Icarus Descending (26 page)

On the floor a figure—no, two figures—sprawled side to side. The first was Captain Patrocles. He lay upon his chest, arms outflung as though desperately grasping for something. The barrel of his weapon protruded from beneath him, its smooth surface blue-white with heat and sending up a single gray plume of smoke. His eyes were wide; two of his bottom teeth were gone, and most of his jaw. He was quite obviously dead.

Beside him Trevor Mallory was stretched out on his back. One arm crossed his breast so that his hand rested upon his heart. The other was extended across the floor, palm upward, the fingers delicately curled as though they held something precious. He was unmoving. Beside him lay his enhancer, its edges slightly crumpled. A perfect star-shaped hole had been blasted through his forehead.

“You
bitch.
” A voice cried out, so charged with hatred and rage that I instinctively ducked, looking around for Colonel Aselma.

But the voice wasn’t hers. It was Jane’s. She stood in the middle of the foyer, her face twisted from weeping as she aimed her pistol to where Colonel Aselma stood a few feet from the two corpses.

“You killed him, you—” Jane sobbed, and in the silence I could hear the barrel of her ancient gun turn over. Behind her Giles crouched, dazed.

“Don’t be a fool,” hissed Colonel Aselma. “You can’t possibly win, you know, just put the gun down and come with me—” But her expression belied her words: her eyes were wide, her mouth set in a tight line as she fumbled at her belt.

“Goody-bye,” choked Jane, holding her gun so tightly that the muscles in her hands were knotted red and white. Then, closing her eyes, she fired.

The retort sent Jane reeling backward. Colonel Aselma’s body crumpled; she took one staggering step and toppled beside her partner. I cried out and ran down the steps, nearly falling as I raced toward Jane. Only when I had my arms around her did I look back at Colonel Aselma. A ragged hole blackened her chest; I recalled the body armor lying on the floor of the living room.

“I thought it was—I thought it was
him,”
Jane gasped. “Tast’annin—I just saw the uniform and I thought, I thought—”

She shook with sobs, and I hugged her tightly. But as I held her, I looked over her shoulder to see where Giles knelt upon the floor, cradling Trevor’s head in his lap.

“Wake up,” he crooned. “Darling, wake up now, wake up….” And then he began to scream.

“Oh, god,” I whispered, pulling away from her. “Trevor…”

Before I could go to him, I heard a clicking sound. I started, thinking in my panic that Colonel Aselma had somehow not taken a fatal strike. But she was still quite dead. Only, in her hand I noticed a tiny object, pen-shaped, emitting a series of clicks and staticky hisses. A moment later a faint, high-pitched whine came through the broken window from outside.

Giles looked up, his face contorted with weeping. “Her Gryphon,” he choked. Jane and I raced out onto the porch.

In the tangled garden where Giles grew yarrow and brambly yellow roses, one of the Aviators’ biotic aircraft crouched in the summer darkness. Its narrow nose pointed skyward, and as we watched, its wings fully extended even as its solex panels folded in upon themselves, like the soft gleaming folds of a bat’s wings. More clicks and hissing blasted from it as a smooth translucent hood emerged and covered its cockpit. The keening of its power supply grew louder and louder until it was a steady roar. Before we reached the porch steps, it was airborne, springing into the air with the ease and lethal grace of a jaguarundi or lynx. Within seconds it was high above the house. I could see its sensors on their long filaments whipping through the air, some of them with glowing green and yellow eyes staring balefully down at us.

“It’s taking a reading.” I started to back toward the door, but Jane grabbed me and shook her head. “It’s too late,” she said dully. “It will already have signaled that we’re here.”

The Gryphon made a final swipe above us, its steel-blue wings slicing through the tops of the white oaks and sending down a confetti of torn leaves. Then it was gone, and the cold wake of its passing raked our cheeks like talons.

We went back inside. I was too numb to register anything except that my recklessness had killed Trevor and betrayed us to NASNA. Jane helped Giles carry Trevor’s body into their room. I followed, silent, and stayed there even when Jane left. I watched as Giles washed his lover’s face and brow, touching gently the pale scar tissue where his eyes had been and kissing the place where the Aviator’s weapon had left that incongruously small wound, like a bloody kiss.

“Giles,” I said after a long time had passed. “Giles, I’m—

“Hush,” he said. His eyes were red, but he had stopped crying. “He was prepared for this, Wendy. He has—he made plans, in case of…” He gasped and lifted his face, his eyes squeezed shut tight. “I’m just—God! it’s just horrible, that’s all. But I know we’ll be together again soon.”

I shook my head, shocked. “Giles! No, you can’t—”

He looked up at me, brushing back the loose hair that had fallen around his shoulders. I saw then that his soft beauty had bled away, as quickly and easily as though it had been merely painted upon his face. What remained was only grief and the outlines of a love so powerful, it looked like rage.

“Wendy.” His voice was still gentle but commanding. “I think you should leave us alone for a little while. There are—there’s something I need to do, and you won’t—I just need to be alone.”

Nodding, I stumbled from the room, wiping tears from my face. I was anguished by my callousness in following him there, by the drunken rage and foolishness that had destroyed my friends. And suddenly I remembered Miss Scarlet, sleeping upstairs with Fossa.

“Jane!” I ran down the hall and into the kitchen. Jane stood at the sink in a shroud of steam, wringing out a pink rag.

“They’re gone,” she said. She turned to me, and I saw where a tag of blood still smeared her cheek.

“Gone?” I repeated shrilly. I was still thinking of Miss Scarlet.

Jane nodded once, biting her lip. “Yes. I—I gave them to the pigs.” She started to laugh, stopped abruptly and wiped her eyes. “Oh, god. It’s all my fault, I never—”

“
Stop.
” I took her in my arms again, smoothing her damp hair. “It’s—if it’s anyone’s fault, it’s mine. They were looking for me, Jane. They have orders from Tast’annin to find me and bring me to him.”

Jane pulled back. “But he’s dead,” she said, and touched the pistol at her waist. “He’s dead, Wendy, you know that—”

“He’s not. He’s alive—they’ve done something, I don’t know what—regenerated him, found his corpse and—and I don’t know….” I started to shake and drew away from her. “Miss Scarlet. She doesn’t know yet—”

Jane went even paler than she had been. “Are you sure? Is she safe, are they still—?”

We ran upstairs, our footsteps echoing through the empty halls. The night wind blew through an open window, and gray light spattered the floor. Near the end of the corridor the door to the linen closet hung open.

“Scarlet! Scarlet, are you there?” I shouted. Jane followed me as I ducked inside, flinging clothes out of my way. “Scarlet!”

The room was empty. The plates and wine bottle and remnants of food were as I’d last seen them. The bed covers where Miss Scarlet had been sleeping were tossed onto the floor.

“Fossa!” Jane yelled. “Scarlet! Where are you?”

I shook my head and turned to the door, stunned. “They’re gone.”

Jane looked at me, her face a tortured mask. “The window,” she gasped, and pushed me aside as she went back into the corridor. “That goddamned open window.” I ran after her down the hallway.

“That’s it,” she cried, leaning out the window. “They’re gone—she must have gotten on his back and they jumped out—see, there?”

I looked where she pointed, to a patch of soft earth that was broken up, as though someone had rolled in it. Jane continued to stare at the ground. “I drove her to this,” she said softly. “Because I never treated her the same way I treated you, or anyone else. I never should have gone off alone—and now this, now this—”

I grabbed my aching head, wishing I could rip it off and silence the roaring in my ears. I breathed deeply, the way Dr. Harrow taught me, and after a moment felt calmer. I drew my hands from my face and looked at my friend.

“Jane, it’s all done now,” I said carefully, my voice hoarse. “I should never have left that room, but I did. And maybe you shouldn’t have gone out alone—but it’s done now. They’re gone. And Trevor—”

I shut my eyes, trying to will away the anguish pounding inside me. “And they’re all gone, is all,” I finished.

Jane nodded miserably and pulled herself from the window. “Those Aviators,” she said, and a bitter edge crept into her voice. “Tell me, what happened?”

We drew together, like survivors of a rain of roses, and walked down the hall. I told her all I knew, ending with my shock at finding myself in the front hallway just as she entered. When I finished, we had reached the kitchen. Jane pulled away from me, shaking her head, and for several minutes leaned with her hands pressed tightly against the edge of a table. Finally she sighed and straightened, and ran her hands through her unruly shock of hair.

“I guess we better find Giles,” she said.

I felt exhausted, so tired that all I wanted to do was sink to the floor and huddle there like a sick child. But I nodded and let her take my hand. Slowly we walked to his room. Through the open windows came the creak of crickets and the wind in the leaves: sounds that now seemed to have no other reference than to this heartache and fear. I glanced outside, half-expecting to see naught but darkness, the long shadow of our grief; but there were the trees tossing gently, there the stars in their midsummer guise, and a faint glow of moonlight in the east.

We found Giles in his rooms sitting on the bed with his back to us. Trevor’s body was gone. Jane looked aside at me, her eyes wide and mouth posed to ask a question, but I shook my head.

“Giles,” I called softly. “It’s Wendy and Jane.”

He turned. He had bound his hair back into a neat braid and changed his clothes—a long deep-blue tunic, not the mourning red I might have expected a Paphian to wear, but then he had not lived among his own people for many years. He looked quite calm, his mouth a little strained and eyes bloodshot; but his expression was peaceful, his voice steady as he spoke to us.

“You should not blame yourselves,” he said. He beckoned us to sit beside him on the bed, and I saw how his hands trembled, and felt how cold they were as they patted my own. “Neither of us knew that they were searching for you, Wendy, else we would have made other plans for you and Jane and Miss Scarlet—”

“They’re gone,” Jane broke in. She glanced nervously about the room, as though afraid of seeing Trevor’s corpse propped in a corner. “Scarlet and Fossa. They jumped out the window—the tracks seemed to go into the woods.”

Giles shut his eyes and ran a hand lightly over his face. “Ah, no,” he murmured; then said, “But no, I’m not surprised, not really.”

His voice shook slightly as he looked away, staring at the dark rectangle of a window set in the far wall. “Fossa hates the NASNA Aviators. He was enslaved by them for many years in Araboth before he escaped. Well, then.” He sighed and turned back to us. “We won’t have to worry about them, at least.”

“What do you mean, not worry?” Jane cried, aghast. “We should be out there now, looking for them!”

Giles shook his head adamantly. “
No.
Fossa knows what he’s doing—they’ve probably set out for Cassandra. He knows the way, and even on foot they’ll probably get there before you do.”

“What are you talking about?” I stared at him as though he were mad. But Giles only sat calmly, stroking the worn cotton quilt with its pattern of interlocking circles. Double Wedding Ring, Trevor had called it; a gift from his daughter. A small brown stain had spread across one panel, and Giles’s fingers paused there as he answered.

“You can’t stay here. By tomorrow there will be more Aviators—sooner, if they come directly from the City of Trees.”

I blanched, and he went on quickly. “But I don’t think they will. From what those two told us, there is only a janissary force in the City now. The Aviators pulled out to attend to an insurrection in Vancouver, and the soldiers who remain have their hands full trying to keep down the rebels. As for the rest of us—we’ll
all
have to take sides now. It seems your talk of the genewars has actually come to pass,” he ended softly. His blue eyes stared mistily at the bed, and I knew he was speaking to Trevor and not to us. But then he seemed to recall where he was. He sighed again and stood, pacing to the wall where an old monitor hung crookedly from a pair of hooks. He straightened it, then clicked it on. The screen stayed blank, but the room filled with low music, gongs and chanting. A gamelan orchestra. I wondered again where the transmissions came from.

“Cassandra,” Giles said, as though he knew my thought. “I have already notified Cadence. They should have left by now—if the weather holds, if they don’t run into Aviators on the way, they should be here late tomorrow morning to take both of you back with them.”

“Cassandra? But what good will that do? And what about you?” Jane scowled, staring out the window to where the forest waited. “And Scarlet? What about them?”

“I told you, I believe they have already left for Cassandra. That was the plan, if ever anything happened—”

“So you’ve been
expecting
this?” Jane fairly shouted. “Some nice little toss-up with NASNA, and Fossa and Scarlet take to the woods?”

“Trevor had an escape planned long before we ever heard of you,” Giles said smoothly. A note of sorrow crept into his voice. “But you’re right, he
did
expect it—I think he hoped for it, in a way….”

“But not dying,” I cried. I thought of how intent Trevor had always been, how much like a man with some great work still ahead of him. “Surely he didn’t want that?”

Giles smiled, an odd, twisted smile. “I don’t think he cared—I know he wasn’t
afraid
of dying, not the way I am—but then, things are different for Trevor. He’s lived so long, and he had—well, he made plans, you know. I don’t think this really took him by surprise, in the end. And I know I’ll be with him again, but it’s just so…”