100 - Put On a Happy Face

Terry leaned his head gently against the inside door of the loo and manfully refrained from beating his forehead against it. “I'm going to kill him. I'm just going to strangle him quietly and leave him at the bottom of the basin. In the deepest crevasse I can find.”

They had not been able to leave Eshmaeel's younger brother unconscious but had been forced to let him wake up, though they had agreed on the pleasant lies they were both telling him about this little jaunt across the sand.

The boy was convinced that they weren't heading away from Prime, but toward him. Eshmaeel was busy telling him about 'His Radiance', who they really worked for, as if he were Prime, but the unfailing, almost mindless cheerfulness was driving Terence to hide in the loo.

The knock almost startled him back away from the door since it was right on the other side of where he'd leaned his head. “Terry? Are you all right? I heard a thump.”

“Davood, I'm fine. I'll be out in a moment.”

“Sure.”

The thing that was driving him the most mad was that they had to maintain the 'cheery face' as well. It was hard enough because Davood must have been astonishingly intelligent before Gerry's techs had gotten hold of him and kept asking questions that needed some real work to answer.

“He's my damaged little brother,” Eshmaeel had said. “But he's still a ceemander and could manifest a wire that would skewer right through Mom's brain if he thought we were--” his whisper trailed away.

“I don't know what a seamander is,” Terry had retorted. “But I understand 'through Mom's brain' perfectly.”

“I would prefer not to have my brain skewered, thank you,” Mom put in. “This vehicle would likely not be able to continue and we are currently six hundred ninety-two kilometres, four hundred fifty-five... six... seven... metres, proceeding vertically... through our journey. That would discommode you quite severely I believe. Outside pressure--”

“Yes,” Eshmaeel had nodded before Mom could tell them every factotum she had gathered. “It would. We'd have no birds to ride.” He threw a quick aside to Terry. “A ceemander is like your 'programmers' or 'builders'. He can...” he shrugged eloquently. “...touch the machines remaking this world. Our 'manders and 'cliners tend to be warriors since they can create weapons with metal dust and a good pattern.”

“I-- see.” Birds to ride? That Hara person mentioned them. Warbirds though her people actually had horses. Razor beaked monstrosities that when full grown could just nip a man's head off without much effort. And I'm going there? To where programmers and bench techs can pull weapons out of what looks like thin air. Remind me to be very polite to everybody, he'd told himself, with no irony at all.

Another knock. “All right! All right, I'm coming.” He slid the door open. “I didn't realize you needed it quite so badly, Davood.”

The boy looked startled. “Um, no, I was just worried...”

“Dav, he probably wanted a moment's privacy away from seeing our lovely faces,” Eshmaeel said. “Why don't you come and see if you can tweak this cooker and get it to spit out something we might actually like to eat? I've tried and all I get is sheets like oyuck leather with extra, extra salt.”

“I suppose. Brother... I still don't understand how we got so far out into the basin that we have to travel this far to get back to Xanadu.”

Esh sighed. “I already told you brother, Prime is not in Xanadu. He's in Hinnom.”

Davood's face took on the pained expression he so often wore. Mom had diagnosed him with headaches, saying it was his own testing of his mental flexibility. “That... doesn't...” he broke off, winced his eyes shut for a moment before glaring at them both. Terry spread his hands, disarmingly, trying to look inoffensive as possible while wearing the same scruffy clothes he'd started in, though he didn't have to worry about a growth of beard.

“You are... we are... going to Hinnom?” Terry and Esh both nodded. Davood's eyes rolled up in his head as things clashed. His brother... betraying him. Then it twisted and paled in rage. “You're lying to me!”

Even as Terry and Esh both tried to say something to calm him down, reassure him, their voices a clashing babble of incoherent explanation, his voice spiraled up into a shriek as he whipped his hand forward and Terry flung himself flat under the knife that bounced off Mom's wall and clattered down beside him before vanishing. Mom slammed the three of them down and held them there. “Medical and safety restraints activated.”

“Again.” Eshmaeel panted. “Owner pisspots, Dav, I'm really getting tired of this.”

“You're tired of this?” Terry snorted. “He always goes after me.”

If he could have Esh would have shrugged. “I'm family.”

“I'm so glad to be of service then, as a bloody great target!” 

Mom released the two of them. Her activation protocols didn't allow accurate restraint at speed, so she just restrained everybody until her programming had the time to sort out who on her floor should be kept still and who should be released.

“I am re-instituting stasis,” Mom said.

“What is that,” Terry asked sarcastically. “Four or five times now?”

“Six actually.” Esh got up and picked up his little brother and laid him on the bunk. “It's good that he doesn't attack me. He still has some of himself in his head.”

“Gentlemen, I am coming up on rougher terrain. I suggest you both lie down,” Mom said.