Brain Ships - Anne McCaffrey [205]
And no compassion.
And now he was going into the floatube, beyond Nancia's sensor range . . . beyond her help. Where was Sev? Nancia scanned the sensor banks until she located him in one of the passenger cabins that had been concealed behind her fake paneling. He was guarding a groggy Fassa who had just begun to come out of the sleepgas.
"Sev, I need you to go with Caleb," Nancia announced.
"CN-935, please acknowledge receipt of formal orders," Murasaki Base input on another channel.
"Can't," Sev answered without looking round. "Have to guard the prisoner. Check regulations."
Nancia knew he was right. The same stupid CS regs that forbade her to transport Fassa without a brawn would also forbid her to take sole charge of a prisoner. "Are regulations more important than Caleb's life?"
"Nancia, he's getting the best possible medical care. What are you worried about?"
"CN-935 RESPOND!" Murasaki Base shouted.
The floatube was a speck on the horizon. They weren't stopping at the spaceport; they were taking Caleb directly to Summerlands. Where Alpha bint Hezra-Fong could do anything, anything at all, to him, and Nancia wouldn't even know until it was too late—
"Instructions received and accepted," she transmitted to Murasaki Base in one short burst. "Now GET THAT BRAWN ON BOARD!" Forister Armontillado y Medoc? Nancia remembered the short, quiet man she'd transported somewhere, years earlier, to solve some crisis. The one who'd spent all his time on board reading. No matter what his records said, he wasn't her idea of a brawn. But who cared? The sooner he was here, the sooner Sev could be released from guard duty to go watch over Caleb.
* * *
Fassa was choking on the bottom of a lake. Weeds twined around her ankles, and the clear air was impossibly far away, miles above the green water that pressed her down and pushed at her mouth and ears and nose with gentle, implacable persistence. She tried to kick free of the weeds; they clung tighter, reaching up past ankle and calf and knee with green slimy fingers that pressed close against her thighs. When she looked down, the weeds shaped themselves into pale green faces with open mouths and closed eyes. All the men who'd given her their hearts and their integrity and pieces of their souls were there on the bottom of the lake, and they wanted to keep her there with them. Her chest was bursting with the need to breathe. If she gave back their souls, would they let her go?
She tried to strip off the charm bracelet on her left wrist, but the catch was stuck; tried to break the chain, but it was too strong. Green lake water seeped into her mouth with a bitter taste, and black spots danced before her eyes. She tugged the chain over her hand, scraping a knuckle raw, and flung it at the hungry ghosts. The sparkling charms of corycium and iridium floated lazily down among the muddy weeds, and Fassa was released to rise through rings of ever-lightening water until she broke the surface and breathed in the air that hurt like fire in her lungs.
She was lying on a bunk in a spaceship cabin. Sev Bryley was seated cross-legged on the opposite bunk, watching her with unsmiling attention. And the burning in her lungs was real, as was the throbbing pain in her head; sleepgas hangover. Now she remembered: surprise and violence and a fool who'd been where he had no business, and the gas flooding the cargo bay while she tried to hold her breath.
It all added up to a failure so crushing she could not bear to think about it yet. And Sev, the man who'd never given her a piece of his soul to keep in her charm bracelet—was he the one who'd engineered this disaster?
"What are you doing here?"