The D’neeran Factor

by Terry A. Adams

  He heard himself with satisfaction; his voice had less expression than GeeGee’s. They looked at him warily. Theo said, “What do you do in the meantime?”

  “I go back to space and wait. GeeGee’s powered and provisioned for years.”

  “Years!” Shen repeated, incredulous.

  “If necessary.”

  Lise’s face crumpled, but Theo and Shen looked at each other with grudging accord.

  It was working. What he said made a kind of sense. They saw the picture he wanted them to see: GeeGee glittering here and there in human space, disappearing and reappearing, outwaiting I&S.

  But it was not a real hope. No one ever outwaited I&S. Instead he would take GeeGee out, out, on a hopeless quest that would end only with the end of his life, or of his sanity. But he would not take anyone with him.

  He left them to look at the illusion with hope, and went to call I&S again—without Hanna, this time.

  Figueiredo’s voice said: “We have contact. Make it quick.”

  “Make him wait,” said the expert’s smile.

  “Is Hanna with him?”

  “I think not.”

  “Dead perhaps?”

  “I think not.”

  “Why did she…?” The violin.

  A sigh. “A warning of some kind.”

  “Suicidal,” Denkovitz growled.

  “An old pattern.” The deep bass, rarely heard.

  “Not quite,” said the expert, light and sweet. “That is, yes and no.”

  The voices hushed to respectful silence. The expert went on.

  “She was shattered once. I think not whole since. There are ways to give warning. Ways and ways. This might have been one. So public? So direct? Inviting attack? Consider what happened. Besides the deaths. The trauma. Her instinct is: become rigid. Cling to what’s known. Those near breaking make shows of strength. She is not well. Perhaps not quite sane.”

  “No good, then.” Disapproving. Vickery’s voice.

  “Those who do what she does must somehow be split,” said the bass.

  “This is different,” said the smile. “There’s nothing solid, she stands on air and swings at nothing; it’s been long since there were foundations, else she would not have risked what she risked. It may mean her time with us is past.”

  After a long silence the bass said, “And next?”

  “I do not know,” the expert said.

  “How do we find out?”

  “Watch,” she said.

  Hanna was dozing when Michael came to her again. She had not been able to turn off the light because GeeGee would not answer or obey her, and it was a vicious glare even to his eyes. He noticed the cold for the first time also, and spoke to his ship. The light dimmed and a current of warm air brushed his face. Hanna did not stir. He sat at her feet, which were bare; he took them in his hands to warm them and she came awake all of a sudden, kicking at him by reflex, savagely.

  “Sorry. Sorry!”

  She had been on her stomach. Now she was upright. She put a hand to her chest, where her heart pounded too hard. Michael raised both hands in the ancient peacemaking gesture.

  She waited to see what he wanted.

  “Don’t kick,” he said cautiously. He touched her feet again and she jerked and said, “What are you doing?”

  “I didn’t mean to freeze you to death.”

  His hands fell easily into a pattern of massage. He knew what he was doing and the blood moved into her icy toes. He talked quietly, eyes on his task.

  “We’ve Jumped. Several times, in fact. I’m talking to someone on Earth. Not the man you had before. They say there might be a compromise, but they want to see you first. So they’ll know you’re all right. You’ll have to come up. I hope you’ll keep your mouth shut. If you don’t, there’s not much I can do about it. But if you think about it, you’ll see that the sooner we get it over with, the sooner you can leave…”

  He went on talking, but Hanna ceased to listen. Something was happening in the soles of her feet. The warmth went straight up her legs and into her belly like current carried on a pair of wires.

  She thought: This man was a Registered Friend. He has forgotten nothing. She had entirely forgotten it, however. Until now. He did not look up. If he met her eyes while his hands were busy in this way, it would be a challenge. Somewhere in the training (and how was he trained? What else had he learned?), he had been taught when to challenge and when to submit, or appear to submit.

  She drew her knees up suddenly, pulling her feet away from him. He looked up. His eyes were innocent; he had only wanted her to be warm. But something else came into them now.

  He said, “Just once I’d like to meet a woman who didn’t know. I might as well have stayed in the trade.”

  “It must be a great burden for you,” Hanna said politely. “The curiosity. The expectations. You must have to say no all the time. What a pity.”

  The corners of his mouth twitched. She was right, and he nearly laughed. He stopped it, but his eyes danced; somewhere there was a well of merriment hard to suppress.

  “Come talk to I&S,” he said.

  The spiral stair was not long, but Hanna’s knees felt the climb halfway up. In Control she sank into a seat with relief. In front of her she saw, first, a chronometer engaged in some kind of count. It was counting up. Then she saw the face of the I&S negotiator, the dark brown face of a woman with a mild, almost sweet expression. The brown eyes were lustrous and made her look very young. Her hair was styled in yielding curves and there was a frill of lace at her throat.

  Michael said, “Hanna, this is Colonel Stiva Waller. As you can see, Colonel, Hanna is alive and well. Shall we get on with it?”

  “And how are you being treated?” Waller said, ignoring Michael.

  “All right,” Hanna answered uncertainly, and looked at the gentle face with wonder; then she understood. How like I&S; how like the Polity! This would not be a straightforward negotiation if they could help it. They would tip the balance in any way they could, they would use a pretty woman whose smile and soft voice might disarm Michael and confuse him; might, even, suggest this affair was a peccadillo that did not threaten him and need not be taken too seriously. Did they hope he would flirt with her? Or be distracted by a subliminal mother-image?

  “Would you like to tell me what you’ve been doing?” Stiva Waller asked sweetly.

  “Doing…?”

  “Are you well? How have you been treated since we saw you last? Some hours ago?”

  “I’ve been sleeping—” Hanna’s voice wavered. She pulled her scattered thoughts together and said, “I was very sick, you know. I’ve been cared for well.”

  “It must be nice to know you’re in good hands,” Stiva Waller said.

  Hanna did not say anything. She felt Michael behind her, unmoving. Waller said, “And have Shen Lo-Yang and Theodore Jadinow helped in your care?”

  Hanna did not understand the reason for the question. She said, “Theo saved my life.”

  Michael put his hands on Hanna’s shoulders and said, “All right. Tell her, Waller. You’re dying to.”

  Hanna screwed her head around to look up at Michael. He watched Waller’s face and for once she could not read his expression. Disgust? Contempt? His fingers moved a little. It felt like a caress, and she was still; but the invisible watchers on Waller’s side would see those graceful hands near her throat.

  “Shen Lo-Yang,” Waller said, “was an executioner in the service of General Greenway on Nestor for many years. She loved her work. So much that when she fell from favor—the punishment, I believe, was mutilation—she turned to robbery with murder to support herself. Theo Jadinow enjoyed a lucrative and illegal medical practice—gypsy practices, they’re called—on Co-op’s frontiers. He was motivated by the need to procure large sums to pay for his use of—well, of nearly any drug you care to name. He does not seem to have killed anyone, at least not personally, and he was not remanded for Adjustment. His medical training bef
orehand was minimal. Yet you feel safe?”

  “Quite,” Hanna said.

  “I see. That being the case, Mr. Kristofik, we can talk about terms.”

  “Mine are easy,” Michael said.

  “Let’s hear them.”

  “Safe passage to Valentine. A personal guarantee from Ecomanager Mejian that when I go back there I won’t be handed over to I&S. Restoration of my property. I want you to quit harassing my friends and I want you to let go anybody you’ve got in custody because of me. In exchange I’ll give you Hanna—and everything I’ve collected on the man she told you about. The places he’s been and the names he’s used and his contacts for the last two years.”

  “That will do for a start,” Waller said.

  “It’ll do for a finish, too.”

  He did not say anything else. The tips of his fingers shifted and rested softly on either side of Hanna’s jaw, on the pulsepoints under her ears. It was a blatant bluff and she was astonished—first, that he thought he could make anyone believe he would harm her, with that transparent face; and secondly, that she had not denounced the fraud at once.

  Before she could make up her mind to do it Waller said, “We’ll discuss it. I’ll contact you later.”

  “No.” He glanced at the chronometer. The call to Earth had given away GeeGee’s position, and he would not linger. “We’re moving on. I’ll contact you.”

  That was the end. As Waller’s image disappeared, Hanna turned and saw Michael’s face as she had not seen it before: stone. Perhaps they would believe him after all.

  He changed; he looked only tired. He dropped into a seat beside Hanna, forgetting for a moment that she was there. She put out her hand and touched him of her own accord for the first time. The golden eyes turned to her face and she saw that this desperate bargain was not what he wanted to do; he was not doing anything he wanted to do. She took her hand away, surprised at what she had done.

  “I have to lock you up again,” he said.

  “All right, if that’s what you want. But—” She hesitated. “It’s hard for me to believe all the things I heard about you.”

  “They’re probably true,” he said.

  He got up and took her back to the mirrored room. It was dim and warm now, and she fell asleep quickly. She was not present two hours later when he settled the details of the trade with Waller.

  The voices considered details.

  “If it fails—”

  “It won’t fail.”

  “If it does—”

  “Then what would he do?”

  “He has nowhere to go.”

  “D’neera,” said the bass.

  “D’neera?”

  “D’neera’s mad enough,” someone sighed.

  “Not that mad!”

  “If she is,” said the bass. “And she is.”

  They were quiet.

  The expert said, “You watched. You know her well.”

  “I did. He touched her. You saw it.”

  “Yes.”

  “That was threat, was it not?”

  “It was.”

  “Was not. She was not afraid. More important: she was not angered.”

  “How do you know?”

  “She would not hide it if she were. When she lived here,” said the bass, as if it talked of a long-ago time, “she met eager men excited by her beauty, or by the ease with which, it’s said, D’neerans contract affairs, or by, perhaps, her belonging to me and the challenge that meant in the games of men. I’ve seen her touched against her will—more ambiguously than this. The look in her eyes freezes blood. What happened, she says— the beating, the rape, most especially the rape—well. I wouldn’t like to be one of those men, if she meets them again. Wouldn’t touch her myself, old friends that we are, without care. But he—what did you see in her face?”

  “Surprise,” someone said. “Only that.”

  “Only that. She did not dislike it.”

  “I thought so,” the expert said.

  “Thought what?”

  “She’s unstable. Old wounds reopened.”

  “And so?” someone said.

  “D’neera,” they breathed.

  “D’neera might shelter him. At her request.”

  “Not for long. There’s no life for him there.”

  “When it’s done—”

  “When it’s done, then what?”

  “Their cobweb plan is done. Hers, the aliens’. When it’s done we’ll do it—”

  “Correctly,” said the bass, weary now. “By rule. A mission staffed with those she’s trained. Not her.”

  “No?”

  “No. When we get her back, she can help us—if she will. But I do not think I will trust her. I think,” he said, “her loyalties are suspect. Does she know it herself?—perhaps not.”

  The rendezvous was fixed for six days hence, even though they were near Earth at the start, at the heart of the network of common routes humanity had developed in the course of seven centuries. The intercom in Hanna’s room, as Michael had promised, worked—after a fashion; when she used it to ask if anyone was there it did not answer, but soon afterward Theo appeared to make sure she was all right. She did not need to use it again. Theo came at regular intervals, solicitous of her health. But the solicitude was mingled with resentment, as if Hanna alone were responsible for what was happening to Michael and his household.

  When Theo was not there, and Hanna had done all the sleeping she could, there was nothing to do except listen to silence. In the silence she “heard” fragments of thought. From Theo: I can do without the money and all. But how can I do without him ?

  From Lise: He is so sad. He doesn’t want me to see.

  From Shen: I will kill for him if it helps. Or die for him. But I will not say so to anyone though they take my tongue again.

  But Michael only thought: Why in hell’d this happen? Bad timing. Pure dumb luck.

  * * *

  One day she asked Theo, “Why do you love Michael so much?”

  He was reading what her blood had to say; he looked up and looked at her as if she were a nonperson with no right to ask such a thing.

  Hanna said, “I’m trying to understand. Why won’t you tell me? Is it something to be ashamed of?”

  In fact he looked ashamed. He muttered, “Only for me.”

  She waited. It was plain that he ached to tell someone. And she had asked.

  At last he said, “You heard what they’ve been saying on the ’beams? About me?”

  “No.”

  “You didn’t hear anything?”

  “I can’t make anything in here work. I haven’t heard anything at all.”

  “Oh.” He was still trying to make up his mind; he fidgeted. He looked at her slantwise and said, “I used to use a lot of dope, you know.”

  “I didn’t know,” she said, not quite truthfully, remembering what Stiva Waller had said.

  “Well, I did.” His skin was very fair, almost transparent. The blood climbed behind it in a violent blush. “I got into some trouble trying to support it. They’re saying, they say, Mike’s mixed up in the traffic. Or was back then. He never was, though. You’d think as hard as they’ve tried to find out things about him they’d have gotten the truth about that.”

  “How did you meet him, then?”

  He stared at her for a while. Finally he said, “Like I told you, I got in some trouble. When they let me go, I couldn’t—there wasn’t anything for me to do. I’d been studying medicine on Co-op but I couldn’t—well, I’d been thrown out. And deported to Valentine. They’re not that particular on Valentine. And I was, as soon as I got there I started doping hard again. I didn’t have much money and it ran out. I was in Port of Shoreground, that’s where it’s easiest to get the stuff, you understand? And Mike—”

  He stopped, looking at her uncertainly. Something about her attention reassured him. He went on: “I was sitting on a curb in the port. In the rain for God’s sake. Wondering if I was strong enough to
pick up a few hours’ day labor. If anybody’d hire me even for that. I’d slept on the street the night before, a lot of nights actually. Some people came by, they were eating something from one of the market stalls, one of them didn’t like it and he threw it down in the street, some kind of meat roll. Half eaten. I hadn’t had a meal in a couple of days. I couldn’t wait till they were out of sight, I jumped on it. There was this dog heading for it, you see. They saw me and they started laughing. I was sitting there eating it and thinking about the ocean. I can’t swim. I wouldn’t have had to go out very far. Somebody sat down next to me, I looked over and it was Mike, he’d seen the whole thing. He said, ‘You want a job?’ I went with him. At first I thought he wanted the obvious thing, and I would’ve gone along with it, I guess, but it wasn’t that. Then I couldn’t figure out what he did want. He never said. He never has said. It’s been six years and he never said why he did it.”

  He added after a moment, “He took the dog along, too.”

  “‘There was only the hunger,’” Hanna murmured.

  “Huh?”

  “Something someone said. Nothing…” She looked at him thoughtfully. “You never thought of leaving him later?”

  “There wasn’t any reason. At first it was just because I had it good. Later he picked up Shen on Nestor and—” He blushed again. “I didn’t trust her, actually. I thought she’d cut his throat some time if I wasn’t around. After that I just sort of never thought about leaving.”

  “Why did he take Shen on, anyway?”

  “Don’t ask me. Never made any sense, far as I could see.”

  “Did you ever ask him?”

  “Sure. Never got an answer, though. But we’re not the only ones, me and Shen. Mostly they take him for what they can get and move on. Steal him blind sometimes. He’s thrown a couple out. It never stops him, though. Once I told him he was crazy and he reminded me what he’d done for me. It’s the only time he ever brought it up, he just wanted to shut me up. So I quit asking questions. You’re a telepath, maybe you can figure it out. I can’t.”