The Horseshoe Nail (The Donn Book 1)

by S Thomson-Hillis

  Having just waded through identity crisis a bone-weary Soren didn’t need sex education as well. To start with, he knew several methods that enabled the more physically similar sentient species to you-know very energetically. Given artificial enhancement some of them could even produce genetically viable offspring but he was damned if he was going to let Sam in on that snippet, especially not now. Secondly, Soren already knew all about the state of Sam’s relationship. Subtlety and Sam were mutually exclusive events and the boy’s confidential whispers caused sonic booms. The Morlstins were high-church something or other, definitely not as tolerant as Soren, and lately it had got dicey avoiding a suspicious Earl Morlstin, Hannah’s father. But there was another reason, a thousand times worse, a dilly. The relationship was doomed, just as it had been for Soren and Tray on Saracen all those years ago. The you-know, however magic, meant squat-diddly to a Donn and a human once the Donn partner had Identified their pre-determined mate. That was set in stone, part of their Ritual Mating, scored deep and indelibly into their DNA. There was no escape.

  For a mad moment Nevus’ mouth wobbled as unsteadily as his head.

  “It couldn’t happen if I was different,” insisted Sam.

  “Yes, it can,” Soren corrected stiffly. “Of course it can, you’re physically compatible, and your physiology is human enough. You, any Donn, can screw who you like when you like, makes no difference. Hormones are close enough to spark up a real storm. It’s inside that’s different. You’re ok with Hannah now because you haven’t met your mate yet.”

  “Mate?” breathed Sam, appalled. “Mate?” Animals had mates. They were mated to produce the best breeding lines for whatever purpose. Humans, you know – stepped out, went out, courted, dated; made out, not to mention a handful of colloquialisms Sam didn’t dare use to Soren, even when he was that desperate. If the Donn were mated then the Donn weren’t human. “Mate.” It was half whimper, half wail and it was ripped out of his belly.

  Soren was staggering blind-folded through an unmarked minefield. “Maybe mate isn’t quite the right word. They say Identify. It might be more like clicked or locked in.”

  “Oh.” Coordinates and computers was it now?

  “You haven’t found your real match.” Match was good, close enough. Soren was fraught. He hadn’t understood when Tray had explained to him so how could he explain to Sam? “Hannah’s not for you, it’s just a practice run, fooling, rehearsing for the real thing.”

  “Fooling!” Then flatly, hopelessly, too quietly. “It’s more than that.”

  “Physically possible,” agreed Soren, “but up here,” a finger tapped his temple, “the only place it counts for a Donn, no, it is absolutely impossible. She isn’t Donn. Donn only mate with other Donn so they produce real Donn children. It’s locked into their heads, they can’t do anything else. Hannah can’t be the one, not won’t. She isn’t Donn. Hannah can’t,” grabbing one of Tray’s almost forgotten phrases like a life-raft, “reciprocate the chemistry.”

  A million year pause creaked past. Carefully Sam addressed hotly embarrassed floorboards. “I’m going to have to leave her because we’re not the same species.”

  No seventeen-year-old boy should sound that bereft while talking so quietly.

  But Sam wasn’t seventeen, probably nearer nineteen. Soren had kept him young, registered him late, committed fraud after fraud on his records. To keep Tray’s son safe.

  “Not straight away, no.” He could only hope that when the time came Sam would be as gentle with Hannah as Tray had been with the bewildered Soren. Nevus stretched out a helpless hand to no reaction and then let it fall helplessly to his lap. “Some of your people opt to stay with a human partner,” he felt impelled to explain, “but when your real mate turns up out of the blue, then, ten-to-one, you’d have to leave. If you had children by Hannah they wouldn’t be Donn, they’d be Latent. That’s an offence. That’s criminal.”

  “Latent?”

  “A Donn retard. They can only block. They can never do or be.”

  “They’re lucky,” Sam spat bitterly. “If Latent means you’re not Donn, I like it.”

  “No, never!” The bitter explosion shocked them both.

  Soren had met a Latent once and they’d shared a real old-fashioned bender for some reason or another. Nevus’ resultant views on Latency, reinforced by Tray, were unequivocal. It was the human partners, not understanding the Donn state, who insisted on children. Most Donn refused to even dream of producing a child who could end up an abomination, shunned by Donn and humans alike. To be fair, it seemed to be as much for the Latents’ sake as anything else. Soren collected himself, gathering his scattered wits into order them, before continuing. All the more terrifying to Sam because he sounded so calm and reasoned.

  “They’d be Latent Minders, your kids. That’s a poison road,” said Soren. “It’s like they’re retarded. Their minds don’t develop. Like you’re starving and you see food so close you can smell it but you can’t eat it because for you it’ll always taste rotten and make you sick. I never met one who dealt with it well. If you stick with Hannah you’d not be fair to her or to you and you’d only be hiding from what you are. That’s cowardly and you are not a coward, Sam, you have to face this. You have to wait until you meet your real partner. In time you will.” Briefly he recalled Kim and Tray’s first meeting and their wonder and joy and Tray’s pitiful attempts to explain as she failed utterly to cut through Soren’s fear, jealousy and dread. Unconsciously he echoed her words. “It’s your only chance. Each Donn has one chance to find their natural opposite, the person in the whole universe to be an exact counterpart. The only person to make it work. One day you’ll turn a corner, look up and you’ll recognise your partner. Identify them. Talk to each other inside your heads, like no-one else ever does, not even other Donn. Sam, you can’t run away from what you are.”

  It could all be so much bull-squirt, he thought dully, but he hadn’t brought up Sam to be a quitter and he wasn’t about to change that now. Sam was quite possibly the last of his people to survive outside Sanctuary. Unless he tracked down that world, he might never find another living Donn, let alone Identify. It would all have been for nothing, Tray’s sacrifice and the life Soren had spent on Sam, all wasted, because Sam might be the very last.

  For a second the man battled with tears.

  “Soren?” A hesitant finger poked his arm, Sam had crawled closer. “Does that mean even if she’s fat and fifty if we meet up here,” tapping his forehead, “that’s it? I’m stuck?”

  No point in messing about now. “Yep.”

  The heater popped and hissed.

  About a hundred years passed by at a stately jog trot.

  Soren opened his eyes and blinked away blur. He didn’t look at Sam. He couldn’t.

  “There aren’t many Donn left out there, are there?”

  “Nope.”

  “I see.” It was a terribly insecure voice, a diminished voice and figure facing down the bleak emptiness of forever with a gesture it understood was worse than useless. “I reckon I’d better get going then, hadn’t I? Start looking for my family and this Sanctuary. Otherwise, with my luck, I’ll either get lumbered with a warty geriatric or score a great big zilch.”

  Chapter Twelve

  The Aqua-cat darted over the swell of Harth Norn’s oceans. Allowing for monster currents and a need for solitude she’d struck a fairly direct course to Long Island and its Spaceport. It would have been a smoother ride if the turbulence over-ride and stabilisers had been enabled, but Ellis didn’t have the first notion about marine vehicles and cared less. They were making progress, weren’t they? Glued to the wheel, she steered fixed and frenzied because a pile-driver inside her head demanded a U-turn. Woe betide the man who suggested slow and steady won the race. Harris’ stomach lurched every time she failed to adjust for the giant waves they almost crested and he’d shut up quickly when she’d deliberately rammed one. Clinging precariously to the steep ladder from the vessel’s
wheelhouse down into its cramped lower deck, he glimpsed a wave-wall coming and instinctively ducked, slipping as he lunged for the next spray-slick rung. Ellis smashed into the wave and Tam leapt awkwardly for the deck below, landing like a bow-legged cat with a hangover. “So much,” he grumbled, as his healing limbs complained, “for reasoned arguments.”

  Deciding it was safer below he shuffled over to the long, tangled body of the Aqua-cat’s former guardian, tidily disposed on the deck and wedged against the cabin wall. The man was better off there than on the locker shelf unless he was strapped down and Tam saw no straps. He’d been unconscious since Ellis had stunned him but it had only been a low-grade stun and Harris guessed he should be coming round shortly. Flinging back the jacket he began, belatedly, to frisk him for injury, weapons and ID before tying him up. One closer look and he stopped. He had to touch before he believed his eyes. Under the high-weave coat nestled a compact, lightweight holster with an ominously familiar design.

  It was a UC-I service-grade holster holding a workaday stunner, ditto, UC-I.

  There were many reasons why the sentry could’ve been wearing a UC holster, including theft amongst other, possibly harsher crimes, but a weird light-headed giddiness collided with the sinking lead in Tam’s stomach. Suppose the Coded Roll had been engaged or Ellis’ message had got through and Krystie had sent help… But then… Just suppose…

  The stunner Ellis had tossed to Tam as she’d leapt aboard was tucked into Harris’ waistband and he tugged it out, really looking at it for the first time. Yes, he blinked in disbelief, yes, well… Harris carefully compared both weapons. A deft finger explored the tiny power cell in the butt of each and located the nick of a symbol that was as good as a nametag to those who knew about it. They were definitely from the same stable, a UC-I/II/III stable run by a tough old Typhion known as Barsnip. Neither could have been stolen from Harris or Edger. Edger’s harness would have fitted this man three times over and he’d drawn a poser’s darter, a twenty-pin, while Tam had preferred a smaller, sleeker, less obvious stunner, a jimmy-spot. So where had Ellis picked up her UC-1 ten-spot? The answer didn’t help. The Aqua-cat pirouetted merrily but Tam Harris forgot all about motion sickness.

  Jenson’s eyelids fluttered and he caught a direct view of Tam’s knees. You could’ve sworn he passed straight out again but Harris knew better. It was exactly what he would’ve done, a standard reaction, basic field training. Quickly grabbing both stunners out of Jenson’s reach, he thumbed one alive and aimed it dead centre of the man’s forehead.

  “Don’t try it.”

  Jenson saw a gaunt man with a wild torrent of jet black hair streaked grey at his temples and swept untidily back into an unkempt pigtail. He had jutting wings of cheekbones under slanting eyes so deep brown they were black and on first sight he could probably give Jenson perhaps ten years. Despite clear evidence of recent damage, Tam Harris was a powerful man, a powerful man pointing the business end of Jenson’s stunner at Jenson.

  “I’m not going to,” charily. “You certainly sober up fast,” he added dryly, recognising the drunk from the wharf.

  “I do,” said Harris. “I surely do.”

  The Aqua-cat dipped and soared, skidded up a wave and bounced over another two, pretending to be a surfboard. Jenson, spellbound, prayed his captor was really sober. He needed to be steady as a rock pile or he’d blast the hell out of both of them.

  “Sit up,” invited Tam, achieving stability with splayed knees.

  “Must I?” Jenson pushed against the drunken deck and failed. “You hate me that much already?” He nodded at the stunners. “One of those is mine and I’d like it back.”

  “I’m sure you would. I’d like to know where you picked it up.”

  “Usual place. And yourself?”

  “Barsnip’s Ironmongery.”

  Nobody, calculated Jenson rapidly, had ever stated that there’d been no survivors from the original team only that they’d got nothing worthwhile back to base.

  “Tam Harris?” he ventured. “So what happened to Sim Edger?”

  * * *

  The aggravating rumble of a card game dragged Macluan into reality when he was far better off out cold. They’d made very sure that he could offer no threat and someone definitely knew too much about the Donn but Mark wasted no time speculating. The sigma- streamer’s worst effect had worn off, it must’ve been weak, and parts of his head belonged to him again. They didn’t know that but it made little difference. Phase-two of how to disable a Donn was working. He was tied so tight, limbs at such tortured angles that blood wasn’t flowing and if he wasn’t released soon his spine might snap. The Donn had amazing powers of recuperation but there was a limit and if his breathing so much as changed they’d hear in a heartbeat. Against the opposite wall a state-of-the-art transmitter terminal was a spherical bulk sinking into deepening shadows and he twisted his eyes almost out of their sockets to try and make it out. The air turned misty blue and, dazed, he realised he’d passed out again.

  One of the men shot him a puzzled look, half stood then subsided slowly.

  Keeping very still Mark began to think.

  They’d probably gone after Jenson. Mark had never used a physical com-link or integral marker, Jenson was used to that and didn’t either. Mark couldn’t warn him and even if Jenson did avoid capture he wouldn’t know where to look. The pilot had been right, dead right. Tokkers, but not that bright, else why keep him alive? What did they want?

  He wondered who their boss was.

  Life faded.

  When Mark woke up his hands and feet were numb and his circulation was cutting out. That frightened him. He had to get away or die. Which was when the notion struck.

  And stuck.

  They’d been looking for the woman.

  If she was being hunted too, then she was not part of this crew.

  She’d got him into this and perhaps she could get him out. A Donn could hear a distress call from another Donn on any wavelength. True, she hadn’t heard him previously, but now they’d met, and something in him had responded to something in her.

  He called.

  And flung the cry as wide as he could.

  No response, but he got a hazy impression of dancing sea and sky...

  He passed out.

  Most of his lower body was freezing cold when he woke. It was dark and the voices of the card-players dopplered. This time he put thought into the cry, memory, feelings...

  Piece by fractured piece, carving the figure with a terrifying force of will, he reconstructed Ellis, everything he knew about her to date. That included how he’d felt when he’d first seen her defiant figure glowing like an incongruous jewel in Beven’s bar. How real she’d felt, how honest her defiance, how warm she made him feel, how much he needed her to hear him. How much he needed her. All that magical alchemy hurled like a missile.

  It was far more than a simple cry for help.

  The Donn had been driven extinct by an Autocracy determined that such a call should never be sent again. It was racial selection, a cry to the perfect counterpart newly Identified by a genetic quirk programmed deep in their DNA. To acknowledge him was to accept his offer, to accept Mark, and because it was sent via a cry for help, Ellis had no choice. Thus the bargain was signed, sealed and delivered and there could be no going back. On one level it was a terrible thing to do. On another level Mark was absolutely blameless, utterly unaware of any consequences, and was thus as innocent as the child he’d been when his family had left him alone in their frantic efforts to save his life.

  So, and so, thus, oblivious and in terrible need, he struck the ultimate Donn bargain.

  It was an extraordinary Identification but it worked.

  It worked on every level imaginable.

  * * *

  Life on the Aqua-cat had been on auto-stop since Harris and Jenson had expressed a powerful and pressing need for explanation. Ellis faced them huddled against the ladder in the cabin, wondering how long it would be be
fore Jenson attempted to murder her.

  “We go back,” she nodded. She’d always known she’d have to. “Where?”

  “First,” ground out HStJ, “I want to know exactly what happened at that inn.”

  “You told me you worked there.” Tam was gentler. In his book people, particularly Ellis, were innocent until proven guilty. “Was that where you found the ten-spot?”

  Ellis had been brought up to face punishment squarely. “I was your waitress.”

  “Excuse me?” Jenson, faced with the impossible, merely blinked. “You what?”

  “Two rank beers,” she confirmed. “Table twenty-three, by the cabaret. I charged you ten, it should have been eight. You never dickered, which, by the by, was not clever.”

  His expression was exquisite.

  And that was when it happened, the end and the beginning of her story.

  Mark’s cry flung her flat against the rungs, winded and flailing.

  I hear you, she gasped and in that instant, with that one automatic response, the imprint was indelible, irreversible. At a stroke Identification was complete and all their choices were gone. One hand crept to her temple and she swayed, making a small noise like a frightened kitten. I need your name. “Your friend, what do you call him?”

  “Stupid,” snarled Jenson.

  Ellis just stared, not understanding. Bonded Donn, partners who’d Identified and achieved their Vows, had won the war for the Union. Nothing could intercept their communion, nothing pierce their link. Mark was in so much pain it clouded everything and made her sick but he’d manage to answer. Already the Bond had hammered home.

  “Mark,” she opened her eyes and saw neither Tam nor Jenson. Mark, I’m Ellis.

  Exchanging common names tasted sweet, no matter what. She smiled...

  It was the wrong signal to give to Jenson.

  Tam’s warning hand closed convulsively on his arm but he shook free.