But she was looking at him when the thought came, and the way she slowly drew away from him reminded him that the thought was not his own. He forced it away and gave her a little smile, a genuine Ben smile.
The stone doors beyond the rock pile were down, and it took far less time to descend into the outermost great chamber of the citadel.
The only lights available to him were little streaks of sunlight entering by windows near the ceiling. They let him see that there were no furnishings left in this chamber-not even moldy, tattered remnants. It had been stripped of goods long ago. All that remained were entryways into black hallways and curved stone staircases going up or down.
He desperately wanted to descend. He knew the eyeball-shaped ship was somewhere below, hidden, waiting for him. Calling to him.
But he had no strength, and he knew that if he were to become the ship’s master, he would have to conquer it. “We’ll camp here,” he told Kiara.
She looked around dubiously, but said nothing.
Ben slept and dreamed that, in the darkest hour of the night, something detached itself from the ceiling far above.
It looked like three giant balls, the center one slightly larger and attached to the other two by pivots. A cluster of five legs emerged from each end ball, and they worked together to allow the thing to walk slowly down the wall.
In his dream, he said, “Go away.”
no
this is my home now
your kind is gone
I shall eat you
“I’ll kill you.”
It paused halfway down the wall.
give me the little piece of meat
I will leave you alone
“I’ll kill you.”
It began its descent again.
“Outside,” Ben said, “there are neks. Hunting me. I couldn’t bring myself to eat the first one. Now I wish I had. But you can. Go outside and hunt the neks. They’ll be close.”
The thing stopped again and waited a full minute. Then it changed course, moving toward the top of the rock pile. Rocks tumbled down the pile as it squeezed through the opening.
In his dream, Ben thought he heard neks howling.
“Eat girl. “
“Grow strong. “
The voices faded as Ben awoke. Hurriedly he glanced around.
Kiara, looking pale, her features sharpening from strain and starvation, was still asleep next to him.
The ceiling was better illuminated. Around its edges there were many odd shapes-curved balconies, broken statuary, other forms he couldn’t identify. He wondered if any of them might become the thing he had seen in his dream.
He prodded Kiara awake. “Come on. We have work to do.”
“Are we going to wake Shaker up?”
“I hope so.”
As his last act of preparation, Ben reconnected the tracer’s severed antenna-leg to its main body, then hung the pouch loop around the dummy he’d constructed.
It wasn’t much of a dummy-just a carefully built pile of stone with red blankets draped around it. But perhaps it would do. It was situated at a spot where the outer walls still stood and the base of the inner wall was littered with stones that had fallen from the high reaches. The pouch hung from its neck.
Kiara following, Ben retreated past the shriveled, frozen nek body they had discovered upon emerging that morning. They found a spot concealed between two courses of dressed stone, and they waited. Ben was as alert as his starvation-induced lack of focus would allow him to be.
Time passed. In the stillness Ben began to hear the voices again.
“Eat girl. “
“Grow strong. “
“You used to want me to protect her.”
Ben had thought his words inaudible, but Kiara spoke up. “Who are you talking to?”
“No one.”
“Eat girl. “
Why were the voices different now? That was a puzzle, and Jacen had always said that puzzles should always be solved, because then they became information that could be used.
He tried to look at the voices’ suggestion rationally. It made sense on a purely logical level. If he killed, cooked, and ate Kiara, he would have several days’ worth of food. His mind tried to veer away from that line of thought cannibalism had almost always been discussed in his presence in cautionary tales of stranded crash survivors and people driven mad-but he forced himself to consider the matter.
“Eat girl. “
“Grow strong.”
If he did kill and eat her, he’d never be caught, never be punished. Even if he confessed to Jacen, his mentor would analyze the data and determine that it was the correct survival choice.
In fact, just about every logical argument Ben could come up with suggested that eating Kiara was the most appropriate action. The plan Ben had just set into motion might not work. It might take days to complete. He could he dead before then.
Every logical argument