The Voices of Heaven (34 page)

Sure, it was a stupid idea. But it was the best idea I had, and I had to do something.

I don't know if I ever would have found the nest by myself. By the time I got to the slopes of those "Rockies," I was beginning to doubt it. I'd had to wade three streams and swim one. I was wet and my legs were sore, and I had about come to suspect that I might have bitten off more than I was going to be able to chew.

I thought about turning back.

The trouble with that was that I wasn't really sure how to get back to the fuel-cutting camp, either, and there wasn't anyone around to ask. I wasn't alone in the woods. I could hear distant whickerings and squeals from the local wildlife, but none I could identify, and none that sounded as if they would be of any help. I was on my own, and I was getting really tired. I reached in my pocket for another of those little white pills to start my motor spinning again.

There wasn't any. The pills were all gone. I'd taken the whole two dozen-odd.

It occurred to me that I probably hadn't been very smart about those pills. I probably wasn't being smart about this notion of going up to the lep nests by myself, either. But, since I seemed to have run out of smart ideas, I thought I might as well continue with a dumb one.

I kept on going.

I kept on for a long time—I don't know how long, but at some point along the way I happened to notice the sun was well up in the sky. What made me notice it was that the rain was over and it had become hot. I was sweating. I was beginning to feel really spacey, too. I felt as though I were being followed. I kept seeing little movements in the brush. I even thought I caught a glimpse of somebody, or something, slipping hurriedly out of sight.

What that something could have been I had no real idea. It crossed my mind that it might be something nasty, something like one of those ugly predators that were supposed to be almost, but not quite, extinct in these parts. I didn't let that stop me. I paused for a breather, leaning against a water tree, with my eyes half-closed. If something was hunting me, the best defense was a sudden attack, I told myself, and when I saw that movement again I jumped for it. Crashed into a sticky, prickly bush. Grabbed what was behind it.

It wasn't a killer snake or a dinowolf or any of the other unpleasant things I'd imagined. It was a lep.

The thing didn't want me holding on to it. It struggled energetically in my grasp. I'd never really felt what a lep was like until then—not slimy, as I'd sort of expected, and not cold either; it was like the skin of a pretty woman, kitten-soft and puppy-warm.

"Got you!" I shouted.

The lep stopped wriggling. He lay quiet for a moment, the giant, blotchy eyes turned on me. I'd seen him before somewhere, I thought, maybe around Freehold, maybe in the nests.

He made a hissing sound, as though he'd made up his mind to something. Then he said, "You are Barrydihoa. You are the friend of the person presently undergoing transformation, Geronimo."

I eased up on my grip. "I am," I agreed. "I just want to talk to you."

He stated, "I do not wish that."

"Come on, damn it! Please! I want to clear this problem up. What-ever's wrong, there must be something we can do to make it right."

He released himself from me and raised himself up, peering at me. "That is not desired."

"Do you desire that I die out here? Because I might. I'm going to keep on trying to find your nests, whether you help me or not!"

He pondered that for a moment, hissing to himself. Then he shrank down again and began to move away. "You may follow me," he said. "I will take you to our nests, where we will take advice."

And, as you know, that's what he did.

Here again, you're probably in a better position than I to remember what happened when I got there. By then I was really spaced out—with fatigue, sure, but also with the delayed effects of those two dozen little white pills. I remember seeing you, Merlin. I even remember talking to you. I remember pleading with you to call off the boycott so we could all be friends together again, and what you told me about what Becky Khaim-Novello had done, and how sadly you explained that there were things leps simply could not accept. But it's all really hazy, because I was. The last thing I remember was mentioning that I needed to lie down, please, for just a moment, and that was all I remembered at all clearly until I was back in Freehold with Dr. Billygoat bending over me.

I suppose some of you guys had somehow dragged me back to town; Billy said they'd found me snoring away in front of this office. "Jesus," he added, more wondering than angry, "you do come up with all different kinds of ways of screwing things up, don't you, Barry? Did it ever occur to you that you're a lot more trouble than you're worth?"

"But the problem was all Becky Khaim-Novello's fault," I told him. "She tried to make Saladin clean her apartment. Merlin told me so himself. That's why the leps are shunning us, because when he wouldn't do what she told him Becky picked up a stick and hit him."

"So what?"

"So we have to apologize to them! Make them understand we're not all like that!"

"Barry," Billy said, "listen closely to what I'm going to say to you now, okay?
I
don't care. Whatever Becky did, it's done, and we'll just have to live with it. Nobody wants you messing around with the leps and maybe just making things worse. I certainly don't want that, personally. All I really want is for you to take your problems somewhere else and get the hell out of my life for good. Please."

24

THAT is it, then, Barrydihoa. You said it for your self. This Billygoethe person had no concern that the Beckykhaimnovello person had physically abused one of our people. This cannot be overlooked.

Oh, hell, Merlin, he didn't mean anything by it. It was me he was really pissed off at, not you guys.

It was not the Billygoethe person alone. Was it not then generally known that Beckykhaimnovello had transgressed against behavioral norms?

You bet it was. I told everybody that. I even told them about all the good things you'd done, like how some leps must have rigged up a travois or something to drag me back to Freehold, probably saving my life.

Was Beckykhaimnovello, then, in your term, "punished" for her behavior?

Well, no, I didn't say that.

I have to admit Becky wasn't exactly punished. Not then, anyway. I think she probably would have been, sooner or later. Somehow. But, as it turned out, that wasn't necessary.

Anyway, you have to realize that I was not considered a very reliable witness at the time and things were in crazy shape in Freehold. All sorts of things were going wrong. There were power cutbacks because there wasn't enough biofuel coming down to feed the generator; everybody was worried about what would happen to our crops without any lep helpers;
Buccaneer
was coming close to its parking orbit and everybody was excited about that; Friar Tuck was making things worse by going around and telling all the Millenarists that he'd always known I was just a troublemaker. People were beginning to feel a little bit ashamed that they'd ever listened to me, and so naturally turned right to the other side—there just was too much going on to worry about whether Becky Khaim-Novello had lost her temper and whacked a lep.

Or to worry much about me, for that matter.

I can understand that. I must have struck most people as a thoroughly unwanted nuisance. I don't blame them for what they did.

Billygoat may not have been much of a doctor, but he had some real good fix-up drugs on his shelves. He gave me some shots and pills and vitamins and tucked me in. After a good night's sleep I was ready for action again. I thought so, anyway. Billygoat gave me a quick check and said the same thing.

As a matter of fact, he used those exact words. "I think you're ready for action again, Barry," he said, speaking fast and sounding rehearsed. "And I've got good news for you.
Buccaneer
's in full deceleration mode. It'll be in low orbit in a couple of days. Then we'll be shipping antimatter from both ships to the factory—as soon as it's ready to receive—and we're going to send you up to the factory now to check it out!"

I had no real reason to think he was lying to me, but alarm bells were beginning to go off in my head. I said cautiously, "Really?"

"Absolutely! If you're up to it, I mean. How do you feel? Ready to takeoff?"

"Ready and willing," I said, getting up. That was paying back a lie with a lie, because by then I had no doubt that all Billygoat's good cheer was fake.

What I didn't know yet was what was behind it, but the best way I could see to find that out was to go along with him. I did. I observed that Billygoat was nervous as he led me out to the waiting car, nervous still, and uncommunicative as we drove down the hill and along the river to the landing strip. The trip gave me plenty of time to try to guess at what was going on, but time wasn't enough. What I needed was facts, and I didn't have them. By the time we got to the strip I didn't know any more than I had the minute after I woke up: Billygoat was concealing something, I wasn't in any doubt of that, but I couldn't imagine what his secret was.

The shuttle was standing there on its stilly legs, Jillen Iglesias peering at me out of the doorway. Suspicious as I was, double-checking everything for signs of some kind of treachery, I noticed something about Jillen that also struck me as peculiar. Her face was drawn, as though she'd been crying. I was almost certain that was the case. Yet I couldn't see how that might connect with Billygoat's little deceptions.

On the other hand, what I thought did connect, Jacky Schottke, Theophan Sperlie and half a dozen other friends and acquaintances were standing around there to see me off.

Theophan was the first to come up to me. "Good luck, Barry," she said, and leaned forward to kiss me. Then the others lined up to wish me well.

That was where the connection was. I had the powerful feeling that this was not really a cheering-me-on send-off. What it felt like was a good-bye-forever, permanent farewell.

Jillen watched impatiently for a moment, but no more than that. When she had had enough of this sentimental display she leaned out of the door and yelled: "Speed it up, will you? We have to go within the next five minutes if I want to make rendezvous." And I finished saying my good-byes and climbed the little ladder to get on board, all my antennae still out and wiggling in the search for whatever was going on.

Jillen wasn't in a welcoming mood. She was businesslike and remote, but she allowed me to take the copilot seat when I asked. She didn't have any reason not to; there were only the two of us in the shuttle, after all. We strapped down and sealed up, and a moment later we were flattened against our seat backs with the initial burn.

Ten minutes later we were clear of the atmosphere and Jillen began making the burns for rendezvous as I watched the board over her shoulder . . . and then I was sure of the answer.

I waited for the current burn to stop. Then I turned to her and smiled. "Did you know I used to be a spotter-ship pilot in the Belt?" I asked her.

The startled look she gave me lasted only a fraction of a second, but it confirmed my suspicions. If she ever had known that, it had slipped her mind.

"So," I said, waving at the orbit solutions drawn on the guidance screen, "I can read a screen pretty well. We aren't really going to the factory this trip, are we? It doesn't look that way to me. Matter of fact, I kind of suspected that was the way it was all along because, you know, nobody said a word about taking tools along." I grinned at her. "I couldn't do much on the factory without tools, could I? Of course, there could be an explanation for all that. There could be plenty of tools at the factory itself, and everybody might've just assumed I'd find them when I got there—"

She had recovered herself by then. "Yes, actually that's the way it was—"

But I stopped her. "Don't bother," I said. "I told you, I can read a screen. You're not a bad pilot, and I can see that we're over a hundred degrees out of phase for a rendezvous with the factory orbiter. So that's not where we're going. On the other hand, it looks to me as though we're right on target for
Corsair
. So tell me, Jillen, is that what you've been crying about? Because this whole thing is just a trick to get me out of the way? So you can stick me back in the freezer so I'll quit being a nuisance?"

I think I must have sounded pretty smug and superior. The reason I think that is that's how I felt. I was patting myself on the back about my brilliant deductive analysis. I really thought I had it figured out.

Surprisingly, Jillen just gave me a cold look.

"Don't flatter yourself," she said. Her tone was as nasty as her expression, too. "I've got better things to cry about than you. No, you're wrong, di Hoa. I don't mean you're wrong about us going to
Corsair
first; no, that part is right enough. But the reason for that is just because Captain Tscharka wants to talk to you before you go to the factory—and, uh, make sure you know where to find those tools when you get there."

I scowled at her, trying to figure out if she was lying to me. Partly I was sure she was—if only because I was convinced Billygoat had been. But partly I thought she was telling the truth—anyway, some truth—and I couldn't decide which part was which.

While I was thinking it over, the cycling beep sounded, and ten seconds later the next burn came. I was a little out of practice; I let the sudden thrust distract me for a second—and so I almost missed it when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw that she was reaching down for something stuck in the seat pocket beside her.

Almost, but not quite. I was, remember, pretty fast. I had a grip on her wrist even before I recognized what the thing she was grabbing for was.

What Jillen had pulled out of its hiding place was a spraydermic. Intended, of course, to be used on me. She struggled, but I had no trouble taking it away from her.

I thought that might make her start crying again. Indeed she looked as though she might, for a moment, but then she shook her head. "Why do you want to make things worse than they are, Barry?" she asked plaintively. "I was just supposed to give you a little shot to put you to sleep for a while. They can't deal with your problems down there now. You must know that; you're a nut. You need to get to an Earthside clinic if you're ever going to get any real help—Dr. Goethe says so. It was his idea that we put you back in the freezer and take you home. For your own good."