The D’neeran Factor (80 page)

Shen said incredulously, “You knew? About this?”

“No. Yes. I mean, I should have realized what it meant.”

Shen stared at him; so did Lise. He could not be making sense. Shen said to Lise, “Go wake Theo up.”

“No. Wait—” A connection made itself without his volition. He picked words carefully. “They knew somebody was after the aliens, I don't know how. They'd made up their minds if anything happened it was going to be me, and they don't know anything about B. So now they're after us. How long to Rescue?”

“A day. Told you.
Was
a day. Changed course soon's I heard this. Good thing I didn't kill her.”

“Huh?”

“Witness. Tell 'em we didn't do it.”

“Yeah. All the same. They'll want to know what we know about B, why we were after him, how we knew he was on Revenge, lots of questions. Questions I don't want to answer. Don't want to get near it, Shen. Too good an excuse to shove me under probe.”

His mind was working better. Shen relaxed. She said reflectively, “Can't go home. Or anywhere.”

“Right. Until she's in condition to talk.”

“Take real good care of her,” Shen said warmly, and the turnabout should have been funny. It was not. With Hanna dead the only way to prove his innocence would be to go under probe. If they got him under probe, they would not be content with his ignorance of the present crime; they would go on to the
Pavonis Queen
and that would be the end. Without Hanna there would be no escape. Not even Valentine would shelter him from this; surely Rescue had cooperated in a trap. So all his life had hung on the thread of Hanna's, and in saving her he might have saved himself; though he had done it for no charitable motive and almost in spite of himself, because of Lise and Theo. Left to himself he might have killed her, he would have killed her in a frenzy of rage or obsession—Hanna who was part of him now.

Shen misinterpreted the look on his face. She said, “Big trouble.”

“Not so big,” he said, although it was; but also there it was, and there was no point thinking about the size of it. He looked for ways out. Best would be a way that did not mean running, a way to sidestep I&S. He said, “I want her to talk to the Polity as soon as she can. We stay lost until then. See if she can keep them off our backs. If she will. Maybe she'll do it. She's not interested in us. She never used to care about anything but her work, although— But maybe she'll want to get back to Contact and the hell with I&S.”

He saw that Shen was astonished by the implied knowledge of Hanna, and became tongue-tied. Shen said, “Maybe.
Can
she do it?”

“I don't know,” he said after too long a pause. “It's worth
trying. She's got influence. The council of magistrates on D'neera gives her anything she asks for. In the Polity there's the Contact director. Jameson. He knows all the commissioners. Some of them are holdovers from when he was on the Commission. He knows everybody in I&S, too. And he owes her. God, does he owe her! But he won't care about that.”

Michael sat down suddenly and put his head in his hands. He wondered if Hanna knew as much about him as he knew about her.

*   *   *

She had forgotten. She woke without strength, still fevered, and alone. She was not altogether awake. With enormous effort she propped herself on her right elbow, swaying. There was something on her left wrist and she lifted her hand, which seemed heavier than rock, and looked at it intently. It was close to her face, brown and out of focus; it seemed to have floated there. She examined it as well as she could for the blurring. A medical monitor bracelet gleamed at her, silvery. She reached suddenly for the chain at her throat, lost her balance, and fell back.

The bracelet had done its job and signaled someone. She was lifted and there was a steady arm behind her back. A hand held a cup to her lips. She swallowed clear water, the sweetest draught she had ever drunk. Her mouth was sand-dry and she sucked at the water greedily. Pieces of the world came back one by one. She looked into Michael Kristofik's unmistakable eyes. She remembered doing it before—but the memory slipped away.
I
will help you,
she thought. Or was it,
Help me!

He moved so that her head, which she was not strong enough to hold up, lay against his shoulder. Fogged with fever, unsure where she left off and he began, she felt his pleasure in holding her. She thought that was odd. And sorted through the broken pieces of the recent past that came back a little at a time. And remembered.

“God. Oh, God.”

“What? What is it?”

Awnlee. Rubee. I must contact
—

She made pictures of Awnlee and Rubee dead and alone in the
Bird,
and the hive of Admin waiting for her call. He said, “They've found the ship. They know.”

There were tears in her eyes. She had not cried for a long time and the wetness was strange and awkward. She cried for Awnlee, her friend, and Rubee, who had extended kinship to her. It seemed the event had happened a moment ago. She knew it had not, time had passed, and there were things she must do, if only she could stop crying. But she could not, it was beyond her strength, and she was angry. Michael held her and made sounds of consolation. She remembered that he was connected with Castillo. She tried to push him away; she hated him. She made him feel it, and knew it wounded him.

He said in distress, “Oh, no, I had nothing to do with it, I only came later and found you,” and it was the truth, but how could it be? He knew Castillo. He had known the monster for lifetimes, the beast of flame.

Don't touch me, don't touch me!
she cried, and heard him swear. He let her down gently and leaned over her, painfully anxious. It added to her confusion; he treated her as an intimate might.

Short as the episode had been, she was exhausted. She could not lift a hand again, not even to wipe the tears from her face. He did it, uncannily responsive; then he kissed her eyes, each in turn. She was paralyzed with rage; she threw it at his head like a weapon. It hurt him. She did not know why. How could he do that to a stranger and then be surprised by her fury?

She could not sustain anger; she drifted away. She wondered if she would ever again in her life be strong enough and well enough to do anything besides sleep.

Michael stayed beside her until he knew she had gone back into the dark. It only took a minute. He thought that he would keep away from her. Perhaps when she was stronger and rational, he could explain. Perhaps by then he would be himself again.

When it was “night” he slept in the lounge. He dreamed of Claire, Claire of the moonlit hair and milky skin, Claire who had agreed to marry him. Then he dreamed a dream that was an accurate memory, except that he was in a dark, threatening emptiness instead of the comfortable dome-mounted flat he had occupied ten years ago.

“I disobeyed a direct order,” Kareem said. “You can do what you think best about that.”

He looked so peculiar that Michael was alarmed. “It's that serious? I'm poor, or something?”

“You told me not to run confirmation on Claire's background. Because if she found out someday, she'd be hurt.”

A light answer died on Michael's tongue; he looked at Kareem's face and could not say a word. Kareem said, “I did it anyway. You have to know. She's an I&S agent.”

When Michael could speak again he said, “She can't be.”

“She's not even real. They made her up, she turned herself into what they thought you'd want. I'm sorry, Mike. I'm so sorry.”

He woke sweating. No one else was in the lounge. The video screen was in the middle of a biography of Hanna. He did not look at it. He knew enough about Hanna. No wonder he had dreamed of Claire; he had thought that he knew her well.

Early each “morning” Shen, faithfully grumbling but faithfully, went to bathe Hanna. This morning while she was gone, Lise brought Michael and Theo coffee in the lounge. The video screen yammered on. Starr Jameson answered questions about Uskos. Michael watched him with unfriendly eyes. The man had not wanted Hanna. Only an idiot would not want Hanna. Therefore Jameson was an idiot. Simple logic.

GeeGee
finished with Jameson, searched, and landed in the middle of a statement by a woman of D'neera. She spoke with a faint accent, as if, among themselves, D'neerans shifted Standard pronunciation to suit their own ideas of correctness. Michael had heard no such accent in Hanna's speech, but she had spent much time on Earth. The eyes of the image were eerily like Hanna's, widely spaced and the same deep shade of blue. D'neera's founding population had been small; those splendid eyes might be common there. H'ana's intimates, the woman said, were convinced she was alive. She was held hostage, no doubt. D'neera had complete faith in the Polity's ability to rescue H'ana from her captors.

“That's us,” Lise said, excited.

“So it is,” Michael said.

Theo said, “Maybe we should go ahead and contact I&S. Tell them what happened.”

“I want her to tell them. Think she could do it today?”

“No. Maybe tomorrow, but I'm not even sure about that.”

“She's not out of danger yet, is she?”

“Not weak as she is. Don't push her.”

“Can he kiss her?” Lise asked.

Theo blushed. He mumbled, “That was just because of what they were doing with their heads.”

“Not that time. Later.”

“Later?” Theo said. He looked at Michael suspiciously.

“Where were you?” Michael said to Lise.

“In the door. You didn't see me. She didn't like it.”

“No,” he admitted.

“You shouldn't do it again. She's too sick. Theo said so.”

“I suppose you're right,” he said.

*   *   *

GeeGee
kept music going behind the anonymous noises of the 'beams. A choir of male voices chanted in unison in a long-dead language. The solemn songs had echoes behind them, as if the singers stood in a cavernous space and drew deeply on the hollow past.
Nostra corda fove laetitia prabe praesidia,
they sang: Warm our hearts with happiness, offer us thy protection!

The structure of Michael's life in these last years had been carefully planned. He had worked hard to make it as it was: peace, freedom, security, beauty. It had not been enough, but he had valued it.

It disintegrated and dissolved.

Kareem Mar-Kize, having proved uncooperative, was restricted politely to his home. Michael did not try to call him. It could not help; it could only harm.

Emma Maurello, apprehended for unspecified reasons, had disappeared into I&S custody—into, no doubt, the half-world of the probe. It would take from her the details of their sweet shared nights and they would never be hers or his again.

The banking officials of Kingstown, where most Shoreground money went, froze all of Michael's holdings. It was possible that they would be irrevocably seized with an eye
toward reparations. His credit was rescinded so that even if he were fool enough to land somewhere and try to use it, he would be a pauper.

I&S personnel from offworld overran his home. If he closed his eyes he could see it as clearly as if he were there: cats glared from trees and stairways, dogs whined outside closed doors, the F'thalian tourmaline balled up under his bed and hid and starved.

Fast little Fleet scouts fanned out through human space to every habitat, mining station, or satellite that supported a human settlement. Revenge would be on the list. The People of the Rose would show an incredulous I&S that Michael had been on Revenge during the taking of the
Far-Flying Bird.
The hunt would be widened to include B, but it would not slacken for Michael. B would know that, too; know, when he heard this, that his time was gone. Then he would flee forever. The secret would go with him, while everything that might have been left to Michael here vanished, too.

He heard again and again about the
Pavonis Queen.
If five years' grace between the event and his linkage with it had not saved him from the scrutiny of I&S, at least it had kept him from the attention of the public. Now the crime was resurrected and greeted with a clamor. It would not be forgotten again.