Jim leaned back slowly, still looking at the screen.
“I owe you an apology, Myles,” he said quietly. “I jumped to a conclusion. I—I guess I’ve been dealing with con artists and crooks for so damn long I forgot what it’s like to do business with decent men.”
Miles sipped his coffee. “You were a decent man once, Jim,” he said bluntly. Jim’s eye twitched at the words, but other than that he gave no reaction. “Your father always thought you’d turn out like him, and why shouldn’t he? He was a man of strong principles. He—”
“Thanks for looking out for them,” Jim said abruptly. “I appreciate that. But I don’t need no lecture. Just set up the meeting with my mother, and I’ll be out of here.”
He started to pick up the sacks of credits. They were heavy and awkward. Myles wordlessly pointed under his desk. Jim looked down and saw a large satchel. He plunked the satchel on the desk, opened it, and filled it with the sacks.
Myles took another sip of coffee. “I ain’t lecturing, Jim. I understand that things aren’t so black-and-white all the time. Why do you think I decided to run for office?”
“Hell, I don’t know. Free checking account?”
“Because I thought I could make a difference. The Confederacy has become more corrupt than ever, and there was a little while when I was able to do a little good for people. But not anymore. Not here. They’ve got too good a grip on things here. Maybe things would be different somewhere else. I’ve been thinking about going to a settlement on Mar Sara.”
“Mar Sara?” Jim laughed. “Remind me never to go on vacation with you. That planet is a hellhole.”
Myles chuckled. “Maybe. But I ain’t going there for the climate. There’s good people out there, Jim. People just trying to make a decent living and lead decent lives. I’ve been offered an opportunity to become a local magistrate.” He’d been looking off in the distance, his gaze unfocused, but now it snapped sharply back to Raynor. “If I go … why don’t you come with me?”
“What? No, thanks. I got better things to do with my time.”
“Sure you do.” Myles’s voice dripped sarcasm. “Just remember, the offer’s there if you should change your mind.”
“I won’t, but … thanks.”
“Anything for a Raynor. You know that.” He cleared his throat. “Well, come on. I’ll take you to see your momma.”
Jim stood for a long moment in front of his boyhood home. It was exactly how he remembered it. Most of it was located underground, keeping it safe from both blowing snow and sand and the annual temperature fluctuations. The roof was a dome covered by a semitransparent membrane that collected heat during the day to be stored in the farm’s power cells. At night, the membrane was retracted. He used to lie back in a lounge chair and look up at the stars, wondering what was out there.
Now he knew, and he realized he’d give an awful lot to be that boy again, working hard during the day, gazing up at the stars at night and wondering, and then sleeping the sleep of the exhausted innocent.
He swallowed hard past the unexpected knot in his throat and had to make a determined effort to get his feet to move down the ramp.
Habit saw him removing his boots in the entryway so as not to track dust all over the house. In his stocking feet, he slowly went through the living room, with its old furniture and steadily ticking chrono, into the kitchen, which had been the heart of the home.
His mother was there, as he knew she would be. Her back was to him as he entered. He took it all in: the wooden table and chairs, the tiny counters still scrupulously clean. She was busy making a meal for herself. No more large roasts from the local ranchers, served with potatoes and homemade bread, for a hardworking farmer husband and a growing young son. Just simple vegetables for a salad. She was standing, but there was a cane within easy reach, and she moved very slowly as she chopped the bright yellow farra roots and round, purple sur fruit. A box sat on the counter with FARM AID SUPPLIES emblazoned upon it.
Suddenly she went very still and straightened, and it was only then that Jim realized just how stooped she was.
“Jim,” she said, the word a statement, not a question.
“Hello, Mom,” Jim said, his voice thick.
Still with her back to him, Karol Raynor carefully put down the knife, reached out for her cane with a trembling hand, and turned to face her only child.
Jim had known his mother was ill. Had known she didn’t have long to live. But that knowledge had not prepared him for the sight of what a handful of years and the ravages of sickness had done to a formerly robust and hearty woman. Once-ebony hair was almost completely white now, and thin, as if it had started to fall out in places. Her green eyes were sunken and dull, and what Jim remembered as a few wrinkles had deepened to crevices. Her cheeks were hollow, and he realized that she had lost a great deal of weight. But the most immediate, most visible thing about her was the look of pure joy on her face.
Tears blurred Jim’s vision. He stumbled forward three steps and caught her up, so fragile, so breakable, in his arms and hugged her.
Twenty minutes later he was seated in the living room, having made iced tea for both of them. Both glasses sat untouched. Karol Raynor leaned back against the sofa, seeming to need it to support her fragile weight. She looked as if a good puff of wind would blow her away. He could see the fine bones in her hands and arms.
“He was with us for a day and a half before he succumbed to the injuries,” she was saying of his father. Jim had heard about it through Myles right after it had happened. The ancient robo-harvester had malfunctioned, stalling out in the middle of a field. Trace Raynor had been attempting to make repairs when the machine had unexpectedly roared to life, crushing him beneath it.
“The doctors wanted to put him on all sorts of painkillers, but he wouldn’t let them. ‘Just treat the injuries,’ he said. ‘Let me stay for as long as I can.’”
Jim winced and reached for the bony hand, holding it gently in his own. It was like holding fine china.
“So … he was in pain the whole time?”
“It was his choice, Jim,” Karol said gently. “We all knew he wouldn’t make it. He just … wanted to be present for the last few hours of his life.”
Tears stung Jim’s eyes, and he blinked them back.
She patted his hand. “There was nothing you could have done, even if you’d been here.”
Except say good-bye, Jim thought bitterly, but he said instead, “The money could have helped.”
She smiled slightly, the gesture lighting up her haggard face. “Now, how do you reckon that? Wouldn’t have made the surgeons any more skilled; they did the best they could with what they had. Shiloh doesn’t have a lot of the high-tech medical equipment that other planets do. Even if we’d taken your money, Jim, we couldn’t have gotten your father to a proper facility in time for all that technology to be of use. It was just his time, Son. Money wouldn’t have done a thing.”
“Might have bought a new robo-harvester.”
She looked at him with deep compassion. “I love you, Jim. But you know we couldn’t take money that was earned through criminal activity.”
“It’s not from that.”
Karol squeezed his hand, and her smile deepened. “Ah, now you’re a criminal and a liar.”
Jim couldn’t help it: he laughed at that. She joined him. “Stubborn woman. Always too smart for your own good.”
They chuckled together for a moment, enjoying the release of tension in the room, and then Karol’s laugh turned into a violent coughing spell. She turned away quickly, hacking into a handkerchief, but not fast enough so Jim didn’t catch the sight of blood on the white linen.
“Mom,” he said quietly, “Myles said you were dyin’.”
She wiped her mouth and leaned back. The fit had clearly exhausted her. “Myles is right,” she said resignedly. “Which is why I am so glad to see you.”
“What is it, Mom?” He reached again for her fragile hand.
“Some kind o
f cancer. Doctors don’t rightly know. It’s something new, and we don’t have the testing equipment here to do research on it. There are several of us with the same symptoms, though.”
“So … something caused this?”
She nodded weakly. “Looks like. They think it might have something to do with the material the old canned rations came in. We stopped using those once Farm Aid stepped in, but—”
“Rations?” Jim stared at her, aghast. “During the Guild Wars?” He had joined up with the sole intention of getting money to send back home. “Mom, you didn’t use the money I sent you to buy food?”
She smiled at him again, but there was a trace of irony in it. “We used the money to pay down the debt, Jimmy. We didn’t need food. The Confederacy was providing it.”
“Damn it!” Jim sprang up from the couch, stalking about the small room like a caged tiger. He wanted to break something, but everything he saw had a newly found value to him, as a relic of his childhood and youth. As something his late father and his dying mother had touched, cleaned, cherished. His hands clenched with anger that had no outlet. “And no one’s saying anything about this? That the Confederacy’s decision to cut corners is killing people?”
She didn’t answer and he knew why. Ever since Korhal IV, people were scared. No one would dare speak out now.
“You know,” his mother said, breaking the uncomfortable silence, “your father always believed you’d come back one day. When he was in that hospital room, broken and dying, he knew he wasn’t going to live long enough to see that day, but he knew it would come.”
Jim was standing with his back to her, one hand gripping the mantelpiece hard. He was glad he had come, but at the same time the emotions that were racing through him were ripping him to shreds, and he just wanted them to stop.
“Myles helped us out, and your father made a holovid so he could say good-bye properly.”
Jim was surprised. His family couldn’t afford to make a holovid. Myles had helped again, indeed. His eyes fell on a small urn a few centimeters from where he grasped the mantel, and he felt a fresh wave of pain as he abruptly realized what it contained. Or, more accurately, who.
He had to get this over with, had to get out of here, into the comfortable, familiar world of violence and near escapes and theft, of drinking and women and forgetting.
“Well,” he said, surprised at how steady his voice was, “that was right nice of Myles. Can’t say as I’m surprised, though. Where is this holovid Dad wanted me to see?”
“Right there, beside his ashes,” his mother said, confirming what he already knew. He looked over and, sure enough, there was a small, personal-sized holoprojector and a disk. It was an older model, clunky and unrefined, but it would get the job done.
“I keep it there so I can see him now and then,” his mother said. “The recording was for you, not me, but … well, I’m sure you wouldn’t mind if your old mother got a little comfort from seeing her husband sometimes.”
The lump that suddenly filled Jim’s throat rendered speech impossible. He turned his head and gave her a faint, strained smile. She nodded, reaching for her iced tea.
“Go on, play it, Jim. I’ve wanted to watch this with you for a long time now.”
He turned back, inserted the disk, and pressed the button.
His father appeared. He was in a hospital bed, and the camera was jumpy: probably the ever-reliable Myles had filmed it himself. Jim could barely see his dad through all the things that were hooked up to him. He seemed almost lost in a jungle of tubes and hanging bags. He looked terrible, and his voice was faint.
“Hello, Son,” he said, managing a smile. “I sure wish I could be looking better for my only holovid recording, but these damn doctors say I need all these things. Won’t for too much longer, at any rate. And that’s why I’m making this for you, Jim. Because I know in my heart that, one day, you’re going to come back to Shiloh. I’m just sorry I won’t be around to tell you this in person when you do.
“I love you, Jim. You’re my son, and I always will love you. I used to think I could also say, ‘I’ll always be proud of you.’ But I can’t honestly say that anymore.”
Jim looked down, hot shame and grief filling him, but continued to listen.
“You’re walking down a dark path, Jim. A path I never could have foreseen for you, and one I simply cannot respect. We love you, but we can’t take your money. That’s blood money, Son, and that’s not how you were raised.”
There was a rustling. Jim looked up again to see his father struggling to sit up and lean forward, peering earnestly into the recorder.
“Do you remember what I used to tell you, Son? A man is what he chooses to be. It’s not how he’s born, or how he’s raised, that makes the man. It’s his choices. Right now, you’re choosing to walk this dark path I can’t condone. But a man can turn his life around with a single thought, a single decision. You can always choose to be something new. Never forget that.”
He eased back down, the effort clearly having exhausted what little strength he had. His face was pale and he was trembling, probably from pain. “I love you, Son.”
The recording ended.
For a long moment Jim simply stood, breathing hard, trying to process what he had just witnessed. He took a steadying breath and turned to face his mother.
She sat where he had left her. The iced tea had spilled in her lap, the empty glass lying on the upholstery beside her. Her face looked less drawn, and her eyes were closed. There was a slight smile on her lips.
“Mom,” Jim said, tears filling his eyes. He went to her, gathered her in his arms, and sat with her for a long, long time.
Myles knew what had happened the moment Jim opened the door. The older man’s face fell, and he seemed to be fighting back tears himself.
“Your mother’s gone,” he said quietly. Jim nodded. “I’ll take care of everything; don’t you worry. It’s a blessing she hung on long enough to see you, and that’s a fact, though it might have been sheer stubbornness. She always knew you’d come home. And with the pain she was in, and what she had to look forward to as this Confederate-cursed disease advanced … well, it’s a blessing she’s with your father now too.”
He squeezed Jim’s arm. Jim stared at him with haunted eyes.
“A blessing,” he said in a hollow voice. “Maybe you’re right.”
The thought was a bitter one.
“You’d best be off. Leave the clothes in the truck; I’ll get them after dark. Right now I’m going to attend to your mother. And, Jimmy … don’t forget what I said about Mar Sara. You’d be right welcome there.”
Nearly an hour later, Jim Raynor sat in the copilot’s seat of a system runner. He stared as the ship lifted off, soaring upward. The brown earth dropped away, becoming not fields as far as the eye could see but merely patchworks the size of a hand. He had worked those patches, had walked those now-tiny streets. Had napped beneath trees that, from this height, looked only as large as thumbnails. He closed his eyes for a second, then focused on the vessel’s control panel as he and Tychus flew up past the clouds, into the atmosphere, and then among the stars.
“You’re mighty quiet, Jimmy,” Tychus said.
Jim didn’t answer. His thoughts were elsewhere: in his mind he was sitting in the living room with his mother, watching the holovid of his dead father…. And wondering why the thought of a night with Evangelina—complete with all the booze he could drink—didn’t sound as appealing as it once had.
TARSONIS
The room was filled with the noises that never ceased: the whooshing of Vanderspool’s forced breathing, the whir of machinery, the click-click of the elaborate machines that made billions of calculations a minute. Other than that, it was silent.
The door opened. One of Vanderspool’s resocs entered and approached the giant metal coffin.
“They’ll be dead in two days.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
SKYWAY STARPORT, HALCYON
They met, far too early for either man’s taste, at the Skyway Starport at 0600. Jim had tried to grab some shut-eye at the hotel, making full use of the credits O’Banon had given them for lodging, but Tychus looked as if he’d simply stayed up all night. Jim was so tired he felt almost drunk, and Tychus looked the same. It was not the optimal way to begin an extremely important assignment.
They headed off in groggy silence in the attractive, sleek little system runner that was waiting for them. Once they had cleared the atmosphere of Halcyon, Jim reached under the seat for the packet he had been told would be there. He broke the seal, stifling a yawn as he did so.
Tychus raised an eyebrow. “Mighty cloak-and-dagger fancy,” he said.
“Yeah,” Jim said. In the packet were a small, old-fashioned key, falsified IDs, a notification that they had outfits awaiting them in the back, and a data chip, which he inserted into the ship’s drive.
Jim read through it quickly. His eyes widened; he looked at the key and then summarized for the benefit of Tychus, who was entering their route.
“Our heist … well, half of it, anyway … is a person. Who is apparently eagerly anticipating us.”
“What?”
“There is someone named Andrew Forrest. He’s … a pharmacologist.”
Tychus snorted. “‘Hello, Dr. Forrest, I need something for this pain in the ass I’m experiencing.’ Why the hell are we picking up a pharmacologist? I thought Scutter wanted us to steal something useful. Like credits.”
Jim started to shake his head, then he figured it out. “Drugs. O’Banon is also a drug runner.”
“Then steal the drugs, don’t steal the …” And then Tychus figured it out too. “Do steal the guy who created the drug! Scutter, I take it back: you are one smart bastard.”
Jim nodded. “I’ll bet you anything this Dr. Forrest is one of a handful of people who know how to replicate the formula for something that’s currently very popular and very lucrative. He may even have been the one who initiated the contact with Scutter.”
Neither, for all their myriad other vices, was heavily into the illegal stuff. While they’d had the chance to snort, swallow, or smear on an impressive variety of pharmaceuticals at various times over the years, alcohol was still their drug of choice. It was cheap and easily obtainable in vast quantities, which was how both of them liked it.
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