Dragonfly: A Tale of the Counter-Earth at the Cosmic Antipodes Read Online Free PDF Page B

of us. Probably not even completely human. No, no. Fifty would be more like it. It’s only a fraction of the profit you’ll turn.”
    “Ten rods.”
    “Ten! Ten rods!”
    I ignored the argument. I was pacing the pit like a caged animal indeed. With a sudden resolve I tensed and sprang, swung myself up to a pipe, and leaped again, grasping the edge of the pit with my fingers. I hung there, trying to make good my purchase and scramble over.
    The old woman swore. Maruch shrieked. Gehud simply strode up, grasped my wrists, and tossed me off.
    I landed on my back, stunned. A hissing noise filled my ears. A sickly-sweet smell like vomit invaded my nostrils.
    “Twenty,” the old woman said. Her voice sounded like it was coming down a long, long tube.
    “Sold,” cried Maruch. But I scarcely heard him. I was already drifting off into a place without dreams.

6 Caged

    I opened my eyes. They met with bars of gold-brown and black. A sense of betrayal was in the back of my mind. Someone had buried me deep in the earth.
    I sat up. I was on a narrow cot. Dim light fell through the bars that formed one side of my cell, striping the floor and the wall. A showerhead hung with stalactites of lime stuck out of one corner. A washstand, a chamber pot, and a pitcher stood in the other.
    “Hello?” I called. “Hello?” My voice echoed into the darkness. Dimly a voice cursed me. The pipes murmured. All else was silent.
    I stood up. They hadn’t taken my harness or breechclout, and my father’s pendant had gone unnoticed, but my scrip was missing. I searched the cell. Deinothax was gone, too. I thought obscurely of grubby hands pawing it, drawing it, using it basely. A wave of rage washed over me. But the horror of the city piled layer upon layer above my head overbore my anger. I was a mite buried deep in a vast, teeming mattress, alone in a maze of men who knew me not, a mere nothing. What a fool I had been! I had never known there were such liars in the world.
    The showerhead caught my eye. I’d never seen anything like it before. Pipes I knew from the fossil cities of Arras, but my people hadn’t used them. I went over and twisted the valve experimentally. There was a rattling gurgle. Then a jet of rust-red water exploded from the head. I shouted in surprise and fumbled with the spigot. It was tight and slippery. I was drenched by the time I got it off.
    A raucous laugh grated on my ears. I turned. There was a face at the bars of the cell across from mine. It was a round face with small eyes, a bulbous nose, and big ears that stuck straight out. The toothy grin was yellow in the gaslight.
    “What are you laughing about?” I said. The man just kept giggling. I decided to ignore him. I turned to my own cell and sat down on my cot. It was wet through. I sighed with misery and stretched myself out. The moisture had unleashed a hundred mysterious odors from the old blanket. I pushed it off and lay on the bare sacking.
    My bones told me it was daytime in the world outside. But I knew I needed rest, that I might escape when a chance offered itself. I was still in a torpor from the sleeping gas, too. But for a long time sleep refused to come.
    I was drifting off at last when a noise jarred me awake. A terrible clangor yanked me to my feet. Someone was running a baton across the bars of my cell.
    She was an old crone, large and hunch-backed and flabby, with pallid skin scored by a fascinating network of hairline cracks. She was like a grub that had never gotten around to pupating. Her mouth was set and unsmiling, her upper lip barred with deep vertical lines. Her pink eyes glittered with malice.
    A man stood a step behind her, a sly man, smiling a sly, mean smile. The hair hanging over his eyes did little to lessen his look of wild inanity. He also was a helot.
    “You talk?” the woman grunted.
    “What?”
    “Do you talk? ” she shouted. “Can you understand me?”
    “Yes. I can talk. Where am I? What is this place?”
    “Where