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Chapter Thirteen

Battlemaster Carcharoth collected arcane lore. He knew the beast from which his own name came—the wolf—though it was in an ancient, imagined language no man had ever spoken. It suited him, in the muscular ranginess of his body, in his iron-gray hair, in the tenacity with which he hunted down and destroyed threats to the Citadel.

His senses were enhanced far beyond those of any wolf, though. And to let them leap further still, he had at his fingertips technology unmatchable elsewhere on Haven (unmatchable even in the Citadel, should any of it chance to fail). As he did every couple of cycles, he let himself into the citadel within the Citadel that housed the Threat Analysis Computer. This was the only terminal that could access and control the AI, although there were others, many others, where the machine's insatiable appetite for even the most inconsequential information was fed. Dedicated pickups were scattered all over the Citadel, and over the older parts of Nûrnen as well, although they could not be replaced or manufactured these days.

Glorund should have done this more often, he thought. But Glorund, full of Cyborg certainty, had decided he was his own best TAC. And now Glorund was dead, and Carcharoth was wearing his boots. The new Battlemaster did not intend to repeat his predecessor's mistakes; he knew he would make enough of his own.

His fingers moved over the keys polished smooth by three hundred T-years of worried Soldiers; it was faster than the voice-recognition system, with Soldier reflexes. The query was a familiar one: THREATS TO THE CITADEL—RANK ORDER.

A light blinked on the screen while the computer processed data. Carcharoth had no idea how it worked, but had no doubt that it did work. The TAC had saved the Citadel untold trouble over the generations since the Dol Guldur had brought it from Old Sauron.

The computer whirred, a sound all but inaudible even to the Battlemaster's ears. Letters marched across the screen, orange-yellow on velvety black:

THREATS TO THE CITADEL:

1. AISHA CALLED THE DAUGHTER OF JUCHI

2. CYBORG SIGRID

3. THE BANDARI

4. STEPPE CLANS

OTHERS TOO LOW A PROBABILITY TO BE EVALUATED.

Carcharoth thought something extremely rude. Had the augmentations that made him Cyborg not obviated the need for oven emotional release, he would have sworn out loud. He almost did anyhow, augmentations or no augmentations. Fat lot of good augmentation had done Glorund, by the gods the Battlemaster did not believe in.

He typed in a new query: THREAT ANALYSIS OF AISHA IF PROVEN NOT TO BE DAUGHTER OF JUCHI. If she wasn't, and if the Soldiers could show she wasn't, maybe that would make her less of a nuisance.

But the TAC scotched his optimism almost at once: THREAT LEVEL OF SUBJECT WOMAN UNCHANGED. PROBABILITY OF SUCCESSFUL PROPAGANDA CAMPAIGN TOO LOW TO EVALUATE.

Worth a try, Carcharoth thought. He considered the Threat Analysis Computer's first response, found it strange. He went to the keyboard again: WHICH STEPPE CLANS INCLUDED IN THREAT ANALYSIS LISTING? The machine usually supplied a chieftain-by-chieftain listing—why not now?

He found out why in seconds: ALL STEPPE CLANS KNOWN TO SOLDIERS AND WITHIN ONE T-YEAR TRAVEL TIME OF THE CITADEL EXPECTED TO BE HOSTILE. EXCEPTIONS: WHITE SHEEP TURKS, CLANS OF OMIN HOTAL (PROBABILITY 86% +/- 3); CLAN OF TOGHRUL (PROBABILITY 59% +/- 6); ROLLING PLAINS TURKS, CLAN OF GASIM (PROBABILITY 53% +/- 8); COSSACK STANITSA OF CHERNINSKY (PROBABILITY 51% +/- 3). PROBABILITY OF OTHER EXCEPTIONS TOO LOW TO BE EVALUATED.

The Battlemaster stared at the screen. If he understood what the TAC was trying to tell him, the whole bloody steppe was going to throw itself at the Shangri-La Valley. He wondered if the Gatlings had enough ammo to mow down every nomad on Haven. Automatic calculation told him the answer was no, but it also told him he was being foolish. The Gatlings had plenty of bullets to make survivors who wanted to keep on surviving give up their assault.

Carcharoth noticed something else: the steppe was going to blow up, but it ranked only fourth on the computer's list of worries. That meant the three threats ahead of it had to be real doozies. The Bandari always showed up on the TAC's list, particularly since Angband fell and uncorked the giant cul-de-sac of steppe at whose southern end the Pale lay. The whole mess with Aisha was Glorund's fault, though the previous Battlemaster was too dead to take all the blame he deserved. But Sigrid—

Seeing Sigrid's name on the threat list was like a stiletto in the heart. The TAC must figure she's gone rogue, Carcharoth thought. He had trouble believing it; no Cyborg had ever betrayed the Citadel. Revolted against its leaders, yes, in the early years. Betrayed it—and the Race—no. But the database for female Cyborg Soldiers was too small to be statistically significant. Sigrid had been gone a long time now. Maybe she wasn't coming back.

Or maybe she was. With an army behind her.

 

"Rivendell," said Sigrid.

The Maasai could not have understood her irony. "Katlinsvale," the woman said. "And a rift valley, yes."

They stood on the brink of it. Two cycles of travel had brought them here, afoot and unaccompanied but for the dogs that had made Sigrid their herd. Sigrid had set the pace, Cyborg pace. She was not surprised to discover the Maasai could match her, except when she pressed.

She looked down. The valley opened without warning, as if the earth had parted at her feet, steep walls plunging down a kilometer and more from where she stood. To Cyborg eyes the whole long narrow cleft glowed with heat—hot springs concentrated at the valley's head and dotted along its length. They supported a profusion of vegetation, a jungle after the barrenness of the steppe, as rich as Shangri-La. And no word of it had come to the Citadel.

The Maasai went over the side. Sigrid followed her onto a track that descended through a dizzying pattern of switchbacks and sudden plunges. There was another, there had to be, for horses and carts, for sheep and goats. This was a challenge. She would take the hard way, the one that paid in death if one misstepped.

It was a long way down. Sigrid thought of the ropes in her pack, and of rappelling down the slope; but there was a certain pleasure in taking the slow way. In feeling by degrees the increase in the air's pressure, and tasting the richness of it: sulfur and minerals from the springs, sharp tang and sudden sweetness of growing things, the underlay of dung and smoke and sweat that marked humanity.

They farmed here. They had to, to support a population of pregnant women and animals. The fields followed the curves and hollows of the land, laid out in patterns as sophisticated as any she had seen outside of Nûrnen. The houses that watched over them were surprising: not houses at all but yurts like those on the steppe. They looked as if they could be moved at the dwellers' whim, or shifted when the pattern of tilled and fallow changed, to be closest to the fields that needed most attention. Even the barns looked temporary, and the granaries, like the yurts, sat on wheels. Nomad thrift, farmer's foresight.

Women worked in the fields. Not all were big with child. Mother Clan, those would be. Midwife-warriors, farmers, keepers of the valley.

They looked no softer than their sisters on the steppe. Good stock, strong stock. Stock that would breed well on Soldier lines.

The Mother Clan had its fire far up the valley, above a chain of springs and steaming pools. Its central yurt was marked like Margit's by a skull on a spear—Katlin's own, broad and sturdy—surmounted by an odd carving in—

Plastic. Not carved, then, but molded, and barely weathered by what must have been generations. If the thing was life-size, the creature it represented was about as large as a Terran cat, and vaguely felinoid in shape. Small for a predator in Haven's arcticlike ecology.

"Valecat," said the Maasai, "and a sister, of sorts. She breeds without the male, you see."

"Ah," said Sigrid. "A form of hermphrodite."

The Maasai shook her head. "No. She has no male, absorbed into her body or otherwise. She conceives of her own essence. If she has a mind or an instinct to vary her line, she exchanges essences with a sister. She lives only here in this valley. She chooses on occasion to share a yurt or a barn. She hunts vermin as an earthcat will, but we never could keep an earthcat here. Valecat won't allow it."

"Appropriate," Sigrid said.

Probably a relict species, she decided. Haven had a number, since it had been undergoing a mass extinction when humans first arrived. Oddities like asexual reproduction might well flourish in a confined micro-environment like this valley. The springs were probably mildly radioactive, as well. Inevitable that it would become a symbol to the tribe.

"Surely. And a sign. While valecat favors us, we know that our way is the right way."

Sigrid raised a brow, but forbore to comment.

Katlin was unexpected. She could not have been as old as Sigrid. She was, it was clear, both chieftain and shaman. And she was vastly pregnant.

"Twins," Sigrid said, looking at her.

She smiled at Sigrid. Two young women, but older than she, had assisted her from her yurt and helped her to sit by the fire. It was so placed that one could look down the length of the valley, over the steaming pools to the fields and the orchards and the wild spaces where Haven flora grew unmolested, and up the steep walls to the distant sky. Her eyes lifted to the last, but her voice was clear and direct. "Yes, twins. Their father was a Soldier. I have high hopes of them."

"If they are viable."

She lowered her eyes to Sigrid. They were blue; she was fair, Soldier-fair, with a Soldier's strong bones, but not a Soldier's coldness. "They will be," she said. "I chose their father carefully. I disposed of him with my own hand. I was sorry to do it. He was a good lover."

Strange to hear her speak so, warm and light and child-simple. "He thought to go back," she explained. "He meant to take me with him. I was a great prize; I would make a good Soldier, he said, and a worthy mother of Soldiers."

"So you would," said Sigrid.

"No," Katlin said. "I might have gone, for curiosity, but he killed Katlin-before, thinking to steal me; and I was Katlin-next. He was sorry after. Soldiers hate to make mistakes."

"Mistakes can kill you."

"He didn't die for that. His mistake was to come here at all, where a Soldier can live and love, but never leave."

Sigrid looked down at the chain of pools. A herd of horses had come down to the lowest, not to drink—the water was foul for that—but to roll and splash, and to lie, ears slack, drowsing in the warmth. They were all mares, heavy with foal, attended by dogs like those that lay, one at her feet, one at a cautious distance. The he-dog sighed and laid his head on her knee. She forbore to push it away.

"Our dogs like you," Katlin said. "Margit's clan speaks well of you. Would you stay with them, or would you choose another?"

"I am content," said Sigrid.

Katlin nodded. "So I'm told. That's rare in a Soldier, contentment. And you are more than Soldier. You'll not always be satisfied to live under another's command."

"I am no threat to your place. Or," said Sigrid, "to Margit's."

"Did I say you were? We grow, you know," said Katlin, resting her hand on her belly. "Our herds are larger than they've ever been; our children thrive. Time's coming for a clan-founding. We've always resisted it; we've kept our numbers low, or turned the men away at the gathers. But Katlin-before died, and Katlin-now carries twofold, and we have a sign. We have you."

"One could grow weary of being a symbol."

Katlin laughed. "But, Cyborg woman, we are all symbols. The world is a symbol, a sign to any who can read it. And now that tells me, 'Take what is given. Grow. Wield the weapon set in your hand.' Would you be Sigrid over Sigridsfolk?"

Sigrid spoke carefully, quietly. "You offer me much, who am a stranger, who could be the most bitter of your enemies."

"So you could," said Katlin. "If you are, you will die, as Hama died, because it's necessary. And we'll mourn you at the gather, when we remember the dead."

"I may not be so easy to kill."

"Of course not. We'd not want you else. You'll rule well, and you'll be free. You can forge a new race."

Subtle, supple words. Words as meticulously calculated as a First Rank's speech to his troops. Breedmaster Titus could have done no better, manipulating Sigrid's mind and her instincts to serve his will. Offering her power, freedom, a race to mold as she would. But not as Titus had done, creating the beautiful monster that was Sieglinde and the simple failure that was Sigrid—dividing the race into Soldier and breeder, warrior male and helpless female. She would create a race more perfectly balanced, using the knowledge of the Breedmasters from before the fall of the Dol Guldur, blending it with the knowledge preserved here. They would remember her as they remembered the masters of Old Sauron, with reverence and awe.

Delusion. She snapped herself out of it. It was, if possible at all, only remotely so. No credit to her that she had succumbed so easily. She was far less in control of herself than she had imagined. The anger that had sent her from the Citadel festered deep, and the desire that had brought her here, while laudable in its concern for the Race, did not bear close scrutiny. It was not the desire of a Soldier to do his duty. It was little more than vanity.

She spoke in the Clanmother's patient silence. "If I am given the rule of a clan, what prevents me from summoning my kinsmen from the Citadel and taking your valley and your people?"

"Nothing," said Katlin.

"And yet you trust me."

"The nomads have a proverb," Katlin said. "A man will gamble on anything. A woman gambles only on a surety."

"Insane," said Sigrid. She stood. Katlin watched her calmly, head bent back on a neck that seemed as fragile as a wheatstem.

It was not in fact much less breakable than Sigrid's own. Necessary deceptions. Women among the nomads lived by them. Women in the Citadel used them—Soldier women too, relegated to the status of portable wombs and bowing to the cant that was fed them: how few, how precious they were; far too valuable to risk.

If these tribeswomen were mad, they were no more so than Sigrid. She supposed she was sane, if she could know she was not.

That was the trap's heart. She stood by the lowest pool, knowing that Katlin watched her, and the Maasai beside the Clanmother. Deliberately she took off her lion cloak. The scent and sight of it sent the basking mares wallowing and floundering out of the water, fleeing to the safety of an upper field. She folded and laid the thing on the edge of the pool, then the rest of her garments one by one. The air was cold on her skin, the water warm as she slid into it, warming toward the vent, cooling toward the edges. Its chemical reek clogged her nostrils. Its steam blurred her eyes. When she dived beneath the surface, her hearing changed, dulling to the upper world, sharpening below.

It was as close to sensory deprivation as she would come, short of the tank in the Citadel. She surfaced, sucked oxygen again and again, hyperventilating. Then she went down.

Quiet. Blood-warm. And, once the surge of her dive had settled, still.

Her timesense ticked unregarded. Her brain spun for a while that subjectively was endless; objectively, less than half a minute. Then, as the water had done, it quieted.

Datum. She was angry. She had been angry since she knew what she was, and what it meant.

Datum. She had defied the Breedmaster's command. She had left the Citadel—had, in effect, stolen herself.

Datum. She had found what she reckoned, with judgment admittedly impaired by anger and resentment, knowledge worth the price of disobedience. The mare, the Maasai, the tribe that had bred them both.

Datum. The tribe welcomed her. It saw her full potential. It proposed to use that potential to the full, and not simply to breed sons.

Datum. She could live this life. It offered possibilities that were, if not infinite, then more extensive than those in the Citadel. There she was a failure and a flawed seed. There Sieglinde was the culmination of the Breedmaster's program.

Datum. She had been manipulated into this condition, first by the Breedmaster, latest by the Clanmother. The latter was quite as insidious as the former. She knew precisely what would trap and hold Sigrid. What promises to make, what to leave unsaid. She saw considerable advantage in a clan dominated by a Cyborg—even knowing a Cyborg's dangers.

Datum. First of those dangers was the key to the rest The ability to make choices.

Datum. Emotionally based but, for the purposes of computation, valid. Given to choose, she would choose this: freedom from the constraints of the Breedmaster's error, and a race to make in her own image.

Just at the edge of anoxia, just when her body could not draw a molecule more of hoarded oxygen, Sigrid surged into the air. It was cold and reeking and blessedly rich in her starved lungs.

The two dogs watched her from the pool's edge. The he-dog quivered; his tail slapped the crusted rock. The she-dog, having ascertained that her herd was safe, went to work on the fleas that beset the base of her tail.

No one human kept them company. The ledge on which the clanfire burned was empty.

Sigrid sluiced water from her skin and dressed as she had undressed, deliberately, without haste. Her pack was as she had left it, her pistol in its holster, her ammunition unmolested. She buckled on the gunbelt, sliding the knife in its sheath to fit nearest her right hand.

She was ready to face her decision. She put on the lion cloak, fitting its head over her damp hair. The bonecarver in Margit's clan had made a brooch to fasten the cloak at the shoulder, a graceful stylized creature that she had taken then for a maneless cliff lion, but knew now for a valecat. Her finger traced the smooth curve of back and tail. Everything, as Katlin said, was a symbol.

 

No one was startled that Sigrid would accept what Katlin offered. Had not the omens foretold it? There was a feast to celebrate, and beer with the kvass, and even wine from vines in the most sheltered region of the valley. "And even at that," the vintner said, "we lose more than we grow." What there was, was good, and surprisingly strong.

It would take time to endow the new clan. For the beginning of that time, Sigrid was sent back to Margit to be trained in the ways of Katlin's folk. With that done, she would begin her travels among the rest of the clans, gathering the women who would be her clansisters.

She was of them now. There had been a rite in the middle of the feast, after the wine had had time to warm everyone but before it made them drunk. She shared blood and wine with Katlin and with the Maasai, and then with the rest who were there: blood from each, a drop into the cup, and wine mixed with it. Sigrid wondered if they knew how nourishing it was, apart from the meaning they laid on it. She doubted they knew what she could do with blood and augmented taste and smell. With this many, mixed so promiscuously, it was a wild confusion of data: fertile, infertile, pregnant, not, someone with a developing disease of the blood, someone else who had been at the wine since before the feast, someone else still who carried the iron tang of the Cyborg.

That was herself. Even her blood overrode the rest, battling the wine to dominate her senses. It made her dizzy, but gloriously so. She was of the tribe. The tribe was part of her, blood and bone. When she was dead her skull would keep vigil from a spear, watching over the doings of her daughters and her daughters' daughters.

 

Eyelight was cold, glaring down on Margit's herds. Sigrid watched them no less balefully. When Byers' Star rose again, she would leave this clan. Lais' clan waited. There were young women already in the camp behind, eager to follow her. There had been tears enough at the Starset feast, and a regret or ten. But no refusals.

Sigrid drew the lionskin closer about her. It had seemed a useful passport into the clan. It had become a symbol in itself. Young fools talked of getting themselves a lion, to prove that they could fight. To talk of getting themselves a man would have been more practical, in Sigrid's mind.

She was fertile again. Gathering was most of a T-year off. Here among women, paradoxically, she wanted—needed—a child more than she ever had in the Citadel. She had not even told her daughter she was going away. Signy would by now, and properly, have been taught to despise her as a deserter and a breaker of orders.

What stirred in her, she realized with some surprise, was pain. She was doing what she could not help but do.

Her hands were fists in the tanned, supple hide. She had chosen her path. She would not, could not, veer from it. Old guilt, old pain—programming only. Reflex. Conditioning that she, who was Cyborg, had broken. Nothing bound her to the Soldiers or to the Citadel. She had given them years of her service. They had paid her by holding her captive, and refusing her any rights but those of a broodmare. She owed them nothing.

Nothing.

Whatsoever.

Her body moved. It took her back through the camp, which slept in the waning hours of Haven's day, as Cat's Eye sank toward truenight. She walked neither quickly nor slowly, concealing nothing, retrieving what was necessary. The dogs followed as they always did. They too were programmed by their genes and their training.

She found herself smiling. She smiled too much of late. The tribe encouraged it. Humor, even humor as black as a Soldier's heart, had no place in a Cyborg's world, but on Katlin's ground it was welcomed. Life, Katlinsfolk insisted, was unbearable without it.

The smile died before she returned to the herd. The horses were accustomed by now to her terrifying garment. They snorted at it but did not run.

The horses she looked for were, by chance or design, near the edge of the herd, and together for once: the mare and all her daughters. One or two others grazed with them. They made a small herd within the larger one, with the bay mare its chief and its guard.

She raised her head at Sigrid's coming and blew out, but gently, with a quiver of the nostrils that was a greeting.

Cat's Eye hung just above the horizon. Unaugmented sight would find the light very dim, the long shadows deceptive. Sigrid made herself part of one.

She whistled softly between her teeth. The dogs wheeled at the signal. The he-dog grinned in dog-delight. The bitch sidled toward the herd. A flick of Sigrid's hand altered her course.

Sigrid drew a slow breath. Herding with dogs was not a skill she had studied. These, bless their good genes, would do as she told them.

They cut out the mare and her daughters. The bitch, spinning and wheeling, flashing wicked teeth, meeting stubborn eyes with eyes as implacable as any Cyborg's, drove the rest back to the larger herd. Sigrid thought briefly of countermanding the order. But the mares who trotted away, ears flattened with resentment, were not the best or the swiftest. And they did not carry the mutation.

The bitch returned to the small new herd, white legs flashing, black body merging with shadows. When she turned to glance at Sigrid, white muzzle and white blaze gleamed. Sigrid flicked her hand again.

Onward.

Away from the camp.

"Why?"

Sigrid spun.

The Maasai stood out of reach or leap. She held a crossbow, cocked.

"An assault rifle would have been wiser," Sigrid said.

"None was ready to hand," said the Maasai. Her eyes fixed Sigrid, as steady as the bolt aimed at her heart. "Why?" she asked again.

Sigrid relaxed her stance, subsiding from the balls of her feet. The Maasai did not lower the bow.

"The worst of all sins," the woman said, "is the betrayal of one's kin."

"Yes," said Sigrid.

The Maasai's eyes widened. She understood. "We are your kin!"

"So you said."

"But never you." The Maasai's finger tightened on the trigger. "You lied to us."

"No," Sigrid said.

"You let us say it all. But," said the Maasai, "you let us."

"I believed I could do it." The Maasai did not have night-sight. Sigrid knew that her shape was, at best, a blur in gloom. Perhaps that let her show more pain than she would otherwise have allowed. Perhaps it no longer mattered that this woman see how close she was to unaugmented, undisciplined humanity. "I believed this was the only choice, the proper choice. I failed in my judgment."

"And so you will go home and confess your sin, and fall on your sword."

"No," Sigrid said. "I am the Breedmaster's heir. I know now what errors he committed. I know what errors I might have committed. I shall commit none of them."

The Maasai's breath hissed as she drew it in. "You are appalling."

"I am a Cyborg," Sigrid said.

"A monster. A killing machine. A demon in woman's shape."

"I am what I was bred to be."

"No," said the Maasai with desperate quiet. "We are more than the sum of our ancestors. They determine our beginnings. We determine our destinies."

"What," said Sigrid, "no gods? No fates?"

"The gods dream us. We shape the dream."

"There are no gods. There are only the genes." Sigrid shifted slightly. The bow twitched.

Dropped.

The Maasai sprang on Sigrid.

She was strong: strong enough, almost, to sway Sigrid on her feet. She did not, even now, fight in hate, but in bone-deep horror—not of Sigrid but of what she had been raised to be. It poured out of her in a flood of soft rhythmic words. A battle song, a death-song. A song of grief for the clan that now would never be, and the Clanmother who had betrayed her word and her kin and her own heart's desire.

Sigrid's word was given long ago, and not to this tribe. Her kin were in the Citadel. Her desire . . .

Her hands closed on the slender neck. The Maasai went still. The last of the Eyelight gleamed on her face.

The mares were well on their way southward, with the dogs herding them as Sigrid had commanded. Here was treasure as great as they. Treasure for which, alive and unharmed, the Citadel might even absolve her of desertion.

The Citadel would deduce what Sigrid had deduced. That there might be more of this kind, hidden among the clans. That those clans existed unsubdued, and within the Citadel's reach. That such an order of things was not to be tolerated in any world in which the Soldiers ruled.

The Maasai's eyes were clear. She was not afraid. She would be reading her death in Sigrid's face. Death that would save her tribe. Horses could come from anywhere. She could come from only one place, a place of which the Citadel knew nothing. Of which the Citadel should know, must know, if Sigrid would most truly serve it.

Sigrid's fingers flexed. The fine bones snapped. The body arched in spasm.

Sigrid held her until she was dead, then laid her down, carefully. She was seemly, for a corpse. The fold of the land would hide her for as long as Sigrid needed to make her escape. She had not arranged for reinforcements, or warned the guards. She had trusted too much: in herself, in Sigrid.

"Never," said Sigrid to the still form in its reek of death. "Never trust a Cyborg. Even if she is your kin."

She turned her back on the dead woman and the living clan. Her eyes blurred. She blinked fiercely. A Cyborg did not weep. A Cyborg knew no pain, and no grief, and never regret.

The horses were out of sight, the dogs driving them on. Sigrid took a step forward. Another. Stretched her stride, as fast a horse could gallop, down the long road southward. Down to the Citadel.

 

Maybe she wasn't coming back, Carcharoth thought. Or maybe she was. If Carcharoth had been an ordinary man, ice would have walked up his spine. He looked at the screen again.

THREATS TO THE CITADEL:

1. AISHA CALLED THE DAUGHTER OF JUCHI

2. CYBORG SIGRID

3. THE BANDARI

4. STEPPE CLANS

OTHERS TOO LOW A PROBABILITY TO BE EVALUATED.

He found a new question to ask the computer: PROBABILITY OF THREATS 1,2,3,4 BEING INTEGRATED.

Even the TAC needed a little while to think that one over. At last the answer appeared: PROBABILITY 61% +/- 12. Carcharoth stared at the screen a long time. Titus has to see this, he decided. Not only was the other Cyborg Breedmaster of the Citadel, he was also Sigrid's father. He would not be happy.

Carcharoth was not happy, either. He outclassed ordinary Soldiers to the same degree that they outclassed the ordinary cattle in Nûrnen. He was used to dealing with them from a position of superiority, able to outthink and outright everyone around him. The Totenkopf he wore on his collar tabs warned those around him of what he was, and let him begin every battle with it half won through intimidation.

Titus, though, was of his own kind, one of the ruling elite of the Citadel. Cyborgs did not hold the top positions on the First Council, which were largely ceremonial these days. They ruled nonetheless, and the Breedmaster was his match, near enough, with weapons or controlled fury of body. And to Cyborg data processing Titus added his own byzantine deviousness. He would be worse than a bad enemy to make. Carcharoth cast about for ways to avoid involving him in his daughter's disgrace. He found none, not with 61% +/- 12 glowing on the TAC screen.

Duty. The word rang through Carcharoth's mind, steadied him. This was not personal, this was for the safety of the Soldiers and the security of the Citadel. Carcharoth looked at 61% +/- 12 one last time, allowed himself a nod. He really needed Titus' help here. That was how he would put it to the Battlemaster.

He picked up the phone, punched a code reserved for wearers of the death's head. The response came while the first ping was still sounding. "Titus."

"Carcharoth here, in the TAC room. I've developed something that might interest you." No matter how secure the phone system was supposed to be, the Battlemaster said no more. Titus was not one to miss nuances.

"On my way."

Before the Battlemaster arrived, the ceiling speaker came to life: "Battlemaster Carcharoth to Interrogation. Urgent. Battlemaster Carcharoth to Interrogation. Urgent."

Unlike mere Soldiers, Cyborgs had the privilege of defining urgent for themselves. Instead of hurrying to the interrogation chamber (the Red Room, they called it in Nûrnen, and shuddered when they spoke), he called to find out what was believed to require his presence.

"Interrogation—Regiment Leader Khim."

"Carcharoth." Whatever this was, the Battlemaster thought, the chief interrogator was handling it personally, which meant he thought it urgent. "I'm engaged in something important where I am. What do you have there?"

"Battlemaster, two Soldiers—Section Leader Ulfast and Senior Trooper Mim—were boozing in a Nûrnen dive when they heard a drunken nomad asking about the Cyborg Sigrid in terms that suggested he was acquainted with her. They apprehended him and have just brought him to me for questioning."

As Titus had with Carcharoth, so the Battlemaster spoke now: "On my way." He paused only to scribble down the questions he had put to the Threat Analysis Computer: let Titus see them, and their answers, for himself.

But when Carcharoth closed the last secure door to the computer room, he turned to find the Breedmaster approaching. "I thought you had something for me here," Titus remarked. His voice was so perfectly neutral, he might have been saying, Why are you sneaking away after you called me? Assassination—of characters and of rivals—had its place in the Citadel's power games.

But Carcharoth said, "My destination is relevant to the matter about which I called you. Accompany me to Interrogation; I will brief you on the way."

Without another word, Titus fell into step beside his fellow Cyborg. The Battlemaster spoke rapidly, intently. The briefing was over by the time the two officers reached the Red Room: talking to one of his own kind, Carcharoth needed neither repetition nor flowery elaboration. Once Titus had the data, he could analyze them for himself.

The Breedmaster's long, thin face did not change expression; Carcharoth would have been shocked if it had. But Titus was slower in answering than a simple pause to process new information would have required. At length, he asked, "How did the possibility of threat linkage occur to you? Many would not have found that question; I admit it might not have occurred to me."

"When I discovered the magnitude of the threat from the steppes and compared it to the low rating the TAC gave that threat, I wondered if it might be connected with those ahead of it. Intuitive leap." Not even Cyborgs could make apparently disparate chunks of data fit together on command; it was like traveling by the legendary Alderson Drive instead of through normal space. At the far end of the leap, you were somewhere new.

"We have never had to face one of our own kind as opponent," Titus said, as steadily as if he and Sigrid shared no genes. "If the TAC proves correct, her elimination may well aid us."

Carcharoth wondered whether to admire or suspect him. Was he putting the Citadel's interests above his own, or just trying to create that impression so that no one would question any other schemes he was hatching? Not enough data, the Battlemaster answered himself. Aloud, he said, "In any case, we need to find out what Sigrid is doing. Not to mention the steppe tribes, and how the Bandari are integrated into the threat assessment."

"Indeed." Titus pushed open the door to Interrogation. "Let us hope this nomad can shed some light on the Sigrid question."

 

I should not drink so much. Drinking so often breaks the Yasa, Temujin thought. Temujin's ancient namesake had laid down the Yasa, the code of the Mongols: it held that a man should drink to drunkenness no more than once a month—though the great conqueror had added: "It would be even better if men were drunk only once a year; better still if they were never drunk at all—but what man could keep such a law?"

Not only that, when I get drunk I talk too much and end up in trouble.

The last time he'd been drunk in Nûrnen, he'd spilled a secret to Sigrid, though she'd had to hurt him to extract it all. Now, seeking Sigrid, he was in the Saurons' hands again—and by every sign, they were ready to hurt him a lot worse than Sigrid had. I should not drink so much. Useless, useless thought. Enough to make a man take the Muslims and their stupid Allah seriously—but then, they didn't obey their own code about drink either, which showed that the Ancestor was closer to the truth.

But it had been such a good bar. He'd been looking for a good bar, a place where he could get drunk and slide under the table and not worry—too much—that he'd have his throat slit while he was passed out.

The sign above the door had drawn his eyes, as it was meant to do: a cat's white needle teeth in the grinning mouth of a bleary-eyed, ratlike face. "The Sozzled Stobor," legends in several languages proclaimed; and the beast was on its back, with a mug in one paw. He'd already tried several places, and found them wanting. He went inside. It took moment before he realized that this was the same bar he'd met Sigrid in—he'd been drunk then, too. That chilled him for a moment. A malicious wind-spirit might be guiding his steps along a path of disaster, always circling back to the same place like a man lost in a winter blizzard.

Nonsense. Besides, he wasn't allowed to be afraid of anything but thunder, as a Mongol. It was a good bar.

Even before he was served, he had a pretty good notion this was what he was looking for. The geese roasting above the roaring fire on the far wall sent out a fragrance that made his mouth water.

He sat down at a small empty table. The barmaid who came over was pretty in a mostly Caucasoid way, and wore much less than was the habit on the steppe. He recognized her only dimly; the first time here he'd had no eyes for anyone but Sigrid, even though at first he hadn't known she was a woman.

"What'll you have?" she asked in accented Turkic, smiling as she spoke. Before Temujin could answer, she added, "Don't say me." Her eyes flicked to the big man a few tables away. "Strong Sven wouldn't like that."

One look at Strong Sven convinced Temujin to keep away from his woman. He looked like a Sauron, tall and fair and with features so sharp and angular that they might have been hewn from stone rather than flesh. Instead of a field-gray uniform, though, he wore a miner's dirty coveralls. Some Soldier's bastard, Temujin guessed, not that anyone with two thoughts to rub together inside his head would have used that word to Strong Sven's face.

"Tennis-fruit brandy, miss," he answered in his own bad Americ, "and a chunk of one of those birds when they're done."

He had several shots of brandy by the time he got his goose. The room was beginning to spin. Maybe, he thought, the fat-rich dark meat and bread would coat his stomach so he wouldn't get drunk so fast.

It hadn't worked that way.

Now he lay naked and spreadeagled on a hard table, shackled at wrists and ankles. He'd tried to twist free a couple of times, and only managed to add to his aches and bruises. Now he just stared up at the glowing panels in the ceiling. He'd never seen electric lights before. He hoped never to see them again.

But staring at the ceiling was better than letting his head slip sideways so he looked at the walls. Every tool hung in neat rows on them was sharp or barbed or otherwise horrific. The uses of some were obvious. He could not imagine how others might be employed, and did not want them demonstrated on his person.

The moment of his own downfall came back to him with awful clarity. It had been just a few minutes after Strong Sven beat the whey out of a townsman who'd patted the barmaid's backside. He'd fought like a Sauron, all right—viciously. Temujin had applauded his own wisdom in leaving the girl alone except for business.

He'd raised a rather shaky hand to call her over again and order another shot when, instead, he'd listened to himself asking about Sigrid. When he got liquor into him, his tongue ran its own life.

The worst of it was, she hadn't known anything. So he'd explained about the Sauron bitch in more detail—in loving detail, he thought now, bitterly. And the barmaid had still looked blank.

Then a hand had fallen on his left shoulder, and another on his right. When he looked up, he discovered each hand belonged to a different Sauron. Next to the two who had hold of him, Strong Sven, sculpted as he was, might have been carved out of tallow and left too near a fire, so he started to run.

Temujin had seen them come in, but they'd taken a table at the far end of the Sozzled Stobor. They couldn't possibly have heard him asking questions of the barmaid . . . if they hadn't been Saurons. But they were Saurons, and they did have those augmented ears. Temujin had forgotten about that. With a few less shots of brandy in him, he might not have. He'd never know, now.

The one on his left had said, "Who are you to be asking questions about Sigrid, plainsman?" He'd have said bedbug with more warmth.

Before Temujin could answer, the one on the right said, "Sigrid's gone missing. What do you know about that, plainsman?" He'd have said sheep two cycles dead of anthrax with more warmth—a lot more warmth.

"Missing?" Temujin croaked, appalled—he'd come searching for the cold-faced wench and she wasn't even here? She was in Katlinsvale after all? He stammered, "I—I don't know anything of that, Sau—Soldiers. I—I met her maybe a T-year ago, and—"

"You met her?" both Saurons said together. They looked at each other. They nodded. The one on Temujin's left picked him up. He started to struggle, then thought better of it—fool that he was, he wanted to live.

The one on his right disarmed him quickly and expertly, down to the holdout knife in his boot, and said, "Let's take him to the Red Room so they can squeeze truth out of him."

A sigh ran through the Sozzled Stobor. Temujin hadn't fully understood it then. Now he did. He wished he'd tried to die fighting.

Behind his head, a door opened. Men—two, by their footfalls—came in. The fellow who'd been in charge of Temujin spoke to them in Americ, which the nomad could follow after a fashion: "Here he is, Breedmaster, Battlemaster."

Wan Tngri is over all. Having professed his faith in the Eternal Blue Sky, Temujin tried to face death bravely. What had he done to draw a pair of Cyborgs down on him? I must not show fear. A Mongol may fear nothing but demons and thunder. Of course, some held that Cyborgs were demons.

They stood looking down at him, one on either side of the table. At first he saw only the death's heads on their collar tabs. Then, when death did not descend at once (and it wouldn't, not at once, oh no), he let his eyes travel to their faces. Rather to his disappointment, they looked like any other Saurons: they were Caucasoid, light-eyed, big-nosed; the one to his left had a moustache with the beginnings of snow in it. The one on his right—

He jerked in surprise against the unyielding shackles. The one on his right wore Sigrid's face, or an older, masculine version of it. The shape of the eyes was the same, the ash-blond hair, the narrow chin and proud cheekbones beneath a broad forehead. So was the thin mouth that looked as if it might be about to smile but never did.

"Do you recognize me, plainsman?" that Cyborg asked in Turkic. His voice was just a voice. Temujin didn't know what he'd expected: thunder and brass, perhaps. But no, just a voice. The Sauron added, "I know I have never seen you before."

Temujin wondered how he knew. He himself would not know most of the people he'd walked past in Nûrnen bare hours before. But he never thought to doubt the Cyborg. When that one said he knew something, he compelled belief.

"You would be well advised to answer Breedmaster Titus," the other Cyborg, the Battlemaster, said. He took one of the small, sharp tools off the wall. Temujin's testicles tried to crawl up into his belly. The Sauron, however, merely began paring his nails.

"I—I—" Temujin's mouth was so dry, it hurt to talk. The electric light glittering off the little blade in the Battlemaster's hand loosened his tongue quickly enough. "Breedmaster, I, ah, met in Nûrnen, a Sauron, uh, a Soldier woman who looks like you."

"Did you?" Only mild interest showed in Titus' voice. "When was this?"

"Maybe a T-year past, maybe a little less," Temujin answered. He was vague about exactly how long it had been. Out on the steppe, one cycle of light and dark was much like another. Less than a Haven year, definitely.

Titus turned to the other Cyborg. "That would fit, Carcharoth."

"So it would." Still trimming his nails, the Battlemaster—Carcharoth—gazed down at Temujin. "How did you—meet—the Breedmaster's daughter? Tell us that in great detail—what is your name?"

"T-Temujin." The Breedmaster's daughter? Temujin hadn't imagined he could be in any deeper than he'd already thought he was. Now he saw he'd been wrong. Or maybe not. Being what they were, knowing what she was, they could hardly imagine he'd tried to force her. He was still alive, after all—for the moment.

Carcharoth dropped the sharp little blade. It clattered down on the table between Temujin's legs. The point just touched—not even enough to cut—the very tip of his glans. "My apologies, Temujin," the Battlemaster said, picking up the tool. "Now, you were about to say—?" His face was the picture of courteous attention.

Temujin talked. Temujin, not to mince words, babbled. He told the Saurons everything from the meeting in the alley to the secret clan of women, to the breed of horses that could foal in the thin air of the highlands. Sometimes a mechanical voice—an even more mechanical voice—chimed in from the grille in the ceiling, making him repeat things over and over. Temujin didn't mind; while he was talking, the Cyborgs weren't cutting and crushing.

The Cyborgs talked, too, across Temujin as if he did not exist. "Did she bring any record of this back here?" Carcharoth asked.

"No," Titus answered. "She was—is—headstrong, as you know. She has always been determined to show that she can be woman and Cyborg both. Investigating this clan of cattle women who might also be warriors . . . being headstrong, she might well have wanted to personally evaluate the situation, use it in her favor against my judgment if she could, before she apprised us of it."

"But what if, having evaluated this clan, she found its values more closely suited her personality than those of the Citadel?" the Battlemaster inquired. "The probability of that, I think, is not too low to be evaluated."

"True," Titus said. "Not to our advantage, but true. If that is indeed correct, then the situation will be as the TAC views it, or possibly worse."

Temujin got confused a couple of times, trying to keep up with the quick-spoken Sauron dialect of Americ. He also got even more frightened, something he hadn't imagined possible. If he'd heard what he thought . . . Sigrid was—a Cyborg? He shivered in his shackles. The spirit that made the two of them meet had had only malice in its heart.

His shiver drew the attention of Breedmaster and Battlemaster. Carcharoth started playing with the little cutting tool again. "Tell me, Temujin," he said, "having encountered Sigrid once, why you came back to Nûrnen to seek her out a second time."

The nomad could not take his eyes off the blade. But even its threat did not make him answer quickly. After some time spent sorting through the muddle of his own thoughts, he said, "Revenge, maybe. And—" His tongue clove to the roof of his mouth. Not even the knife could make him say what else he'd thought, not to the Saurons, most especially not when one of them was her father. If he said what else, Carcharoth might carve him with even more fiendish ingenuity than if he kept his mouth shut.

Titus sniffed, turned to the Battlemaster. "Note the pheromones?"

The word meant nothing to Temujin, but Carcharoth nodded. "He wants her. What game was she playing, the night she found him?"

"I do not know." Titus' words came out machine-flat, but Temujin heard—or imagined he heard—pain lurking under them. The Breedmaster went on, "I know her genes, I know her training, I know the biomechanicals that made her one with you and me, but herself—? In the end, not all things are calculable."

"Yes," Carcharoth said. "Under the circumstances, however, do you agree we would be expedient to try to track her down and, if she has indeed gone rogue, to take appropriate measures?"

"Under the circumstances, the expedience of this course is undeniable," Titus said. "Its practicality, however, is open to question. Can mere Soldiers be relied upon to take appropriate measures against a Cyborg?"

"I admit the probability is low," the Battlemaster answered. "But we will have the advantage of surprise, for surely Sigrid would not dream that this nomad here might return to Nûrnen for her, and thus give us some clue as to her whereabouts."

"No doubt you are right," Titus said. "Who can calculate the foolishness of cattle?" He paused a moment in thought "If we send out, hmmm, two sections under an Assault Leader, they may possibly generate a threat of sufficient magnitude to persuade her to return with them to the Citadel."

"Rather than leave her bones on the steppe, you mean? Were you not the one who just questioned whether Soldiers could deal with her at all?" Now it was Carcharoth's turn to ponder. "I certainly would not risk more than two sections on the task, not in view of our other difficulties at this time. But her genes are undeniably valuable—and you are her father."

"I tried not to let that influence my suggestion," Titus said coldly. "Perhaps I failed."

"In any case, if they fail to make contact, the search team will still be available to gather intelligence on the tribal movements the TAC predicted," Carcharoth mused. He seemed at last to remember Temujin was present. "As you said, Battlemaster, Sigrid will not have anticipated this nomad's reappearance—nor that he might guide the search team toward the clan of females she was investigating."

Carcharoth looked at Temujin, too. The plainsman tried to hide on the flat, matte-black surface of the table. The Battlemaster said, "If he can be relied upon to guide them in the right direction."

"That should not be a problem," Titus said. "For one thing, his self-interest is involved, as, if he leads us astray, he will be moving further from the object of his desire. And for another, the Soldiers of the search team will have access to overtly coercive measures to ensure his cooperation." The Breedmaster ran a gentle forefinger down the midline of Temujin's belly. "You would not care to be overtly coerced, would you?"

Temujin shook his head. He wasn't altogether sure what Titus was talking about, but, as with the more arcane tools on the wall of the Red Room, he didn't want to learn in detail.

Carcharoth went from one corner of the table to the next, unsnapping Temujin's shackles. "Sit up, sit up," he said almost jovially, and helped Temujin do just that. The power of his arm under Temujin's back showed the nomad that he was in truth of Sigrid's breed. "Besides which, Breedmaster, why should he not be willing to come to our aid, when he has passed into our hands and out again without being tortured. Eh, Temujin?"

Now Temujin nodded, as eagerly as he could. Nor was he lying, or not entirely. After all, he remained intact. But if Carcharoth thought he believed that a Sauron Cyborg dropped knives by accident, then the Battlemaster, for all his augments, was a fool.

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Framed