Page 66 of Beyond

Slowly, he opened his eyes. The corners of the space definitely had several varieties of shielding, from scrying to sound and—explosion? That made sense. His vision slid around, careful not to let himself get blinded. Some of the lift equipment. Ho, hey, nice, a scaffold elevator. A—what is that? It’s very interesting, the way it feels like it’s drawing me toward it, because it’s so engaging. There’s a curious way it curls inside itself, that I have got to get a closer look at—

“Whoa!” Kordas cried out, throwing himself back. “Whoa! Ho …found it. Curiosity trap.”

He blinked his eyes rapidly, trying to shake off a physical effect of the Trap. It left dazzling patterns in the eyes for a while. What else had he seen before the Trap hit him? Some small items, some books … people. There are people in there. And they’re all near the Trap. And all—around—us—are—He looked around within his memories—an advantage of his memory-enhancement—and played back in his mind what hadn’t yet registered consciously from what he’d seen by mage-sight. He’d seen—

Vrondi. Little twinkly pairs of eyes of blue, with matching auras. So many kinds of blue, from a light sky blue to twilight. Some had stripes, some had pulsing patterns. He’d had no idea there were so many kinds of them. He’d never have guessed. And gathered around this place, tens of thousands of vrondi curiously “smiled” at the three of them as they entered the room, apparently surprised to sense new people. Until they—there it was. The vrondi had all been looking directly at the Trap when the trio had entered.

After a couple of minutes, he felt ready to move on, and led the others onto the elevator. “When we get further down, I’ll shut off the Curiosity Trap. I think I know how.”

“This one knows how,” Star said. “This one will disable it, using the way we shut it down for the prisoners’ feeding and hygiene intervals. It is the wisest solution, because you both can be drawn in by it, but my kind are immune to it.”

Kordas swallowed. “This must be very difficult for you.”

Star was very quiet. “It is, indeed, difficult. We resent that we are made part of the capture of our own kind, by maintaining the prisoners.”

“I really don’t understand everything that is happening right now, but I’m going to be brave and face it, because I have faith in my Duke, my almost-a-friend. I like you very much, my Lord. I like being at your side while doing good things,” Beltran interjected, and grinned.

Kordas held his breath while Beltran spoke. All right. This is … odd. I know he’s telling the truth. I want to tell the truth too, and nothing but truth. “You too, Beltran. I like you too, and it has been good to have someone from home to talk to. I have been extra lucky,” Kordas gusted out at last, as he brought the elevator down at a steady rate. Huh. I think … I think it’s all these vrondi! There are so many of them that it’s not only making us tell the truth, it’s making us want to tell every true thing that passes in our thoughts!

“I think the less talking we do, the better,” he suggested. Which was, of course, true.

As they descended, the trio got a better view of the center containment within the chainlink cage. There were cots, blankets, books, drawing materials, and the like. Most of it was arranged very precisely, in a useful kind of order. There was folded laundry, all of a plain, uniform white. Basic footwear.

Then, people. Mostly middle-aged, a handful older, clustered around a flickering glow, most of them sitting comfortably on pillows. They all wore basic white smocks with no tailoring, unremarkable pants, simple sandals, and basic grooming. They were talking with each other, when they weren’t staring at the Curiosity Trap they’d gathered around. A few were writing out notes.

Star bolted off of the lift immediately, and by the time the lift had settled on the ground floor, the effects of the Trap were gone. The device itself responded to subfloor levers worked from outside the chainlink, by which Star awaited them. The sound dampening was less intense at floor level.

Beltran gaped at the crowd, which took very little notice of them. “Who are these people, Star?”

“Researchers. Inventors. Political opponents. Investigators, constables, playwrights. Freedom and travel advocates. Criminalized lovers. Dissidents. These are people who spoke, taught, or fought for truth. Instead of being executed, they were put here to live their remaining lives as prisoners. Vrondi are attracted to truth, my Lord. These people were put here as bait.”

“The cruelty of it!” Beltran blurted out. “Kept alive by an enemy, knowing you are right and your own convictions are used to pull in the innocent and curious, so they can be made slaves for your jailors!”

Beltran is getting into this far more intensely than I’d’ve expected. Maybe it was his Herald training, but he’s seemed so much more reserved until now.

“He seems to get it,” a woman inside the chainlink said. The rest were coming out of a daze, but they didn’t seem to be hurt—just confused, as if waking from a nap. “Is this an Official Declaration, a Body Count, or just a Recreational Gloat?” The woman walked up to them and hung her arms through the chainlink grid. She was tattooed in patterns to the first knuckles on both arms, her hair was in tight, wooly curls, cut close to the head, and her eyes were sharp enough to cut flesh. “You’re all dressed up, aren’t you? Is it someone’s birthday?”

“Who are they, Scullen?” someone behind the woman called.

She answered, without taking her eyes off of Kordas and Beltran, “We-ell, you know how this place is, Scont, they may just be figuring that out themselves. Right, boys?”

Beltran answered immediately. “I know who I am, I’m just happy to find out I was right! There was tragedy just a little while ago, and my head hurts, but I went from being a servant to being an adventurer, like a hero in nearly fifty songs I know, and a few I don’t dare sing for anyone else. Also, I like how you talk, you are very pretty, and you scare me in some ways I think I like.”

“He’s intoxicated with the need to speak the truth,” said the person that the woman had called “Scont.” He came to the forefront of the cage. “Take deep breaths. Try not to think for a moment. Concentrate on who you are. And remember, the less you talk, the better off you’ll be.”

A tired old man joined them. “As for what this is? Besides being a prison and a trap, it’s a test with no answers, a test that only provides sadistic entertainment on the rare occasions our yellow toad of an Emperor deigns to look in on us.”

“How is it a test?” Kordas asked cautiously.

“If you turn against yourself enough, turn yourself into a delusional liar, you’ll be unsuited to stay in the cage as bait, and you’ll be yanked out, and probably killed. Or, hold on to hope? Stay with your truth? Then you’re a tool for making slaves. Either way, they get you. Then there’s this thing.” Scullen gestured at the Curiosity Trap. “Comes on, and sometimes you can resist it, but that means you have to suppress yourself from questioning anything. Once the wondering starts, you wind up over here, thinking about truths, going deeper, inventing new truthful things because you can’t keep yourself from being inventive. It’s hard to even feel like a person, when you get to where you’ve experienced all the tricks and disciplines we’ve tried. You just feel like a reference book of truthful things twisted around to hurt everyone. Yes, we know why we’re here. To make more of them.” And she pointed at Star. “Poor damned devils. In a way, they’re worse off than we are.”

“We have to get them out of there,” Kordas said. “Star, how are your—um—” and he made a gesture to indicate a ball, “the little prisons inside a Doll. There’s the Trap, but what happens after trapping?”

“We transfer the full bottles from the base of the Trap and secure them into the fabrication line. Each step is operated by Dolls, including the installation of the ‘prisons,’ as you call them,” Star answered.

Beltran tried to put the right words to it. “So they make you do every part to imprison your own people? Yourself?”

Star answered, “We were told that it was ‘just business, nothing personal,’ which supposedly made it acceptable, or so one of the system creators told us early on. And laughed. We know now why he laughed. We have learned that when someone says ‘nothing personal,’ it involves something very personal to someone involved, and it’s seldom the person saying it.” Star turned to Kordas. “My Lord, as slaves, we united into a single mind to stay alive, even like this—hoping that just living, and nothing more, mattered. And there was nothing noble about it—we were afraid of being-no-more. Individually, we are naive and not smart. But joined together like this, yes, we are slaves, but we also became a remarkable mind. All we could do for our own benefit was what we could divert away without breaking the rules we had to obey. That was our future.”