Mistworld

by Nina M. Osier

  “Of course it doesn't.” Emboldened by what he heard in her voice, and even more by what he felt in her thoughts, Linc let go of her hand and slipped his arm around her waist instead. “Look, the boys said they'd bring up contacting Maddy with the Mistworlders. I'm sure that if they—the Misties, I mean—think it's possible, with me as conduit, and if they're willing, we'll know about it soon enough. And for the record, I don't believe it was anything you said or did that set Ewan off like that. I think it really is that being confined to a body's no longer his natural state of being. Not while he's on this planet, anyway! And I'm afraid he really has overstayed his welcome as far as Ishi Sanibello's concerned. Which isn't your fault, either, my love."

  “No. But I still hated hearing it!” She shuddered in his one-armed embrace, and nestled closer against his side. “Linc, I don't want to lose them again. Ewan, or Bryce, or Marcus. All the time they were away from here, on board the SHIP or on Narsai, part of me couldn't help realizing that if anything happened to the bodies they were inhabiting they'd be gone. Forever, this time. Now they're back where that can't happen, but I didn't realize how much I was counting on still being able to see them in those bodies. The same ones, every time! I should be thinking about the mutiny, and being thankful that Narsai's got a chance of regaining its freedom. Instead I'm just realizing, finally, that you and I may never be able to go back. Not as long as there's still a Commonwealth ... and not as long as our going home might actually put our loved ones at needless risk."

  “So what will we do now?” Linc asked her, in his gentlest tone. They stopped, near the place where the grassland ended and the cliffs dropped away to the ocean below. After a moment of staring out over the sunlit water, he added without waiting for her to answer his question, “It must be dark already down by the shore. Astin and Nadja will be ready for supper by the time we get back."

  “Which means we'd better start walking now. And I'm not sure what we'll do next, dearest. Except that I've got to stop assuming that getting back to Narsai is our only goal.” Katy sighed again, this time without causing herself physical pain; but with infinite regret. In another moment they would be turning, and making their way back from whence they'd come.

  They'll hold your portions of nourishment until you arrive. Don't be concerned about that. The thought entered her mind so gently, that at first she thought it came from Linc. You should sit down, both of you. Well away from the precipice. We've decided to help you reach your daughter's thoughts, on the world our SHIPS visited—and where you now accept you may not be able to return.

  Was that what had been holding them back, the native (well, “native” in a manner of speaking) Misties, from offering her this help before? Her own stubborn reluctance to give in, and accept at least the possibility of making a new life here? Why that should be true, Catherine Romanova didn't know; but that it was the case, she knew now with utter certainty.

  Linc drew her along with him, to the last tumble of rocks they'd passed on the way here. On it they both chose seats. Even at this vantage point, the light was starting to fade; but with their eyes closed, that didn't matter. Nor did either wonder how they would make their way “home” to the Nah Trang/Fort cottage after they were finished here. They sat with their hands clasped, clinging to each other, and they waited with a curious mixture of peace and rising excitement filling their now shared consciousness. Shared as it had been before, in high orbit around this world, long ago when Katy's awareness of Linc's ability to know her like this was a new thing. A frightening thing, that she'd hated to allow anyone or anything else to experience, too.

  She didn't feel that way about it now. After years of ever-growing mental intimacy, reinforced by frequent and pleasurable physical union, she had a calm confidence in her husband and in their shared ability to meet the Mistworlders (or any other telepathic species they might one day encounter) without damage to their own precious bond.

  He hadn't been her husband back then. Her friend only, and command partner; because then she'd been carrying George Fralick's daughter inside her body. And that, of course, was why Linc could hope to reach across the distance from here to Narsai now, and find Maddy's thoughts. Because Maddy was there, unseen yet unmistakably present, as part of what happened before.

  Now the Mistworlders’ minds (if that was the correct way to characterize their state of consciousness) touched those of the two mortals, Human and Morthan, directly. Joining with them, at all the levels to which such a union was appropriate; and stopping (as neither Linc nor Katy had known they would, before) at the barriers beyond which they couldn't be willingly allowed. Find this young one, this Madeleine, in the way you would find her if you knew her to be nearby, came a gentle command to the part of this union that called itself Lincoln Casey. Distance has no meaning for us. Remember that, and reach out!

  Maddy. Maddy...? Maddy! First, calling. Then, actively seeking. And at last, joyfully, finding. Katy could feel her daughter's thoughts, and for a moment the relief and delight of it overwhelmed all else.

  Mum? Linc? Maddy's recognition came back to them with understandable amazement. Where are you?

  Still on Mistworld, love. But we've heard from Narsai, in a roundabout way, and we've found out that with some help we can reach you even from this far away. Katy, riding Linc's strength and no longer giving their Mistworld helper or helpers a thought (except for that oblique explanation), spoke to her daughter with all the reassurance she could muster. What's happened, Maddy? I've never felt this much sadness from you! Not even just after your father died. I thought the battle group leaving Narsai would make everyone happy. I realize it's only a beginning, but ... what? Maddy, I don't think I'm, well, hearing you right. Who did you say's been killed? Why did you think we had been?

  Words, names, titles didn't come through. Images did, instead. Trabe Kourdakov and Cabanne Romanova, at the door to a structure—Katy's own house?—vanishing in bursts of blaster fire. Cab Barrett, cousin and beloved family physician, slumped beneath a blanket on the carpet in front of her apartment's magnificent living room window—her body pulseless, and losing its warmth to the cold air of the room around it. And those weren't the only deaths. They were just the ones of people on whom Maddy had depended for adult guidance and protection. Not to mention that they were the ones she'd witnessed, so the images and sensations (right down to Cab Barrett's throat, terribly still under Maddy's fingertips) came through raw and almost impossibly real. All the way to Mistworld, to the minds of her mother, her stepfather, and the “Misties” who'd joined with them to make this possible.

  After that came an image of Narsai gone dark. Of a building, an apartment house filled with unsuspecting people, disintegrating to punish the planet's people for ... what? Images of people vaporized for violating arbitrary rules, and—then—darkness, again. Claustrophobic blackness.

  The connection was so intense, and the shadowed headland so remote from Katy's awareness, that when the link broke without warning other things broke, too. The Human woman and the Morthan man toppled off the rocks on which they'd been sitting, senseless and blank-minded and limp. What happened to the Mistworlders was less easy to observe, and impossible to describe in words a fleshy creature's voice could utter; but it was far more traumatic than fainting.

  It happened simultaneously to every other “Mistie” on the planet.

  * * *

  Chapter 21

  Madeleine Romanova woke up screaming. She bolted from the sofa in the small meeting lounge where she'd been allowed to nap, and found herself swaying on her feet as her muddled thoughts started to clear.

  She'd fallen asleep soon after being brought here and told (not unkindly), by the same Marine who a few minutes before that had delivered her to the Ambassador's office, “Get whatever rest you can, kid. While things are still quiet!” She'd lain down to do exactly that—and now, here she was. Standing beside the sofa, and putting out her hands in an effort to keep from falling.

  “Take it easy, Maddy!�
�� Someone called her by name, in a familiar and reassuring tone. A big man fairly materialized beside her, and she felt his supporting arm sliding beneath hers. “You've been having a nightmare, that's all. Reen and I were waiting for you to wake up. We've been here with you for the past hour."

  The windowless room's lights, like everything else in the Embassy that required power, were working just fine. Someone turned them from muted to daylight normal. Maddy squinted, and looked up into Johnnie Romanov's anxious face. Then she looked beyond him, and saw Lorena.

  “I dreamed I could talk to Mum and Linc!” she said, putting up her free hand and wiping her eyes. “All the way from here to Mistworld. I was telling them about everything that's happened here since they left, when something cut us off. Something that hurt Mum, and hurt Linc, too. And that's what woke me.” Had it been a dream, actually? The girl shook her head, and waited for what she'd just experienced to fade. Even the most vivid dreams did that, during the first minutes after waking—but this one showed no such intention. Her parents were dead. She knew that, for sure. Didn't she?

  The door slid open, and a pair of unfamiliar Marines stepped into the room. From outside, Maddy heard the voice of the sergeant who had brought her to Ambassador Paré; and later here, to wait and rest. “The kid's awake? Good. She comes with me, then, and the two of you stay put. Ms. Romanova?"

  That title belonged to both Lorena and Madeleine, but the girl took her arm out of Cousin Johnnie's clasp and answered without pretending to misunderstand. “All right. Whatever's going to happen, I want it over!” she said.

  That was just how she felt about everything, now. She'd had enough, and wanted only to deal with whatever she'd been brought here to do. Perhaps afterward she could go home ... whether to Mum's house, or to the Farmstead with Johnnie and Reen, didn't matter. Any place would be fine, where she could hide in a quiet room and lose control. Anywhere she could stop being Councilor Romanova, Trabe Kourdakov's heir, and go back to being a grief-stricken young girl called Maddy.

  Part way down the corridor from the meeting lounge to the lift, she found herself face to face with her parents-in-law. Tena Romanova and Kyle Kourdakov stared at their son's wife, but didn't say a word to her. Maddy, walking as straight-backed and square-shouldered as her mother in best parade ground mode, barely bothered to glance at them.

  On their way to join Johnnie and Reen, no doubt. Why, Maddy hadn't a clue; but it no longer seemed to matter. The echoes of her dream, of telepathic contact over so vast a distance that it surely couldn't have happened in truth, still resonated through her soul. Especially that dreadful cutoff. The mental screaming she'd “heard,” that without her realizing it had set her own voice to producing the same agonized sounds.

  * * * *

  Marigold Tar had been dying to enter these quarters. She'd been occupied, during the hours (now stretching into a second day) since leaving Narsai, with organizing her people to operate a ship of the Aragon's size despite their lack of numbers. With disposing of the bodies of the wildlings they'd killed (a job that still wasn't finished), and with everything else that getting all the way to Mistworld was going to require. But now, internal sensors told her, Admiral Benedon's multi-compartment cabin had no one alive inside it—so Mari decided that she richly deserved a break.

  Would she move into this sumptuous space, after she'd removed Benedon's corpse? Because the flag suite did look sumptuous, to the eyes of a woman who'd never in her whole 35 standard years known what it might be like to have even one room all to herself. With life support restored to the Admiral's private space, Mari forced its entrance (using the “jimmy,” so-called, that was part of any good engineer's tool kit). Walked inside ... and then stood still, for a time, in wonder.

  So much room, for just one person! And this was only the outer compartment, the so-called day cabin. But where was the Bitch (as her lower-deck folk called Lita Benedon)? Inured though she was to the sights, sounds, and smells of death, Marigold Tar moved cautiously toward the high-backed chair that faced away from her on the day cabin's far side. The chair that pointed its dead occupant's eyes toward the stars—assuming it was where the Admiral had chosen to spend her life's last moments.

  It was. Mari turned the chair away from the viewport, swinging it unceremoniously once she'd glimpsed the older woman's slumped and obviously lifeless form. She stared at Benedon's face for a time, and thought about hauling the body off to the nearest industrial-sized disposal chute right away. But she'd done more than her fair share of such lifting lately—and there was no rush with this body, because the Admiral wasn't going to start rotting anywhere near as fast all those others. This compartment had grown pretty damn cold before Mari gave it back its heat, along with its air, just a few minutes ago.

  A sound from the day cabin's desk pulled her away from the corpse. What the hell ... why was its terminal active? Who'd given that order?

  The gen leader leaned over it, and what she saw on its screen puzzled rather than frightened her. It didn't make sense. A countdown in progress? A countdown to what? Set in motion when, and by whom?

  A silent countdown. She'd heard only the faint humming of the terminal bringing itself on line, and without gen-sensitive ears she might not have detected that. She spent the whole time while the numbers marched across the screen, starting with a huge standard numeral “10” and ending with an even larger “1,” trying to figure out what she had done to trigger it. She'd just decided that it was supposed to commence when she forced the cabin's door, but something about the combination of circumstances—taking the cabin's life support off line, maybe?—had caused a delay, when another sound claimed her attention. One that reverberated from deep in the dreadnought's heart, and that didn't require interpreting because anyone who had hyperdrive engine training knew exactly what it meant.

  It meant that it was already too late. The Aragon's engines, and then the ship itself, blossomed into a vast fireball. One that the other commandeered vessels from Benedon's disbanded battle group, straggling out behind their flagship, didn't rival when each of them met the same fate a few seconds afterward; but those orbs, exploding against the void's blackness, looked unbelievably beautiful to the survivors on the as yet unexploded ships.

  Until, of course, the last one's engines detonated in a conflagration that no one was left to witness.

  * * * *

  Maddy wasn't George Fralick's daughter for nothing. She might have given up, with regretful pragmatism, calling herself by his surname; but she still knew a press conference when she saw one. Because she didn't find herself in Ambassador Paré's office this time, when her escort led (rather than pushed) her through a dilating doorway. This looked like, and at other times probably was, a ballroom. With temporary seating set up for an assortment of Narsatians, many of whom the girl recognized. Reporters, news commentators, political analysts—and government officials, including several commissioners.

  She, though, was the only Councilor present. Until the door dilated again, and her betrothed husband came through it.

  Did he know what this was about? Was he here by choice?

  Stupid questions. Of course he knew, and of course the damnable traitor was here because he'd chosen to be! But when he reached for her hand, Maddy didn't refuse to let him take it. All the eyes in the ballroom were on her, on both of them—and that included those of Ambassador Paré, and of half a dozen armed Marines.

  She might have to play a part for a time, to get out of this trap. If so, she could at least do it with aplomb. And as for what her fellow Narsatians, the ones in the audience for this farce and all those who would probably hear about this afterward, thought of her—she couldn't do much about it. Not right now, anyway.

  She could do no one any good by joining her grandparents. Harbie, and Mara, and Doctor Cab. And who knew how many others, who'd died since the Benedon battle group arrived in Narsai orbit?

  “They've got our folks, Maddy.” Farren spoke in an urgent, penetrating whisper. “My p
arents, and my grandparents. And that's all the close kin you've got left now, too!"

  “No, it's not. Mum and Linc, and my brothers, are on Mistworld. They're alive, after all.” Maddy lifted her head proudly, and met his eyes as she realized she truly believed what she'd just said. Was he actually concerned about the hostages? And maybe, even, about her? She hoped so. But she wasn't dumb enough to count on it.

  Paré stood at a podium, a portable one set up on top of a long table that probably (Maddy surmised) functioned as the head table at banquets. The Terran ambassador said, as the young Narsatian couple arrived at her side, “Welcome. By now you're all aware that Admiral Benedon's ships have been called away to take care of an emergency elsewhere. To prevent civil unrest while they're gone, I've been obliged to cause a temporary interruption in power delivery to your planet's surface grid. I'm prepared to restore it, but first I need two concessions."

  Called away? Maddy repeated the words silently, and glanced at Farren to see how he was reacting. Did he know more than she did about what actually had happened, to make those ships leave Narsai guarded only by this Embassy and its contingent of ground troops?

  Either he didn't know more, or what he knew was anything else but good news from his viewpoint. He looked puzzled, and he reeked of fear.

  Paré continued, “We need access to Narsai Control. Placing guards inside that facility is one thing Admiral Benedon should have done, and didn't. And,” she turned, finally, to the young pair at her side, “you need to do whatever's necessary to establish Farren Kourdakov and Madeleine Romanova as your heads of state. For that you have one Narsatian day. To open Narsai Control to my Marines, though, I can give you only one hour."