Carnifex

15/8/469 AC, Gunoz Karez, 200 feet down

Robinson had no compass. It seemed such a primitive thing, really, that the thought had never occurred to him to bring one, even had one been available aboard his flagship. Then, too, with the twists and turns of both escape tunnel and karez, he was really quite lost. The only objective measure he had to go by was that the karez was, however gently, ascending. That meant . . .

"We're heading to Pashtia?"

"Yes," Nur al-Deen answered. "It took you long enough to notice."

"But . . . why?"

"Three reasons," the Salafi answered. "The first is that they are less likely to look for us there. The second is that the enemy base, the enemy who attacked us in Kashmir, is there. The third, closely related to the second, is that there we can use the bomb we have brought to destroy the enemy in that base, in accordance with the will of Allah.

"Not without my key, you can't," the High Admiral insisted.

"You will use the key as we direct," Nur said, quite definitively.

"I will not."

"Yes, you will." The Salafi sounded, to Robinson, unaccountably confident.

"There is no way you can make me."

The Salafi sighed. Could this UE fool really believe that?

"Admiral Robinson," he began, patiently explaining, "we will take the bomb to Pashtia. We will get it moved near the enemy camp. At that point you will either detonate it, as we command, or we will begin rearranging your skin."

"Torture doesn't work," Robinson countered. "People will say and do anything under torture, but you cannot tell if anything they say or do is the truth."

"This is true, High Admiral of the infidels. That is to say, it is true unless one has a way of checking the truth in part or getting immediate feedback. In this case, we will, if necessary, rearrange your skin—oh, yes, eyes and internal organs too—until the bomb goes off. Thus, since you agree that people will do or say 'anything' to stop the pain, you must agree that you will do this."

"You can't know if I send the key to set the bomb off or to disarm it permanently."

Nur al-Deen's laugh echoed off the karez wall. "Foolish infidel, if you disarm it permanently then it won't go off at the time we demand. Then the pain will begin again and never stop."

* * *

Khalifa heard the laugh. She thought it belonged to Mustafa's number two, Nur al-Deen, though she couldn't be sure; it was rare for her to be privileged to serve at the leaders' feasts. For the most part she was a woman who tended her own hearth. Still, she couldn't imagine what it might be, here, that could possibly be worth laughing over.

She was hungry, painfully so. What little food she had managed to grab before her hurried flight from the cave she had thought of as home had gone to her children, mostly to the boy, as the Holy Koran and custom commanded. The girl, younger, weaker, and hungrier, already knew her place in life and kept quiet but for an occasional understandable sniffle. It was even more understandable given than the girl was down in thigh-deep cold water while the boy, though older and taller, nestled warm against his mother's breast.

As bad as it was down here in the karez, and it was even more cramped than the narrow escape tunnel had been, there was at least breathable air and a modicum of light from the air shafts so high above.