Charles Ingrid - marked man 02 The Last Recall (32 page)

Jeong joined him on the ridge. The lanky boy was on foot and sketching as he came. He looked up. "I think we've gone as far as we can go today."

He was too tired to feel any more anger. "This is just supposed to be a break."

"The mounts are exhausted. There's good grazing here—they need it." Jeong looked up. Stefan was surprised to see the sketch was of him looking over the camp on the ridge. In the quick, competent lines, he thought he saw a defender, a sentry on duty.

But it was only himself.

"How's Trout?"

"A little better. He has to be, otherwise we'll have to make a travois for him. He can't ride sitting up much longer.''

The trouble with healers was that they couldn't work on themselves except for basic herbal doctoring and Trout was barely hanging on. Stefan let out his breath in a long drawn out gust. "All right. Tell the boys to pitch camp for the night."

Jeong nodded, turned heel, and sauntered down off the ridge, taking his time, drawing as he walked. Stefan stayed where he was. Watty had been right, of course, in the privacy of his thoughts. The abyss had defeated them. An immense crevice running as far as they could see across the fall-burnt foothills, it had brought them to a stunning halt. They had scouted it on horseback for several days and had not found a passable point, nor any sign of the crevice's end. Too wide to jump and too long to ride around. They could have bridged it hand over hand, but there was no wood to build a real bridge to bring the animals across. That, and the barren land, and Trout's illness had brought him to the decision to take them home. Next spring, God willing, they'd start out again. In the meantime, he'd have to pound their successes into them, give them heart, not let them give up. None of them would think of themselves as failures if he had anything to do with it.

He wondered if Alma would be waiting for him. He knew he had no right any longer to wonder, but he did just the same. The trip had taught him a bitter lesson. He hoped it wasn't too late.

His horse whickered as the other mounts were hobbled and put out to pasture. He could feel its hunger and fatigue. He squeezed his knees, bringing it down off the ridge, to join the others.

The screens in the conference room were dark. Nothing they could have shown would have been much more spectacular than the water planet the
Challenger
circled, dominating the windows. Gemma had gotten there earlier, and sat, hugging herself, unable to tear her eyes away from the sight.
Home.
Not a history or a myth to make the 250-year voyage more bearable, but her home. The cloud-shrouded view drew her complete and total attention. She could see changes in the coastlines and continents facing her, though they were subtle. But how subtle to those who'd once inhabited those geographical areas, to be seen from an orbit this far out?

Commander Dakin sat in a chair, his profile enigmatic. Fewer than ten people finally took places in the room. She knew without looking about who they'd be. Marshall, of course, denying the gray in his hair. Herself. The enviros Klegg and Palchek, both middle-aged but fit. The mechanic Reynolds who, without knowing it, reminded Dusty of an Amazon. Dusty didn't think sexist mythology like Amazons had gotten into the ship's library. She'd have told Reynolds herself but wasn't sure if the bronze-skinned, dark-haired woman would have thought it was funny. There was Kerry, who split her occupations between accounting and medical. Dubois, from communications and whose hobby was cartography, sat biting a nail, his dark hair in spikes, careful to sit with his back away from everyone so that the thinning spots could not be seen. The last two volunteers were both from agra, a botanist and a zoologist. From the unhappy looks on their young faces, Dakin had twisted arms to get Colby and Goldstone here.

A balanced team. Volunteers and the volunteered. None of them had been alive to explore the Alpha Cen-tauri regions. None of their grandparents had been alive to remember Earth. She knew they cared, everybody aboard ship cared, but these had cared enough to make a trip without options.

Colby and Goldstone were talking, low-voiced, everyone else was silent, waiting for Dakin to speak. He held his silence a long moment before finally looking to them.

"I guess that's everyone." He swiveled his chair about. "Under the circumstances, a good turnout. The pressure front kicking up some high winds in the landing area has broken up and we can expect calm weather the next two to three days. We'll be going down in two. Marshall—" Willem's dark face looked to the commander expectantly. "You're in charge of the Away Team."

Marshall nodded, satisfaction glimmering deep in his caramel brown eyes.

Sun looked at them all. "I want reports at 2200 hours, on a daily basis. Avoid confrontations, there aren't enough of you to put up a fight. What are you expecting down there?'' Goldstone said, "Cockroaches as big as horses." Everyone laughed. Sun smiled patiently before adding gently, "We may find subhumans as well. The Earth has gone through a lot. We don't know what to expect. I wish I could tell you to give two yanks on the rope and I'll pull you right up, but--" he spread his slender hands. "We've exhausted our capacity to relaunch on the shuttles and I don't think we're going to get any help from the locals."

The ship's cat entered with a plaintive meow and leaped onto the table. He butted an insistent yellow head on Sun's hands. The commander gathered in the striped tabby and the animal sat, gently kneading Dakin's lap. Dusty watched, distracted for a moment, thinking of how much her sister Lisa had loved cats.

"What equipment are you going to let us take down?"

"Well, there's the hover. It's pretty old, but it's reliable and there's no worry about fuel as long as the solars get enough exposure. We've two ATVs as well, for smaller forays. The shuttle itself has the portable lab setups—and I want you all to wear enviro suits. Maintain a quarantine just as if you were returning. I think that's necessary."

Marshall said quietly, "Weapons?"

"Handguns, rifles, stuns. Anything more and you'd be facing a war and I think your best bet would be to get in the shuttle, fire it up and 'drive' as far away as you can get."

Reynolds said, "That'll be hard on the ship, sir."

"Better the ship than you." Sun put the cat down and stood up. "We all owe you a debt. You're doing what our fear won't allow us to."

Dubois spat out part of a fingernail. He added, as if the event had been punctuation to his sentence, "What about later? What if we find out there's something worth reclaiming? Are you coming down then?''

Sun did not answer immediately. Then, "If the crew votes to."

Colby's and Goldstone's faces went pale. They were young newly weds, each a shadow of the other, white faces, dark hair, slender bodies. Colby had warm hazel eyes and Goldstone's were dark brown, otherwise Dusty had always had trouble telling them apart. They held hands tightly. Dusty looked away. She had trouble dealing with the despair on their faces, as well.

* * *

The dean looked over the dry lake beds. The low-lying hills to the east and north were in purpled shadow. The beds wavered in mirage illusion. The quonset huts and buildings across the landing strips were hunkered down, rusting and degrading dinosaurs, skeletons that might have come to drink at the mirrored pools and died of the illusion. Satisfaction and hunger rode his gut together. He swung down from his horse. "We made it, Ketchum."

The tracker said nothing. There was a dour look on his begrimed face. The dean arched an eyebrow. "Still sulking over that mare?''

They had lost one of their horses during the last day. As soon as the wind had died down, theyd set off at dawn and just as the dean had threatened, he'd spared nothing getting them here on time. Ketchum's boots were stained with the blood from the knife he'd drawn across the painted mare's throat to put her thrashing agony to a quicker end. The nester looked at the dean.

"She was the first four eyes I have had," Ketchum said, "who was not blind in one of them."

"Bah." The dean unslung his waterskin. "God never intended for a horse to have four eyes." He tilted his head back as he lifted the waterskin. Ketchum stared at his wattle of a throat and thought of putting his knife to a better use. He looked away.

"When are they coming?"

The dean replaced his waterskin and opened his pack. He took out his robes of black and garish decoration, donning them quickly. Then he took out the box of magic he had carried with him.

Ketchum knew mechanicals when he saw them. This box had never particularly fooled him, though the sha-men would make a great fuss over it. But he had brought it to the dean on more than one occasion. As nearly as he could tell, it never did anything but flash lights.

The dean stroked the casing. The flashes had slowed, becoming a longer, more intense pulse. He looked skyward. The readout said 1700 hours. "At dusk, Ket-chum," the man said, sinking to his haunches. "They're coming in just before sundown."

Dusty clenched her teeth. She wrapped her wrist in her shoulder strap as the shuttle swept downward and she could feel the push of real gravity, as though the world had a skin and they were a needle trying to penetrate it. She closed her eyes, her stomach churning against the feeling.

The other crew made fun of her from time to time, that she was not a military brat, born into the service and into the mission. Now none of them were although they were conscripted at sixteen and served a facsimile of military training aboard the ships. But she was just as born to it as their forefathers had been—her grandfather had been a Navy pilot during the Viet Nam war, her father had been one of the last aircraft carrier captains of the twenty-first century—and she and Lisa had drawn his attention early.

Their twinship had been rare even among identical twins. They'd spoken their own language and they had always been able to live in one another's skins, so to speak. So they were barely out of toddlerhood when their father and mother had volunteered them for service.

Unlike the other crewmembers, whose genetic engineering had been ingrained into them, spliced in unknowingly from the earlier moment of creation, she could remember the hospitals and labs. They hadn't suffered much—she knew their mother would never have allowed it—but there had been some fear and deprivation and pain.

The outgrowth was the ability of the twins to be even more telepathic with one another and to voluntarily put themselves into a sort of suspended animation. They had known from their first year of school that their destiny was paired with that of the longships. Their fate was to be separated for the duration of the trip, only their minds reaching out. Lisa would sleep when Dusty slept, family and friends living and dying and turning to ashes while they communed and rested and communed again.

Only she'd lost Lisa. Now she had nothing. Her mind stayed forever devoid of another presence except her own fleeting thoughts. She was empty.

Her stomach gave up on a corkscrew manuver that strained her body against its straps and as she fought to contain herself, a sense of displacement swept her. A darkness more complete than the absence of light created by merely shutting her eyes welled up inside her head. She heard a man's voice, clear as a bell:
Where the hell are you ?

It was a voice she'd never heard before. Her loneliness arced through her. She wanted to answer, but her thoughts scattered like clouds in a high wind and her mind spun away as if knowing the voice was not meant for her.

Dusty opened her eyes. Sweat dripped off her forehead. Her ears popped. Dubois grinned at her. "Sick?"

"No." They'd reached the lightness of atmosphere. The sun's glare was dazzling off the form-fitting silver material of her enviro suit. She closed her eyes again. Wishful thinking. There was nothing down below with a voice for her to hear.

And she was airsick, dammit. She clenched her teeth tighter as the shuttle spun downward.

Reynolds' alto voice. "What are you doing, sir?"

"Conserving as much fuel as I can. This isn't going to be a one-way trip if I can help it." Marshall's thick, rich tones, filled with quiet determination.

Dusty smiled in spite of herself.

Thunder boomed. Ketchum moved away from the small campfire he'd been nursing. He looked up. "No clouds," he said. "No rain."

But the dean was grabbing for his binoculars. "Fool," he said, unthinkingly. "That's not thunder. That's a sonic boom. She's coming!"

Ketchum squinted. He could see nothing angling in over the hills, but the dean was striding across the parched earth, hand up, pointing, his voice rising louder.

"She's coming in! There she is! Look at her!"

A low rumbling could be heard and then even Ketchum could see the white form in the sky, like a bird on the glide. It came lower and lower and then, as the rumbling could be felt in his bones as much as in his ears, the thing touched down.

The dean let out a whoop. Streamers of dust burst from the earth like flame and the object roared down on them, bigger, ever bigger.

Ketchum got to his feet and wiped his damp palms on his trousers. The dean had finally done something that impressed him and it was roaring down on them like a vengeful god from the past.

The dean paced back. "Slow 'er down," he cried. "Slow 'er down!"

The chant seemed to help as the great winged object began to slow. Still it came head on, and Ketchum swore he could feel the sun's heat off its body, dancing in shimmering waves.