snow-covered grass, an assortment of bare trees and half a dozen evergreens, mounds of sculptured shrubs, a little pond, frozen over at the moment, with a scattering of benches. It appeared to be the inside of a city block, which had been gutted and turned into a private space for the Angels to sit in the sun and smell the flowers, away from the public eye. Assuming Angels smelled flowers.

She let the drapes fall shut and went to the internal door, through which she had been carried but not yet walked. To the right, toward the inside of the building, was a small bathroom, with toilet, basin, bath and shower, all shiny enamel, bright paint, and thick towels. To the left, with its own narrow window overlooking the park, was a small kitchen—a table and two chairs below the window, metal sink, small wooden preparation area with three drawers below, black stove with three flat grids of concentric rings that she took to be electric heating units, an actual, humming refrigerator only slightly smaller than Ling's tucked under the tiled surface next to the stove, and overhead cabinets. And I am only a C, one step above the lowest of the Angels, thought Dian, looking at a row of brightly glazed mugs hanging on hooks under the cabinets. Angels always have eggs. Angels also have electricity, and warmth, and a higher degree of technology than she'd seen coming through the city. And if Angel technology includes planes and artillery, she thought, then God help Meijing—God help us all. She glared at the humming refrigerator as if its bland front concealed a launch button and continued to the fourth door, the bedroom. Her bedroom.