The Dark Remains - Mark Anthony [156]
“Headquarters says the civilization level of the aboriginals is medieval, approximately eleventh century, with some tech-specific variance of plus or minus two centuries. I still find it amazing that development could happen in such parallel with Earth, just lagged a thousand years. But that’s what our historians have been telling us all along. Humans are humans. It’s population density and probability theory that are the controlling factors, not individual will. Maybe the high-ups are right. Maybe manifest destiny exists after all.
“Whatever the case, it must be a violent period there. The subject can’t talk to us, but the scars, the multiple injuries to his bones, tell a story of brutality. I know this hypothesis isn’t particularly scientific, but I believe that, were he awake and unrestrained, he would kill me with his bare hands.”
Silence.
“This is Dr. Ananda M. Larsen. End recording.”
A sigh, shuffling noises, then the scrape of a chair being pushed back. The shadow stood.
Beltan let his eyelids droop shut. That was the first rule of a prisoner of war. Make your captors believe you were helpless. The woman—the doctor named Larsen—was not completely wrong about him. Were he free, he would not have killed her, but he would have done anything else it might take to be free of this place and these people who were holding him.
A sound he did not recognize rose on the air—a series of chiming noises. Then came a heavy thunk followed by a grinding sound that on any world meant a lock was turning. He was trapped. And alone.
A rattle, followed by a soft whuffling of breath.
No, not alone after all.
Beltan opened his eyes and craned his neck. From the steel cage in the corner, the chin-pasi gazed at him with intelligent brown eyes.
“Hello,” Beltan said, his voice a dry croak. “So you’re still here, too.”
The creature tilted its head, then ran long, dark fingers over the wire mesh of its cage.
Beltan frowned. “You understand me, don’t you? Not my words, maybe, but you’re like I am to them. You know more than they think you do.”
The chin-pasi stretched long, scarred arms toward one of the glowing bone-pictures on the wall: a high, delicate skull with too-large eyes.
Beltan tried to lift his head, found he could a little, and examined his surroundings. He was still naked, but they had cast a thin sheet over him. So perhaps he was not just an object to them, but a man. The myriad wires and tubes of his last awakening were gone, and now there was only one tube that led from a clear bladder above to a needle stuck in his arm. He was still restrained, but the bonds seemed a fraction looser than before, as if carelessly tied. Again, they had not believed he could wake so soon. As far as he could tell, there were three bands beneath the sheet: one that passed over his arms and chest, one that bound his hands beside his hips, and one that held his legs.
Gritting his teeth, Beltan strained against the bonds. Whatever the straps were made of, it was stronger than he. He tried wriggling instead. This was more effective; he was nearly able to pull his right hand free from the strap around his waist. If there was just a little more space.…
He strained, but after several minutes—exhausted and right wrist burning—he stopped. There was not enough room inside the strap. The only way he could pull his hand out was if he chopped off a limb.
Think, Beltan. Your muscles are gone, so use your brain for a change, if it hasn’t completely withered over the years. Think about saddling your charger. A horse always takes in a breath when you’re cinching the girth, so that when it breathes out the girth loosens and the saddle slips down. Breathing out won’t do you any good—the strap is around your hipbones. But is there a way you can make yourself smaller?
Then he had it.
He pushed upward against