Firechild

by Jack Williamson

  “Misericordia de diós!” Panchito knew him. “El Cucaracho!” The gun jumped, and the dream was broken.

  44

  “Adiós!

  Belcraft stood blinking at Anya, feeling sick. Clad in shorts and halter against the Mexican heat, she was pink from the sun and streaked with sweaty dust, yet still aglow with a long-limbed perfection that seemed to deny her dazing confession.

  “How could you—” He had to get his breath. “Have you told anybody were Meg is?”

  “The hit man.” Her sun-freckled face grew tighter. “The human rat they call Cockroach. A child killer, who ought to die himself. Clegg picked him for the mission. He’s the Indian type with the mirror glasses that just splashed you.”

  “If he harms Meg—” He stared into her green-eyed defiance. “I’ve got to stop him.”

  “No chance.” Watching him warily, poised and cool, she shook her head. “A professional killer, armed to the teeth. Ahead of us now, on four good tires.”

  “I—I—” He caught his breath, staring down at the toy-sized radio in his hand. “And you—” He waved it at her, helpless. “You’ve been calling that killer every day. Guiding him to Meg. That’s why you made love to me. I—I ought to kill you.”

  “You could try.” She shrugged, though he heard a tremor in her voice. “Others have failed.”

  “Of course I can’t.” He sagged into bafflement. “I didn’t even bring a gun—” He bit his lip. “I suppose that’s the reason you warned me that smuggling weapons could land us in a Mexican jail?”

  “It really could.”

  He stood silent, blinking at the grease-smeared device in his grease-smeared hand. A clever invention. He turned it, staring at the removable insert that had held the actual face cream, the nest of wires and batteries and computer chips it had hidden, the tiny mike, the thin antenna that could be unreeled to transmit the message. The broken jar slid out of his fingers and shattered again on the rocks.

  “Killing—” He choked on the word. “Killing isn’t my business. But if Meg is killed—” He shuddered to a wave of nausea. “I hope you know what you’ve done.”

  “Sax, I don’t know.” Her voice had fallen soberly. “Nobody does. That has been everybody’s problem since the whole thing began. Alphamega came out of the same lab that killed Enfield. But why it happened or what she is or how she came to be—”

  Her sun-colored shoulders tossed.

  “Meg can’t be blamed!”

  “Who can? We’re blind. Nobody knows what new city or what whole nation is to go next. Anybody able to command such disasters can kill the world or rule it. With EnGene gone, that queer child was the only key to what happened. Clegg was trying to wring it out of her. The KGB sent me to get it for the Soviet.”

  “She couldn’t—she couldn’t kill anybody!”

  “A good many thousand died in Enfield. Clegg believes she has you bewitched.”

  “Clegg’s insane!”

  “Perhaps he is.” She nodded, and he couldn’t help a fleeting pleasure in the sheen of her bright hair where the sun struck it. “But Sax, look at yourself. Captivated by a little pink worm, from your very first glimpse. Throwing away your whole medical career, for no sane reason. Claiming to be guided in your strange behavior by visions that come to you alone. Any court would commit you.”

  “Do you think I’m crazy?”

  “I don’t—don’t understand what she has done to you.” She frowned uncertainly, her fine eyes graver. “But I haven’t been enchanted. She frightens me. When I tried to weigh your hopes for her against the risk of catastrophe, I decided she should die.”

  “You’re terribly wrong.”

  “Who knows?” Unhappily, she shrugged again. “It wasn’t just my own decision. The KGB has allowed me to work with Clegg—with your own government—to put Harris on her trail. Not that I like it.” Her face hardened. “A degenerate animal! I can guess how you feel about me, but I was taking orders. I—”

  She gulped, and her voice sank lower.

  “Believe me, Sax! I’ve dreaded this. The moment when I’d have to hurt you with the truth.”

  “Let’s get on.” He swung abruptly back to the luggage he had been loading. “Meg has this Torres with her. Armed, I hope. Maybe—”

  Her eyes had widened. “You’re taking me?”

  “I can’t abandon you here on the desert. Get in the car.”

  He climbed in beside her and drove on.

  Out of the arroyo, he found the black van again. Already kilometers ahead, it was zigzagging up a far-off hill at a rate the little Buick couldn’t match. A powerful machine, probably with a four-wheel drive. Both vehicles must have been selected, the bitter thought struck him, to handicap him for just this contingency.

  Yet he pushed on as fast as he dared. The twists and rocks and ruts and washes of the neglected road took most of his attention. Keri—or whatever her real name was—sat silent beside him, looking so miserable it was hard not to pity her.

  “We’ve talked about Vic.” He spoke at last, almost in spite of himself. “He used to talk to me. I know what he hoped to create with genetic engineering. It was no sort of weapon, but something good—something that could transform the world toward perfection. His notions were often too dazzling for me. He used to talk about creating a benign virus, engineered to invade and remake our bodies.”

  “Whatever he wanted, it all went wrong.” Her voice seemed small and bleak. “Enfield died.”

  “I remember Vic’s last phone call.” Watching the road, he didn’t look at her. “A call I still don’t understand. Very brief and cryptic. Somehow upbeat, yet I got a sense of desperation.”

  “He mentioned a letter?”

  Surprised, he looked hard at her.

  “Written and mailed just before he called. Which makes me wonder now if he foresaw the disaster. Though, if he did—” He paused to steer around a mud-hole. “Why didn’t he get out? Or at least warn your sister Jeri—” His voice caught. “I guess she wasn’t your sister?”

  “Call me Anya.” She nodded. “Keri was a role I played.”

  “Played well,” he muttered. “You took me in.” Pain drew his face. “I thought I was in love with you.”

  “Love?” Her whisper seemed sardonic. “Love?”

  They were jolting and pitching through a muddy wash. Beyond it, he pushed faster, watching the black van crawl up a distant hill. It vanished over the crest. He drove a long time in bitter silence.

  “Sax!” she burst out suddenly. “I can’t stand it—the way you look. I know you won’t believe me, but I never wanted to hurt you. Not this way.”

  Bent over the wheel, he tried not to hear.

  “Listen, Sax.” Her voice rose unevenly. “I’ve done things you’d hate me for, but I’m not wicked. Not the way Harris is. I’m no killer. I told Clegg I couldn’t kill Alphamega. That’s why he sent Harris—”

  “What’s the difference if she’s dead?”

  Anya had no answer. He drove on, up another rocky slope and on across a barren mesa. The black van was out of sight. When he glanced again at her, she was sitting bolt upright, hands folded on her knees, staring straight ahead. Her forlorn expression wrenched him.

  “Tell me.” He had to speak. “How’d you get into the KGB?”

  “To escape something worse.” She looked at him searchingly. “If you care,” she went on at last, “I’ll tell you how it happened.”

  He had to say, “I’d like to know.”

  “I’d grown up happy. I was an only child, badly pampered. My grandfather was an engineer who made a fortune under the czars. Come the Reds, he was smart enough to compromise. Built factories and managed foreign trades for them.

  “My father managed to inherit his status and some of his contacts. One friend on the Central Committee. When I was a child we had a summer dacha at Nikolina Gora, out in the forest west of Moscow. A Volga with MOC license plates, which meant you were somebody. My father was never a party memb
er, but he stood high enough to let us shop at the party stores. Gourmet foods. Imported shoes and clothing. Fine liquors.

  “Mother and I were allowed to go with him on missions abroad. When I decided to be an actress, he got permission for me to study in Paris and London, then pulled political strings to make breaks for me back at home. Of course I knew that most other people were not so well off, but nichevo—”

  He glanced to see her sad little shrug.

  “I never had to care. Not till a silent upset in the Kremlin tossed my father’s friend out of favor. Nothing very drastic happened to him. Party members take care of each other. But the people around him—we took the heat. My father died in prison. We lost our apartment and the dacha and the car. My mother killed herself. And I—”

  Dismally, she shook her head.

  “I don’t suppose you can imagine what all that did to me. My stage debut was just about to happen. I’d made exciting friends. Important men were courting me. The whole world looked wonderful, a dream come true.”

  She paused again, staring away into the dance of heat on the far brown horizon, and he almost pitied her.

  “Overnight it all winked out, like Cinderella’s coach in your fairy story. No money. No job. No way to live. Nowhere even to sleep. My friends—I’d thought they were friends—were afraid to speak to me. All except two or three seksoty. Secret agents of the KGB, assigned to check the reliability of people who might go abroad.

  “One of them took me in. A loud, pushy little guy, who scribbled unproduced plays and catty criticism to cover what he was. I’d never really liked him, not till then. But he was better than any alternative. Not bad in bed.”

  Glancing back at her, he caught the odd little quirk of her lips.

  “He kept me as his mistress till his wife found out. By then I knew what he was. He introduced me to the trade and gave me my first assignments.”

  She stopped to look at him, her green eyes piercing.

  “You think I’m wicked. Maybe I am. But I’m a survivor. Glad I didn’t follow my mother into the Moskva.” The recollection shadowed her face. “It was spring. The ice just breaking. The river still caked with it. A cold way to die.”

  Her sunburnt shoulders straightened.

  “I guess you won’t forgive what I am, but I’m not sorry. I’ve stayed-alive. I’ve learned. I’m good at what I do, and I enjoy success. There have been good times. The best with old Jules Roman—at least till I met you—”

  Her mouth quirked again.

  “You’ve probably heard of Roman. An American industrialist who spent most of his life working for peaceful trade with Russia. Going senile when we met, yet still admirable for what he had been. Devoted to me. I got fond of him.

  “His murder hurt—”

  She must have seen him start.

  “He was killed in Moscow.” Her voice had turned husky. “By his own doctor, on secret orders from the KGB. I’d set up the Russian trip to let me deliver an early report from our agents at EnGene. Something in it alarmed the Kremlin. I was ordered to rush back and get more of the story. Jules was too sick to travel. The Center arranged for me to bring his ashes.”

  He turned from the wheel to stare. “You killed your lover?”

  “Nichevo.” Her shoulders lifted. “He was dying, anyhow—and never much of a lover. I used to pity him when he wanted to try. But please don’t think I liked the way he was killed. I couldn’t have stopped it.”

  Silent while they rocked across another new gulley, she met his eyes when he glanced at her again.

  “You’re appalled at what I have to do. As I used to be. But I’m a Russian. I love my country. If you know our history, it has always been full of cruelty and death. That’s still true. We have nearly always been at war. We are now, with your USA. In the KGB, I’m a soldier in that war. When orders are given, we don’t ask if they are ethical. We obey.”

  He heard her draw a long, uneven breath.

  “You may hate me, Sax. I’ve done hard things, but most of them were things that had to be done. I felt sorry for my father, but I’m afraid he asked for what he got. I’ve had bad times, but they have made me stronger than I ever hoped to be.

  “There’s very little I regret. Not even the death of your dear Alphamega—assuming Mickey Harris is able to kill her. Perhaps she’s as harmless as you think. Perhaps she isn’t. Nobody knows the nature or the limits of her powers. She may carry whatever hit Enfield. She may not. The risk is simply too frightening to tolerate.”

  With that she fell silent. They were climbing a difficult slope that took all his skill. She was staring straight ahead when he could look at her again, fine hands folded on her sun-colored thighs, looking too young and too lovely for what she had said.

  “You’re hard to hate,” he muttered. “But killing Meg is something I can’t forgive.”

  “Nichevo.” Her shrug explained the word. “I had to tell you who I am.”

  From the crest of the hill, he saw a plume of flame-yellow dust climbing from the flat gray mesa they had left far below.

  “Somebody behind us. I wonder who?”

  “The field support people, I’d imagine. Men from your military intelligence, here with permission from the Mexicans. They’d been picking up my signals and getting orders to Harris.”

  Noon came. She found the water jug and gave him a newspaper-wrapped taco they had brought from the motel. Accepting it from her as if they had still been good companions, he felt a wry amazement at himself.

  The road narrowed, bulldozed out of hazardous slopes. Anya pointed, and he found a white fan of shattered rock poured down the mountainside ahead, the tunnel-mouth a dark dot above it. They crept around a jutting point and he heard Anya catch her breath.

  “Mickey! Already back!”

  The black van lurched into view, recklessly skidding down the road from toward the tunnel.

  “Which means—” He stared accusingly at Anya. “You’ve murdered Meg!”

  If she answered, he didn’t hear. For Meg was dead. Dead, dead, dead. He swayed giddily, the word drumming in his mind. He tried to stop that hard word, pounding like his heart, but he couldn’t shut it out.

  “I couldn’t help hoping,” he whispered. “Hoping—”

  The whisper died. He saw no hope.

  Meg had seemed eternal. She had survived shocks that surely would have killed any merely human being. The burning of the lab. The Enfield plague. The fall into the well. Torture in the interrogation cell. Yet a merciless certainty seized and dazed him now, a cold conviction that she was gone forever.

  He had loved her more than Midge, more than Anya, more than anything. Never knowing why, he had hardly even wondered. Meg had mattered more than anything. He had done his best to help her.

  He had failed. The sun was suddenly too cruel, the air too hot to breathe. The waves of heat all around the brown horizon came rolling closer, dissolving everything into a strangely blazing blackness. He felt the car jolting off the road, but he didn’t care.

  Meg was dead.

  “Adiós, Señor Sax!” Her voice came out of that pounding blackness, but still he knew that she was dead. “Soy triste—Soy triste—”

  Her voice was thin and small, as if from somewhere far off in the blinding dark. She felt sad to see him so unhappy. His own life had lost its meaning now that she was dead.

  “Animate!” Bravely, she tried to cheer him up. “I must go away forever, because my body is hurt too much to let it live again. We must say good-bye forever, because I’ll be too far to reach you. But you must cheer yourself. Animate, querido Sax! You have been my dearest friends, you and Panchito. I love you both, and I beg you to be glad for me.”

  He tried to whisper, “If you are dead—”

  “No, Sax! Es de nada!” Her far-off voice seemed quick and bright. “I can’t come back to my poor body, because its little life has ended. But I have received a better kind of life from my new friends. They are the people of fire, who live in a world wi
thout land, near a strange black star that swallows suns. I am very sad to leave you, but they are my own people now. I must go where they take me.

  “Be happy for me, Sax! I have left the broken body that tore me with pain. My new people love me, and they will let me share the life that comes to them forever in the black light of their black star. They will teach me what I am, and help me become whatever I’m to be, and make me happier than I have ever been. Por favor, promise to forget your sadness, so that I need not grieve for you.”

  He tried to promise, but his throat hurt and he had no voice for her to hear.

  “Adiós, querido Sax!” Her small voice was fading. “Adiós—”

  45

  “Cold as

  Stone!”

  “Wake up!”

  Anya’s hands were on the wheel. The car had veered off the road toward the brink of a deep arroyo. He braked it to a pitching stop. The black van was still a quarter-mile ahead, coming fast to meet them.

  “Sax?” She caught her breath, staring at him. “Are you trying to kill us?”

  “Something hit me—” He felt giddy. “I don’t know what. A dream—a vision of Meg. She somehow spoke to me. The first time ever when I hadn’t been asleep. She’s dead—her body is. But she—her spirit, her soul, whatever she is—came to say good-bye.”

  He saw the look in her eyes.

  “Call me crazy if you want, but I know we’ll find her dead. Murdered by your gunman!”

  If she replied, he didn’t hear. Still sunk deep in the sadness she had brought, he sat blankly staring at the killer’s van. His brain felt dazed. Meg’s parting words seemed stranger than any dream, because they reflected nothing he’d ever known. People of fire, living in a world without land around a black star that swallowed suns …

  He shook his head, blinking at the skidding van.

  “This heat?” Anya looked hard at him. “Too much for you?”

  “I—I’ll be all right. “But Meg—”

  The van was lurching to a stop just ahead. Mickey Harris got out and stalked on toward them. A dark stocky man with grease-slick hair.