In that moment Jameson came in, and stopped abruptly when he saw her, staring at her face.
“My dear girl,” he said, “are you all right?”
“I was just dozing,” she mumbled.
He said, “You told Ward you wanted to see the mind-healers.”
She looked up quickly. “Yes,” she said.
“Why? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” she said, lying hopelessly. “I just—it was the trauma. That’s all.”
A long time went by. Finally he said, “No.”
“No?” She turned back to him anxiously. “You won’t let me?”
“That’s not what I mean.” He paused then said, “Hanna, you must tell me a little more. Just a little more.”
His voice and eyes said: I am your friend. She believed him. She longed to tell him. She whispered, dizzy with gratitude, “I’m going insane.”
“Why do you think that?”
He spoke gently, leaning forward a little, and her lips parted but she could not speak. If she told him they would try to fix her here. And she had to leave. Had to.
She looked away, hardly breathing, knowing he waited for an answer. But she could not think what to say, and after a minute he said, “I know about some of it.”
“You know?” said Hanna, but a voice said in her head in great alarm: No. No. No.
Jameson for a moment receded. He said, barely heard through a wall of mist, “Some of it.”
She shook her head. “No. What?”
When had she become so inarticulate? Oh help me, she thought, but she could not say it. He went on quietly, “The muscle spasms. The movements you can’t control and try to disguise with falls. The blackouts. The night-walking. The conversations you don’t remember. What else?”
“How could you know!” she said incredulously. Her mind went blank. A single tremor shook her. She was an empty vessel filling slowly, inexorably, with fear.
When she could move again she looked down at her hands, afraid to meet his eyes.
“What else?” he said softly.
“It’s been you. Watching me.”
“Yes.”
“Why?” she whispered.
He did not answer at once, but presently he leaned forward and took her hands. It seemed an invasion, and she shuddered.
He said gently, “Don’t be afraid, Hanna. No one wants to hurt you. But there are answers we must have. Too much is unexplained. What did the aliens hope to accomplish by giving you back to us? What did they do to you with their drugs? When Tharan probed you he could not retrieve some memories that must be there—why? What does it have to do with what’s happening to you now? Tell me what you think. Somewhere you must have the answers. You are the woman who wrote ‘Sentience’—”
She shook her head violently. “A failure,” she said.
“No. A brilliant work. In essence accurate, I think; flawed perhaps in detail, because you did not take into account some things that—well, that no one could imagine. Not a failure…You are quite capable of reading the pattern, reading your own behavior. Do you read it as I do? Think.”
She did not know what he was talking about. She said in confusion, “I can’t—I can’t—”
“Think, Hanna. Do it. This is your last chance.”
“My last chance!”
She looked up at him in terror. His hands were warm and there was sympathy in his face, but what he said might have come from the man who had come to her on Endeavor, offering cold alternatives and enforcing them with threats. She tried to pull away but he held her hands tightly and she had no strength.
He said, “You cannot convince me nothing strange is going on. You cannot convince me you are not hiding something. At best, hiding; perhaps deliberately lying. And I am not alone in thinking so, Hanna. Stanislaw Morisz believes I am right. I have talked to General Steinmetz, I have talked to Peter Struzik, I have talked to Andrella Murphy. When I say this is your last chance, I mean it is your last chance to cooperate voluntarily. Trust me, Hanna. Tell me the truth and nothing will happen to you. I promise you will not be harmed.”
She tried to think and could not, and felt nothing but unreasoning panic. She did not know where it came from. It seemed part of her mind was screaming before a long-expected danger, but she could not tell what it was.
He said, “The night-walking—”
She said through the panic, “What are you talking about!”
He said, “Do you really not know why you are never rested?”
“No. No. I don’t know what you mean.” It was hard to speak because, she thought dimly, she was going to faint. She spoke only because to speak, to comment on the unknown, was a human habit. Her thoughts were surface-level and sprang from no foundation of logic; under the superficial web there was blackness.
He said slowly, “You don’t go very far. Only to the terminal in your room. And all night you study mathematics, history, military science, other things, astrogation—always, every night, astrogation. You have known for years the approximate route from D’neera to Earth, yet in the last weeks you have studied it carefully. Why have you done this, Hanna?”
“I don’t know—I don’t believe it—” She moved restlessly, helplessly. There was a great pressure behind her eyes and she thought vaguely of Ward, she ought to tell Melanie about that, maybe something had broken loose.
“I believe you, I think.” He let go of her hands at last and looked at her strangely. He said, “You are exhibiting classic symptoms of a dual personality, you know.”
She rubbed her hands over her face. She did not understand what he was saying. But something connected and she said, half a question, “The mindhealers?”
“No. I wish it were so simple. The evidence suggests you’re under some kind of control, Hanna. From outside—”
“That is impossible,” she said clearly, and then heard herself say, “I am not. That is not true.”
He and the room seemed to have become very small, as if she were a great distance away. She saw that he shook his head.
“Who knows what’s possible for the aliens? Powerful telepaths, evolved not engineered telepaths—you said once that you are too human to guess what that might mean. Until we know, we cannot let you go.”
She stood up suddenly. It was not she who moved and she swayed, seeking balance in a moment of darkness. Her eyes cleared and she saw Jameson on his feet, his eyes wide with alarm. She stretched her hands out blindly.
“Help me,” she said.
He said quickly, “Yes. All right.”
“I remember,” Hanna said, and watched her hands lift, and in a last wholly human moment wanted to tell him what she remembered: the drugs, the dissolution, the whisper in what was left of her mind, the overpowering presence of the creature who was their Leader, desperate, bending over her as if her ruined body would accommodate him.
I remember, she started to say again, but instead she backed away from him for more fighting room and Leader spoke, directly to Jameson’s mind, and said: I will kill you now.
* * *
She sprang straight for his throat. The edge of her hand nearly broke his forearm, thrown up just in time to save his life. Her foot smashed into his groin and he went down in agony with a strangled animal sound. Through the roar in his ears he heard running feet, Visharta, Morisz’s man, he would be too late, she was fast and skilled, one more blow—
There was no other blow. He managed to unfold himself. Visharta stood over Hanna, the snout of an armed laser handgun pointing at her head. She lay face down and limp, dead or unconscious. Visharta began to talk into a communicator on his wrist.
“Stop that,” Jameson said. “Shut up. Not on an open channel.”
“But Mr. Morisz—”
“I’ll talk to him myself. Tell him to wait.”
He eased painfully to a sitting position. It hurt to breathe too deeply and he was weak and nauseated. He said, “Is she dead?”
“Nossir. I didn’t touch her. Fou
nd her like this.”
Hanna suddenly rolled over in a single convulsive surge. Her eyes were open and unfocused. Visharta shifted his aim.
Jameson said, “Is that all you’ve got?”
“I’ve got a stungun, sir.”
“Then get it out, for God’s sake. She’s no good dead.”
Hanna’s eyes focused on Jameson. Visharta said behind her, “Don’t move.” She swiveled to look at him and when she turned back to Jameson he saw she was breathing unevenly, gasping, eyes wide, an animal in the extremity of panic. She tried to say something and nothing came out. Her hands made erratic movements that went nowhere.
Flight reflex, Jameson thought dispassionately. Dangerous as hell.
He got slowly to his feet. The pain was bearable now and he could ignore it, with some effort.
“Back off,” he said to Visharta.
“Nossir,” the man said stolidly. “My orders were to protect you.”
Jameson went slowly across the little space that separated him from Hanna and dropped to one knee in front of her. He was not interested in arguing with Visharta and would chance getting stunned. He looked into Hanna’s terrified face and saw that it was, at least, her face. Perhaps he had only imagined that half-formed distortion.
He said, “Hanna?”
She still gulped for air in irregular sobs, but the convulsive efforts to move had settled into tremors. She nodded in jerks: Yes. I am Hanna.
“What is it?”
“One of, one of them.” Her voice was thick. She took another breath. “Inside me. Alive.”
“Impossible.”
She shook her head and reached for him in the gesture she had not finished before. After a second, unwillingly, he put his hands on her shoulders and drew her closer to him.
“What does it want?” he said in her ear.
“It wants to go back,” she whispered. “It came to find out what I didn’t tell it. It knows now. It wants to go back.”
“Back where?”
“I don’t know. Where it came from.”
“How did—never mind.”
He patted her back absently, holding her close and looking past her at nothing. This was worse than even he had thought. She said, still against his shoulder, “It’s gone now. Hiding. Inside me.”
“But it can come out whenever it wants? Control you? Do what it wants?”
“No, not—” She lifted her head a little and let it fall back. Her breath was warm through his shirt and her voice was calmer. “Not whatever it wants. It wanted to kill you. I stopped it.”
“But who’s in control?” he said, and discovered with profound shock that he was rubbing the back of her neck. The skin was silken under his fingertips.
“I don’t know. I don’t know. I knew it wanted to kill you and I stopped it. I don’t know how.”
“Can you feel it inside you now?”
“Yes, like—” She fumbled for words. “Like carrying a stone around inside me.”
“A physical entity?” he said, incredulous.
“No. No, I don’t think so. It’s been there all along. I didn’t know what it was.”
“Can you communicate with it? Try,” he said, and deliberately held her more closely, reassurance against panic.
Another tremor went through her and she said, “It doesn’t want to. I can’t make it. It said so. It’s afraid—”
She lifted her head and he saw the fear was gone from her face; there was only a look of wonder.
“It said so,” she repeated. “It’s gone again now.”
He felt her curiosity, so strong it left no room for fear. She met his eyes, inviting him to share it. He could not afford the luxury. He said, “It only comes out when it wants to?”
“I guess—yes.”
“You can’t get at it unless it wants you to.”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Well,” he said, “that settles that.”
He touched her hair once, regretfully, and let her go and got up. She looked up, startled.
“What are you going to do?” she said.
“Call Morisz. Get the experts started on you.”
“What do you mean? What are they going to do?”
“I don’t know.” All his aches had started up again. He said tiredly, “Maybe we can get to it if we duplicate the drugs. That must have had something to do with it.”
“But—wait.” She stood up too, a little unsteadily. Her eyes were anxious again. “What do you mean? What they gave me?”
“Yes. If—”
“Oh, no. Please. I remember. I remember what it was like.”
“If it is the only way—”
“No!” She was frightened again. She came a step closer and looked up into his face. “They said that too,” she said. “The only way. It’s like dying. It’s worse than dying. It was the worst, the worst of all. You can’t. You can’t do that to me.”
He said with finality, “I’m sorry. I have twenty billion human beings to think of.”
Her hands closed on his shirt. “No,” she said. “No. Please.” Horror blasted him, and a silent, powerful plea for help. She had trusted him, still trusted him, wanted to trust him. The flood of mental intimacy revolted him. He got hold of her hands and nodded to Visharta, and the contact ended, leaving him empty. Visharta drew her away.
Jameson said thickly, “Arrest her. The assassination attempt, for now. Maybe espionage, I don’t know—”
“But I didn’t! I didn’t know!”
“It doesn’t matter,” he said, and turned his back on her outstretched hands and walked away. His footsteps were loud on the polished floors and he thought he heard her call to him. He did not look back.
He went on through the house to his private communications module and plowed through the identification routine, moving stiffly. He thought she still begged him, distantly; but it was only the aftershock of that assault on his emotions. He cursed all telepaths, Hanna above all.
Morisz was waiting for his call and said, “I’ll send more men over.”
Jameson thought of Hanna being taken away by a squad of armed men. He said, “That won’t be necessary. The less disturbance, the better. Visharta can put her under light stun.”
“I’ll be waiting at the complex,” Morisz said, and signed off.
Jameson leaned back wearily. The light in this little room was too bright, as always. He hurt in places where Hanna had not hit him, and he was more shaken than he had thought. He had done his duty—and he thought flatly that it might have been more difficult if he had not been fueled by fear and revulsion and pain.
It was time to put out of his mind forever the vision of Hanna as the fragile survivor of shipwreck, because she was not going to survive this one. The charges they would hold her on were a joke, but they would serve to keep her while they studied her, poked her, probed her, drugged her, took her apart to the bone to find the real prisoner, the alien spy.
She knew it, too. The look of betrayal on her face was clear in his memory. I have no choice, he thought, but the deep blue eyes accused him and he thought: Perhaps when this is over I should resign. I do not think I could do this again.
He would have to face her sooner or later. It might as well be now. I will tell Visharta to stun her, he thought, and went slowly back to the room where he had left them.
He had waited too long. The utter silence told him before he stepped through the door that something was wrong, and as he did so he felt the cold draft from another door open somewhere to the winter.
Visharta lay on his back near the fireplace, alive but unconscious and looking peaceful as a baby. His weapons were gone, and so was Hanna.
Chapter 12
Murderer!
You too
I stopped you
too soon but you wanted
to kill—stop it! Stop!
Her skull seemed full of voices. They would shatter it. And all of them were right. She could not murder humans but she had to
, if she had to, to escape.
Drifted snow sucked at her. She floundered, going no where, and sank to her knees. The pressure in her head was everywhere, it was going to burst. But she hadn’t killed Visharta, though the thing inside her had urged it. Calculated tears, eyes swimming, body lax, a fake collapse, he had come to see if her heart still beat and then—
All hers. The plan and calculation were all hers. And the restraint, above all, at the end.
She was not going mad. She wasn’t insane. Relief swept over her, all her own and so great she cried out aloud in gratitude. Alien-seeming reality, body, thoughts, dreams—they were all his. The presence that haunted her had been not the watchers but him. Now that she knew he was there he could be resisted. Her present danger seemed almost insignificant.
She stumbled to her feet with difficulty, possessed by an urge to run. Hers? Leader’s? Both.
Leader gabbled in soundless terror. She tried to think where to run to.
Hopeless. Nowhere to go.
Another wave of panic nearly blacked her out. She swayed where she stood and screamed at him.
Stop it! Stop! I have to think!
The terror eased but she was shaking, gulping for air. It was easier to start these things than stop them and Leader, feeding on her terrors, feeding her his, for days, for weeks, was near breaking.
An oblong of light showed a hundred meters away: Jameson’s front door opening. Trees and shrubs showed against reflected light with the vividness of hallucination, black and knife-edged. Her first flight had carried her halfway down the long hill before the house, and her footprints were clear in the dim snow-light shimmer. She cowered at the end of them.
“Hanna!” Jameson was silhouetted against the light, a target-practice cutout. Her hand tightened on the stungun.
“Hanna! Come back! You can’t get away!”
Kill!
“Not him!” she said violently, but her hand jumped. The stungun dropped to the snow and she was holding the deadly laser. She cried out to Jameson: Get back!
His shocked comprehension mixed with Leader’s rage.
Fire! What he will do to both of us!
I will not harm him! I will not!
The D’neeran Factor Page 24