KORDA

Chapter Two

I think I would have preferred an honest beating. Whoever invented the neural tenderizer was doubtless trying to save lives (although I later learned that a significant number of victims suffered heart attacks as a direct result of their neural tenderizing) but spared no one pain.

The thing about pain is not so much that, by definition, it hurts. That passes, quickly or slowly, but it does pass, unless whatever is causing the pain fails to pass. No, the thing about pain is that it's exhausting, draining, depleting. Double that if you've been tenderized. Your neurons send extra messages to the brain, telling you, to put it simply, that you hurt. If your brain receives a message that you hurt, then you hurt. A maximum blast can put you in inexplicable, nonspecific, relentless pain for a good three hours.

I got a double blast. Two security guards got me simultaneously from different directions. I was useless for seven hours. I lay on the filthy straw and tried to go into a trance but that was too difficult so I tried at least to calm my breathing down, with not much success there either. Then I realized that I'd been suppressing a natural antidote if not to the pain itself then to some of the stress pain imposes on the body: crying. I suppose I'd been suppressing it in order not to alarm my friends. I certainly didn't care what anyone else thought. At any rate, it was only suppressible for so long and no longer: I wept.

It helped. It scared the hell out of Nyssa, who spent a lot of time holding my hand, cooling my brow, keeping everyone but Tegan away from me. My crying made her cry, but it helped. When I was all cried out I was still in pain but found myself able to sink into a trance, in which my breathing calmed and slowed, likewise my pulse, and at last my thoughts.

When the pain subsided I was still useless, or so I thought, but as weary as I was, I found that my friends had made such progress on our behalves that my work was easier. For one thing, they had managed to delay my sale. Tegan had stolen and given to me an ankle monitor key but never needed it, as I was obviously sufficiently debilitated not to need one. Nyssa had expressed unfeigned outrage at my treatment and declared that she was taking her merchandise elsewhere. Indeed, they could have declined as soon as we were separated, or even sooner, but neither of them was sure (and nor was I) whether we had already committed ourselves in some way. For all we knew, riding in the rickshaw was tantamount to signing a contract. On old Korda I could have assumed that this was a criminal enterprise, or an insane prank. Now, who knew? How things can change in a few hundred years!

I bid a civil farewell to Ventura, Feliz and Brea despite my suspicion that one of them had grassed on me. (But how, if they weren't even allowed out of the stable? Perhaps there had been a bed check; it wouldn't have mattered then what they did or didn't say; for all I knew, they'd tried to protect me.) They sulked.

"I don't suppose you could buy them?" I asked Nyssa, as we waited for our disagreeable hosts to bring out the rickshaw and take us back to the station.

"And then what?" she replied. "There is no manumission here. If we bought them and set them free they would be requisitioned…"

"… like property," I acknowledged.

"Yes, they are property. Then they'd be put up for auction. If no one bought them within three days they'd be disposed of."

"Disposed… killed! No wonder they weren't interested in running away."

"Doctor, when we get back to Ingram, can we just leave? We don't have to stay and fix anything, do we?"

"We can't," interjected Tegan. "It's a whole planet and we are three people."

"Two," I corrected her. "I'm not a person here."

"See? Hopeless!" Tegan was adamant. "Let's just go!"

"All right," I sighed, now feeling pretty guilty about leaving my three stablemates behind. Then I had a thought. "Wait here a minute."

I returned to the stable, where Ventura, Brea and Feliz were seated on the floor, as far from the haystacks as possible, unenthusiastically eating colorless mush. They looked up at me and back down at the mush. I approached Feliz, who drew away from me an inch in apparent disgust. "Come to gloat?"

I slipped the ankle monitor key into his hand, turned on my heel and left without looking back.

"You did what, doctor?" Tegan was aghast. "You know, we may still need that key Anything could happen on this horrible planet."

"Sorry" was all I could say.

Brea was our driver this time and his demeanor was icy. We were accompanied by the frail woman who had separated me from my friends upon our arrival and she was not appreciably warmer. She initiated no conversation and responded to anything we chanced to utter in monosyllables. Yes we were going to the station. No, she was not feeling ill. Yes, we were almost there.

Our trolley, we were told by the cosmetologist (Nyssa paid our fares), was having technical difficulties and we might have to wait an hour or more for it to arrive. Two hours later we were informed that our trolley was not coming at all for some reason the cosmetologist didn't care to explain. Forty-five minutes after we were so informed, we boarded a trolley going in the opposite direction, got off at a bigger station after only two stops, boarded a trolley running at an acute angle to the track we'd been on, so that we were at first heading vaguely toward Ingram but steadily widening the distance therefrom. The next station big enough to have a cross-directional trolley was an hour and a half away, barring technical difficulties. I was still feeling pretty shaky and lay down on a seat for two; Nyssa and Tegan sat across from me and whispered together, not wanting to disturb me.

Two hours into our 90-minute ride I sat up and peered out the window. From the first trolley we had seen open spaces, farms, more open spaces and a few clusters of houses. Now we were surrounded by dense woods, If memory served, we should soon be at the sea – far from the TARDIS and its translation powers. I was relieved when the driver droned the next station announcement in English not too distant from what Tegan and I would easily understand; Nyssa, of course, would be at a disadvantage. No one in the known universes speaks or understands Traken. I warned my friends: If we crossed the sea to the other continent, my fluency in Spanish would help a bit, although the language there would be steeped in Romani and Arabic.

I was determined that we should not cross that sea.

There were people on that trolley who were equally determined that we should.