The Gen turned, heart thudding madly, to find three Simes holding stilettos and observing them silently. Klyd rose to his feet, brushing the dirt off the proud Zeor colors. Glancing over his shoulder, Valleroy caught the hawklike intensity in the channel's eyes. Here was the whole House of Zeor prepared to go down fighting.

Then the channel did a strange thing. Standing just behind Valleroy and to his left, Klyd rested his right hand on the Gen's right shoulder, extending the nearest lateral to brush Valleroy's neck. With his left hand, the Sime gripped Valleroy's left hand, extending his laterals in the same position he'd used to accomplish the internal shunt.

For an instant, Valleroy thought he was being asked to serve despite the emergency. He was nerving himself to give it a try when he saw the Raiders' reaction. Klyd's need and Valleroy's intent to serve were tangible to the Simes. They'd heard of such things, but the reality was still a compelling strange, luridly daring, repellently fascinating attraction.

Knowing now that Klyd had clamped down a rigid control that allowed him to make contact without surrendering to instinct, Valleroy was able to dampen down the last vestige of apprehension. He played his part with calm assurance that captivated each Raider as he arrived at the scene. Beginning to enjoy holding his audience, Valleroy conjured a genuine concern for Klyd's feelings. He tried to project the impression that he wanted to serve.

Evidently, he succeeded too well. Simultaneously, Klyd whispered. "Ease off. You're tempting me." And the latest arrival who appeared to be the leader said, "All right, perverts! Step apart."

Klyd answered calmly, "A channel and his Companion do not separate."

"You try for a transfer and you'll wish that rock slide had buried you both right here. Move."

"I'm tempted to call your bluff," said Klyd levelly. "You wouldn't dare try to break up a transfer. Who would be the worse pervert then?"

"Even afterwards you'd be no match for all of us. But to avoid bloodshed, I'll give you my word that you'll get your transfer. Now just step apart so we can search you."

The ring of Simes surrounding them tightened until it seemed to Valleroy like a wall bristling with wicked steel blades. Loosening his grip, Klyd whispered in English, "I've given you the best credentials I could. Now, you're on your own." Disengaging gingerly, Klyd moved aside and stood to be searched.

Valleroy struggled to retain his concentration on serving Klyd. It was the only way he could endure the probing and poking of the Simes. They confiscated every loose item on his person except the starred-cross, which they didn't seem to notice. Valleroy was thankful for the layers of warm clothing that protected it and for the Sime's reluctance to expose merchandise to the cold. The talisman was all he had left now, and it was little enough against the heavy manacles, collars, and ankle chains in which they were marched back to the local Runzi rallying point.

The sun finally cleared the horizon, but the sky remained filmed with a slate-gray haze that dissipated all the warmth. The chains were searing cold against Valleroy's skin. Where the cruel barbs dug in, they were torture. The collar made him walk erect with his eyes fixed on the horizon. It took two Simes, one on each side, to get him down off that hillside. But the comparatively level valley floor wasn't much easier walking. His ankle had begun to swell. The pain brought freezing tears to his left eye every time he took a step.

He kept telling himself over and over that the ankle didn't matter because he was going to die anyway, and very soon too. He didn't believe the squad leader's promise to allow Klyd a transfer. But even if the Runzi had meant it, he'd worded it in such a way that it was doubtful if that transfer would be from a Companion. If the Runzi lived up to their reputation, they'd offer the channel a kill-probably some recent captive who'd never heard of channels. They'd wait to the last minute so that even a channel couldn't resist the Gen's fear. And then they'd gloat.

Somehow that humiliation of Klyd and of Zeor seemed more dreadful to Valleroy than his own fate. It never occurred to him that he might be taken all the way to the main encampment.

CHAPTER TWELVE.

Captivity

THE NEXT THREE DAYS WERE A NIGHTMARE FOR BOTH Klyd and Valleroy. For the most part, the time passed in a blur of meaningless impressions for Valleroy. But several events did stand out with a stark clarity that haunted the Gen ever afterward.

When they had arrived at the rendezvous, the squad leader had turned them over to his superior, who was in charge of the entire burial operation. There was no spit and polish to this army, Valleroy noted, but the discipline was stiffer than he'd ever seen anywhere.

No sooner had they arrived than they were given hot food and drink, better than they'd had for days. Ignoring the heavy chains, Valleroy started to dig in but then noticed Klyd watching him. He looked around to find the other Simes also watching him. Experimentally, he moved his spoon over the plate, observing their reaction out of the corner of his eyes. It wasn't poisoned food, no. But a lot of it was for Simes only. He ate greedily, but only those things he recognized.

Almost before he finished his meal, another group of Runzi escorted a new captive into the camp. It was the young Gen girl who had taken refuge in the cabin with them. She was in a state of such hysterics that she didn't even recognize them. But it wasn't the screaming, struggling girl that shocked Valleroy. Nor was it the manner of her demise. It was Klyd's reaction to it all.

She was thrust into the arena between the other two captives. Her cloak and jacket were stripped away leaving her skin bare to the cold. Then the chief of the Raiders came forward to examine her, evidently reading her field. Surveying his men, he singled out one obviously in need and thrust the two of them together... a pirate chieftain awarding the spoils.

Sick with fascination, Valleroy watched, but he also watched Klyd. The expression on the channel's face paralyzed him. Klyd was a detached scientist observing a demonstration. He was a physician observing a dissection. He was an actor watching a performance, judging its artistic effectiveness but totally immune to emotional involvement. There was no trace of a human being watching a murder.

It was all over in a few seconds. As the Sime approached, the girl's hysteria mounted to a peak. Valleroy could see bruises where she'd been beaten. He thought sourly that she'd probably been raped too. As the Sime grabbed her, eagerness written in every muscle, her eyes rolled up. Valleroy thought she'd fainted to cheat the Sime out of his fear-ration. But the junct did something to her head. She began to struggle again, wildly and desperately. In that instant, the predator struck. Her frantic motion kept him from making lip contact. He took his fifth point off her cheek. The result was the same. A moment of bone-snapping rigor followed by instant death.

The murderer casually scooped up the wilted heap of cloth and flesh, a tiny bundle, and walked off to the common battlefield grave pit that was just being closed.

The sight of him discarding that unimportant piece of litter was engraved painfully on Valleroy's memory forever. But the look on the channel's face was even worse. Klyd's expression wasn't something one could exact retribution for. It wasn't a betrayal for which a court could execute. It was a disillusionment that threw Valleroy's new-found ideals into chaos.

His mind churned, throwing up fragments of beauty that had just begun to have meaning for him. A Sime-Gen Union? Impossible. The Householdings joined together under a strengthened Tecton thwarting Zelerod's Doom? Why bother? A place of pride serving as a channel's Companion? Repulsive notion. He wanted to cry. He wanted to vomit. He wanted to slit his own throat.

Instead he walked. He walked chained behind a horse-drawn buckboard. A few feet behind him came another team of horses, another buckboard, and after that, Klyd, also in chains.

Valleroy's clothes became caked with dust. He was savagely glad that it covered Zeor's colors. He wanted to tear off that uniform and bury it. His stiffened ankle paralyzed his leg with pain. He was glad because it took his mind off the itch where he imagined the channel's eyes on his back.

He let himself sink into misery, seeking oblivion. He didn't even try to focus his eyes. When they stopped to eat, he just let the plate sit before him. Eventually, a Sime came to shove the food into his mouth. He chewed and swallowed because he didn't have the will to fight. He didn't care if they poisoned him.

They turned into a logging road that led upward into sweet-scented evergreen forests. The nights became colder, but the lone Gen was always given a place nearest the fire. He didn't even notice that there hadn't been any active sadism directed at him. And what they did to the channel didn't bother him.

On the third morning, they rounded a bend in the old road that Valleroy thought must be Ancient handiwork. They came out immediately into the main encampment of the Runzi Raiders. To their right and a little to the west of them Valleroy spotted Hanrahan Pass. There was a deep, majestic, evergreen-filled valley between them and the pass, but there was an old winding road that crossed the valley; it was barely visible as an intermittent scar among the dense foliage. To their left, in a large flat clearing at the foot of an enormous cliff, lay the camp.

It was the first time since the murder of the girl fugitive that Valleroy had clearly noticed anything. He focused his eyes with effort. They entered the camp under an archway with the Runzi symbols inscribed over it. Before them, two rows of temporary buildings stretched all the way back to the granite face. Obviously they were barracks. To their left, stables and an administration complex were also housed in temporary structures. To their right, row after row of close-packed cages stood ominously empty.

The entire camp looked deserted. As far as Valleroy could see, there were no Gens in the cages and very few horses in the stables. From one of the buildings a curl of fragrant smoke rose, marking the commissary. That was the only visible sign of life. Adding the contingent arriving with them, Valleroy estimated there couldn't be more than a hundred residents in a camp designed for eight times that many plus captives.

As they passed through the archway, two security guards counted them and recorded obscure data in crisp notebooks. It took only a few moments for the column to disband, every man knowing his job and doing it with swift efficiency. The two captives were handed over to fresh guards, who processes them into numbered cages as if they were sacks of potatoes for the larder. They were given not the slightest opportunity to attempt an escape.

Valleroy had to admit that they'd been treated better than Gens treated Sime prisoners. Since the Sime was the most dangerous animal on the face of the earth, Gens took great care to deplete the prisoner's strength at every opportunity. The Sime prisoners were kept in bonds, which Valleroy now recognized as inhumanly painful, especially to the laterals. They were given nothing to eat or drink. And they were interrogated at close intervals until they died, sometimes of attrition but more often in some frantic escape attempt

Gen captives had nothing that could threaten their captors. Nevertheless, the Simes never relaxed their vigilance. No wonder, thought Valleroy, there were no Gen captives returning to tell the story.

It was the mystery of no return that gave the Raider's pens their aura of supreme dread. The actuality wasn't really that bad. And in a way that made sense. These were professionals harvesting a valuable crop. They took care not to spoil their wares before they reached market.

The cages themselves were rectangular boxes divided into six equal compartments by a triple row of bars down the long axis and two triple rows across the short axis. The outside walls of the cages were double rows of bars, one row six inches inside the other and offset so that there was almost no space between bars.

The roofs and floors were solid metal. The whole unit was mounted on stubby legs fitted with rollers, and the whole unit looked like nothing so much as a circus wagon.

Placing a ladder at the head of one cage unit, the guards marched the captives up one at a time. The foremost guard used one of a bunch of jangling keys with numbered tags. Then he pulled open a trap door in the top of the cage. Two of the other guards lowered Valleroy into the hole. Then they let go. He fell three feet onto cold metal plating where he lay stunned, his swollen ankle shooting hot pain all through his body.

By the time Valleroy recovered his senses, Klyd had been installed in the adjacent cage and all but the last guard had departed after rigging flexible transparent sheets around the sides of the cages. Shortly, vents in the floor began to blow hot air into the cages. Valleroy sat up, massaging his ankle and looking around.

The interior of the cage was bleak but clean. Dividing his compartment from the adjacent ones, the three staggered rows of bars almost provided privacy of a sort yet without the effect of solitary confinement. There was a full eight inches between the rows of bars. They were set so close together that only a child's wrist could fit between them. There was no way occupants of adjacent cages could combine resources for an escape.

"Hugh! Come here."

The Sime's hushed whisper grated on Valleroy's nerves. His impulse was to retreat to the farthest corner of his cage. But before he could move, Klyd asked, "Is this Aisha?"

That drew Valleroy to his feet in spite of himself. He'd forgotten she must be in the camp somewhere. He shuffled to the bars and found the channel peering into the cage to his right. By closing one eye and moving back and forth, Valleroy got a slim view of the cage that shared only one corner with his. However, it was enough. That creamy tan forehead, straight nose, and unmistakable eyebrow were distinctive. Their neighbor was indeed Aisha Rauf.

But she lay as if unconscious, a boneless heap on the bare floor. They'd finally found her, but it wouldn't do any good. "She's dead!" Valleroy blurted despite his reluctance to speak to the channel.

"No. She lives, but she seems to be drugged. When she wakes, she'll fear me, and the Raiders will gather to watch the spectacle of a channel's disgrace."

"She's too smart for that. You can't get at her, and you're a prisoner too. If that's what they're expecting, they're in for a disappointment."

"I'm not so sure. I'm only human. With you so close, yet beyond reach, I may break before dark."

"I may enjoy watching you die the way you enjoyed watching that poor child murdered."