Free The Chamber in the Sky by M. T. Anderson Page A

a capture.”
    The Thusser dragged Brian and Gwynyfer beside him and kicked Gregory along in front — the blond boy weaving and toppling, hardly able to catch breath.
    Gwynyfer, jerked along by her arm, was still trying to brightly convince the torturer that she was worth saving. “Oh yes, my friend, you’ll have a fine tale of honor andchivalry to tell your fellows, as you sit around in your barracks, eating rationed chocolate, playing sentimental tunes on the old upright piano, drinking toasts to the finest — must you drag so? What is your rank? Do you have a coat of arms? Who is your commanding officer? Take us to him at once! Announce me!”
    The Thusser kicked Gregory again, shoved Brian, grabbed Gregory briefly by the collar to get the kid sliding along in the right direction, and pushed them all into a workroom.
    Brian seized at one of the Thusser’s harness straps — hung for a second — and then, shoved again, he collapsed into the room, snapping the strap.
    The chamber’s walls were rounded — the inside of a metal drum. There were tables and vats and unlit furnaces.
    Brian, Gregory, and Gwynyfer were sprawled on the floor.
    The man dragged a huge cauldron and pushed it against the door. It must have weighed several hundred pounds. He’d blocked the way out. He went over to a table and took a machine out of a grubby plastic case. He started to set it up.
    Gwynyfer, with a hint of desperation in her voice, asked, “Oh, are you a hobbyist?”
    The guard plugged the machine in.
    Gwynyfer continued hopefully, “I think it’s a fine thing for a person to have a hobby. I may tell you that so famous a man as the Marquis of Holocrine Downsley chisels things into the likeness of bears.”
    It was at that moment that Brian looked up and saw several Norumbegans dangling from the ceiling.
    They were no longer humanoid in their shape. They had begun to spread out into the curved wall, their bodies casting out roots and fronds. The arms of one wound like a growth, no longer straightened by bone.
    Brian suspected they’d been captured in a submarine somewhere and dropped off here while the Thusser were performing a sweep of the vein. Now they were part of the place. He’d seen this happen to humans back on Earth: He’d seen how the Thusser Horde anchored themselves using the decomposing thoughts of others to plant their own lush dreams.
    Brian looked in horror at those brittle, half-human faces. The mouths were open. The ears were webbed to the metal around them. The bodies slumped into the iron as if they were drowning in bathwater.
    And this, he knew, was what the Thusser guard had in store for him and for Gregory and finally for Gwynyfer. They were about to be hypnotized and colonized.
    The machine was some kind of projector. It shot out beams and blips of light.
    The Thusser strolled over and shut off the overhead lamps in the room. He leaned against the smelting cauldron that blocked the door. The room was dark except for the light that escaped the machine.
    It sent out a bead of light. Then nothing. Then another bead of light, in a different direction.
    Then a spray of little lights. They darted around like guppies before they faded.
    The kids watched the lights warily. They tried to figure out what was going on. They tried to work out a rhythm.
    â€œDon’t look at it,” Gregory said, looking right at it. “It’s … This is like what I saw … when they captured me before … in the dungeon … when I had the … colors.” He kept staring. He did not shut his eyes.
    Gwynyfer turned away, her mouth locked shut in fear. She looked up, following a large, flashing orb, and saw the bodies of her fellow Norumbegans fading into the wall. Brian heard her sob under her breath.
    Brian was trying to keep thinking. He just wanted to watch lights, not think. He just wanted to count them. He wondered if patterns were repeated,