The D’neeran Factor

by Terry A. Adams

  The chill of the cavern reached into Theo’s bones. The only help he could give was to watch, so he did it.

  He did not wait inside the cave but just at the opening, ready to duck inside at the first sign or sound of anything in the air. He was cold and alone, and even when his eyes adjusted to the dark, even here looking into the open, he felt smothered; the bluff was a mass of black hung over his head and he faced a tree. On either side of the tree, and at either hand, brush shut out everything except a few patches of starless sky. He longed for a clear line of sight to the valley, for any sight of it. Michael had said B would return to the village, but if he did, it would be hard for anyone on the mountainside to know it. The wind rustled gently, and whenever it rose Theo started as if he heard hunters creeping through the wood. Once in a windless moment he thought he heard a spacecraft lift off, and jumped to his feet, ready to run. But as he stood in the dark the sound faded and was gone. He strained his ears and heard only the night, until he was not sure he had heard anything at all.

  He sat down and waited again. He was still very tired. But he was on guard, fighting sleep, when the communicator set up a sweet steady signal and an unmistakable voice said, “Mike?”

  He had never been so glad to hear anything. He said shakily, “Mike’s asleep, I’ll get him,” and scrambled to wake the others.

  They came out to a filament of dawn. It wasn’t much, because the mountain blotted out the east. Shen said, “Coming in, where are you?” and they stood in the open and looked up at the lightening sky.

  Michael got his communicator back and talked into it, thinking This is too easy. “Meet us just under the tree line,” he said. “About forty-five degrees south from a straight line up the mountain from Croft. See it?”

  “Not yet,” she said. There was no sound to indicate GeeGee was near, and Shen would not tell them where she was, not when someone else might be listening.

  They started downhill in a hurry, running and skidding on the steep decline. “What if the other one comes back?” Lise said nervously.

  “They’ll go after GeeGee,” Michael answered to reassure her, and saw Hanna nod.

  The light strengthened as they went on. Going down was easier than climbing had been, and there was no stopping to peer around in the dark for old, changed landmarks. They were close to the open when they heard GeeGee, and a few seconds later saw her gliding in at an altitude not much greater than theirs.

  “That’s fine,” Michael said. “Set her down.”

  “Hell of a grade,” Shen complained. But GeeGee stopped in midair and slowly lowered herself toward the ground.

  Made it, he thought, and saw Hanna freeze, staring across the valley through the lacy tops of the last trees.

  “Tell her to get out!” she cried, there must have been a burst of thought, too, or Shen had seen what Hanna saw, because there was a roar from GeeGee and she was gone, leaping into the air as from a catapult. “Back,” Michael said, “everybody back!” They did not need to be urged, they all saw the other shape now, a dark blot racing across the valley, and they turned and climbed for their lives. Michael ran behind the others, looking over his shoulder, waiting for an explosion in the air or among them, but there was none. Then the valley was empty and the sound of engines was gone.

  They kept running until they tumbled through the mouth of the cave. The dark past the opening was a wall. I thought I had stopped running, Michael thought. He had shoved the light into his pocket as the day grew, and now he got it out and turned it on and they wormed their way back to their first resting place. They sat in a circle round the light, panting and sweating in the chill air.

  Michael wondered for the first time what would become of them. He looked at Hanna and saw her hunched, head bowed to her knees. He had never seen her like that before.

  After a while Theo stretched out on his back on the stone. He said, “They had us. If they’d fired, it would’ve been over.”

  “They went for the ship,” Michael said. He looked at the stone because otherwise he would look at Hanna, and he did not want to. For once he did not want her reading his thoughts.

  She did not have to read them. She had been a soldier and a killer, and she could make out the strategies of violence for herself.

  She said without lifting her head, so that her voice was muffled and expressionless, “GeeGee’s a lot more important than we are. If he killed us first, there’d be nothing to keep Shen here. So we’re bait to keep bringing her back till he shoots her down. Then he can just pick us off…He’ll come back sooner next time. He was over there waiting. I wonder how long…Could you persuade Shen to leave us and carry word home?” She was talking to Michael now, but she still did not raise her head. If Shen did that, a ship of the Fleet would come in a few months’ time—but the four left behind would be dead long before then.

  She’s a realist. Maybe she’d go.

  He could not say it. Lise had lain down with her head on Theo’s chest, hiding her eyes. How could he tell Shen to go and leave Lise?

  “We’re tired,” he said. “We’re not thinking straight. Get some tabs down and get some rest, all of you.”

  Hanna looked up finally. Her eyes were veiled and she said nothing, only made a one-minute meal of food tabs with the others and afterward said, “Shall I watch?”

  “I will. I’ll wake you later.”

  He kissed her quickly and took off for the entrance to the cavern, as if being out of sight meant she could not read his mind.

  * * *

  He waited in the dark and thought about taking a chance.

  The first notion had come into his head as he crawled back into the cave, leaving the day behind. He had put it aside as fast as he could, afraid Hanna would see it. He did not think she would like the idea if she knew about it.

  The situation was hopeless. The four people on the ground were much less dangerous for B than the Golden Girl, which had the course to Gadrah in her data banks. B could not allow her to get away and take that knowledge back to the Polity. But she had to get away—with Hanna and Theo and Lise on board with Shen. He had thought of a way to change things—maybe.

  The day had turned bright, and when he looked out from the dark it dazzled him. Time passed, but Hanna did not come out to him, to his relief; she must be asleep; he wanted her to stay asleep. He turned to go where she was—but it was Lise he wanted. And heard someone slither over stone and a moment later saw, to his further relief, that Lise had come out seeking him.

  She hunkered down with him between day and night and said, “I couldn’t sleep.”

  “Want to take over on watch?”

  “Yes,” she said, pleased with his trust.

  “Good for you. Wait here a minute.”

  He crept through the passage of stone for the last time, to the light at the end of it. He meant to steal Hanna’s communicator. He was afraid he could not do it without waking her, but she had put it down on the stone beside Carmina’s tooled blue-black gun, and he picked it up without disturbing her or making a sound. The disc of light metal was no larger than his palm, and he remembered, incongruously, why he had bought the things in the first place—so he could talk from the great house on Valentine to Theo or Shen on the sand far below at the foot of the cliff, or they could talk to him. Not that anyone going to the beach had ever remembered to take one along. It hadn’t mattered; nothing had ever been too urgent to wait.

  Then he picked Theo’s pocket. Theo muttered and groaned at the light touch, and turned his head back and forth, but he did not wake.

  Hanna did not move. He looked at her with longing, but he could not risk a kiss.

  He took his booty silently back to Lise. She was in the light now, using the shiny surface of his own communicator as a mirror while she wiped grime from her face with her sleeve.

  “Here,” he said. “This is Hanna’s. I’m taking mine with me. I’m going for a walk and I need it. This is Theo’s clock. You keep it. Now, listen. In exactly an hour, if
nothing happens sooner, go wake Hanna and Theo up. Tell them I’m going to create a diversion. Do you know what a diversion is?”

  “To make those men look the other way?” she said shyly.

  “Very good. Tell Hanna and Theo that the three of you should go down to the place we were making for this morning. When you get there—this is very important—Hanna’s got to get in touch with Shen. Not by voice; telepathically. She has to make Shen understand three things. First, if Shen’s not close she’s got to come in as close as she dares without being detected. Second, when she’s at that point, she’s got to let me know. There was a code we used on Revenge, she’ll remember it; Hanna should tell her to use it again. And third, when the diversion starts, she’s got to pick the three of you up.”

  He made her repeat it back to him twice. She had it right, but he had also taken the precaution of recording what he said; Hanna would see the blinking light on her communicator and play it back. He gave it to Lise, and with it the packet of food tabs he carried. Win or lose, he would not need them; the others might.

  He got up finally, smiling down at Lise. She had listened to him carefully, too caught up in detail to see any flaw in what he proposed, but a trace of doubt came into her eyes at the last.

  “What about you?” she said.

  He said readily, “You just wait and see. I haven’t come this far to get stopped now. All right?”

  “All right…”

  “Remember, let them sleep for another hour.”

  Which would give him time to get well away before Hanna woke up and wondered exactly what he meant to do. Maybe it would be all right if she did. She might say grimly: Yes, someone’s got to do something, it might as well be you. But maybe not. It was better to leave her no choice.

  * * *

  He had come up the mountain once or twice at this time of year to say farewell to summer. The puffball bird-things with their faceted eyes were gone. The forest still tilted in the sunlight, leaning toward morning then evening as the day progressed; all the trees were nearly vertical now. The tenacious leaves made a warm brown roof, and sunlight danced through the spaces between them. The wind had stopped blowing and the silence was so deep as to be a tangible thing. A silence like this was compelling. It warned you to be still and wait and listen, as if the universe had stopped and any sound, however slight, would carry the monumental meaning of its starting up again. His own footsteps made a little noise, but all that did was give him an eerie feeling that he was the only thing in this stasis for which time counted, the only thing that went forward in it, while everything else was frozen in a moment that was, for him, past.

  He did not make for the goal he had set the others, the place they had tried to reach at dawn. Instead he crossed the face of the mountain in as straight a line as he could contrive until Croft was directly below him. Then he turned and started down.

  He judged that something more than an hour had passed when the trees began to thin and he could see where he was going. He sat down under one of them. Hanna would be awake now, and they should have started for the point that would, he hoped, mark a rendezvous with Shen. They would be moving more slowly than they had in the morning’s futile dash for safety; give them half an hour. Then Hanna would have to touch Shen’s mind; how long would that take? And then there would be a little more time, or a lot of time, while Shen got into position.

  Nothing would happen quickly in any case. No matter how close Shen was now, she would not come in openly. She would creep in behind the mountains, hugging the ground and squeezing GeeGee through passages cut by mountain streams. And B would know something was getting ready to happen. He was over there somewhere, watching; maybe he would see the spots of heat on the mountainside, wonder why one had split off, guess it was Michael. He would not do anything about it yet. He would wait for the Golden Girl.

  Michael settled down under his tree and waited, like B, for the universe to start up again.

  * * *

  Hanna spent the whole way downhill trying to get herself into a condition where entering trance would be possible. She could not even breathe deeply, could not take that first step. Why, I am afraid, she thought. She did not know what Michael was going to do. But, It’s too dangerous! she cried to the indifferent trees. Theo talked gently to Lise, even cheerfully. He did it well; if Hanna had not been a telepath, she would not have guessed that he was afraid, too. But he would not let Lise see it.

  The sun had started an imperceptible slide into afternoon when they got to the edge of the trees. The valley was a bowl of light. Croft, to the right and far below, looked as if nothing but peace had ever touched it—except for the charred gouge the Avalon had left with a single shot. Smoke rose gently from chimneys and vanished in the transparent air. A few tiny figures moved in and around the village. Harvest was over, the great work of the year was done. They would be mending and repairing, looking after stock, maybe hunting—but no hunters would go abroad today.

  Theo warned Lise, “We have to be quiet now. Hanna has to concentrate.” Hanna gave him a bitter look. Concentration seemed impossible. All her mind was busy wondering where Michael was; she couldn’t think of anything else.

  It was necessary, however. She reached for every bit of discipline she had ever learned in her life, and began what she had to do.

  * * *

  This was another mode of being, and the world was a different place. For eyes there were mountain, valley, sky; for Hanna in trance those things, though perceptible, were unimportant and remote. Much closer were the not-voices in her head.

  “Think of stones,” she had said to Lise and Theo. They had gathered a handful of pebbles and dutifully fixed their eyes, and their thoughts as well as they could, on that object. They had no training in meditation and it was hard. Other things kept breaking in. Where is Shen, where is Mike? What does Hanna do so silent and still? What’s going to happen? Stones. Stones. Stones. She identified and detached herself from them. There was something like a soft murmur she identified as Croft. There was apprehension there, but no threat. She set that aside, too.

  And touched Michael: Oh, Michael! she cried; he had been relaxed, but she felt him come to his feet, startled. She was so close to him that his body might have been at her side.

  Love, what do you mean to do?

  She got a dim picture in answer, dim because he didn’t want her to see it. It had something to do with the Avalon.

  Only the detachment of trance kept her from objecting. In trance it seemed reasonable enough.

  There were other presences. She measured them. She had met them before, on the Avalon. They had changed, were less confident, and there were not as many as there had been before, but she knew them.

  When she had placed all those minds, the men of the Avalon, the people of Croft, her own friends, she marked a barrier around them, and reached out for Shen.

  Found her at once; saw through her eyes. The warm light in Control, panels blinking as GeeGee talked to herself. Shadows of mountains outside the port. Shen was very close, GeeGee hidden somehow in a narrow gorge. Fancy flying to get in! Shen thought when she was over the first surprise of Hanna’s touch.

  Excellent indeed, Hanna thought. Listen now to what comes next—

  * * *

  Michael sat under the tree, cross-legged, hands folded. The shadows on the mountainside moved slowly, deepening in the hollows that followed the great slopes, trickling into depressions in the valley. The scene took on a texture deep-piled as velvet, and the afternoon light bathed it a rich tinge of gold. He watched it in deep contentment. He looked at the village and put names to the houses. He had not gone to the house where he and Carmina had been born, and he contemplated the unlikelihood that he would ever enter it again. He was calm; he wondered where the old rage had gone. If ever it should appear, surely it should be now, in this trap. But it was gone. Having lost all he had owned, on the point of leaving behind his friends and the love of his life, he was rich—and not alone. He was s
wimming in gold, the abundant golden light of the valley. The light was the work of a moment. But all moments were filled with gold.

  He had lost track of time when the sound came. Ready, it had meant on Revenge, and it meant the same thing now. There had been no sight or sound of the Golden Girl, and he did not know where she was—but with luck B did not know either.

  He did not get up at once. When he did, the universe would start moving again, and he held it back for a minute.

  He moved finally; stood up and walked out from the shelter of the trees. The long fall of land before him was smooth, close-cropped by a summer’s grazing. He walked down it without haste, his shadow trailing behind. It was silent here, too, as if the land itself was watching.

  He reached the valley’s edge and veered a little north to pass Croft by without entering it. All the tiny figures had disappeared. He wondered if Carmina watched, and wondered what she thought.

  He meant to walk all the way across the valley if he was allowed to get that far. He might not make it—but he went on and on through field and pasture without challenge. He glanced back sometimes and saw pure peace, and Croft was farther away each time. The silence continued undisturbed. Doubt crept into his mind—was he going the wrong way, was B even there?

  He is there, said a whisper like a thread of ice, and he faltered for the first time, knowing Hanna on the hillside not only watched him but accompanied him. He had not meant for her to do that.

  Go on, she said, he is waiting for you, and he recognized the cold voice of trance. She did not ask what he meant to do. Perhaps she knew he had no clear idea. It depended on B.

  He came finally to the hills opposite Croft. They were neither as high nor as heavily forested as those on the eastern edge of the valley, but there was plenty of room to hide in them and to hide the Avalon. He stopped and looked ahead and to either side without seeing a sign of the ship. There was no whisper in his mind to guide him. Hanna could not know precisely where it was either.