RAINBOW RUN Page 2

  "No." His voice was steady and hard, like his limbs.

  "What is that place called?"

  "It’s the Rainbow Run."

  "What is its purpose?"

  He shook his head. "We don’t have time for questions now. Keep quiet, and follow me." His manner was stern and decisive with a hint of menace.

  The confidence that breaking the color codes had given me had been eroded by the rushing water that almost drowned me and now by Errox’s bluntness. I followed him meekly as he led me down the channel to a spot where the wall was lowest. He went over it in a single, smooth leap. I scrambled after him, shivering in my wet tunic. We climbed up a grassy bank. I looked around; the horizon was dominated by a nearby mesa of gray buildings without obvious doors or windows. The megalithic structures covered both sides of the bank as far as I could see in either direction.

  Although my legs were longer than Errox’s stout limbs, I had to walk quickly to match his brisk stride. As we neared the buildings, there was a loud hum that I heard and felt. I pressed my hand against the wall of the first building we reached and felt my bones vibrate.

  There were no people. Every thousand paces or so there were narrow corridors which revealed only more mountainous structures. I lingered briefly near a hot air vent.

  While I was trying to dry my still wet tunic, Errox turned into a corridor and vanished from my sight. My heart hammered as I hurried to catch up; I needed my guide despite whatever reservations I had about his behavior inside the Rainbow Room and his indifference to my plight. I turned the corner and saw Errox ahead, motioning impatiently for me to hurry. By the time I caught up with him I was winded. He waited for me to catch my breath. Then he led me down a narrow passageway.

  I needed all my concentration to keep my weary legs moving. It seemed like an eternity passed before he stopped to let me rest. He didn’t appear to be the least bit tired. I gave him a thankful nod and leaned against a wall.

  "We’ll be through the autofactory sector soon," Errox said.

  Questions filled my mind but I was unwilling to ask them because I was dead tired and unsure whether I would get meaningful answers—or any answers at all. Why had Errox been in the color room? Why had he wanted the dead woman’s green wristlock? Did he have some ulterior motive in saving me from drowning?

  We made two more rest stops before reaching the end of the corridor where there was a large slideway with ten slidestrips moving in each direction. The slow moving slidestrips were on the outside.

  As we stepped onto one of the slow-moving slidestrips—a motion my body made automatically as though from long practice—Errox said, "Walk beside me and stay on the same slidestrip. Keep your right hand in the folds of your tunic so no one can see that you aren’t wearing a wristlock. If anyone speaks to us, I’ll answer."

  I noticed that everyone we passed wore a wristlock on their right hand. They were of many hues, although the majority were gray. I stayed alert for the first dozen blocks, expecting to be challenged at any time. The people I saw were a variety of shapes and colors but all wore the plain brown tunics. All of them worecolored wristlocks. No one even noticed me. I avoided direct eye contact but scanned every face looking for someone, something, anything familiar. I didn't find it. I was lost in a world of strangers.

  We passed huge pyramidal structures, built with steep, receding blocks, separated from each other by wide walkways. I had to crane my neck to see the peaks. The pyramids were different colors, like the slidestrips, with one wide portal on the bottom floor. All the windows were opaque and I wondered if they were made from one-way glass to conceal peering faces.

  Several times we took slideway exits to elevated cross slidestrips. I lost all sense of direction. Errox seemed to be following a remembered route because there were no directional markers that I could discern. As we approached one of the pyramids, Errox guided me off the slidestrip and onto the gray building’s front lip. Errox said, "We’re going into this urbode. Stay close and follow me."

  Errox nodded a greeting to a gaunt man wearing a gray wristlock who appeared to be guarding the portal. The guard acknowledged the nod. Errox placed his wristlock against the portal’s silver plate and the door opened. I followed Errox as closely if I were his shadow.

  The entrance hall was jammed with people of both sexes and various colors, white, yellow, black and various shades of brown. Many of the people nodded to Errox while others seemed to ignore his passage. I stayed as close to him as possible, sensing an undercurrent of potential hostility that seemed to be directed toward Errox or me, or maybe both of us.

  At the main elevator bank, Errox used his wristlock to open the doors. We went up to the fifteenth floor and got off. The walls and floors were surprisingly immaculate considering the large number of residents, some of whom obviously lacked the cleanliness habit.

  Everything seemed new to me. Nothing stirred any memory of a past before the Rainbow Room. My brief conversations with the woman who died and with Errox assured me that I knew the language, but I knew nothing of how these people lived or survived in this culture.

  Errox stopped in front of a door with three embossed diamonds over two crescents. He pressed his wristlock against the doorplate and we passed through an anteroom into the common room, where five people sat on furniture built into the wall. Three of them started talking to Errox at once.

  Errox held up his hand and the talking ceased. Turning to a tall, thin man with a bony face, he said, "Geeter, this is Rathe. Take him to the sleep room."

  To me, he said, "Go with Geeter."

  I followed Geeter through another room, past an archway, and down a long hall. Geeter stopped and pressed his wristlock against the doorplate of the fourth doorway. As soon as the door opened, he motioned for me to enter, saying, "Sleep well and may you find your rainbow in your dreams."

  "Thanks, Geeter," I replied, pleased to know the name of one more person in this world of strangers.

  I lowered my exhausted body onto a raised sleeping platform. As the bed cushion conformed to my body shape, I began to mentally playback the day’s events. They made no more sense to me upon reflection than they had when they were occurring. I slowly drifted into sleep, hoping that my subconscious would dredge up cluesas to my identity, my past—and to my present predicament.

  * * *

  I awoke with a dry mouth and a full bladder. I stumbled through an archway to the sleeproom lav. After urinating and drinking from the bubbler, I tried to recall my dreams. All I remembered were confused images of multicolored tiles disappearing as I tried to walk on them and being swept away by a river’s current, carried down a channel toward an unknown destination.

  I cleaned my hands with the ultrasonic washer and peered into the mirror. The lean face peering back was neither familiar nor unfamiliar. The nose appeared too large for my thin face. My skin, prison pallor gray, was stretched tightly over the bones of my face. My brown hair, like that of all the other men I’d seen, was cut short in stubble.

  The only surprise was my eyes; they seemed to burn with their own inner light. I remembered a phrase—"the rich gleam of fanaticism"—which seemed to describe my eyes. Where the phrase came from, I did not know. No other memories were forthcoming. Looking into my blue eyes, wondering what they had seen, made me uncomfortable with my own staring.

  The rumbling of my stomach reminded me that I was hungry. I had no memory of eating before or after I came to in the Rainbow Room. I went to the door intending to go out and search for food, but the door wouldn’t open. I remembered Errox using his wristlock to open doors. My wrist looked very bare.

  I was trapped, a captive of Errox's unknown intentions. I started shivering and my heart began to pound. I hit the door with my fists, trying to attract someone, anyone’s attention. Either no one heard me or I was being ignored. As my heartbeat slowed, I realized that I didn’t want these strangers to think that I had panicked. I fell back on the bed and endeavored to keep despair at bay.

  Som
etime later, a lean, tense woman with sharp features opened the door and said, "Hello, my name is Ural."

  "I’m Rathe."

  "I know. Would you like something to eat?"

  "I’m famished." I couldn’t remember the last time I ate.

  I followed Ural into a room where six people, including Geeter, were sitting on the floor and eating. All of them wore gray wristlocks. Ural said, "Sit down and I’ll bring food."

  She brought a crystal flask of amber liquid and a translucent pale blue plate laden with rose, aqua and violet cubes. I automatically bit off the top of the flask and ate it, then drank deeply of the warm, satisfying fluid. I was surprised by my automatic reactions—my reflexes were in better shape than my memory. I must have known the flask was eatable, which proved I’d eaten thembefore. I believed that was important information; it meant that I was lost, but not a stranger to this world.

  The food cubes were excellent, but when I’d finished them I was still hungry. When I saw the others eating their plates I started taking bites of my own plate, which was crispy but with a surprisingly sweet taste.

  After finishing the plate, I sipped from the flask and studied the others. Most of them were unkempt except for a big-boned man who reminded me of Errox. Geeter looked at me. I asked him, "Is this your first meal?"

  "Yeah. How was your sleep?"

  "The best I can remember."

  Geeter wheezed several times and said, "Nothing like a sense of humor."

  Geeter turned away when the big-boned man gave him a stern look. I felt uncomfortable but I had no place to go and no wristlock to open doors. I didn’t like the feeling I had of being at their mercy, since these people didn’t appear to be very caring.

  I sat quietly and sipped my drink. A small man with a finely sculpted face entered the room looking out of place compared to the rest of the grays in the room. His tunic was clean and he had a confident air about him that most of the grays I’d met lacked.

  The newcomer asked, "Where is the new blanc?"

  Ural pointed to me. The small man sat beside me and said, "I’m Kahalyton."

  "I’m Rathe," I replied.

  Kahalyton’s brown eyes brightened. "You remember your name?"

  "No. Errox gave me my name."

  "Do you remember anything about your former life, anything at all?"

  "No," I answered. "I know the language and the names of common objects, but I can’t remember anything that happened before I came here." Saying that out loud brought an incoming tide of black despair that threatened to engulf me.

  Kahalyton’s hands gripped my shoulders with a surprising firmness. "You're not the only one, Rathe. Dozens of blancs appear here in Azrath daily. No one knows where they come from or why they are here. Some think that Kara has forsaken the House of Rebirth, although the intermediaries deny that."

  "You mean there are others like me?"

  "Yes, but we don’t see very many of them. Most get taken into custody by the VIS and are taken to an imprinting center."

  "Who are the VIS?"

  "The Variation Investigation Service; they try to preserve the status quo."

  "What does the imprinting do?"

  "It’s supposed to provide blancs with a new personal history. In practice, the blancs get the bare minimum of information necessary for survival. Most of them end up as perms, like the people in this urbode." He pointed to his wristlock.

  It was gray.

  His eyes followed mine and he smiled. "I’m a gray by choice, not like these—" He stopped when the big-boned gray glared at him. "Anyway, you are not alone."

  I felt somewhat better knowing that I was not the only one dumped into a strange, dangerous place with no memory.

  Kahalyton asked, "Where were you when you regained consciousness?"

  "In a place that Errox called the Rainbow Room."

  "How did you survive and find your way here?"

  "Errox helped me escape that room and brought me to this urbode."

  Kahalyton seemed surprised and asked, "Errox was in the Rainbow Room?"

  "Yes. What is the purpose of that place?" I asked.

  "It is a place where anyone can take a chance to raise their color level without playing the Game. It’s very dangerous, as you probably noticed. Do you know what the wristlocks are for?"

  "All I know is that they open doors and that they come in different colors. Nothing else."

  "In this world the wristlock is the key to life, at least in the cities. It’s different in the countryside. But here: what you can do; where you can go; how long you can stay; even how long you live—all of these are determined by the color of your wristlock. The magic key to freedom is the rainbow wristlock. All doors are open to the rainbow, including the portal of eternal life."

  "What determines the color of one’s wristlock?"

  "How well they play the Game, which is the steady route to advancement. The Game challenges the intelligence, judgment, intuition, creativity, senses, and all the more subtle characteristics of the mind. If you have the intelligence and are willing to spend half a season playing the Game, you can raise one color level. There are thirty-six colors on the rainbow road; few players ever rise above saffron, the twentieth level."

  "How does the Rainbow Room fit into the Game?"

  "The Rainbow Room is part of an alternative, a very dangerous alternative known as the Color Wheel, to the Game. It is for death-defying players. People who enter the Color Wheel risk their lives in hopes of advancing through the colors without playing the Game in the ordinary way. There is a choice of environments—the Mirror Maze, the Vibration Vessel, the Laser Lobby, the Hunting House, the Bouncing Ballroom, and the Rainbow Room. Some enter hoping for a better life; others enter seeking the certainty of death."

  I had been dumped in the Rainbow Room to die. There was no other explanation. I didn’t know why it was done to me, but I was going to find out why. When I did, I would punishwhoeverwas responsible. To do that I needed a lot more information about the world I found myself abandoned in.

  "Have you ever been inside the Color Wheel?" I asked.

  "No, Rathe. I like to think that I’m too smart to play such a longshot. I played the Game well. In less than twenty seasons I rose to magenta, the thirty-second level. And there I was stuck—four levels below eternal life, unable to advance no matter how diligently I played the Game. I knew rainbows that were less intelligent, less astute, less perceptive, less skilled...

  "I began to question everything. I took a critical look around me and I didn’t like what I saw. My friends and contemporaries were slaves to the Game; it demanded their complete attention—it devoured their lives! It struck me that playing the Game was slavery; the higher the hue, the tighter the chains."

  Kahalyton’s voice grew louder as he remembered his failings. He was making the other occupants of the room uncomfortable. Two of them got up and left; the one woman who was still crunching on her plate ignored us.

  Kahalyton continued talking. "So I stopped playing. My former friends dropped away like leaves in winter as the color of my wristlock degraded. It takes a long time for a magenta wristlock to turn gray—a very long time. During that period I learned a lot about myself and about this society. I learned that the color of a wristlock does not determine a person’s worth. I learned that—"

  Kahalyton stopped speaking when Errox entered the room. When Errox glared at him, he jumped up and said, "Excuse me, Rathe, but I have to go. I’ll talk with you later."

  Errox watched Kahalyton’s exit with a predatory grin as if pleased by the anxiety he had created with his entrance.

  Ural said, "So he thinks he’s the one who’ll save us. That’s a laugh."

  She and Errox laughed in a way that had little to do with amusement.

  Errox put his hand on my shoulder. I jumped it was so unexpected.

  "How are they treating you?" he asked.

  "Fine," I answered, too quickly to sound convincing. A couple of the grays quickl
y looked away.

  Errox frowned and said, "If anyone bothers you, tell me. I’ll take care of them."

  "What about a wristlock? I can’t leave the building without one."

  "It’ll take time. Until then enjoy yourself. Leave the worrying to me." He turned and pointed at a washed-out looking woman with a gray wristlock, he grinned lewdly and said, "Anything you want here is yours."

  That brought me a hostile look from the big boned gray man. Why was Errox so friendly to me and not to the others? All of them, even the big gray, seemed afraid of him. What power did he have? Why did the others stay if they were scared?

  "Remember Rathe, it’s not safe to leave the urbode without a wristlock and a reliable guide. If you don’t have both, the VIS will get you. If that happens, even I won’t be able to save you."

  THREE

  I was back in the sleeproom, but sleep was not forthcoming, nor were any of my former memories. I’d spent the previous evening alone in this small cubicle in Ural’s dwell, thinking about what Kahalyton had told me the day before. I tried to find some pattern based on what little I knew; all I found were more questions and no answers.

  Other than Errox, Kahalyton was the only person who had shown any interest in me. The other grays acted as if I were invisible. Kahalyton told me that this dwell belonged to Ural. I wondered how or why someone like Ural came to possess such a large residence. She refused to answer my questions about that or anything else.

  From the abrupt way Ural treated me, even I could see she only tolerated me because Errox told her to. Why was she so afraid of him?

  Errox was in a dominant position with me because I knew nothing, but his hold over Ural was different, not only in degree but in kind. The other grays deferred to Ural, but not to the extent they kowtowed to Errox. From a conversation I’d overheard I knew that everyone would be leaving Ural’s dwell soon. I didn’t know why and I didn’t ask because I knew I would be rebuffed again. There was an obvious undercurrent of dislike aimed at me. Was it because Errox had picked me for some role or action in one of his schemes and the other grays were jealous? I didn’t know enough about him, or them, to put it together.