Damia's Children

by Anne McCaffrey

  Later! Larvae have been discovered intact. Must be preserved.

  Of course they must! What incredible luck!

  I’m the only one who thinks so.

  Not at all, my boy. You’ve done well. I’m already forwarding the news where it must be known. Now, shut up and save your strength! The very idea of an unpowered call that far. He’s worse than his mother.

  Thian had to grin at that tag or perhaps that was why Jeff Raven had allowed it to be heard. He felt depleted but not as bad as he might have. The elation of discovery seemed to have buffered him. Though that dwindled away as he thought of facing the anger and resentment of his shipmates. And Malice was in the boarding party. That was an unfortunate circumstance. But that was the goad that stimulated Thian to action now. If Malice got here first, before the Commander . . . He pushed off the deck and floated beyond the target tunnel, catching a thin pipe and halting his drift, slowly pulling his body slightly into the next tube opening. That was all that saved him.

  GOTCHA! That was all the warning he had.

  Out of nowhere, for no helmet lights heralded the approach, the shock wave of a stunner blast shoved him with crushing force against the back curve of the tube.

  That single mental shout, with its ferociously triumphant tone, gave him the nanosecond required for him to tap reserves he didn’t know he had. Reflexes he had never had to use were triggered to form a shield, not as strong as it would have been if he hadn’t lost energy calling his grandfather. Even so, he blocked the worst of the blast effect and struggled to retain the consciousness needed to keep the protection in force in case Malice came to inspect his victim. He tried very, very hard to project a Mayday, and was mildly amused that his attempt came out in ’Dini. He felt himself slipping. Here goes the captain’s bright plan to evacuate his chosen few, he thought, amused that he could be amused as he wilted completely.

  * * *

  A buzzing in his ear was irritating but it could not be ignored. It was a warning. Why did every nerve in his body scream? He tried for mental control of pain synapses but his head was indulging in a monumental ache. His brain lining felt far too full to be contained by his skull. He was panting with effort. He opened his aching eyes a slit, coughed in the foul air he was breathing and vaguely realized he was wearing a helmet. The buzzing continued. He tried to focus his eyes. His vision was blurred but he seemed to be inside an escape pod.

  There had been an emergency, hadn’t there? The buzzing meant it was over. Good! He could get out of the space suit. He fumbled strengthless gloved fingers on the helmet release and knew he’d succeeded only because he felt cooler air brushing across his sweaty throat. He couldn’t do more than twist the helmet once but more fresh air relieved the necessity to pant. He lay where he was and willed himself away from the pain of his body.

  * * *

  “HE IS HERE! I’VE FOUND HIM!”

  The glad cry came through Thian’s mind physically and mentally. It was the mental identification that reassured him and he opened his eyes, smiling weakly up at Gravy’s anxious, tear-streaked face.

  “Oh, however did you get here, Thian? Oh, thank all the gods that you’re safe! If you knew . . .”

  I have an enemy, Gravy. Guard me! he said.

  Her eyes bugged out. “I heard that,” she said, sensibly whispering. An enemy? she added with reasonable telepathic strength. Who’d want to hurt you? You’re a Prime.

  Tell only the captain but guard me.

  Even that brief exchange took what energy he had.

  “Stungun. Bolt. Got me. Hurt,” he whispered, too weak to writhe with the pulsing agony still throbbing along nerves and blood.

  “Stungun? On you?”

  He couldn’t have missed the outrage, horror, and fury she broadcast had he been a 12. Returning consciousness reminded him that there was something much more important he had to know and he struggled with words to form the question.

  “This is only standard, but it might help,” Gravy was saying and her hands were pulling at the neck closures of his suit: it hurt even to be moved about. He was relieved that he’d still been out when she’d removed the helmet. Then he felt the blessed coolness of a hypospray and tried to speed its dose through his system. He couldn’t manage much on that front either. “Who did this?” she demanded.

  He managed a helpless grunt in answer. Even that sent a spasm of pain through him. “Larvae? Safe?”

  “Oh, Thian love,” she cried and bent to kiss his forehead, a loving gesture which Thian knew oughtn’t to hurt as much as that one did, “you’re amazing! Worrying about those damned things when you’re in bits . . .”

  “Saaafffe?” he repeated urgently, trying to raise one hand to emphasize his need to know.

  “Yes, of course they are. The most important find ever! The ’Dinis are triumphant. Mind you,” she added swiftly, with a glance over her shoulder, “there’re some who were for blasting ’em to space dust but the captain stopped ’em. Well, it took you guys long enough!” she added in a brisk critical tone.

  There was movement beyond him, movement and noise and his head began to throb painfully in reaction.

  “Gotta get his suit off ’im first,” a male voice said. “How’d he get through the port with it on?”

  “Never mind. Is Commander Exeter there?” Gravy asked in a no-nonsense tone. “The man’s badly injured and will need heavy sedation before he can be moved. Here, Commander,” and Thian felt in every nerve of his mangled body the reverberation of heavy feet as the medic entered the pod. Gravy dropped her voice. “He’s been stunned, Ted, with one of the Hiver weapons.”

  Exeter inhaled sharply. “That’s criminal!”

  A second cool spray on Thian’s throat and he thankfully dissolved into a painless world.

  He regained consciousness a number of times for very short periods, finding himself immersed in a thick liquid, his head resting on a cradle. Mostly it was pain that woke him but he was immediately medicated and was sent back to sleep. The third, or maybe it was the fourth time, he awoke, the pain wasn’t so intense. And his mother was sitting beside him.

  “Ah, Thian, back with us for a bit?” she asked, her expression loving and yet oddly stern. She smoothed his hair, the silver streak that matched hers, back from his forehead, and, with that tender gesture, the pain was also smoothed from his body.

  “Mother?”

  “Didn’t you know I’d come if you were hurt?” Absently she gathered the long hair that had fallen forward across her shoulder and flicked it to her back. “You’re improving. No brain damage, no lasting physical damage, though you may twitch occasionally. The worst discomfort will disappear very soon now. You were lucky to get only the fringes of that blast . . . the tunnel as well as the suit protected you from a direct hit. Which you wouldn’t have survived.”

  “D’you know who, yet?”

  “Lieutenant Greevy said you mentioned an enemy.” Her lips thinned briefly with displeasure. “Do you know who?”

  “I had suspicions only. I got resentful sendings, malicious ones, but I could never identify who. I had choices.”

  “I must see what I can discover then.”

  Thian’s reaction was ambivalent.

  “The punishment should fit the crime?” his mother asked, wryly amused at the dominant thought in his mind.

  “Well, I know Primes aren’t supposed to be vindictive but . . .” he began in a rueful tone, “but I’d sure like to pay back in kind for something like this.”

  “Natural enough,” Damia replied neutrally.

  “Oh well,” and Thian found himself forced to rationalize. “He or she was only spouting the usual anti-Talent-privileged-position nonsense we’ve all heard from time to time,” he said, having thought better of inflicting that degree of agony on another Human, however misguided. “I suppose me wanting to save the larvae was the last straw!”

  “Something like that,” Damia agreed easily.

  The ’Dinis were right, Thian mused; Hum
ans were soft. “How long have you been here?”

  “Three days now. I had to push your father out of the way to come,” she added with a grin. “But I am your mother and the stronger Talent. He had to admit that I have a special touch for easing pain.” Her smile was extremely tender but Thian knew she wasn’t thinking of him just then. She stroked his face again, her fingers marvelously gentle and reassuring as she moved down to gently knead muscles in his neck and shoulders. “You were very wise to have contacted Dad. He had me in a capsule and on my way with Fok and Tri before the boarding parties had assembled at the larval combs. I made it eminently clear that no larvae were to be destroyed. That was my first priority. That was, of course, before I realized I couldn’t ‘feel’ you on the wreck. I could sense you nearby which confused everyone but you wouldn’t—then I realized—couldn’t respond.” Her face mirrored the anxiety she had endured.

  “But the larvae weren’t touched?”

  “Indeed not! Their discovery will provide inestimable data on Hivers. Incalculably valuable. However, not as valuable as you are to us. Your life would not have been a fair exchange for that data. And I was horrified not to be able to locate you: you were there and you weren’t. You couldn’t be located here on the Vadim but I knew approximately where your body should be. It was Alison who thought of the pods. Whyever did you go there?”

  “Abandon ship drills,” Thian said, managing a slight grin which surprisingly didn’t hurt, though his face muscles still ached. “Are you great-grandmothering me?” he asked, realizing that her subtle soothing strokes were purposeful and he was feeling drowsy again.

  “A bit of,” she said with a grin. “Glad you can feel it working. Isthia swears it brought Dad back to life. And you’re in need of more healing.”

  * * *

  Gravy was his attendant the next time he surfaced. Testing his mental health, he found it sufficiently cured so that a light mental cast located his mother, fast asleep nearby.

  “Gravy?”

  “So you’re awake, are you?” And she moved to the side of whatever sort of a tank they had him floating in. “By any chance, would you be hungry?”

  “You must be reading my mind.”

  Her smile was radiant. “Nah, you should be hungry about now, if the treatment’s working.”

  His first meal was only broth but it was more delicious than any he remembered.

  “That’s because you’re hungry,” she said.

  “I didn’t say anything,” he replied, giving her a long look.

  She grinned, wrinkling her nose at him. “That’s something, isn’t it? I’m picking up more than ever I did before. Only short-range but that’s fine by me! Damia says sometimes fright triggers or expands Talent. And I won’t lie that I wasn’t terrified when they reported you couldn’t be found at the wreck. Lieutenant Kiely set up an awful stink. Then your mother arrives in an unscheduled capsule, knocking a drone out of its cradle. The watch in the shuttle bay thought they were being invaded by Hivers. Only because your mother’s a Talent, she’d have been charred if she hadn’t paralyzed their hands so they couldn’t fire on her. Then she compliments the captain on such an alert crew and insists that the larvae be preserved . . . which is the first Captain Ashiant had heard about that! But he got Vandermeer on the blower which was smart, because they were having quite a time, keeping the ’Dinis off ’em while they planted charges because they thought destroying the things . . .” and Gravy shuddered, “was the right thing to do.” Then she grinned. “I think your mother made herself known to Vandermeer and that was that! End of problem! I heard Vandermeer say she found herself removing the charges before she knew what she was doing. Can Talents do that? Make someone DO something?”

  “It’s not considered good manners,” Thian began, enjoying the vision of his mother manipulating the sturdy and strong-minded security commander as easily as she’d have controlled an errant child. “It’s an invasion of privacy and not something Talent would consider except under very unusual circumstances.”

  “Which those were! Crims, Thian,” and Gravy’s eyes sparkled with excitement, clearing her mobile face of more solemn considerations, “even the guys who were for charring the larvae are now patting themselves on the back for being in on such a find. But the glory’s all yours!”

  “Mine?” Thian hesitated only one brief moment before he said as earnestly as he could, “But Kiely was first down the tube, not me,” in perfect truth.

  “Kiely?” Gravy was astonished.

  Thian nodded once emphatically. “Kiely was first down that tube.”

  She stared at him, puzzled. “But I thought . . .”

  “Kiely deserves the glory for being first. I wasn’t even sure what the things were. I called Commander Vandermeer because I thought she should see what Kiely’d found.”

  “And here Kiely’s been down-playing his part . . .” Gravy trailed off and then her grin was smug. “Well, we’ll just see about that!”

  Thian was well pleased.

  I am, too, son of mine, said Damia. That will go a long way to discredit rumors.

  You’ve heard some?

  He heard his mother’s sigh flutter in his mind. No more than usual.

  Have you found my assailant?

  I shall perhaps have better luck now. Your touch is much surer today. Everyone will be overjoyed to hear my report of your return to health—with one notable exception. I’ll be “listening” for that!

  * * *

  “Considering the trauma to nerve, bone, and tissue, you’ve recovered amazingly, young man,” Exeter told him when Thian was allowed out of the restorative fluid. “I thought that stunner was supposed to work as effectively in vacuum as in atmosphere, but maybe not. Can’t think how else you could have survived.”

  “Oh, I was raised hardy on Aurigae, you know,” Thian said easily.

  Exeter scratched his close-shaven pate and grinned wryly. “So I’m led to believe. Amazing woman, your mother. Ah, here’s the orderly to escort you to your quarters. Now, you’re still on sick leave, Thian. My orders are for you to take it easy: report to Lieutenant Clark for physiotherapy to get those muscles toned up. You’ll be on the special diet for a while but that’s not going to hurt anyone’s feelings the way your mother’s been hauling in provender for us.”

  Thian thanked Exeter for his attendance and followed the orderly into the passageway. To his surprise, Fok was waiting and rubbed its silky furred arm up and down his in affectionate greeting.

  FLK, MOST WELCOME OF OLD FRIENDS, HOW GOOD TO BE SO GREETED.

  DM ASKS. FLK AGREES. THN WALKS SAFELY.

  Thian gave the orderly a quick glance and smile but the man seemed unconcerned by their quick ’Dini exchange.

  DM SAYS ENEMY HERE? Thian asked, swinging his voice upward in query.

  ENEMY EXISTS UNTIL REVELATION. CLEVER ONE. HIDES IN CROWDS. TIGHT MINDED. FIRST SON CANNOT BE VULNERABLE IN PRESENT WEAKNESS.

  NONSENSE! Thian said with such angry authority that Fok skipped a step and tipped its poll eye down to Thian’s face, SORRY! DM HAS UNNECESSARY ANXIETY. THN WELL ABLE TO CARE FOR THN.

  THAT WILL BE SEEN. And the downward note of the last sound was the end of that discussion.

  To his surprise, Thian was escorted up to officer country.

  “Your gear’s all stowed here, Mr. Lyon,” the orderly said, pulling back the door into one of the visitors’ cabins, far more spacious affairs than his previous quarters.

  “Thank you very much indeed, Tedwars,” he said, peering in, but he gestured for Fok to precede him.

  “Checked the place out myself, Ambassador Fok,” Tedwars said in mild reprimand.

  Thian laughed. “I guess I better get used to being treated like eggs.”

  “No, sir, the eggs get treated much better’n you,” Tedwars said in an aggrieved tone but closed the door before Thian could recover from his surprise.

  He did shoot a quick probe at the orderly whose mind he had found to be open and honest. Ted
wars privately thought all the trouble about the beetle eggs was vastly overdone. Eggs as could survive a bloody nova wouldn’t be harmed by much else.

  “Ah!” Thian turned excitedly to Fok. THE SAILOR SAYS THE WRECK WAS DAMAGED BY STAR NOVA?

  Fok gestured for Thian to seat himself which he was quite willing to do for even the short walk up from sick bay proved tiring. ’Dini seating had been included in the furnishings of this stateroom and Fok made itself comfortable on the padded stool.

  ANALYSIS SUPPORTS NOVA THEORY. ONE RECENT NOVA IS IN ESTIMATED TRAJECTORY OF WRECK. SIZE OF VESSEL SUGGESTS FINAL MASS EXODUS. UNUSUAL AMOUNT OF STORAGE SPACE ON VESSEL PLUS EXTRA SHIELDING AROUND EGG REPOSITORIES AND QUEEN QUARTERS. TWO QUEEN QUARTERS WERE NOT TOTALLY DESTROYED BUT BODIES REDUCED TO RUBBLE. VALUABLE STILL. BIGGEST QUEENS EVER NOTED. THEORY IS THAT VESSEL WAS ESCAPING WHEN STAR ABRUPTLY EXPANDED. THEORY IS THAT PREVIOUS THREE SHIPS WERE ALSO FLEEING, IN TIME, FROM NOVA.

  ESCAPE PODS? Thian asked, having such facilities much in the fore of his mind.

  Fok gave the rasping noise of ’Dini amusement.

  SOME ESCAPE PODS RELEASED ON OUTWARD SIDE. TWO QUEEN SKELETONS FOUND IN PODS ADJACENT TO QUARTERS. FOUR MORE PODS WERE NOT OCCUPIED AND HAD NOT BEEN ACTIVATED. THREE WERE GONE.

  ALWAYS SAVE THE WORST NEWS FOR THE LAST, MMMM, FLK?

  Fok shrugged its upper limbs and bent its poll eye on him. NOT WORST NEWS BUT REQUIRES ALTERATION OF CURRENT PLANS.

  IN WHAT WAY?

  Fok tapped its feet, which included the toe wriggling that had fascinated Thian since he was a child and found his toes could not duplicate the motion.

  SPKTM VOTES TO CONTINUE VOYAGE TO INVESTIGATE NOVA, DISCOVER WHAT DEBRIS MIGHT EXIST OF THAT STAR SYSTEM . . .

  Thian grinned, TO BE ABSOLUTELY POSITIVE THAT THE HIVE WORLD WAS VICTIM OF NOVA?

  EXACTLY.

  THN CAN HARDLY FAULT THAT.

  THN WOULD NOT.

  AND THE HUMANS VOTE?

  THEY WISH TO PICK UP TRACE OF ESCAPE PODS AND FOLLOW.

  THAT COULD TAKE A LONG TIME AND A WIDE AREA TO SEARCH.

  NOT SO WIDE. TRACES ALREADY FOUND. THREE PODS, THREE HUMAN SHIPS. GOOD CHASE. NO REAL DANGER BUT MUCH LEARNING AND MUCH GLORY.