The D’neeran Factor

by Terry A. Adams

  “Oh, but—” She wanted to say she couldn’t. Every time she had touched B’s thoughts it had been like a breath of the cold of deep space. And she knew, thinking of doing it now, that she was not as competent as she had been before. Because something had happened to Michael, and it was as if it had happened to Hanna herself. Hanna had been wounded, too. Nothing like this had happened to her before; she did not know whether she was diminished or augmented by Michael, but there was no separating one from the other, and the shock of knowing it made her tremble.

  Shen looked at her with slanting eyes. “Communicator?” she said, distracting Hanna; what had happened to the communicator Michael carried? It had been broadcasting right up to the end. Shen on GeeGee, and the others on the ground, had heard every word of the last dialogue. If it had been destroyed— She turned suddenly so no one could see her face. She had a clear memory of Michael being searched, hoping they would leave the communicator over his heart—

  If he were dead, she would know it. She clung to the thought.

  As if it had been waiting for her to think about it, the communicator she had taken from Lise began to speak.

  “Who’s in charge?” said the voice like a snake, like a slug; a spider would talk that way. Hanna had the thing in her pocket; she pulled it out as if it were hot. “Where’s the D’neeran?” B said.

  She kept the shaking out of her voice. “What do you want?” she said without illusions, remembering the Far-Flying Bird more clearly than she had in months.

  “Want him back?” said the voice.

  “I want him back.”

  “Give me your ship,” B said. “Fair trade.”

  She looked around at the tense faces. But Theo only looked at Lise.

  “We have to think about it,” she said, the hardest thing she had ever said, and shut off the transmission before B could speak again. Had he been listening to what was said on the Golden Girl? No, there had been no sound at all from the other end; the instrument must be shut off.

  GeeGee slowed and hovered over forest. Shen said, eyes gleaming, “If we could get back there fast enough Surprise ’em.”

  “GeeGee’s the fastest thing on the planet,” Hanna said. “If we take her back, we give her up or get shot down. Or just get shot down. What’s he need GeeGee for?”

  Shen shook her head. “Nothing. Trick,” she said.

  Not even Michael would recommend this risk, because it was a certainty, not a risk. B would use Michael to entice them to return, and kill them at once; then he would kill Michael, too. And GeeGee would never carry news to the Polity, and nothing would change on Gadrah, ever.

  It all pointed to one end, the logical thing. If Michael could talk to them now, he would make it clear what he wanted them to do.

  But Hanna said, “I can’t leave him. Whatever the rest of you do, I can’t.”

  Shen said patiently, “Told you. Find out what they think.”

  Hanna said without hope, “I’ll try.”

  * * *

  It took a long time. She retreated to Michael’s room, and when she lay down on the bed and tried to clear her mind she was so tired and afraid she did not think she could get up again. She had not known that fear like this would be worse than fearing her own death. Her hand crept out to the empty space at her side, as if she could bring Michael back to it with her yearning. She did not want to touch B’s mind. She had touched it before she knew who he was, when he had called the Far-Flying Bird. Then she had not even been revolted; her senses had cried Caution! but given no more specific warning; there had been no rage or hatred or even madness to trigger recognition. Evil is cold, she thought, fumbling. And she thought of what the creature had done, feeling nothing, on Gadrah—bringing death and bringing it finally to his allies, too, indifferent—and of the boy locked in B’s quarters, uncomprehending, no mercy given to his sweetness. He liked, liked ruining things, I think—

  She forgot what she was supposed to do and searched for Michael. She found him, and horror nearly drove her from the dream she had fallen into. He was in shock and in great pain. Nothing had been done for him. The burning light that had made his wound had cauterized it, and there was little bleeding, but every movement started agony up again. He breathed so shallowly that he hardly breathed at all. But then he would have to take a deep breath, and when he did, sometimes it came back out as a cry.

  He did not know Hanna was with him. He thought he had made her up, along with her grief. It did not seem to Hanna that anything could drive her from his side. But the traces of Shen in Michael’s thought, Shen’s purposefulness, did it.

  I will come back, Hanna said. He thought he made that up, too. Pain took his attention again; he did not notice when she left him.

  Too weary for discipline, made small by grief, she wandered. It was only luck that took her to B. Like Michael, he did not know she was there, only thought he was thinking about her. He might not like D’neerans (she thought later), but he disliked them without knowing much about what they could do.

  Something was missing from his mind; it lacked a part. She wrenched herself away and thought: He is not a human being.

  Yet by all criteria, he was. He was certainly not an alien, he was not even the Master of Chaos, he was master of nothing.

  She opened her eyes and looked at the worked bronze Michael had set overhead. It looked back with the warmth of his eyes. She was so tired that exhaustion itself had shielded her from B, as if, without it, she might have been spattered with filth. She thought back reluctantly. She had learned something, she realized; she had no hope, but she could not say she had come to the end. Not yet.

  She got up and went wearily back to Control. GeeGee was over ocean now, moving steadily but not fast, just to keep moving. The other three watched the ocean, where reflections of the Ring made a glittering path.

  Hanna said without preamble, “He doesn’t know we came without telling anybody.”

  Shen made an impatient movement; Hanna was talking gibberish.

  “He’s not sure nobody else knows how to get here,” Hanna said.

  Shen said comprehensively, “Henrik.”

  “He didn’t think about Henrik, maybe he hasn’t seen him, maybe Henrik didn’t tell him, I don’t know. Henrik’s dead,” she added, sure now. In all the exploration she had done since the morning, there had been no trace of him. Theo started to say something, but Hanna went on talking. “That means he won’t kill us right away. Look, there’s more of them and they’re armed. I don’t know what we can do.”

  “Find out,” Shen said, very pleased.

  “Theo?”

  “If we put Lise down somewhere safe first.”

  “No!” Lise said, full of indignation, and Shen said, “Nowhere safe.”

  After a minute Theo nodded. Hanna said, “Then we all go back.”

  * * *

  Michael was left where he had fallen, out of the way and harmless. The chamber was a blur. There were meaningless sounds and he could not move, did not want to. After a long time of pain he could think again. The pain had not gone away, but he was not stupefied any more. But his thoughts followed random paths, and he had no direction to give them. He had not thought of this eventuality, of injury, immobility, captivity. He had expected swift death or a chance to escape, and had gotten neither.

  He thought that since he was still alive, he must try to stay that way.

  He thought that there were five men in front of him now, all armed; that only if he kept very still was the pain even tolerable; that he could not move without groaning, try to stand without falling, walk without staggering.

  There was not much hope of escape. He gave up thinking about it.

  Sounds began to fall into words. The blurred edges of the flight deck came into focus. The men stood between Michael and the consoles that housed the controls. Their backs were toward him, but from time to time one or another looked around. To the left was an open locker. He could see some kind of weapon in it; there might be ot
hers.

  It would do no harm to get closer.

  When the five were all turned away from him, he hauled himself up so that he sat with his back to the wall. The cost was blinding pain. They must have turned to look, but he was half-unconscious again, gasping like a dying fish and too weak to move. When the mist cleared, they were looking away.

  He started to inch along the wall, using legs and his one good arm, pushing the useless left one ahead. He had looked down once at the black crater the laser had left and absorbed what it meant. If he were trapped on Gadrah he would lose the arm, at the least; without sophisticated medical attention, he would most likely die.

  The hand at the end of it, dangling, got in his way. It was turning blue.

  The world contracted, all his life contracted, to a simple sequence he would repeat and repeat forever. Hitch and move and brace against the pain and the fog it brought along. Wait for it to ease. He felt no diminution when it did, but his vision would clear, and he would know it must have gotten better.

  Watch for another chance. Do it all again.

  When he had been doing this for a long time he had moved a meter. The locker was still twice that far away. What was left of his strength was ebbing.

  In one of the pauses he thought he heard Hanna’s voice. He had imagined it once before, and he thought he must be losing consciousness again. But this time she was not talking to him, and he realized, slowly, that he heard a real voice, and real words, and what they meant.

  “You will board, one of you, and we will give you our arms. I understand. If we make any resistance, Michael will be killed. Yes, we all understand.”

  After all his costly silence, after choking back a scream at every furtive move, he cried out then: “No! No!” He meant it to be a command and a plea for Hanna to hear, but it was a whisper. B heard it, though, and looked at him. He looked at the place Michael had started from, at the locker with the weapon in plain view, and he went to it and picked it up: another laser pistol. He swung it toward Michael and smiled with the faintest amusement, as he had smiled sometimes years ago when he did some unspeakable thing and watched the contorted, tear-stained face like a scientist observing the outcome of an experiment. “You won’t need that any more,” he said, and aimed for Michael’s groin. Michael twisted away and the light burned another crater in his thigh. He made one wretched sound and sank on his face without tears or hope, and the Avalon and everything else went away.

  * * *

  The Golden Girl skimmed over seaboard, moving quickly but doing nothing like top speed. Shen looked ready to fight; she was the only one who did. A bleak feeling that death was near had come to Hanna. She tried to look back at the path that had led her to it, but she could not see one. Courses. Silver necklace of Earth, golden alien treasure, a piece of plain utilitarian metal: exactly what had B found all those years ago? A sheaf of paper? A microchip? She looked for some meaning in the objects, and found none. They had fallen into her life and she had had to make choices about them and that was that. You choose what you can and the rest is just there. He had said that to her once. She could not remember when.

  Without warning her left leg gave way and she fell on the floor. There was an instant of nothing—she knew that because Theo had been at the other side of Control, and now he was bending over her. Her leg did not hurt; instead she held both hands over her heart. Theo took her pulse, examined her skin; he thought her heart was failing. It was not, but it was breaking. He wanted to know what was wrong with her and she would not tell him. Why hurt him by telling him Michael had been hurt again? But he must know by the tears that ran out of her eyes and down her cheeks. Her will was paralyzed; she could not stop them.

  * * *

  When GeeGee got back to Croft’s valley, the Avalon had moved. It was not hidden but brooding in the open upriver from Croft. Shen brought GeeGee in slowly and landed a few meters away from the Avalon. She had been told to make the distance between as small as she could. She opened GeeGee up and they waited in Control, and Shen looked at Hanna and saw no help. Hanna was broken.

  The thing that was supposed to be a man, looked like a man, was biologically a man, crossed the space between the ships. He came quickly. He would not make himself a target any longer that he had to; he thought he might be attacked; he thought they might hurt him though it meant Michael’s death. That was how little he knew about them. It was how he thought.

  They did nothing. They let him come. He walked into the golden light of Control like a bloated white spider and they only stood there, except Hanna who could not move and did not look up. Close to the door where he stood was a pile of weapons. There were three stunners, all they had left, and Carmina’s well-made, old-fashioned gun. He looked at them as if he did not believe they had gone where they had gone, done what they had done, with a handful of stunners.

  He squatted and picked up the stunners one by one and snapped out the power pack from the butt of each. He put the packs and his laser pistol in a pocket, got up holding Carmina’s gun, and cocked a finger at Lise. No one had uttered a word. Lise stood still. She was very pale.

  “I want to look around,” the soft voice said. “You show me.”

  Theo said to her quietly, “He won’t hurt you yet. He wants another hostage.”

  “That’s right,” B said, “Listen to your daddy.”

  Lise took a step forward, shaking. The next step was stronger; she made it the rest of the way a step at a time, haltingly. B put his free hand on her shoulder and pushed her to the door. He said to the others, but mostly to Theo, “You know what happens if you do anything.”

  Theo said, “You don’t need her for that. Unless Mike’s already dead.”

  “Not quite,” B said.

  Lise looked up, the first time she had dared lift her eyes to his face. “You can kill me,” she said. “I don’t care. But don’t hurt Mike!”

  The transparent eyes were impersonal. He watched a performing animal.

  “Why do you hate him?” Lise said. Her voice shook. “He never hurt you. He never hurt anybody.”

  B was not interested. He pushed her again. But Hanna said from the floor, “Earthquake.” They looked at her again, even B, but her eyes were empty. She spoke again, with great effort. It was evident that she hardly knew she was speaking, and that she was talking to Lise—for her education. For some reason B listened, too. She said: “Wind. Volcano. Flood.” Her eyes met Lise’s. They were still empty, but after a moment Lise nodded as if she understood something new. Her face was sad. She was calmer, and she did not look like a little girl.

  “People can be like that, too,” she said. “Sometimes you don’t live through it.”

  B shoved her then and she went out ahead of him, the gun at her back.

  She did just as she was told, though she was slow about it. She had almost stopped thinking. I used to be afraid like this sometimes before, she thought, when she did think. But for a year she had forgotten this kind of fear.

  B followed her through the galley and the lounges. Cooking and luscious food, games and conversation. She wanted those familiar places to mean what they had meant before—she wanted it so badly that she was disoriented, which was why she was slow.

  The medlab. “Ever use it?” he said. Theo was a physician, she said with difficulty. The old staff quarters with their alphanumeric locks; they had modified one to lock from outside for the I&S operative, and B looked at it carefully. The cargo hold, and down to the engine rooms, living quarters, Mike’s room, Lise’s own. Theo patiently repeating a lesson. And back to Control.

  She wanted to run to Theo, but B held her by the arm. He held her in front of him and poked Carmina’s gun into her back. He talked into the air, his voice traveling to the Avalon. Who would be killed, who would not be?—it remained an open question, that was the meaning of what he said. There was Polity medical technology here and a Polity-trained doctor. Maybe Theo would be spared. And Lise, as hostage for his good behavior. She got that much ou
t of what B said. But that meant—she shuddered, and the hand was harder on her arm—that Mike wouldn’t make it, or Hanna or Shen. There was no use for them.

  * * *

  Hanna’s body had forgotten who it belonged to. When she got up it was weak, and twitched. It rose in obedience to some command from outside and let itself be herded out of Control and through GeeGee toward the craft’s rear, into the room they had made into a cell. The door closed and they were locked in. Lise could finally cling to Theo. Shen stood by the narrow bunk, her face dark with thought, but Hanna sank to the floor again. Her body was numb, especially on the left side, shoulder and thigh. She had never felt anything like it before, she had not know this was possible, this connection of flesh through the spirit. Her efforts at thought did not get anywhere; they spiraled into the pit of Michael’s unconsciousness.

  Shen came and squatted in front of her. When Hanna did not look up, Shen took her shoulders and shook her. “Wake up! Pay attention!”

  It was too much effort to speak aloud. I can’t, Hanna said in thought.

  Shen shook her again. “What are they all doing?”

  I don’t know.

  “Find out!”

  She tried halfheartedly. When she reached out there was only one place she wanted to go, one mind she wanted to see. If she tried hard enough, she could wake him. But only to pain and despair—so she would not do it; but the struggle not to do it, to let go and give him up so his end would be easier, took all the little she had left. She put no name to what she felt, the vast misery. She only knew that Michael’s coming death was the most important, the worst thing that had ever happened, and she could not spare thought for her own fate, or Shen’s.

  Shen felt enough of it to know what was happening in Hanna. Real pain, sharp and stinging, forced its way through Hanna’s fog; Shen slapped her methodically, cursing. “Gonna lay down and die? Say where they are. Say it now! Now!”

  B’s in Control. Doing something.

  “Doing what?”

  I don’t know. The navigational systems. Crippling GeeGee. So we can’t go back—