The D’neeran Factor (84 page)

“Guess,” Michael said.

His last call was to Earth. He got a lot of people out of bed while he tracked down Emma Maurello. He found her at a medical center near Admin and the caretakers there got her out of bed, too; it seemed that notoriety gave Michael a certain importance. Emma was a tear-stained wraith. She was not recovering as she ought from the I&S probe. She would not meet his eyes and when he spoke to her with tenderness, she wept. She said something he could not disentangle from the sobs. “What was that?” he said. “What is it, dear Emma?”

“I hate you. I hate you,” she said.

After that he sat for a long time with his face in his hands.
Dear Emma, good-bye.
The sound of Lise's breathing disturbed him. He had wanted to be to her, at the least, what the monks of St. Kristofik had been to him; he had meant to watch her grow up.
Good-bye, little puss.

*   *   *

A few hours later, after all the waiting, it was time.

Hanna sat in the lounge where Theo had put her and looked out at the stars. If she were to go closer to the transparency and look toward her left, toward
GeeGee
's nose, she might see the ship of the Polity that had come to rescue her. She sat on the edge of a divan with her fingers gripping it as if she might fall off. She had no possessions to take with her; she owned none. There was only the silver chain at her throat. She knew nothing of the procedure for transferring her to the Polity vessel. Now she wondered about it, and when Theo put his head into the lounge, to make sure she was still there, she asked him.

He said, staying where he was, “Somebody's boarding with a suit for you. We don't have any to spare.”

“They can't dock a shuttle—?”

“No, of course not. We're not big enough to take one in. Why? Can't you use a maneuvers pack?”

“Yes, of course. I just thought—wouldn't it be easier to dock
GeeGee
in the other craft? Or is it too small, too?”

“It's big,” Theo said. “But that would be stupid. Once they had us in there we might not get out. No, this way we keep some distance between us and them, see?”

“I see. Will I see Michael before I go?”

“You wouldn't if it was up to me,” Theo said honestly.

“No?” She looked at him as closely as she could from where she sat; he still had only one foot inside the lounge, as if he were impatient to get away from her.

“It's really not my fault,” she said.

“No, I guess not, but the result's the same.”

“He has some kind of plan, hasn't he? If it goes wrong?”

“If he did, would I tell you?” Theo gave her an incredulous look and withdrew.

She waited, thinking of nothing except anxiety. It ought to be only for her own safe return to civilization, but it was not. Presently Shen came and led her to Control, and there was Michael. He was not quite calm, but Hanna saw that what he felt at this moment was not unpleasurable. There was excitement in him, a bright edge of daring. He was going to see what he could get away with.

She began to understand more about the
Pavonis Queen
affair.

The Polity ship lay not far from
GeeGee
's nose, outlined in light. No one in Control was doing anything, but one display module showed the two ships and, between them, a pinpoint of light that moved. Hanna shivered. It did not take much effort to find out why. The last time she had watched a blip of light approach, Awnlee had been huddled at her side.

She moved at the thought, and Michael glanced at her for the first time. She said awkwardly, “I guess it's time to say good-bye.”

He said, “Think so? We'll see. He's supposed to be unarmed—” Michael pointed at the dot of light—“but we've got no way to tell.
GeeGee
doesn't have detection sensors for things like that. They said we had to be all together up here. I don't like that.”

“Couldn't you refuse?”

“Sure. Then they would have had to think of something else. I hope this is as obvious as it looks.”

GeeGee
said suddenly, “He's approaching the lock. He says the agreement was, you all have to be visible to the craft standing by. Except the one who comes to get him.”

“All right. Link us up. Go, Theo. Fetch.”

Theo left them.
GeeGee
said they could be seen by the Polity vessel's crew, but the transmission was one way; there were no voices or faces from the other ship. They waited in silence, Hanna and Michael and Shen.

Hanna opened her mouth to say: Where is Lise?

Then she shut it without speaking.

Theo came into Control with a spacesuited man behind him. A patch on the shoulder of the suit showed a name: Mencken. Mencken had removed his helmet and it hung loosely from his hands. He looked at the others clustered at the farthest point of Control and said, “How are you, Lady Hanna?”

“I'm fine, thank you.”

“Everybody's here? Good,” he said, and dropped the helmet. There was a stungun in his hand. He said, “Come over here with me, Lady Hanna.”

But she stood beside Michael and said, “I hoped you were acting in good faith.”

“Necessity, ma'am. Please come over here.”

And still she would not have moved, if Michael had not given her a push. She went then to stand beside Mencken. She looked at Michael anxiously. If he was going to do anything, he had better not wait much longer.

“That's right,” Mencken said. He lifted one wrist to his mouth and said, “All right, Commander. You can send the others over now.”

Hanna thought she had made a grave mistake. She thought she had overestimated Michael's intelligence. Nonetheless she turned in a single swift movement, kicking. The point of her toe caught Mencken's hand and the stungun went flying.

At the same moment he grunted and went down like a rock. Lise stood behind him, another stunner held in both her hands, her eyes wide with responsibility.

*   *   *

They moved fast after that.

“If you shoot,” Michael pointed out to the faceless commander from the Polity, “your own man goes up in atoms. Not to mention Hanna. And you want me alive, too, right? So don't shoot. And you'd better put some distance behind us because we're going to Jump. Now.”

“What about Mr. Mencken?” said a cold voice.

“I'll think about it. That's nice EVA stuff he's got. Did he even bring gear for Hanna? I guess he did, that's where he hid the gun, wasn't it? Maybe we'll dump him at a relay someplace.”

The voice said, “Where'd the kid come from?”

“She's been here all along. What did you think I did? Carved her up and ate her? Get moving. For your own good.”

“Lady Hanna?”

Hanna did not answer.
GeeGee
broke the audio link; the two ships moved apart. They were alone again, except for the unconscious Mencken sprawled in the door.

“They're clear enough,” Shen said. “Now,
Gee.
” She touched a switch and the field of stars changed and the Polity ship was not there any more.

Michael stood looking at Hanna as if he had never seen her before. She said, “I don't know why I did that.”

“Fair play,” he suggested. He said it as if the idea were funny. “All you had to do was nothing.”

“You didn't tell me that. You didn't trust me.”

“True,” he said. “But there was something else, too. If you were caught the way he was, they couldn't say you had anything to do with it.”

“Now's a little late to be telling me that,” she said.

*   *   *

Hiero-volan Mencken of I&S was shut into a small cabin over engineering. There were three such rooms there, former servants' quarters, bare and isolated. He made a lot of noise at first. Presently he was quiet, but no one on
GeeGee
forgot he was there. His anger was spread from end to end of the
Golden Girl,
a subliminal thunder that underlay all their hours. When it was time to take him food, Michael and Shen went to him together, armed and implacable.

Hanna, unable to account for herself, turned to other
things. She wanted no part of keeping Mencken locked up and she wanted no part of whatever plans the others might make. To keep from thinking, she found her way to the gymnasium on
GeeGee
's upper level. It was dark there, not because it was supposed to be, but because Hanna turned off most of the lights as if to hide from herself her own lingering weakness. There she stretched, pulled, bent, reached, until her muscles ached and trembled and she was covered with sweat. The small chamber was deep inside the
Golden Girl,
entirely enclosed, and the only stars Hanna saw were those exertion floated in her field of vision. The only other things to see were padded walls hung with mechanical devices that looked like weapons, or like instruments of torture. She had always been bursting with health, taut and fit as a sleek young animal, except when the People of Zeig-Daru had taken her apart. She had not liked weakness then and she did not like it now, and struggled with it bitterly. The work kept her from listening to immaterial echoes of Mencken's fury, but it could not stop her from thinking altogether. This still was not her fight, or her flight. She was not needed; Michael and Lise would have managed quite well without her.

She caught herself thinking, was enraged, and punished her unfaithful body. She could not let it continue to be weak.

She did not give up until she hurt everywhere, every muscle throbbed; there was also a pain low in her abdomen that made her straighten, panting, at a new thought. The medic at Halber in Province Koroth, where she had gone briefly on assignment for her House. When had the trip been? Exactly when?

(“…and so after regeneration, nothing was done about fertility control. It was not necessary. I had only one lover afterward, and he was sterile by choice. Not that I did not want
—
but he did not—”

“I understand. And now you wish
—?
”

“Yes. Please.”

“You're celibate, I hear. Then why—?”

“Why not?”

“I
don't recommend implants unless there is need. I have, oh, a prejudice against tampering unneeded.”

“But the bother. And the aches. Every thirty-five days!”

“You don't need an implant to control that; only as a guard against conception.”

“But I want it! I'll go elsewhere.”

“No, I'll do it. For how long? Three years or five?”

“Twenty?”

“At your age? That I won't do.”

“All right, then. Five years.”)

Five years Standard, or D'neeran? If D'neeran, she was safe, she could not have gotten a child by rape. If Standard—well, if Standard, she should be safe, too, though the margin was terribly narrow.

Safe or not, she stood with her back to the door and rubbed her belly cautiously. She had stripped to briefs and tied a scarf tightly around her breasts, but otherwise she was naked, and the skin she touched was hot and slick with sweat. When she looked down, the scar of Theo's surgery stood out like a red beacon.

The lights came up, startling her. “Are you all right?” Michael said.

She turned quickly, thinking that she was safe nowhere. The people of the
Golden Girl
appeared and disappeared at random like particles subject to continuous creation and demolition, as if they had some basic right to materialize in her life.

“I'm fine. Why?”

“Oh, nothing. I just—”

His eyes were peculiar.
I just saw you touch yourself like a woman suspecting new life,
said his thought.

“You ought to have a pool,” Hanna said at random.

“Huh.” He was distracted; his eyes danced. “I went to Earth on a Dru once, years ago when I was a Friend. It had a pool. Halfway between Valentine and Earth something went wrong with the grav stabilizers. One minute we were three times our weight and the next it was free fall. There was water everywhere pretty soon—except in the pool. Ever thought you'd drown in your own bed?”

She saw his memory of the sodden luxury craft and the bedraggled passengers, nearly laughed, then bit it off. She stood stiffly, a sullen droop to her shoulders. So he could surprise her into laughter; it was good to know. She could guard against it.

He watched the smile fade from her eyes. “I want you to tell me about D'neera,” he said.

“Why?” she said.

“I want to dump you. Also him from I&S. Also my friends. I go alone the rest of the way.”

“What way is that?”

“I've got friends on Valentine; maybe they can get something done if I hide long enough.”

He might as well have put out a sign that said “evasion,” though he had lied to Stiva Waller with flair and precision. But the first part had been true. He meant to go alone from here.

“Why D'neera?” Hanna said, but guessed the answer. “A more humane place for your friends to be caught?”

“I hope so. Will it be?”

“It should be. Especially if I'm there.”

“Then tell me this,” he said. “Suppose we turn up at the closest possible Jump terminus to D'neera. Shen estimates—if I push
GeeGee
to the limit and slow down for nothing—
GeeGee
can land, offload passengers, and get back to Jump-legal space in thirty minutes. What I want to know is what's going to stop me.”

“D'neerans aren't.” The sweat had dried; she was getting cold in the blazing light. “What do D'neerans care about you? There's nothing to stop you.”

“You're wrong,” he said. “You gave your sympathies away, back there. I always meant to go on to D'neera if they tried something like they tried, but it wouldn't have been an obvious move before. After what they saw you do, it is. There'll be a welcoming committee from the Polity waiting for me.”