by Far Freedom
Sammy didn’t see one of the men in the room grab the barbarian’s cocked fist. He did feel the surge of pain as the barbarian swung him again. He felt the impact with some object, then another impact, then nothing.
1 *
“We got the last barbarian, sir! We have two fatalities and I can’t get through to the hospital! The two dead are children, Captain!”
“Damn!” Horss swore. “Are they viable?”
“Unknown, sir. They were heroes. They distracted the barbarian until the grownups could attack. They beat the bastard to death. They’re all frantic for medical help for the boys. They won’t let me touch the kids, but one of them is Sammy.”
The pit of his stomach filled with lead and his mind burned with hate. Horss switched his shiplink and connected with Mai. She opened the channel but couldn’t reply for a few moments. Horss could hear her issuing triage orders, her voice rising above the din of pain and confusion in the hospital emergency rooms. He used his captain’s authority to break into the comm traffic. He placed his shiplink on broadcast and released his fury. “Listen to me! Two children have died! Children! Children! Do you hear me? Go now! Use a transmat! Here is the location!”
“Children?” Mai finally said.
Horss could hear other people in the background, echoing the word: children. Then he heard the word GO shouted by others. She cut the connection.
“Jon,” Zakiya said by shiplink. “Jon, what children?”
“Where are you?” Horss asked.
“I’m in the hospital, helping. It’s terrible here!”
“Stay there, dear lady! Don’t go with Mai.”
“Is it Sammy?”
“Don’t go. Please, don’t go.” She cut the connection. Horss slumped into his chair.
Zakiya looked into their faces and saw terrible emotions: shock, terror, grief, anger, guilt, pain. Two Marines were treating the simple injuries. She saw the first child lying on the floor, guarded by three people who stared at her as she paused. Their expressions showed dismay and sorrow. She recognized the boy: Abie, Lam’s nephew. He was connected to a small medical device. He might survive. She saw a man tending a simple tourniquet on a woman’s severed arm. On the other side of the room people stood in a group, looking down at something, many of them crying. They noticed her and reacted with even more emotion.
Mai had only just arrived and now Zakiya was here, so soon. She could tell by the reactions of the people standing around her. She didn’t want to look up at Zakiya. She didn’t want to speak to her. She didn’t want to say what had to be said and then see Zakiya’s reaction.
Zakiya saw Sammy’s body even though Mai seemed to be intentionally obscuring it from her view. Mai was not doing anything for Sammy that Zakiya felt was necessary to keep him viable; she was just straightening his legs and folding his arms across his chest. She went down on her knees. She placed her hand on Sammy, closing her eyes to the blood and to the absolute stillness of his body. She wept. She opened her eyes when she felt Sammy move, but it was only Mai trying to lift him, trying to take her son away. Zakiya held on to Sammy and pulled him from Mai, got her arms under him. She carried him unsteadily toward the ruined doorway. She passed into the corridor. The future lay dark and blurry before her.
Mai paused by the doorway to watch Zakiya walk away. Only duty kept her from screaming and retreating from reality. Other people moved past her to exit the room. They followed Zakiya down the passageway, some of them even needing treatment for injuries.
Zakiya was hardly aware of how long or how far she carried Sammy’s body. She wasn’t aware of the people who followed her or of those who fell in behind her all along her route. She vaguely realized many people watched her pass by them. She reached the biosphere, where the sun was starting to set, not knowing where she was going. Her strength began to falter, the grief weakening her more than the effort of carrying Sammy. She stumbled, went down on one knee. Many hands helped her rise. She finally found herself in the plaza in front of the hospital. People were waiting for her. There was a gurney and hands reaching for Sammy, to take him from her. She had to let go. She had to. He was dead. He was gone. She cried harder as they took Sammy.
Zakiya collapsed on the pavement. Direk sat down beside her and held her. The crowd melted away. Eventually Direk helped Zakiya find her way home.
Section 029 The Son of Two Mothers
She couldn’t sleep, yet she couldn’t bear to be awake, to be awake and to think and to remember. She remembered Sammy, the first time she truly embraced him and wanted him, perhaps even loved him. He needed her and came willingly into her arms. She carried him through the woods to Rafael’s house.
Images formed. Her breast: light, not dark. Her infant: dark, not light. Aylis reaching toward her baby, touching it, finding purchase, drawing her son away from her. His small complaint at losing the nipple, the drops of milk wasting, a toothless yawn.
“Why did you find me?” Ruby asked, not yet admitting that she would never see her child again. “Why did you have to find me?”
“You remembered,” Aylis replied, “but you didn’t remember enough, or you would not have done this.”
“Let me have my son!” Ruby pleaded. “Why must it be this way? “
“Not while there is still hope,” Aylis said, pulling her son away.
“There is no hope! He’s gone forever! And Jamie is gone! This is all I have of him!”
“There is hope. That is my task: to remember the hope.”
“And my task? “
“You won’t sleep but you must not die.”
“I’m a mother! You’re stealing my son!”
“So am I a mother,” Aylis Mnro said. “We’re sisters, you and I. And there is still hope.”
Someone shook her, then shook her harder. She awoke but she didn’t know who she was or where she was. “Aylis!” she cried. “You took Petros!” Someone grabbed her face in two hands and pushed open her eyelids. “Go away!” she demanded to the blurry form above her.
“No!” the person shouted at her. Focus returned. The blurry form became the blood-spattered face of Sugai Mai. The blood and Mai’s expression were enough to shock Zakiya into functional wakefulness.
“Mai. What?”
“I need you! Aylis is sick and I can’t help her!”
“What’s wrong with her?” Zakiya tried to sit up.
“I don’t know! She’s pregnant and exhausted, but so am I! I need her! I need rest! We have volunteers and trainees but someone needs to supervise. She’s unresponsive and I think it’s emotional. Please, see if you can help her!”
Zakiya was numb: a wall against her grief, however tenuous. It helped that she had wept for what seemed like hours. It helped that people tried to comfort her. She had lived too long, to have waited to experience such pain and loss.
” She fell off,” Mai said, entering Aylis’s office. “I had her on the couch.”
She helped Mai pick Aylis off the floor. They put her back on the couch. She was limp but began to stir, once on the couch. Mai put her fingers on Aylis’s chest and read her vitals. Mai grimaced and slapped Aylis lightly on the cheek.
“Aylis. Aylis! Zakiya is here. Tell us what’s wrong.”
Aylis opened her eyes. She slowly turned her head, her face a mask of pain, and when she saw Zakiya she curled herself into a fetal position.
“I’m leaving,” Mai said. “I’m sorry. Try to get her on her feet.”
Zakiya sat down by Aylis and put a hand on her shoulder, then absently started rubbing her back. The tension in Aylis’s muscles would not release under her hand. It was several moments before Zakiya’s beleaguered mind registered the fact. She tried to find some way to think clearly and decide what to do about Aylis. All she could bring to mind was the fragment of memory she had just experienced before Mai woke her. Petros. Petros!
“What happened to Petros?” Zakiya asked herself but Aylis must have heard the question as though addressed to her.
; Aylis screamed and tried to roll away from Zakiya and she fell on the floor. Zakiya was shocked into a greater awareness of the situation, a clearer realization of the magnitude of Aylis’s distress. She got down on the floor and tried to pull Aylis’s hands and arms away from her breast, to help her rise, to at least get her to stop screaming. All she could do was shake her, then clamp her hand over Aylis’s mouth to stop the screaming. Aylis finally opened her eyes again, just watery slits contorted by distress. Zakiya realized Aylis was trying to speak and she removed her hand from her mouth.
“I killed him! I killed Petros!” The words were almost lost under the obscuring emotional burden.
As she finally understood what Aylis said, Zakiya weakened her grip on Aylis’s hands and Aylis snatched them back and began beating herself on the head. Her nose started to bleed.
The door opened and Direk stood there for a startled moment before moving to help Zakiya stop his mother from hurting herself. He and Zakiya picked her up, and when Aylis seemed to realize who Direk was, she clung to him and wept. He held her and looked at Zakiya questioningly.
“She said she killed Petros,” Zakiya said dully, still not completely accepting reality and understanding its meaning.
Direk studied Zakiya for several moments, trying to decide what he should say and whether she should hear it. Exhaustion dulled his inhibitions and most of his other functions. He would get this over with now. It would hurt them badly when they were already suffering the loss of Sammy, but they would survive it and find peace that much sooner.
“Do you remember Petros?” he asked.
Zakiya was slow to respond. “My baby. My son. Aylis would never…”
“In a sense, she may have killed him.”
“He’s dead? My baby?”
“Perhaps not yet, but he is lost to us.”
“Why? How?”
” She didn’t tell you what he was going to do?” Direk now wished he could be as Essiin as he once was, but it was too difficult. It hurt him to even think the words he was about to speak. “Petros was going to infiltrate the Navy cadre of interlopers. He should have made contact with us before now, to receive the antidote. We’ve lost him.” He felt his mother hug him harder and tremble with the strain. He saw Zakiya drop onto the couch and hang her head, then cover her face.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I wish I had remembered sooner. I wish my copy had remembered. I wish mother had remembered.”
“I did!”
“What did you say, Mother?” Direk did not hear her clearly.
Aylis disengaged from the embrace of her son. She stood before him, wavering a little, with a hand on his chest to help keep her balance. Zakiya was behind her and she dared not turn to look at her. Aylis was exhausted. Her throat was raw with the ache of grief and the stress of screaming and weeping. Her head ached. Her eyes hurt and wouldn’t stay focused. She wanted to die. But before she did, she must tell the truth, for Zakiya’s sake, and for the sake of her own soul. She couldn’t look at either Zakiya or her son as she coughed and tried to speak again.
“I knew who he was and I had to deny it. I had to! Until I made myself prove it. It was him. There is no doubt. And it was all I could think about, even as I was trying to help Mai treat the wounded. I hope I didn’t hurt anyone! I don’t remember anything, except the blood and the cries of pain. Then they brought Sammy in and I couldn’t go on! I can’t believe he’s dead!”
Aylis’s knees began to shake and Direk grabbed her before she could fall. He sat her on the couch and she seemed determined to continue speaking, wiping her face and giving herself a moment to rest.
“Did you see him?” Direk asked.
Zakiya almost didn’t want Aylis to go on. She didn’t want her to suffer. She didn’t want her unborn child to suffer. And she had a very bad feeling about what Aylis might be about to say.
” Yes, I saw him! I didn’t know him immediately. I just knew he wasn’t Essiin. I did feel there was something special about him. But I tried not to think about it. I was desperate to deny it! It could not be Petros who was doing this unspeakable thing to me! I loved Petros! And I was hitting him and screaming at him. And he was… And it hurt! He was hurting me! And I hated him! And I couldn’t make the right words come out of my mouth! And I just gave up and stopped thinking, stopped feeling. And it was suddenly over. And I just wished he was dead , whoever he was! Then, afterward, there was Jamie. And I told myself that at least Zakiya had Jamie and I could forget about Petros. But I couldn’t, no matter how hard I tried. I finally made myself examine the genetic code of my fetus, and it is definitely Zakiya’s granddaughter!”
“Aylis! What are you saying? Who is Petros now?”
“I could have told Etrhnk the truth! I could have told him who his mother is. I could have stopped him from raping me. But I only wanted to deny the truth and hate him. Even after he was done with me, I could have told him. He even gave me Rafael’s portrait of his mother, and I could have said, ‘Here is your mother.’ But I didn’t. I had to hate him. And he’s going to die soon. He said he was. And I took my payment and left him to die! I killed him! I loved him! I killed Petros!”
Zakiya waited for Aylis to finish speaking, then she waited a little longer. She looked at Direk and saw how sad he was and how exhausted from his medical duties, his hospital scrubs blood spattered. The news of Petros being Etrhnk was terrible but reaction to it was muted by the loss of Sammy and by her concern for Aylis. She was also thinking about Freddy and becoming worried that he had not come to her yet to share her grief. She was well aware of how Freddy felt about Sammy and she knew it could be very bad for his mental health, perhaps even fatal. She had never known Petros as a real person. But she had known Sammy, and loved him with all her heart. And she had known Freddy and loved him as a real and very special son. Etrhnk was not that important to her, not right now. Aylis was important. Freddy was important.
Zakiya needed Aylis and the ship needed her. The future would lose most of its meaning if Aylis did not travel to it with her as the good friend she was. She turned to Aylis and tried to grasp each of her hands. Aylis resisted for a moment, causing their hands to flutter about, until Aylis looked up at Zakiya and tried to understand what she wanted. Then Zakiya took her hands and pulled her off the couch, pulled her close, released her hands, and embraced her.
The android was unwise to have twice let him live. He could have killed it either time. He should have. No. No logic in that, only an unethical urge. If it was an android, then it made little difference in the balance of his life’s accounts. But this was a person in a bloodless body. No, only a stream of thoughts in a soulless feedback loop of consciousness.
Etrhnk was plagued by such mental reversals. It began the first moment his attention was stolen by Admiral Fidelity Demba. He should have killed her. He couldn’t. It became worse when the musician Pan came into his personal presence. He should have killed him. He couldn’t. Then came Aylis Mnro.
He stood in the presence of the android, waiting for Pan to arrive. It occurred to him the android could be informative. “Why do you stand guard? If I can find you, The Lady can.”
Fred flexed his fingers on the grip of his hand weapon, as if uncomfortable with its fit. He looked into Etrhnk’s eyes. “Perhaps she has never lost us. Why doesn’t she attack? I stand guard because I will not sleep.”
“Fred never sleeps.” Pan arrived through the trees. “If he sleeps, he dreams. The dreams disturb him.”
“Your journey is slow but it seems to have direction. Northwest.”
“We receive clues of dubious value, but they are consistent.”
” She wishes to have visitors? Otherwise, you should be dead.”
“Would you object if I said I intend to kill her?”
Etrhnk could have been amused. Did Pan have any notion of the scope of The Lady’s power? Did he realize she could not be understood, could not be predicted? ” I commend you for your ambition but see no chance of success.”
” She requested that I kill her.”
“It doesn’t matter. You can’t trust her.”
” She seemed pleasant to me but I understand she is evil. If my life ends on this scenic journey in the company of my old friend Fred, then it’s a life well ended.”
“I would ask to join you but they will have other plans for me.”
“Why did you let Zakiya live? I suspect you will pay a high price for that.”
Etrhnk waited several moments to reply. He didn’t think logical thoughts during this delay. He didn’t measure pressure differences between urges. Perhaps he felt emotions and perhaps not. If it was emotional to want knowledge, then that caused him to respond the way he did. “I don’t know. She has some magical power over me. I tell myself that it doesn’t matter that I let her live because I would be dead soon in any case. Perhaps for the same foolish reason I let myself do terrible harm to another person, as though ethics have no meaning in the face of death. I’ve changed. The evil I’ve done weighs heavily on my every thought. If there is no hell after I die, there is this agony before I die. I confess that I came here either to take you with me into the dark, or to beg for any scrap of knowledge that would help explain my mysteries and my fate. I deserve nothing from you. I apologize for the drama my words imply. I apologize for forcing myself into your company and increasing your risk.”
Pan stared at him for a long time. Even the android seemed very thoughtful gazing at him. It made Etrhnk uncomfortable. He turned away, not understanding anything, even himself.
“Wait.”
Etrhnk turned around slowly. The android raised his weapon to point it at Etrhnk’s head, his aim smoothly tracking his slightest motion.
“I warn you,” Etrhnk said, “that my actions are not well controlled at this point in my life. Your friend is wise to keep me in his sights.”
“Give me your hand.” The coercion bothered Etrhnk. It was disturbing him again, how his urges could swing so far from positive to negative. Perhaps he would never be able to feel even the possibility of friendship with this man, but he had felt comfortable in his presence, and now that was taken away. He couldn’t decide what to do. “There is no threat,” Pan said. “Not from me. Fred does what he feels necessary. I may disagree with him but I am not his master.”