Warstrider: Jackers (Warstrider Series, Book Three)
Page 31
She was reminded of genie and human, singing together in the barracks at Stone Mountain.
A warstrider loomed against the smoky sky. It was a Ghostrider, and it bore on its prow the name Victor.
It was Vic Hagan's machine.
"Katya?"
"Vic!" She nearly fell into his arms as he dropped off the rungs set into the Ghostrider's leg.
"God, Katya! What happened here?"
She turned and stared up at the mountain of the atmosphere generator. It was silent now, still wreathed in clouds, but no longer spitting lightning. Parts of its regular surface looked uneven now, where huge chunks had been torn away.
"I'm not sure, Vic," she said. "But I'm hard-jacked certain that the Heraklean Naga had something to do with it, and if I'm right about that, then I'll bet Dev had something to do with it too."
"You mean . . . he's alive?"
"I think we'd better grab a magflitter and go find out."
"Where?"
She looked toward the atmosphere generator, wreathed now in muttering purple clouds. "There. Up there on the mountain."
Dev was deeply shaken. Arguing from a strictly military viewpoint, he decided that perhaps he should have tried to destroy all of the Imperial ships. He'd certainly been trying to do just that . . . and he could have succeeded had he tried.
On the other hand, he'd all but annihilated the Imperial squadron, destroying fifteen of the nineteen enemy ships. The survivors would return to Earth and other Imperial bases, bearing the story of a frightful, inexplicable, irresistible Confederation weapon, of white fire and destruction against which there was no possible defense.
For as long as this war continued, the Imperials would remember Herakles and wonder what weapon it was that the Confederation had used there. Hell, it was just possible, if there were any among their leaders who had a modicum of sense, that the bloody nose they'd received here this day would lead them to grant the Confederation independence without any further fighting.
Dev hoped so.
With a thought, he dissolved the side of the Naga traveler that had sheltered him through that artificial storm. The air was steaming wet, and still tasted of ozone and summer lightning. Stepping out onto the side of the mountain, he wavered a moment, then dropped to hands and knees. He felt so . . . weak. . . .
**I/we must part company now.
*Why? Your enemy is crushed! And I/we have a new Universe to explore!
**I/we . . . I don't want to be a god. I can't be a god.
*What is a god?
Dev couldn't answer. He was lying on his side now, unable to move. He didn't remember falling. Rain drizzled from a leaden sky.
**Please. Leave me.
*Agreement/disappointment/sadness. It was good not to be lonely.
**You won't be lonely. We'll still . . . talk. And I'll introduce you to others. But I don't think I can manage having you inside me like this. Not all the time.
*Was there discomfort? Damage?
**No. Temptation.
*What is temptation? I don't understand.
**Never mind. Can you leave me . . . as I was? Uh, you don't need to break the back again.
*I would never do such a thing! You are Self!
**I am . . . I want to be human.
*You . . . love . . .
**. . . Katya, yes.
*Katya . . . loves you too. She told >>self<<. I do not . . .
**. . . understand . . . no. But it is good . . .
*. . . not to be lonely.
A feeling like a ripple of warm silk passed along his chest. Dev opened his eyes, but the sight of the Naga supracell spilling out of his chest along thousands of hair-thin tendrils, slowly growing larger as it retreated from his body, was disconcerting. He kept his eyes closed until he felt his perceptions dwindling, felt the radio link with the Naga snap.
When he opened his eyes again, he was alone on the ledge.
When he tried turning his awareness inward, he found . . . nothing. Nothing! He could no longer examine himself internally. His entire being felt . . . smaller, and sharply limited. Only five senses!
Could he possibly go back to what he'd been?
It was a long time before he allowed himself to feel again, and then it was with the hesitant caution of a man who thinks he might be badly hurt, who fears the pain will come with his next wrong movement.
He suspected, though, that the parting Naga had left some changes intact. He retained a clarity of thought he'd not possessed before, a clarity undimmed even by the crushing exhaustion that pinned him now to the artificial mountain ledge.
The Naga was gone, withdrawn into its underground lairs. Dev felt a sadness, a loneliness unlike anything he'd known before, worse even than the day he'd lost his father.
Or possibly it was his father he was missing now; he'd never been able to mourn him, not really. Tears ran down Dev's face, mingling with the rainwater there. Tears of sadness for his father, and his mother too. Tears of happiness, too, for Katya . . . for he thought he could feel her approach.
Katya and Hagan arrived with a flitter moments later. "Dev!" She cried, vaulting from the vehicle and racing to his side. "Dev! You're alive!"
Vic helped him stand. "Thank God, Dev! I thought . . ."
Katya threw herself on him, hugging him close.
He clung to her, losing himself to her reassuring warmth. Somehow, he managed a ghost of a smile. The tears continued to flow. "I'm . . . human," he said.
Epilogue
Tharby padded on bare feet across the richly carpeted floor, bearing a tray as he'd been trained. As he approached the Master's artroom, the door dissolved and Sonya walked out.
As was the rule in the Master's house, the ningyo was nude, while he wore only a white fundoshi wrapped about his loins. They were forbidden to speak to one another, but they made brief eye contact, and she gave him a curt nod.
These past few days, it had been necessary to be extremely careful around the Master. He spoke little, but from what the household servants had been able to piece together, the Empire had lost a battle, possibly a very important battle, at a far-off place called Herakles.
Tharby didn't know the significance of that battle, but he did know that if the Imperials were unhappy about it, then it was good.
Captured on New America, he, Yodi, and Sonya had been loaded aboard a transport and shipped to Earth, to Singapore Synchorbital where the ponderously fat man they knew as Master had ordered them interrogated, then retrained for his personal servant staff. The interrogation had been brutal and painful, but soon ended. Service to the Master was brutal and painful as well, and showed no sign of ever ending. Sometimes, Tharby nearly despaired.
Silently, he entered the artroom, which Sonya had just told him was clear. He paused a moment inside as the door rematerialized at his back. Inside, there was a tatami mat, a rack of swords, and the desperate, silent agony of the inochizo.
Tharby felt a powerful kinship with the twisted artform; they both were genies, though the living statue possessed far less of the human genome than did Tharby. Swiftly, he set the tray down, then approached the statue. Its pain-racked eyes followed him, pleading.
"I told you I would come," he told it. Reaching into his loincloth, he extracted a small bottle, unsealed the stopper, and poured the liquid contents into the soil from which the inochizo grew. The dark, human eyes blinked twice, then closed.
"Peace, little brother," Tharby told it. With luck, the Master would assume it had died of some unknown illness.
Someday, somehow, perhaps Tharby and the other servants could arrange the Master's death as well.
"The day is coming, little brother," he told the dying statue. "You will be avenged."
The genie turned, picked up the tray, and walked proudly from the room.