Blue Remembered Hills (ch18)
14 January 2018 12:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
igenlodeAnd finally (after I'd edited it, and the computer crashed, and edited it again, and discovered I hadn't installed the HTML mode when I upgraded my text editor...)
I still remember the sense of achievement when I succeeded in finishing this chapter after breaking off to write To Ease Your Troubled Mind in an unprecedented (and since unequalled!) rush of inspiration — oops, that was back in March 2014! https://igenlode.dreamwidth.org/35318.html
This of course was the chapter where I could finally use that eerily apt line from Housman's original poem.
Chapter 18: Into my Heart on Air that Kills
Dar’s men were dying.
Cris watched disaster unfold with dry eyes and an aching heart.
Erik was beyond her pleas entirely now, voice and mind lost behind the mocking, raging mask of the Ghost. He’d routed Dar’s communications back through the control tower at the dockyard and flung them wide open to Federation monitors; every move, every desperate attempt to regroup was betrayed before it could even begin, and long-planned routes of retreat were compromised at the very outset. The Operation on Newparis was falling apart in the vengeful hands of its creator like the toy of an angry child, and the Ghost’s electronic laughter reigned over all.
She had never heard him like this: not even on the night he’d thrown her to the hands of the mob — last night! only last night! a battered part of her mind whispered — when filtered, distorted speech had flayed her most private moments in full view. But it was his public face that he had donned now, to greet the ‘guests’ against whom he raved and railed, and his public voice that echoed from that mask’s circuits. There was no word for Cris amidst that wild torrent save the hissing command that she should pack up the possessions he had bought her and stand ready to leave on a moment’s notice. And even that order had come only as an aside between tirades of chillingly unspecific threat.
She did not think he cared much any longer who might live and who might die. There were over a thousand lives in the vast building beneath which it seemed they stood; the Ghost spoke gloatingly of them as the toll for some great disaster, even as he spat invective at Dar, who had been his friend. Cris understood only that in his mind this home, this refuge of his, was at an end, a nest befouled and its secrets betrayed... or perhaps a confining cage from which he would at last fly free, to live as other men did with her as trophy on his arm. It was not clear to her; she did not think it was very clear to him, either. But he spoke only of abandonment and destruction, of interlopers who would pay and of an example to be made, and Cris knew that he meant to take her away from here where she could too easily now be found.
She told herself that, at any rate. It was better than believing... the other.
Yet both her arms were locked tightly around herself, hugging fiercely, and through the cloth the hidden weight of that weapon of last resort was cold and hard against her ribs where it lay cradled in her sleeve. She would not go easily — either way.
Standing obediently by the long viewport with the soft bag he had given her packed and ready at her feet, Cris shivered a little and raised her head in defiance, a small, stubborn figure in the entrance to that great gallery. It was thus that Rall saw her, the pale-crowned profile turning sharply towards the sound of his steps as he came pell-mell down the final passage with all thought of the Ghost for one moment forgotten.
“Cris!”
He’d had Blake’s programmed deactivator held high in one hand; Captain Philp’s gun drawn and ready in the other. But both were thrust away unthinking as she turned and stood there frozen, and Rall caught both her hands in his.
They were cold as ice and shy in his grasp, and he was suddenly conscious of the same awkward constraint. He’d dreamed of her and fought for her and poured all his heart’s passion into the struggle to find her again... and this, now, was reality; not the burning ideal that had drawn him on, but a stiff, frightened girl with weary, reddened eyes, a smear of grime across her cheek and wisps of hair straggling from their braid.
In his dreams they’d lived a thousand rapturous reunions, avowed sweet secrets and lost themselves in ardent passion for one another. He’d never thought to be caught in this instant of sick uncertainty, as if everything they’d shared had tumbled down into one more childish game of let’s-pretend. He could feel his face draining as white as hers.
He dropped her hands and put a clumsy arm around her shoulders, tasting shame and dull ashes. But Cris turned all at once in his hold and buried her face against him, clinging for comfort, and her heart was quick and light against the unaccountably racing beats of his own. He held her close — closer — feeling the slight young body yield its tension and settle against him with a long breath like the most tender and precious thing in the world.
“Oh Rall, I—”
His cheek was in her hair, pressed among the firm coils and their tiny crisp tickle, and he hushed her with murmurs, cradling her more tightly against the ache of longing in his breast. Someone was trembling. It was a moment or two before he realised that it was himself.
Cris stirred, nestling against him, and turned up her mouth to be kissed with a tenderness and trust that took his breath away. She— belonged. She was no impossible dream, but a swelling knot of happiness beneath his ribs, a teasing brush of lips along his own, a slim bundle of limbs and curves and warm angles that fitted the place he had for her within his arms as if they had been born to make each other complete... One arm slid up around his neck as her kiss parted again under his, in eager rediscovery that was no longer shy; and it had been worth it, all of it, for this instant together and from now on, when she was his and he was hers and no hours of fear and suffering could shake their knowledge of each other ever again.
His fingers found hard metal within her sleeve. Rall broke his hold in silent question, understanding all too swiftly the answering flash of resolution that he read within her eyes. Gentle Cris — to even consider such a choice! He felt his own hot anger rise again at the thought of the monster who had forced her to that resort, and remembered with a belated jolt just where he stood and in whose domain.
It had seemed like eternity... it couldn’t have been more than a minute or two. Could it?
He took a step back, one hand going for the gun he’d jammed so obliviously into his belt scant minutes ago.
“Ah, the murder weapon...” The voice belonged to nothing human. It seemed to crash over him in all its mechanical fury from all sides at once, and despite himself he flinched. “And now the assassin comes so bravely to claim his prize.”
A flicker of movement in the corner of his vision had him spinning round in a stab of panic that he would not admit even to himself, fumbling with his other hand for the deactivator unit he’d thrust into his pocket. He could be standing at this moment in the range of some hellish device... Without meaning to, he fell back another pace. The towering faceless apparition seemed to have formed out of the shadow itself.
“Don’t call him that!” Cris showed no sign of fear, thrusting in front of him in a fury. “Why try to make him believe—”
“What the whole world knows?” The Ghost was staring down on them from some higher level, Rall told himself. He had to be monstrously tall — but not as tall as all that. And it was some electronic trickery of that mouthless white mask that made the distorted voice seem to swirl and insinuate itself from somewhere behind Rall’s own shoulder... The voice that had taunted him in the prison cell had been that of a man like himself, whatever its power. The sound that came from the mask was the voice of a creature who had chosen nothing of humanity at all.
“Step back from her, boy... step back from Erik’s Cris. And another pace... yes, and another...”
Helplessly, Rall obeyed, certain at every moment that the next step would deliver him into the grip of some vile torment. But Cris— Cris was there within range of the Ghost’s every whim. And the further apart he was forced from her, the less chance at least that she would be caught up in whatever fate the monster planned for intruders. If he could only distract his enemy — get the deactivator to her — then she could run... He pulled the unit from his pocket, trying to make the gesture look natural.
“You lied to her and drugged her and stole her here, and you still think she’s yours? She’s no more ‘Erik’s Cris’ than—”
“Is she yours, then?” The hissed riposte cut away his certainty like a scything beam. “Your little trophy, Alpha-grade? Your toy until you leave the planet? Even Erik can give her more than that—”
Half-blinded by the outrage of that injustice, Rall caught sight at the last moment of the wide muzzle rising at his opponent’s side. He had the space of half a breath to get the deactivator up above his head and triggered...
Then nothing. Blinding, deafening nothing. He could not see, he could not feel; he could not breathe— Panic took him, the panic of a living mind within a body marked for death, and he would have cried out like a child. But even that humiliation was forbidden him.
And then long gloved fingers were dragging his face up by the hair, and there were hard bands constricting his body, painfully tight, and gasps of air were flooding back into his starved lungs in a choking rush that felt more like sobbing. He couldn’t hold himself up. It didn’t matter. Three broad force-bands had closed around his body at chest and hip and knee, pinning him upright against one of the great conduits on the wall, and he hung helpless in their grasp.
Stasis effect. His mind had begun, sluggishly, to work again. The Ghost had used a single-shot stasis charge on him. But why — how — why was he even still alive?
“He won’t be needing this.” It was almost a sing-song tone, a happy little croon, as the Ghost flicked the deactivator free from fingers trapped at his side. “Oh no, this won’t do him any good at all, will it? What a foolish boy, to think that Erik would give Dar a key to every weapon in his home. And he won’t be needing this”—Philp’s gun skittered aside, flare-chamber cracked and distorted—“and this...”
The breath-mask was dragged roughly from around his neck, half throttling him, and dropped casually to the floor beneath the Ghost’s suited heels. Rall braced himself for the crunch.
“Oh, but I think Cris will need that. Such a pity...” The voice stroked along his flesh like a knife-point’s caress, sliding around his naked throat, where the mask should have rested. Where it always rested, always, in drills or in reality, when a Federation officer on Newparis was out of sealed quarters... His lungs were heaving faster already just thinking about it. What was the monster going to do to Cris? What — unworthy animal panic — what was he going to do to Rall?
He clenched his jaw, biting back the protest that wanted to escape. He didn’t trust himself to control his own voice, and he wasn’t going to give the Ghost that much pleasure.
“So small, so fair.” A relentless grasp that yanked his head up again to meet the stare of that mask, so close now that a glint of light moved deep within its eyesockets. Rall wanted to shut his eyes to escape it, and could not. He must not show fear. He must not...
The Ghost pivoted away almost gracefully, plucking the breath-mask from the floor without breaking step, and reached with spidery fingers for Cris where she stood as if frozen, hands clenched and desperate. Only her eyes moved, darting in a frantic quest for answers.
“He wears Newparis on his face, your little lover. But shall we put him to the test? For I do believe he cannot breathe!”
It was no more and no less than he’d suspected. Rall jerked violently, unavailingly, against his prison, watching the Ghost bestow his breather like a mockery of their embrace around Cris’s rigid neck. He could feel his throat trying to close up in anticipation, remembering choking breaths outside the airlock, tears of humiliation hidden in the comfort of the girl’s hold... and his rival’s eavesdropping attentions had gloated even over that. The knowledge left him sick.
“And now Erik will let in the air... and Cris will choose! Yes, choose!”
The monster’s grip had closed upon her shoulders like docking grapples, towing her relentlessly in his wake. He reached up one-handed for a great curved handle high beside the viewport, and dragged it down. Sockets groaned, and somewhere in the room an alarm circuit began to drone, abruptly silenced.
An escape hatch, one part of Rall’s mind told him calmly, as detonations rippled in miniature, percussive destruction, one bolt after another jerking and lolling free in a ragged ring around the panel below. The wall sagged and began to lurch outwards, trailing jagged metal as it went. Tiny eddies of dust outlined its edges, and a gust of air flowed past him as the seal breached, a tiny, buffeting sigh. The Ghost had triggered the escape hatch.
His head was swimming, and Cris seemed suddenly very far away, a flickering shape behind a multitude of pillars that seemed to tease him and then dart again from sight. He loved her; he’d wanted only to save her. Why would she run from him like that...?
“And now, my Cris, you will choose.” The Ghost’s voice struck like a slap in the face, dragging Rall back to reality, and he found he was coughing and could not stop. He was pressed back against the wall here, and the atmosphere could not have diffused this far yet, he told himself frantically. The burning in his throat was just imagination. It was all mind games for his torment; the room was vast and the storm-haze clung around the hatch where the weak light streamed in. The toxins that would flay the lining from his lungs and clench him into drowning spasms had not reached him, not yet. But no amount of logic could clear the sensation that he was starting to suffocate.
The Ghost held Cris pinned against a console, the white mask reared above her as if to strike. His voice thundered about her, and she had covered her ears. “I am so very tired of this game of lairs and ambush, of a girl who cannot be trusted and a rebellion that falls apart... so you will give Erik his answer one last time, yes or no. Oh, you need not say it — I’ll spare that pale face of yours the final blush. Here on the screen, do you see, we have two commands. To say no once more, you have only to choose this command here to the left, and Erik need never suffer again... and you may throw your lying arms around your lover if you please, for then his agonies and yours and all those above will have but three seconds more to endure before the override ends, and this complex and all the human race within it are wiped from the face of this planet.”
“You can’t.” Cris, more Newpie than he, had not needed to mask herself; she coughed a little and caught her breath in horror. “A thousand lives — Erik, you can’t! I begged you not to—”
“Why then, Cris, if it’s to be yes for us, you have only to choose the other comand,” Erik said, weary in disdain. He stepped back, with a bow. “The command that will free my little Scorpio-class from her hangar, and take us far from here, to leave this planet and live merrily, so merrily... and there will be no explosion, and the Federation will burst in here and find your lover. If he is lucky, very lucky, then maybe they will shoot him. Or maybe, like Erik, they would rather leave his convulsions to run their course...”
Every intake of air hurt him now, and he was slumped against his bonds, eyes streaming with the effort to inhale. He’d always meant to die for her if he had to — if he’d had the Ghost aboard that flyer today, he’d have smashed his own life and those of Blake and Gan to pulp without a second thought, just to set her free — but not like this. Not as a trapped and useless afterthought, an each-way losing gamble in a vile game that pitched her freedom against mass murder...
Cris was staring at that tall figure as if she had never seen it before, and somehow that hurt more than anything. Didn’t she know the monster for what he was?
“Or perhaps you lack the courage for an honest ‘no’.” The Ghost’s voice was bitter. “For I don’t see any inclination to ‘yes’ in that ever-loving face... Well then, if in two minutes you have not chosen Yes, Erik will choose No for both of us... and if you prefer that No, then it would be kinder to that boy of yours to choose it sooner rather than later!”
Her gaze came round in horror, staring straight at Rall as her hands clenched and unclenched, and he thought he read a desperate plea for resolution there.
Cris... He tasted blood in his throat and bit down hard, trying to hold himself upright, trying to tell her she didn’t need his permission for what they both knew she had to do, whatever the cost to both of them. She had to say Yes. She had to leave him and go, and go now, before he could no longer see, or think, or beg for anything beyond the momentary comfort of her arms and the promise of an end within that haven...
“Do it—” Rall tried to get the words out and nearly strangled; saw in an agony of disbelief the defiant lift of her head as she turned to face that black suitor, a movement of rejection that would bring down a thousand innocents to join their grave. But Erik read it otherwise.
“Then it’s to be Yes?” His voice shook a little despite the overlay, in a tone almost of wonder. “Cris will never regret it, I swear it. And we’ll find those blue hills I promised, where her Daddy’s waiting—”
“I’m not a child to be lied to any more, Erik!” The girl’s voice cracked, and she slipped aside as he bent over her, darting round behind that stooping head. “There are no fairy hills, and my father’s dead—”
She put all the force of heartbreak into that final word, joined hands swinging up and over. And Rall remembered at the last moment — through blurring vision — the one thing the Ghost had never known. She’d kept back one final argument up her sleeve... quite literally.
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Date: 2018-01-14 01:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-01-15 01:24 am (UTC)