The Stars Are Legion(47)

“What is this?” I ask Casamir.

She waves to some of the women, calling greetings in that other language. “We’re engineers,” she says. “I told you I was an engineer. Well, training to be one, anyway.”

“What language is everyone speaking?”

“Oh, it’s the human language.”

“But . . . we’re speaking human right now. All languages are human.”

Casamir laughs. “Some languages are more human than others,” she says. “We trade a lot with other people, so I know, I don’t know, a couple dozen languages.”

“A couple . . . dozen? How many people are here?”

“Lots,” Casamir says.

As we move to the back of the room, I see great bone cages full of people. I recoil. They are heavily disfigured, naked. One is completely blind, both her eyes gouged out.

Das Muni shrieks when she sees them.

“Oh, that’s nothing,” Casamir says. “Those are enemies of the conclave. It’s all right.”

One of the women in the cage snatches my sleeve. I try to jerk away, but her grip is strong. Her face is a map of wrinkles. Her thinning hair has been shorn short. She has only one arm, and one of her feet is missing.

“I remember you,” she says. “You destroyed everything I love.”

I get my sleeve free. “Who are you?” I say.

Casamir pulls me away. “Oh, that’s nothing. They’re nothing. They just speak nonsense. They’re mad. Don’t worry about them.”

“Where did they come from?” I ask.

“Here and there,” Casamir says. “Here’s your holding room.”

She pushes a bony protrusion, and a door blooms open. I find myself relieved to see something that reminds me of the world above.

Inside are two raised platforms, some folded woven blankets, and what’s likely a waste receptacle. I step inside and turn to ask if I can have a bath, but the door is already closing.

“No!” Das Muni says, and hurls herself at the door as it huffs closed.

I think of the workshops and skin and tendons outside and my stomach sinks. It may not be a cage of bone, but it is still a cage. This is what happens when you trust people. More the fool, me. I should have learned better from the Bhavajas and their sick cunning. This is a place where you eat or you are eaten.

Das Muni slumps in a corner.

I search the room, trying to get a better handle on it. There are no openings. One of the spidery water bulbs is affixed to a pillar at the far corner of the room, giving out heat and light. I contemplate breaking it open just to drink the water. If it’s really water.

Testing the various growths and protrusions from the wall turns up a water sluice, which spills water into a shallow, crescent-shaped bowl against the far wall. I drink my fill, disrobe, and wash. The water is cold, but the room is warm, and the floor eats the damp as I pour it over my neck and shoulders.

“You thirsty?” I ask Das Muni. As I turn, I see she has been watching me wash. She lowers her gaze. Nods.

I towel myself off with one of the blankets. It’s made of plant fibers. I still haven’t seen any plants. I rinse off my suit, which dries quickly and doesn’t soak up muck. When I dress now, the only things that still stink are my hair and Das Muni, but I can deal with that.

I pull at the blanket and rip off a long length of it. I twist it in my hands and test its strength. I remember what I did to those tongueless women. I am capable of great violence if pushed. Casamir and her people will soon see it.

Das Muni drinks from the basin and washes her face. Then we both sit and wait. I lie back on the bench, contemplating the play of the light on the fleshy ceiling. I play with the length of blanket, imagining wringing Casamir’s throat with it. I think this idea should make me happy, but it doesn’t. I want to believe the world is better than it is.

The door opens some time later. It’s not Casamir but the same two guards we saw at the door to the engineering room. “The conclave will see you now,” the tallest one says.

“Where’s Casamir?” I ask, stuffing my improvised garrote into my pocket.

“She’s there already,” her shorter, thinner companion says. She picks at her teeth.

I keep my hands out of my pockets as we’re led back out into the engineering room, which is now eerily empty. They take us up a set of tall, broad steps that lead into a massive theater. All of the engineers are here, sitting in the broad half-circle of the amphitheater. Six women reside at a broad table on the stage below. Casamir stands in front of them, gazing back at us as we enter. Her face is more serious than I’ve yet seen it. She looks even more frightened than when I threatened her in the recycling pits, but when I catch her eye, she gives a broad grin.

Our guards hustle us down the steps of the amphitheater and tell us to halt beside Casamir. Now I put my hand in my pocket, the one with the garrote, and I wait.

“Casamir tells us you speak Handavi,” a plump, wizened woman says from the center of the table. Her hair is arranged in a spiky crown. She wears a red woven tunic and blue apron. Her hands are stained in grease.

“If that’s what you call what we’re speaking, then yes,” I say.

Das Muni grumbles something.

“And you say you come from the top of the world,” the woman says.

“I do,” I say. “There is a war above, on the surface of the world, between us and another world like ours. It’s between the Bhavajas and the Katazyrnas. My sisters and I were recycled.”