Early Byrd (10 page)

"Aw!" Tim complained.

I frowned. "We can help—it was us who
rescued
you,
after all."

Li shook his head. "This is different. And
just as soon as I can figure it all out myself, I'll explain
exactly why and how." Then he patted down the guard for more
ammunition.

"Listen to him," Rapput said, which
surprised us because his eyes were closed and we'd sorta thought he
was out of it again. "You've won your share and more of honor
already today, boys. It's no shame for untrained youths to stand
aside for a skilled professional." He looked at Li. "I've known who
you were from the beginning, Colonel. It rather vexed me that your
kind would stoop to such blatant dishonesty in honorable family
matters. But now I'm glad you're here. This is properly a fight
between you humans, and I have every confidence the proper side
shall prevail."

Li nodded, and then of all things bowed
slightly before dancing up the hallway like an acrobat, making
hardly a sound despite the nasty footing.

"He and I have had an opportunity to talk,"
Rapput explained. "And as is often the case between beings of high
honor, we managed to say much to each other with few words. Fear
not—I have no doubts whatsoever regarding his ability." He grinned,
albeit weakly. "Your fellow humans must think we're stupid. Li was
once your father's commanding officer in an elite international
unit, yet somehow they thought they could conceal this from us
merely by hastily altering a few data files." He shook his head.
"Ah well. The mutual deception was growing tiresome in any event.
For both of us, I believe."

By now I was unlocking Rapput's handcuffs,
and he moaned as his broken arm was freed to rotate back into a
more natural position. Just then Li's little gun fired a short
burst—
brrrp!
Then
there came a second.
Boom!
a shotgun went . . .

. . . then there was only silence.

"Hurry, Robertherman," Rapput urged me as I
worked at freeing his feet—somehow I'd lost track of which keys I'd
already ruled out. "We'll need to move as quickly as possible."

I didn't like that the final round in the
fight had been fired by a shotgun—Yukon and Sam were the only ones
who carried them. But sure enough, it was Li who popped his head
through the curtains. "Rapput? Can you walk, sir?"

"Hah!" he declared, staggering to his feet.
"I've been injured far more severely than this and then hiked
forty-three . . ." His eyes rolled up. Then he collapsed back to
the cage-floor, luckily landing on his good arm.

Dad would've cursed, but Li was all
business. "Boys," he ordered, "I need for you to remain as strong
as you have been. As you said, one of the guards is missing and we
have no idea where he might be or when he'll show up. He's a
complete wild card, and we can't afford wild cards just now. So
we're going to leave this place in five minutes or less. In that
time I want you to round up all the water containers, food,
matches, blankets, and other survival stuff you can and put it on
the kitchen table." He looked away. "I should warn you that there
are two bodies lying on the floor in there. One of them is the
woman."

We nodded as one. I felt even worse for
Linda, somehow, than all the rest combined.

"Good boys!" he added with a smile. "While
you're working at that, I'm going to be making a stretcher for
Rapput."

"How are we . . ." Tim asked.

"He's so heavy," I clarified. "So how can we
move him?"

"I'll take care of that," Li replied. "Now,
you gather everything up as fast as you can. Except . . ." He'd
been holding one hand behind his back—now he revealed Sam's
double-barreled shotgun. It was even shorter than Yukon's, and the
left barrel was still warm. "This is for you, Robert," he said as
he broke the weapon open. The empty shell went flying, the unfired
one merely lifting slightly. Then he placed it in my waiting hands.
"You've earned it. Make sure to pick up all the ammo you can!"

Our scrounging work was almost as easily
said as done. Wordlessly Tim and I separated, with me heading for
our bedroom and him for the kitchen. I snatched the blankets and
comforters from our beds, then grabbed the pillowcases as well.
They'd be perfect carrying-bags for the other loot. There not being
much else of use in there, I hauled everything into the kitchen in
one armload and dropped it on the table.

It wasn't until then that I really saw what
a slaughterhouse the room had been transformed into. The two
front-room guards lay piled atop each other at the far kitchen
entrance. It looked for all the world like they'd leapt to their
feet together and run side-by-side into the narrow doorway, leaving
neither of them room to swing their military-style rifles before a
single burst had taken both out. Sam sat in the corner with a silly
look on his face, one not improved by the single bullet-hole
centered near-perfectly in his forehead. He was hit in several
other places too, but the forehead wound was the one that really
made an impression. And Linda . . .
Poor Linda
. . .

For the first time that day, tears
strung
my eyes. She lay
sprawled on the kitchen floor I'd seen her so happily mopping just
a few moments before, wearing a frilly apron stained red from the
dozen gaping buckshot wounds in her torso. She'd been a hotel
manager; had she spent her workdays dreaming of a cabin in the
country? And on the counter . . . On the counter . . .

"What?" Timothy demanded, looking cross.
"Don't go soft on us now, Robert. Okay?"

I shook my head and pointed, tears flowing
harder. On the counter was a baking sheet with a half-dozen
chocolate-chip cookies lying unbaked on it, the oversized chips
formed into smiling faces. I didn't need to guess who they were
meant for.

"J
eez,"
Tim
said, staggering like he'd been punched in the gut.

"She risked everything to save us," I
whispered. "From her point of view, I mean. That was all. She
wanted to save everyone everywhere from the aliens that want to
make us fight their wars for them. And so did . . . So did . . ." I
looked at Sam, who'd smiled so happily at us that very morning. "I
just don't know . . ."

Then Li's voice rose from behind us, his
tone soft and regretful. "She was unarmed, so far as I could see. I
shot Sam first, then the guards together when they made their move.
I meant to take her alive. But . . ." He shook his head. "It
must've been a muscle spasm as Sam died, or something." Then he
stood straight. "Boys, I know . . ."

"It
hurts
," I complained. "Did we . .
. I mean, what
else
could we have
done?
"

"Nothing," Li answered. "That's one of the
problems with life that it's better to learn about when you're
older. Even bad people almost always have at least some good in
them. Worse still, sometimes we're forced to do terrible things to
good people who are only doing what they in turn believe is right
and decent. If there's anything in this universe more awful than
that, I can't imagine what it is." He hung his head. "I won't lie
to you. It won't quit hurting. Ever. No matter what you do or how
long you live. And yet . . . you don't realize it, do you?"

"Realize what?" Tim asked. Now he was all
teary too.

"Rapput is the one who negotiated the
Treaty," Li explained. "A lot of the Artemu hate it almost as much
as we do—they wanted to wipe us out and move on to the next
conquest. Most of them wanted that, even. But they can't override
Rapput and his vision of our two species working together." He
sighed. "If we don't get your new uncle out of here alive somehow,
well . . ." He shrugged. "It's not like the rocks aren't still out
there just waiting to be dropped on us. You two may have saved the
entire human race from extinction."

18

Three hours later I was a lot more worried about
our
extinction than that of the rest of the human race, and I suspect
Li felt the same way. Not that he showed it; he simply plowed
stoically along, head high and alert as he dragged Rapput on a
travois behind him. I didn't like the travois because it left a
trail a blind man could follow, and I'm pretty sure Li agreed with
me. But we didn’t have a choice, Rapput being as big and heavy as
he was.

Not that we were going to be
that
easy to follow; Li had led us almost half a mile downstream and
into a rocky area where the stretcher-gadget left no traces before
doubling back, this time carrying Rapput on his heavily-muscled
back while Tim and I carried the travois. Then he kept right on
going with Rapput on his back across solid ground for all of
another mile upstream before taking a short break.

"Why upstream?" I finally asked while Li
returned the alien to his improvised stretcher. "Dad says that if
you want to find civilization, you should always go
down
stream."

"He's right," our teacher agreed. "But this
is a special case. The bad guys know about walking downstream too,
you see. Besides, the jetboat's gone. Since we were fighting the
current on the trip up here, then most likely it's busy somewhere
down that way. The last thing we want is to run into it by
accident." He was huffing and puffing, so I opened up the
pillowcase I was carrying and pulled out one of our bottles of
water. We had eight, two factory-sealed and the rest refilled from
the sink. This one was a refill.

Li smiled, opened the bottle, and drew a
long draught. He'd taken the time to wolf down a few mouthfuls of
Linda's poutine, while Tim and I'd been able to bring Rapput around
long enough to swallow a few spoonfuls as well. Our coach was
looking better by the minute, despite the incredible load he
bore.

"So," Tim asked as he looked into the
mountains that seemed to rise all around us, "if we're not headed
for civilization, then what's the plan?"

Li took another drink before answering.
"We're headed for the closest mountain I think we can climb." He
pointed at one in the distance. It wasn't as close as some of the
others, but a lot more rounded off. "That one, probably. Long ago,
even before I knew your father, I was on another mission in
mountains much like these." He frowned. "Perhaps those mountains
weren't quite as high, but the natives were even more dangerous. At
any rate, I was given a signal to use to identify myself in case I
needed emergency evacuation. It was to be sent from a mountaintop
and only a mountaintop, so that my friends wouldn't have so much
territory to monitor."

I nodded. "And you hope they'll remember
that signal?"

"They'll be studying my file," he answered.
"They'll be looking." He climbed to his feet, back-muscles
crackling from his recent workout. "Come on. The quicker we move,
the sooner we'll get there."

It'd been afternoon when we hit Yukon on the
head, and even later in the day before we'd gotten everything all
packed up and ready to move. Then Li's backtrack ate up still more
time, so it wasn’t long before it started getting dark. The bugs
came out, and they bit—hard! Plus it was getting cold, and all Tim
and I had were t-shirts and shorts. We wrapped ourselves in the
comforters without stopping, and that helped some. But eventually
our feet started to hurt too, and we dropped behind.

"I have a blister, I think," I finally
admitted to Li. "I need to stop and do something about it, or it'll
just get worse."

Our teacher turned around and scowled. Then
he seemed to really
see
us for the first time in hours as we
stood shivering under our cocklebur-covered comforters, our lips
blue and blood running in streaks down our bare legs from where the
flies had bitten us. Then he merely sighed and thought for a
moment. "Can you make it another half-mile? I think we're about
that far from the river."

"It'll be even colder there," Tim pointed
out.

"So it will. Yet I expect it'll also be far
safer." He repositioned Rapput's travois, and then without another
word took off downhill toward the water.

I looked at Tim, who shrugged. So I shrugged
back and we followed.

The brush grew thicker and thicker until it
was so bad that all of us were forced to advance on hands and
knees, guarding Rapput's face to make sure none of the lowest limbs
scratched it.

"So," Li said as we proceeded. "One of my
functions is to instruct you two in how to survive little
difficulties like this one. I fear that so far I've been remiss.
You already know why we're headed upstream instead of down. Now,
can you tell me why I'm making camp in such an awful, inaccessible
place?"

I thought about it as I crawled along,
tearing up my knees on the sharper rocks and getting my hands and
legs all chilly-wet. At least the question took my mind off of my
misery, as was probably intended.

"You think they're following us, then?" Tim
asked.

Li smiled. "They almost have to be, wouldn't
you say? We left at least one unaccounted for. Plus, they're part
of a larger organization. All we can really hope for is that they
fell for our false trail and went the wrong way at first. In which
case we won't see them until tomorrow around mid-morning at the
earliest. But . . . what if they have access to a really good
tracker? What then?"

"Pulling Rapput slows you down a lot," I
said. "Not that you have any choice.
So . . .
they could be almost right behind us!"

"I believe that’s very likely the case," Li
replied.

"They know we're armed and desperate," I
continued. Then I felt my ears redden. "They may even figure out
who killed Yukon, and possibly the other guard too."

"They'll also know what guns are missing,"
Tim observed. "Two shotguns, your assault pistol, and Rapput's
.45." He frowned. "Why are you carrying a gun for
him
,
anyway? He can't use it, and it's heavy."