The D’neeran Factor (86 page)

“You won't.”

He could not console her. He smoothed the hair at her temples, and she felt a great tenderness in him.

“Hanna, nothing lasts,” he said. “Nothing lasts.”

She shook her head, but it was hardly a denial at all, so great was his conviction. It had always been true for him. And he might have been a madman—she thought then that he was—but he was not bitter or cynical or in search of pity. Instead she felt only his compassion—for Hanna, looking toward loss she could not even gauge accurately yet; and for all the others who had hoped for shelter, and when they had found it, saw it blow away.

*   *   *

There was no formal countdown. There was only, as the time neared, a slow move toward Control; Hanna joined it.
GeeGee
Jumped just as she entered Control. The stars outside were achingly familiar. Dead ahead, brilliant but not yet a naked-eye disc, was Hanna's own sun.

“One more Jump,” Theo said. He fell silent as a strange voice sounded in Control, calling for identification. No one answered. Soon the air rippled with D'neeran voices, first startled at this unscheduled arrival, then impatient at the absence of response, and at last exceedingly cold.

Michael talked over the murmur, running through the plan one last time.

“At ten minutes before landfall, Theo and Lise go down to the main passenger hatch. Theo, you use manual override to open the inner seal so there'll be no delay on the ground. At five minutes, you two—” he looked at Shen and Hanna, “—get Mencken and take him down. Don't take any chances with him. Pick up stunners on your way and drag him out feet first if you have to. I'll pop the outer hatch from up here when we're down. Don't waste a second. Get out and run like hell. I'll be monitoring you and I can't take off till you're clear, understand?”

Hanna was bitter with resentment. That last was unnecessary; he did not need to play on their anxiety for his clean escape to make them move fast. But perhaps he had said it because of Lise, who was already in tears at a parting she
thought temporary. Theo stayed close to Lise; Hanna thought he was assigned to keep her under control.

Shen said, “You're at optimum for atmospheric moves. The landside program's laid in.”

“Jump her, then.”

And there, without a whisper or sensation of movement, was the world of Hanna's birth. The light of its sun, a near-twin to Sol, shone into Control. D'neera was between the ship and the star so that they saw the planet's nightside, the great black circle rimmed with light. Hanna was coming home. To blue and lavender, dew-washed meadows, the horses on the fields of morning, the duties of her House—

(—and the voices,
said a whisper,
that send you here and there; submitting to the Polity, treading amongst its rules; what else is there? See what happens to those who step outside, oh yes Outside indeed
—)

GeeGee
started her preprogrammed descent, an arc of wild speed that would take her round the planet fully three times before she braked for landfall on the day-side. “Start talking,” Michael said to Hanna urgently, she remembered what she had to do and heard the shocked voices now, the men and women wondering if they would have to shoot. She identified herself, stumbling over the words, unreasonably giving the birth-name unused since childhood instead of her name in Koroth's House, by which she was better known: “It's H'ana Bassanio, don't fire, I'm just coming—”

Home.
She could not say the word.

GeeGee
skidded through the terminator and leapt into full light. Below there was dazzling white cloud. Hanna heard herself talking, making sense maybe to someone but not to herself. Because there were other voices at her back and she heard them as if they were the only sounds in the silence of deep space.

Lise said, “But can you fly
Gee
by yourself?”

“You could fly
Gee
by yourself.”

“If they shoot at you, they'll only make you land? Sure?”

“I'm sure. Go on, little puss. It's time to go.”

“But what if they hit something else?”

“They won't. They're good.”

“But if they do, you'll
crash.
”

Hanna's head jerked right around. She said brutally, “He doesn't care if he does.”

GeeGee
flashed into the dark again. Control was full of shadows. Michael walked purposefully toward Hanna. She saw the gold-flecked eyes with clarity in the half-dark, as if they had a light of their own. It took him perhaps two seconds to reach her, but for Hanna time slowed and stopped and the world she had always known turned over. She heard his intent to shut her up, and his rapid calculation of the changes in plan that must be made to offload an unconscious Hanna.

In the last split second, in a single devastating pulse of thought, she told the others exactly what Michael meant to do.

He heard it, too; he knew what she had done and what it meant. They would revolt as soon as they grasped it. They would not let him set them free.

And here it was: the rage she had forgotten burst out like an oily cloud with screams in it. His face changed.
Not Mike. I don't know who this is but not Mike.
A creature hardly human leapt for Hanna's throat. She dived and rolled. Her mind ticked over in an endless second, analyzing. If he knew anything about fighting, the fury had wiped it out. He was fast, though, and she barely got out of the way of the next lunge. Time still was slowed and everything in it was preternaturally clear. Lise wailed, paralyzed with a terror that was half longing to help Michael and half animal recognition that this was no longer Michael but a thing that ought not be helped, a thing he would not wish her to help. Theo was white as a corpse. Shen was busy with
GeeGee,
looking over her shoulder as often as she dared.

She was going to have to hurt him to stop him; if she could; before he caught her and killed her with his hands.

She picked a direction. Two more lunges; two more calculated, dangerous dodges that brought her up with her back to the swiveling seats before an auxiliary control console. When he came at her again, she caught the outstretched arm, bent, shifted—and heaved him over her shoulder headfirst. She spun and pounced like a cat. He was wedged between two seats, struggling to get up, all coordination gone in the passion to destroy. She kicked him on the jaw without compunction and it had no effect at all; so she sprang to the top of the console and crouched and waited. When he came up at last, back half-turned to her, she hit him at the base of the skull
with the edge of her hand. She had to do it twice more before he went down. Then he was still.

GeeGee
skimmed back into the light. Shen swore, hissing.

“Gotta pull out,” she said. “Theo. Come help.”

Hanna slipped from the console to the floor. She pulled at Michael to turn him over, and Lise helped her; when he was on his back, she got his head into her lap and held him. His mouth bled where her foot had smashed it. The pulse in his throat faltered under her fingers and her own heart nearly stopped; then the beat steadied to a slow but strong rhythm. She nearly wept with relief. Control was full of voices, it seemed that all of D'neera and the Polity were shouting at her. It was dark again, and then light as
GeeGee,
no longer on her programmed course, broke out over one planetary pole; whether north or south the disoriented Hanna could not tell. “H'ana!” said a woman's voice, she knew the sound of it, the Lady of Koroth called her. Shen's lips were drawn back from her teeth; that was, Hanna saw with astonishment, a smile of sorts. Shen fed
GeeGee
a Jump order; they were nearly away. All the Polity's gunboats had been plunging for projected landing sites, and the change in course had taken them by surprise.

Michael's eyes opened, their color strangely faded; all Hanna saw was the gold. Almost at once he looked up at her with knowledge. She smoothed his hair and it felt like silk to her hand.

He pulled himself to his feet just as
GeeGee
Jumped. Hanna gave him her shoulder to lean on. He did not reject it; he needed support and so he accepted it, eternally the realist. He whispered, “Stay here,” and she let him go. The tall figure staggered and she thought of the spiral stairs. Theo started after him and she said:
No. He'll be all right.
She added aloud before Theo could respond, “How is he after that happens to him?”

“After what happens?” Theo was puzzled. “Getting beat up by a girl half his size?”

Shen muttered, “Told him he'd got soft.”

“The fit, I mean. The craziness. When he turns into somebody else.”

Theo looked as if he wanted to deny that anything had happened. He said, “I never saw it before.”

“I saw the start of it once and I haven't been around very long. You must know what I mean.”

“All right. All right. I guess I've seen the start of it, too. But I never saw him lose control before. I mean, he could always stop it. He told me, once he told me there were times before when he didn't. But I never saw the whole thing before.”

Shen looked at a scanner and said, “We're clear. Nobody around.” She made an evil noise that Hanna recognized, after a moment, as a chuckle.

“I have to look at his head,” Theo said.

“Not yet. Unless you want to handle him if he starts up again.”

“No,” Theo said with alarm. “No, I don't.”

Shen said abruptly, “Good thing you did that, told us what you did. Outside, huh? If he wasn't shot down first?”

“That's right.” Reaction was setting in. He could have crushed her skull between his hands; the thought made her weak. The silver chain bound for Uskos was chokingly tight.

“Can't get rid of us that easy,” Shen said. “You're all right.”

Hanna did not say anything to that. Shen would not expect it.

She made herself wait a little longer. When five minutes had gone by, she passed through
GeeGee
to Michael's room, stopping on the way to take a stunner from the cabinet where
GeeGee
's small store of arms was kept. But she knew at once, when she went through his door, that she would not need it. The room was dark except for the glow of starlight; he lay on the bed looking up into the dark. She came to him and touched him, and found that his hair and face and shoulders were wet. He had put his head under cold water.

She stretched out at his side, but he did not speak. Hanna ached as if it were she who had been hit.

“Michael,” she said, but there was no answer. She turned and leaned over him in the dark. She put her hands on him and his body was foreign to her as an alien substance. In his rage he had fallen into a dream; he was in it still, and in Hanna, seeing it, recognition woke. Snow and flame and a blood-red sky. A child crying with pain.

She whispered his name at intervals, until finally he moved, remembering her. She could not say anything about
what she had done. Intead she said as steadily as she could, and practically: “When did you start having those attacks?”

To her surprise he answered, perhaps because he was so beaten that it did not matter. But he talked as if speaking hurt.

“The first time was—the night I got away—onto Alta.”

There was a jolt of fear and flight. Castillo.

“Got away from
him?
”

“Yes.” The quiet voice was hoarse, as if he had been screaming. Perhaps he had, down here where no one could hear.

“How long were you with him?”

“I don't know. Months, I think…There were never any clocks. I guessed about day and night. I got bigger…I knew we'd landed somewhere. He went out and came back drunk. He forgot to lock the door. It was the first time he ever forgot and I tried to run out and he caught me. It was always bad, but it was worse that night…”

His voice trailed away. She saw a picture of explicit sexual brutality, an agonized child caught in terror and helpless rage. She said, her own voice not quite steady, “He gave me to the others, but he never touched me himself, not once. I never thought about it. If I had, I'd have thought he only liked men.”

Michael said, “Only when he can't get little boys.”

“You must have been an exquisite child.”

“That's why he took—” The ragged voice stopped.

“Took you away from where, Mike?”

The silence lengthened in despair. She was whispering again, and shaking. “You don't know, do you?”

He turned his head away; he was trembling, too. She said with urgency, as if the quick question let her leap an abyss without looking down, “How did you get away?”

“He passed out…”So faint she heard more thought than words. “There was something—heavy—I can't remember what it was. I got it—somehow I got it up. I couldn't hold things, I, my hands—”

She thought he was going to choke. She stroked his cheek, willing him to breathe. “Your hands were injured. Did he do that?”

“He saw it done. When he—took me on board—he tried to fix them. So I could use them for him. On him. He was,
he was satisfied with how they came out. He liked, liked ruining things, I think. And so I dropped it on his head—” He was entirely unaware of a disjuncture. “I didn't remember until later. That was the first time.”

“And then you ran out?”

“Yes.”

“Got off the ship?”

“Somehow. I don't remember. Hanna, don't you see what you've done?”

Another whisper. “I know what I did…”

“I can't take the rest of you Outside.” He was trying patiently to explain. “Lise and Theo and Shen, they've got a right to a real life. We can't just fly around forever with no place to land. But they won't let me give myself up. That's why I had to leave them behind…” His voice trailed away.
GeeGee
closed in on them, claustrophobic.