Steel dogs

THE DAY passed as a hundred thousand other days had passed. Aandred played with the dogs and thought about his former life, the lovely bad old days. But the memories had worn thin, as if from too much remembering, and he found his thoughts straying to the Picker woman. What had her life been? he wondered. She had been born in a profoundly regressed culture, the descendants of lost guests and escaped slaves, on a backwater world where the starboats no longer called. She could hope for no more than a lifetime of suffering and an early death. She would never know the wonders of the human galaxy; she would never walk the gilded halls of Dilvermoon or the dirty corridors of Beasterheim, would never see a world from space, like a jewel on the richest velvet, would never experience the thousand joyful luxuries that he had taken for granted in his life as a man.

He shook his head. Pointless maundering. Sundee Gareaux no doubt valued her life, such as it was, as much as he valued his own synthetic existence. Or more, he thought darkly, but the notion frightened him, and he pushed it aside. A shame that she must end her life as a troll’s plaything. That thought made him angry. He resolved to break her neck before he gave her to Merm, as Droam would certainly order him to do. He could spare her that horror.

As day passed into evening, the annunciator chimed. Droam's voice sounded from the wall speaker and in his head, a disorienting sensation. «Huntsman. Bring your prisoner to the audience hall.»

Aandred found a jeweled leash in a locker he had not opened in a hundred years. «Come,» he said to Sundee Gareaux. «You must wear this. Droam will expect me to deliver you without difficulties.»

Her eyes were huge, and she hung back. «What if I promise not to run?»

«I'm sorry,» he said. «Were I you, I would promise anything and run at the first opportunity. You may be more agile than I, and though you could never escape the castle, you might evade me for a time. Droam would soothe its impatience with my pain.»

She bowed her head, and he locked the collar around her neck. The dogs jumped against the gratings of their runs and implored him to take them, too. «Be good, puppies,» he said. «You can't go this time. I'll be back soon.»

They walked through the bright corridors of the castle, the leash slack between them. Sundee Gareaux looked about curiously. Few of the castle's staff were abroad so early in the evening, but they passed a party of dwarf janitors armed with mop buckets and sonic brooms, a white-bearded wizard and his youthful assistant, three trolls who stood in a dark doorway and sniggered, a red-haired witch magnificent in the glittering habit of the Dark Mystery. His prisoner studied each passerby closely.

«All dead,» she said in a marveling voice.

«In a sense. They believe themselves to be alive.» To his amazement, he felt slightly defensive.

«I'm bewildered,» she said. «But they don't seem to be enjoying their immortality; they all wear sad, bitter faces.»

«You don't see why?» The long, empty years weighed on him. «I'll explain, so you won't think us the Fortunate Folk.» It could be worse for you, Sundee Gareaux, he thought. Perhaps you'll find your own fate more acceptable if I tell you about us.

«Droam is staffed by a few more than three thousand human revenants. Is there a Picker village that big? No? Does that seem a great many people to you?» He laughed a booming laugh, and she winced. «Oh, it would be, if our halflives lasted no longer than yours. Seventy years, eighty — is that a good span for a Picker? We've been together here in Droam for seven hundred years. Can you imagine? Imagine! And consider who we are. Murderers, rapists, torturers, those who stole things so precious that they were put to death for it. Merm, for example, was a high sheriff. He enslaved young boys and girls with spurious charges, used them brutally, and when they were worn out, he buried their bodies on his prison farm. He swears they found only a fraction of his victims, and they found a thousand! Do you wonder at the evil you see in his face?»

Sundee Gareaux watched him with a mixture of pity and horror, her face white, her lips bloodless.

He continued, pushed by a passion he had thought worn away forever.

«Did you think I exaggerated my crimes? No! And I was a paragon of nobility, compared to many here in Droam: I stole only from the wealthy; I used violence only on the violent; I attacked only those who could defend themselves. I admit I was a quixotic pirate, but I did not wish to think of myself as a monster. Hah!» Had he tear ducts, he might have cried; instead he slammed his fist against the wall. The smooth marble facing shattered explosively, revealing the rough concrete beneath.