The man standing guard at the accessway surprised her: Becker, the most senior of the Federal Security types who now infested their convoy. Why hadn't he stationed himself on Leonidas?
Because, the answer came readily, since it was pure military, he knew it was expendable; and he doesn't want to die. No more than I do. What else does he know that I could use?
She must have asked that question aloud.
"What else do I know, Lieutenant? I know that your questions to computer alerted me. I also know that right now the last thing Captain Borodin needs on the bridge is a mob of pilots still wobbling from Jump and a bad case of righteous indignation."
Her own righteous indignation balled her hands into fists. For the first time since she had met the man, he was speaking to her as if he were human, and not an official bound to speak to junior officers as if he were the voice of Regulations itself.
"Don't even try it,” said the Fed Sec, and raised one hand slightly. Armed. So there was more to the man than bureaucracy. She might have been intrigued if she hadn't been ready to fight.
"Right now, you only have two choices. Either get yourself back to quarters, or round up your friends and tell them to make themselves useful with the refugees."
"And if I don't?"
"Then I report that you were uncooperative."
Pauli snorted. Uncooperative. The war had blasted every known system to pieces, taken her life apart ... and this fool expected that the imbecilities he had probably learned in some deskbound leadership course would work. On a combat-blooded, combat-drained pilot.
"They need your help, Yeager. Think of it. You were on Wolf IV. You saw the children we picked up. That was a bad Jump for you, and you knew what you could expect. What about those children? They know nothing. And if you're not worried about them, think of your friends"—Becker actually grinned at her, his eyes knowing—"who are in there with them. Unarmed, among children who have probably killed to eat. Children who have lived with terror, and fought through it."
The fury at the base of her skull felt like laserfire as she glared at him. But her rage was deflected by that damnable grin. “You stationed yourself here. You were looking for us,” she stated.
"Looking for someone,” agreed Becker coolly. “You. I judged you were most likely to think it through. And I was right."
"Becker, you tell the captain...” Technically, the civ outranked her, outranked a captain, if he and Arnaut had been throwing around the orders that blew Leonidas and put the Jeffrey Amherst's bridge off-limits. The hell with it.
"That you want to see him? As soon as our course is laid in.” Becker's smile became less sly, and more confident. He knew he had won. For now, Pauli told herself. I'll get some answers somehow.
"What is our course?” Pauli asked.
The marshal smiled. “That is another of the things that is classified for now. As soon as possible, however—"
"Have me paged,” Pauli ordered, covering her frustration with a show of dignity. Becker would probably page her when that white dwarf in the last system cooled down. “I'll be in emergency quarters."
She turned on her heel and strode away, then whirled. “Becker, are you going to release elevator access, or do I have to suit up, go outside the ship, and climb back in?"
"Such temper,” scoffed the marshal. “If you go back to the first elevator you tried, you'll find that power has been restored. You can go anywhere you want. Except the bridge."
Pauli stalked into the elevator and slapped the panels for the main landing bays on the deck below. The door slid shut, and she felt the minor hum of power engaging. The door opened into reddish darkness and pure nightmare.
Someone must have sprayed disinfectant about the bay not long ago, but even that acrid, eye-watering smell could not overpower the stinks of food, of faulty air exchange and improvised reclamation chambers which leaked the vinegar and naphtha stinks of human urine or sickness. She smelled sweat, including her own. In the darkness Pauli grimaced. But the stinks of crowded humanity and failing systems were not what made her scalp and hair, soaked from her helmet, suddenly prickle and go chill. Years in a ship's artificial environment had made her increasingly sensitive to smells. After all, a gas leak or concealed fire might mean the death of the entire ship. What brought her alert and wary now as she stared into the darkness of that converted docking bay was fear. Not panic, but the type of watchful, practiced fear that could become the murderous attack of a cornered beast.
She had smelled that before. The Amherst had made planetfall by one of Wolf IV's cities and sent armed parties out to guard the civ task force who had come to reclaim the children. Lifesupport revealed many bodies in one building that looked like the ruins of a school. In any case, it still had parts of its roof, which made it unique. The power cells had faded, and the wall panels had darkened to the twilight ruddiness of a lair where desperate creatures knew every pathway, and in which they had gone to ground.
Instinctively Pauli's hand dropped to her sidearm, snapped open the catch that secured it. Until her eyes adjusted to the gloom, she was exposed here; and she didn't like it.
A gasp rose from somewhere in that vast space turned into something that was neither relief station nor den.
"I wouldn't,” came a quiet, deliberately expressionless voice. She might not be able to see the speaker, but she knew that voice. Raiford Adams. Once, they might have made a good team, the pilot and the xenobiologist. They had been a good team in other ways. But when pilots measured life expectancy in terms of numbers of missions flown, Rafe had tried to talk her into another field. Persuade her out of flying? Easier to find another man than another field, she had thought at the time.
Behind Rafe's tall silhouette she heard rustles, and whispers. Someone stumbled, cried out, and was quickly hushed.
"Why do you keep it so dark in here?” Deliberately, Pauli went on the offensive. “It's like a damned cave."
"What about lights, David?” Rafe turned and called into the dusk.
"I've got power restored, I think,” came a deep man's voice. “I'd have to see your boards, but I'd say that that last Jump almost wrecked lifesupport. Can't say much for your backup systems either."
The lights came on, and Pauli blinked. Rafe turned away. His eyes were suddenly too bright, and he shut them, but not before she had seen.
That had to be relief for her, not for the people who crouched around him. The entire docking bay, usually bare and clean, was heaped with bundles and turned into a maze of makeshift corridors, some made by the sound-deadening plastics and composites that, in more prosperous times, were what ships used to throw up temporary quarters. When those had run out, they had hung foil blankets that rippled with every passing body, or the almost imperceptible air currents in the vast bay. In each one of the spaces partitioned off crouched at least one child: dark children, pallid ones, tall children, and toddlers. There was no way to assign one specific genotype to those children, for they were refugees drawn from several worlds.
Two things stamped them as kin: their thinness, even after weeks on ship's food; and their eyes, frightened, yet speculative. Seeing Pauli, a newcomer in a uniform, they had fallen silent. Now she felt the intensity of their gaze, a gaze focusing, in most cases, on the sidearm strapped to her thigh.
But they are children! she reminded herself.
A tall blonde woman rose from the side of a child who coughed until she bent double. “Lieutenant Yeager? I am Alicia Pryor, senior medical officer here. I met you before you were transferred to ... my regrets, Lieutenant, on the loss of your ship."
"Ship?” asked a boy.
"Her ship,” Dr. Pryor explained patiently. “It exploded, and her friends were killed."
The intensity of the children's scrutiny faded somewhat. If Pauli were, like themselves, a person who had lost something, perhaps she was not an enemy. Had Pryor deliberately created that impression? It was a foolish speculation, but as Pauli walked farther into the bay, echoing with
cries and questions, she could not put it out of her mind.
"What about the other ships?” asked the man who had restored lighting to the bay. Pauli remembered his name. Ben Yehuda. David ben Yehuda. A refugee himself, with two children, older and more robust than many of the others.
She shook her head. “You know about Leonidas."
"That was some shockwave. For a moment, I thought it would deform Jump,” ben Yehuda said. “The children were terrified."
"It did,” said Pauli. "Daedalus and three of my riderships failed to come through."
Rafe caught ben Yehuda's arm as he reeled. “Forgive me. I've been at least three watches without sleep. We're short-staffed here—"
"You won't be,” said Pauli. “They're keeping the pilots—those who made it through—off the bridge, funnelling them down here to help out."
"I hope they're of some use,” snapped a black woman from her position at the food dispensers. “Pilots! What we really need is a maintenance tech."
"I'll get onto it,” said ben Yehuda. “Next. In a moment. You say they didn't survive Jump?"
Engineer the man might be, but he was a grounder, Pauli realized. She shook her head. “You don't really live in Jump,” she started to explain.
"So you don't die there. Ever?"
"We don't know,” she sighed.
"No rest, no peace forever, like the Wandering Jew,” said ben Yehuda. He bent his head, muttering. "Yisgadal v'yizgadash sh'meh rab'bo." To Pauli's shock, tears ran down his lined face, and his children—a boy and girl so close in age and appearance that they might be twins—huddled about him. A third child, one of the boys who had stared most intently at Pauli's sidearm, watched, his head cocked. A tiny girl clung to his leg, whispered to him, then released him and started over to the weeping man and his family.
"He hurts!” she hissed at the boy.
For a moment he stood irresolute, as if trying to solve an equation. He glanced over at Pauli again, this time not at her weapon but at her face.
"It's grief,” Rafe explained quietly. “Yes, I know. He doesn't cry because he is hungry; and he isn't sick. He cries because other people died (or worse than that)."
"He won't see them again,” the boy muttered. His voice seemed rusty and unused. “When they go away, when they get sick, after a while they don't move. Then they go away, and you have to leave where they are."
Ben Yehuda turned to the boy. “That's right, Lohr. You remember it, and—"
"I hate it!” cried the boy. “I don't want them to go, I don't want to leave them..."
"Hush, there, hush.” David ben Yehuda knelt and held out his arms to the boy. The hundred or so children nearest had all fallen silent. What struck Pauli most was the quality of that silence. It was wonder. These children were all familiar with death, with people who had “gone away,” leaving their bodies behind in lairs that the children would avoid from then on. They had taught themselves to conceal pain at death, to blank it from their awareness; and now ben Yehuda reminded them.
"We'll have hysterics in a moment,” Dr. Pryor murmured. “Can you handle it?"
The black woman muttered something.
"Quiet, Beneatha! Right before Jump, you were the one who complained that these children are too stoic. Now that they're beginning to feel again, you want to blame it on the military."
"You didn't have to spring it on them,” Beneatha accused—who? Pauli? Ben Yehuda himself?
"As long as it happens,” ben Yehuda said earnestly. “Lohr,” he spoke to the boy, “it's all right. See, Ari is still here. Ayelet is fine,” he gestured at his son and daughter, who sat and stroked the hair of the tiny girl who had left Lohr's side. She was crying now, and Lohr watched her, appalled. He started to shake, and a bead of spittle appeared at the corner of his mouth.
"She is crying, Lohr,” said Rafe. “It doesn't mean she is going to die. It just means she's sad because someone she cares about is sad. You care about David, don't you? Hasn't he taken care of you and ‘Cilia since you were brought in?"
The boy's mouth worked. He gulped and ran his hand over his lips. Ben Yehuda held out a hand, encouraging the boy to cry and be comforted. “Let it out, Lohr,” he whispered.
Pauli found herself holding her breath. The boy started forward. They've got him! she thought. Relief caught at her throat. Then he bolted for the nearest corner of a rat's maze of hanging blankets, tilted partitions, and heaped-up supplies. A warren formed by hanging blankets. For a moment, sobs trailed after him, but only for a moment. The child ‘Cilia ran after him, shaking her head at offers of company.
"How old do you think he is?” asked Dr. Pryor.
"Nine, ten?” What did Pauli know about the age of children?
"He's as old as Ari and Ayelet here. Almost thirteen. Practically feral. You were right to guard your sidearm when you came in, you know. Lohr had his eyes on it. He's not a bad child, you know. He's just never really been a child: that's all. That little girl, the one David calls ‘Cilla—we think she's Lohr's sister, though they don't look a thing alike. See how frail she is. There must have been times it would have been easier for Lohr to survive if he had abandoned her. But he never did."
"Sometimes he cries in his sleep about her,” said David. “I think he's killed people to protect her. There's anger in him, and fight, all bottled up. But I think I can turn him around. He knows he exists, rough as it's been for him. Some of them aren't sure. We even had to name a few kids who'd forgotten what their parents called them."
Pauli found herself pacing, watching the pile of blankets into which Lohr had burrowed, hoping that he would sob himself out, then emerge. To her astonishment, she wanted to talk with him. There must be something she could say, words drawn from her own experiences on Wolf IV, assurances that all adults—especially adults who wore uniforms—were not evil. But he never emerged.
Beyond her, from the corner of her eye, she caught sight of others of the pilots working with the civilians, squatting down by a sleeping child, carrying piles of equipment, talking in a circle of thin, preternaturally cautious survivors camouflaged by immature bodies. They were of many races and sizes, but a single look of wary, fearful hunger stamped them as kin.
Abruptly the air currents failed again, and the lights went dead. The silence, even of those children most distraught by the invasion of these uniformed adults and their unwelcome news, was uncanny. Occasional rustles and whispers told the adults that the children moved.
Pauli had been this silent herself in survival training, had felt the same buildup of tension as she searched out a new star system for enemies who might, at any moment, reduce her and her ship to frozen vapor. That was her risk: she was an adult who had chosen combat flying. It sickened her that a child would understand those fears.
"No one's hunting us,” she announced, making her voice deliberately cheerful. “Why is everyone so quiet?"
"Oh, well done!” whispered Alicia Pryor.
The rustling increased, came closer, like rats padding in a slum. If someone flashed a light across the room, she had the sensation that all over the room, drawing closer and closer to her, would be pairs of eyes, gleaming like the eyes of wild beasts. She wanted a wall at her back, and preferably someone else to defend her back for her.
"Not again,” grumbled ben Yehuda, deliberately jovial. “Ari, get my torch. I never get any rest around here.” Thin, nervous laughter spattered out.
"You think it's funny that I don't get to sleep? I don't. I will give those lights until three to come back on. And then I will be seriously angry at the lights. One...” the children's laughter intensified—"two ... you don't believe this, do you?” Now more of the children laughed. Even their footfalls had more sound now. “Say, I don't think this is working. Two and a half? Lights ... anywhere?"
"Try two and three-quarters?"
"Well enough, Lohr. Two and three-quarters..."
With a hum and a sigh, the lights flashed back on, and the hum of the air conditioners resum
ed.
The children laughed and cheered. At least they laughed and cheered until they saw the tall, pale man in the dark uniform of the Federal Security marshals standing in their midst.
Becker had crept in like a hunting cat or a wild child himself. How long had he stood there, his pale eyes scanning the entire bay, pausing to evaluate each officer who had been dispatched to assist the refugees?
"Dammit, did he stage that?” asked Pauli in a furious undertone. “Kids have enough problems without his setting up dramatic entrances."
Rafe shrugged. “Becker's not all that bad, for a marshal. The evacuation from Wolf was mostly his doing. He won't say, but I think—” he thinned his lips, his usual signal for ending an unwelcome discussion. “Sometimes he comes in and talks."
"If you want to hear regulations, why not access armscomp? It doesn't pretend to be human."
"Becker knows what he's doing. And you're talking like one of the civs. You're a pilot, not a social worker. At least, that's what you told me when you accepted assignment to Leonidas."
Another futile argument with Rafe! Under the sweat and grime, Pauli knew she was flushing. She wanted a bath and a rest, and to get herself away from Rafe before she did or said something irrevocable and idiotic. But Becker stood there, tall and dispassionate, scanning the mob of children and civilians until he caught sight of her in her drab flightsuit.
"Lieutenant Yeager? You're wanted on the bridge."
"Now?"
"Right now. That's a direct order. From me.” All around her the children murmured, their whispers intensifying into a growl. Pauli started forward, and two or three of the girls caught at her hands. She remembered how on Wolf IV they had scratched and screamed at any attempt to separate one of them from a group—and the silence that fell after the child was removed: as if she were gone now and, since it was irrevocable, there was no point in tears.
"No one's going to hurt me. Or you. They're on our side,” she called, even as she hurried over to Becker, easing past a knot of refugees who tried to block her way. “I'll be back. I promise I'll be back."
Heritage of Flight Page 3