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normally hungry, but her memory and imagination made it seem worse. Nathan's suggestions had
caused her to remember just how bad her first withdrawal had been. She considered the irony bitterly.
She was probably the only person in the colony whose combination of perversity and past experience
made the technique she had suggested more a hindrance than a help.
Time crawled by. She found herself thinking of Diut, feeling glad that he could not see her as she was
now, as she would be shortly. When he saw her again, the ordeal would be over and he would be able to
speak more than his few illegal words to her. She would be clean. Not that her situation was directly
comparable to that of a Tehkohn captured by the Garkohn, and not that Diut was subject to every rule
that bound other Tehkohn. He could hardly have spoken more with her before Jules anyway. But still,
addiction was a shameful stigma in his culture. An addict who did not withdraw as quickly as possible
could not expect to remain in favor with him. She was surprised to realize how important that had
become to her that she keep his favor. She had expected him to suffer in comparison with Missionary
men men of more human appearance. He had not. She could no longer see him as the monster he had
once appeared to be.
He would return for her as well as for the Tehkohn captives. She was certain of that. And he would kill
Natahk both because Natahk was too dangerous to be left alive, and for another more personal reason.
As she withdrew, she would think of Natahk dying as Tien had died. Natahk, who was the reason for her
past suffering and for the suffering she faced now. She would think of it while she could think.
After a while her awareness of time grew distorted. She seemed to move too quickly, or in slow motion.
She lay down on her bed and before she realized it, she had fallen into a meklah dream. A bad dream
this time. The nightmare of her first withdrawal.
She could feel the cold sand beneath her and hear the convulsive gagging of those Missionaries who had
tried to eat the meklah-free mountain food that the Tehkohn had left them.
There were Garkohn huddled silently around the mound of their yellowed dead, waiting for their own
deaths. They maintained what dignity they could until their senses left them. Then they groveled
unknowingly with the Missionaries in the filth on the floor.
Alanna remembered searching for the door, finding it too late. Remembered the two Tehkohn who lifted
her like a sack of grain and threw her back into the cleansing room. Remembered hatred. Remembered
landing on someone who groaned and tried feebly to crawl away. Remembered the pain of awakening
once and finding her head pillowed on a yellowed Garkohn corpse. Remembered crawling away
sickened, dragging herself to a Missionary man and finding him equally dead. Remembered terror and
fury that she should be abandoned in such a place she who was not dead.
The entire experience was there, replayed in seconds, or in hours. Alanna did not know which, but it
held her, gripped her. It threatened to replay again and Alanna strained away from it. The present
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flickered before her, stable for a moment. Her bed, her room, shadowy figures nearby.
Then heavy gluey sleep sucked her away from them. Sleep held her tarlike, though she tried to waken.
She could not open her eyes. She struggled, not knowing whether her struggle was physical or mental.
She fought and seemed to hear animal sounds around her. Her own voice gibbering.
She awoke sweating and vomiting and choking. Her body heaved convulsively again and again and
again and there were moments when she was aware of being covered with her own filth.
And there was the pain. The agony that would not stop. As though her body, having been denied the
meklah, had somehow begun to consume itself.
She trembled, convulsed, trembled&
She was aware briefly of other people with her, staring at her. She felt her breath ragged, knife-edged
against a throat already raw from screaming. Her voice was a mere husk of itself, her tongue dry, thick, [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]