House of the Wolf (Book Three of the Phoenix Legacy)

by Wren, M. K.

  It came at irregular intervals. A nearly invisible movement behind his closed eyes. Nightmares, perhaps. She watched the brainwaves. A dream-state pattern, or so it seemed, and she took hope from that; he hadn’t even shown evidence of dreaming for two weeks. Yet the brainwaves displayed a slight peculiarity in contour; there were anomalous elements of waking, high-anxiety states in them.

  She took his left hand in hers and heard the ticking of his monitored heartbeat quickening. She watched his chest rising and falling, heard the whispers of breath, felt his hand stir in hers. She considered calling Dr. Eliot, but decided against it, foreseeing nothing she couldn’t deal with, knowing he was presently involved with a serious knife wound.

  But the brainwave configuration—it worried her because she didn’t understand it; she didn’t understand what was happening in the dark recesses within his mind to which he had retreated.

  She uncovered the pressyringes, not even sure which of them she might need. Not the stimulant, at least. The one nearest her was morphinine. That he would need; as long as he was in a comatose state, he’d been given nothing for pain.

  Alex . . . Alex, are you there?

  She didn’t speak the words aloud, afraid to do anything, hesitant even to move. His breathing was becoming labored, the exhalations accompanied by faint moans, the only sounds she’d heard from his lips since that first night. His hand moved in hers, pulling away, and she let it go, watched it move against the sheet as if he were trying to reach out to something or someone. She paced her own breathing carefully, warned by a hint of lightheadedness that she was so intent, she was forgetting to breathe.

  He was trying to speak.

  Erica watched the tentative motions of his lips fixedly, as if she might read the half-formed words. Perhaps it was only an unconscious contraction of muscles; perhaps she only wanted to believe he was trying to speak. Faint sounds formed with the motions of his lips now. Still, she couldn’t make sense of them.

  “Alex? Can you hear me?” She whispered the words, leaning close to him. The ting of his monitored pulse beat faster, a small sound that seemed inside her head; her ears would burst with it soon if—

  Adrien.

  Finally, Erica recognized the word he was trying to say, and she felt an aching within her, a painfully palpable sensation. If that was what he was waking to, waking in hope of finding . . .

  She didn’t speak again. Perhaps he had heard her, heard a feminine voice and translated it into Adrien Eliseer’s.

  His head moved against the pillow, face contorted; he still tried to speak the name through panting breaths. Erica shifted her attention from him just long enough to reach for the morphinine syringe, and in that brief time he surged up out of the bed, ripping wires and tubes loose, his right arm wrenching against the restraints.

  “Adrien! Adri——”

  The pain stopped him. Erica held him as his body curled spastically, strained cries hissing through his clenched teeth. She forced him back onto the bed, and it took all her strength to keep him still long enough for the morphinine injection.

  It began to take effect within thirty seconds. She felt the cramping tension in his muscles loosen and glanced up at the screen. The erratic pulse and respiration rates gradually slowed. Finally, she could let him go, but she didn’t let herself relax. She pulled back the sheet to assess and repair the damage, restoring tubes and electrodes, checking the bandages on his arm, cutting away a section at the elbow soaked with reddish secretions that meant he’d torn some of the unhealed skin grafts. She used an antiseptic spray and made a hasty temporary bandage. By the time she restored a semblance of order and covered him again, he was lying with his eyes closed, his breathing and pulse rate nearly normal.

  She couldn’t say the same of her own as she stood at his left side, waiting, wondering whether he would slip away from her back into unconsciousness again.

  At length, he opened his eyes.

  She wanted to cry his name, to shout a prayer of thanks, to weep, to embrace him. But she only stood silently, watching and hoping.

  His pupils were contracted with the morphinine, and she knew he was seeing little more than indistinct lights and shapes. He was trying to focus his eyes, frowning a little, and she was beginning to dread the moment when that vague gaze would find her, dreading that he wouldn’t recognize her. And yet he did. It took some time, and she dared to speak now, sure he wouldn’t mistake her voice for any other.

  “Alex, welcome back,” she said softly, and her eyes blurred with tears when he finally smiled weakly, and his hand moved, seeking hers.

  “Erica . . .” A slurred whisper of sound caught on a long, trembling sigh. Then she heard the ting of his pulse rate quicken. He was trying to speak, to tell her something, but he couldn’t seem to shape the words.

  “Slowly, Alex. Just relax. There’s plenty of time.”

  He managed a nod at that, and took a long breath.

  “Shh . . . she’s . . . al——” For a moment, frustration got the better of him, then he took another breath and tried again. “She’s . . . alive. I saw . . .” A frown, then; he seemed bewildered. “Nn-no. I didn’t see. But . . . I know shhh . . .”

  Erica couldn’t respond. She knew exactly whom he meant with that feminine pronoun, and the affirmation that Adrien Eliseer lived stunned her. She didn’t know how to answer it. But he didn’t seem to expect a response, and when he spoke again, the words seemed to come more easily.

  “Pain . . . she was in pain. But she . . . wasn’t . . . afraid. I don’t understand. But I . . . I know she’s alive. Erica, she’s alive. . . .” He turned his head away, covering his eyes with his left hand; he was weeping, and he didn’t want Erica to see the tears he couldn’t stop.

  No more could she stop her own, and she could only hope he was right. She found herself murmuring meaningless assurances, the words falling into a lulling, hypnotic pattern. It was still possible; Adrien might still be alive. She must be if these words, these tears, weren’t to be his last.

  The weeping ceased at length; he was slipping away, but not into unconsciousness, only sleep. The brainwaves recorded a typical deep sleep pattern, all vital signs stable, reflecting only a general weakness due to long illness.

  A miracle.

  She tried to understand it both medically and psychologically as she went around to the other side of the bed to bandage the arm properly. She had to work carefully; several times he stirred and nearly wakened. Then she made careful notations on the chart, and it took an inordinate amount of time. Her thoughts kept wandering from past to future, from despair to hope. Her hands were shaking when she filled a fresh pressyringe with morphinine and put it with the others, ready for the time when he wakened again.

  Reaction set in, and when she sank into the chair, she was crying. She propped her elbows on her knees, head in her hands, and let it run its course.

  When Jael came into the cubicle half an hour later, the tears had spent themselves, but there was still evidence of them, and he had no way of differentiating relief from grief when it took that form.

  “Erica? For the God’s sake, what happened?”

  She rose, hushing him with an upraised hand. “Nothing happened—I mean, everything.” She was half laughing, half crying, but Jael’s anxious bewilderment sobered her. “I’m sorry. He’s all right; he’s sleeping now. He regained consciousness and recognized me, Jael. He talked to me.”

  Jael’s shoulders sagged in relief. “Thank the God. I thought perhaps I came too late with the news.”

  “What news?” she demanded sharply.

  “Val finally called. I came straight from the COS HQ.”

  Erica was hard put to keep her voice down.

  “She found Adrien—she found her!”

  “Who’s telling this spin, anyway? Yes, she found her.”

 
; Erica looked at Alex with a chill of wonder. He knew. How? It didn’t matter; some phenomena could only be accepted, not explained.

  She said absently, “Forgive me for ruining your story, Jael.”

  “Well, you haven’t heard it all yet, and you’ll never glim the end of this one. I’ll lay any stakes on that. The Lady Adrien just gave birth to slightly premature, but healthy and hollering twin sons. Now, does that clear a few questions in your head?”

  Erica stared at him, and at first it cleared nothing; it only created a blank void.

  “Gave . . . birth . . . ?” As she said the words, it began to make sense, and for some time she couldn’t speak for all the questions and answers coming together in her mind. Jael was right; it cleared quite a few.

  Again she looked at Alex, relieved to find him still deep asleep.

  “Jael, he didn’t know she was carrying his—sons, did you say? Twins?”

  “Identical twins. No, of course, he didn’t know. He’d have lined Val in on something that obvious, and besides, Alex is a gentleman born. He’d never knowingly let his Lady run that gant. She’s a straight blade, Erica.”

  “So she is.” Then, with a frown, “A multiple birth and a first pregnancy—were there any complications?”

  “Val says it went off without a catch. Val’s with her, by the way. In the hospital, I mean. The medal turned the card with the Lady, and she laid word with Thea. Val’s moved into the same room with her.”

  “Thank the God. Jael, I must talk to Adrien—I mean at the hospital. Val will have to set up an MT fix for me. I’ll have to call her.” Then, with a glance at Alex, whose sighing exhalation of breath reminded her to lower her voice, “Can you get a medtech—”

  “Carl’s outside, sister. As for Val, she can probably take a call now; it’s the night shift there.”

  “Then, come on. I’ll have to talk to Carl first.” She was almost out of the cubicle before Jael stopped her.

  “What about Alex? Don’t you think you should line him in? At least that his Lady’s been found?”

  She turned and looked down at that gaunt face that seemed so much at peace in its repose now.

  “I don’t have to tell him. He . . . already knows.”

  PHOENIX MEMFILES: DEPT HUMAN SCIENCES:

  BASIC SCHOOL (HS/BS)

  SUBFILE: LECTURE, BASIC SCHOOL 4 AVRIL 3252

  GUEST LECTURER: RICHARD LAMB

  SUBJECT: POST-DISASTERS HISTORY:

  THE MANKEEN REVOLT (3104–3120)

  DOC LOC #819/219-1253/1812-1648-443252

  I think one of the most tragic figures in the Mankeen Revolt was Commander Scott Cormoroi, the tactical genius who gave Mankeen the might to make a Rightness of his ideals. I wonder at what point in the long war Cormoroi first realized it was hopeless. Fairly early, probably; he was a highly intelligent man, and his early training in science undoubtedly made him fully capable of recognizing hard facts. And I wonder at what point Cormoroi realized that the greatest impediment to the Revolt’s success was Lionar Mankeen himself.

  Mankeen, like Pilgram and Ballarat, had a talent for motivating people, and despite the defections that plagued his cause in its later years, those who renounced him were in the minority. The devotion he inspired among his faithful had almost religious overtones, and it isn’t surprising that the Bonds made him a saint. But, unlike Pilgram and Ballarat, Mankeen had no talent for consolidating his gains.

  He didn’t seem to know what to do with them. Time and again Cormoroi won territories by dint of tactical brilliance and courage, only to have them lost again months later. Mankeen couldn’t seem to formulate a consistent policy for the occupation of these territories. Too often he tried to initiate sweeping social reforms in situations where the immediate need was for order, not freedom, and the result was anarchy and unnecessary loss of property and lives. In some occupied territories, his administrators—usually League Lords—in desperation imposed order by harsh means that resulted in counterrevolts. Thus Cormoroi was continually in the position of trying to maintain an advancing front while looking over his shoulder for attack from the rear, and the tragic abandonment of many of the vacuum colonies can be attributed to Mankeen’s lack of organization and control. If there had been even one man among the League Lords capable of effectively consolidating Cormoroi’s gains, we might live in a very different world today. But there were none, and Mankeen, who should have taken the spiritual role in this campaign—should have been his own Colona or Almbert—constantly undermined himself and the Revolt with ill-conceived reforms and conflicting directives to his administrators.

  I couldn’t hold it against Cormoroi if he had chosen to wash his hands of Mankeen. Yet he didn’t. Scott Cormoroi continued fighting Mankeen’s hopeless battles until the last one, the Battle of the Urals, and when that was lost, Cormoroi was among those who joined him in his death flight to the Sun.

  Cormoroi was a man of honor. He was also Mankeen’s closest friend, and beyond that, he believed fervently in the ideals Mankeen tried, so ineptly, to realize.

  Most of the passengers on that final flight left lettapes behind for friends, relatives, or posterity. Mankeen, oddly enough, did not. Cormoroi addressed his parting message to a brother, James, his only surviving relative, or so he thought. In fact, James had died a year before, but the news of his death had never reached Cormoroi; James was allieged to Reeswyck, a Concord House. At any rate, Cormoroi’s message was the most eloquent of the lot, and has since been the most quoted.

  Cormoroi, at the age of seventy-three, facing his death and looking back on his defeat, tells his brother, “Human beings can’t go on forever living as slaves. That’s what it was all about. At least, for me. We lost, finally, and the price was high, both for the losers and the winners. I know that. But, James, we had to try. We had to try.”

  The Concord was more fortunate in its leadership, although it couldn’t boast a military commander with anything like Cormoroi’s genius, but it had an administrative leader of extraordinary ability in the Chairman, Arman Galinin. He wasn’t as inspiring a leader as Mankeen—he left the spiritual aspects of leadership to the Archon, Bishop Nicolas III, who proved very effective at it—but Galinin was a strong personality and one of those men who seem to rise to adversity.

  It was Galinin who formulated the Charter of the Concord of the Loyal Houses and used it to forge a new order and cohesion among the Lords in the chaotic aftermath of the League’s initial military assaults. The Concord Charter is. of course, essentially the Articles of the PanTerran Confederation reiterated, yet it served to unify the Confederation at a crisis point when it was in very real danger of dissolving, and that was undoubtedly its purpose. The Court of Lords met in Octov of 3105 in Victoria—which became Concordia before they adjourned—to sign the Concord Charter, and from that point the Concord presented a united front to the League, and could thus take full advantage of its superior numbers and industrial capabilities. Galinin continued to be an astute and forceful leader, and was backed by an equally forceful Directorate, on the whole, and, as I’ve noted before, the power structure came through the Revolt virtually unaltered. There were only three changes on the Directorate during this period, which, considering the number of Houses destroyed, merged, or absorbed, is remarkable. One Directorate seat that changed hands probably would have done so under any circumstances. The House of Tadema was failing long before the Revolt began, and with Selasid backing, it was almost inevitable that Hamid should take that chair. Lagore Lao wasn’t exactly displaced; it simply merged with Shang, but certainly its First Lord was displaced. Adalay was the only undisputed victim of the war; that old landed House was forced to give way to the emerging House of Cameroodo with its multiple metals franchises.

  One could wish that Arman Galinin had taken advantage of this time of crisis to slip a few liberalizing reforms into his Charter—and he was ph
ilosophically a liberal—but he undoubtedly realized that even a hint of liberalism would smack of Mankeenism and jeopardize the unity so vital to the Concord’s survival. In fact, to civilization’s survival. And Galinin can’t be held responsible for the reactionary attitudes on the part of the surviving Lords that have brought us to this new period of crisis nearly a century and a half later. That he managed to maintain order and the existing social structure through the catastrophic stresses of the Revolt is a miracle in itself and a tribute to his ability and foresight. There was really nothing he could have done to counteract the inevitable extreme conservative reaction to Mankeen’s extreme liberalism.

  Above all, Arman Galinin can’t be held responsible for the Purge. That holiday for mass murder and unrestrained violence was in no way sanctioned by Galinin, the Directors, or the top echelons of Conpol and Confleet. Men and officers in both the latter were unquestionably responsible for a great deal of the destruction and slaughter, however, while House guards must take the blame for most of the rest of it, and they didn’t always act without orders from their Lords, although no Lord ever admitted giving such orders.

  The Purge—which began immediately after Mankeen’s death and lasted a month—was as much a threat to the survival of the Concord and civilization as the Revolt itself. It is, in fact, an indication of how close we came to another dark age. And there was a lesson in that vicious and bestial exercise of vengeance that the Lords should have heeded, and that is how easily externally imposed (in contrast to internally imposed) behavioral controls fail. The lesson was ignored, perhaps because too many Lords themselves suffered a failure of internal controls, and of course had few external controls imposed on them.

  At any rate, Arman Galinin brought the Concord through the Mankeen Revolt and the Purge, but both had taken a bitter toll. Not only were nearly a billion people killed—a quarter of the population—but humankind had retreated to Terra, all the extraterrestrial colonies abandoned, except for Pollux, which was for a time and for all intents and purposes forgotten. Civilization had taken a giant step backward to a stage of development approximating that of a century before, even though MAM-An, nulgrav, and SynchShift were available. But they didn’t make the war-shattered Concord of the post-Mankeen period any less a planet-bound culture. The Lords had to rebuild, both literally and figuratively, their Houses on Terra before they could consider rebuilding on the other planets or satellites. It was half a century before that became possible.