“I will stay and see my son, as promised; and always I will do what I can to teach him something of myself … but have no fear. Once the birth is over, I will trouble you as little as possible, as long as he is happy and well cared for. For that, I trust, even you have sufficient honor.”
Then: “Why the hell did you ever get pregnant in the first place? Or don’t tell me that was part of the plan, too?”
“No. Oh, no. Of course not. I never meant—”
“I apologize for that, then.”
He could yet manage a degree of calm. It wouldn’t last. Soon, he must leave this room.
“Don’t! I do want our son,” she cried out, reaching out one, small hand, her voice still sounding dazed. “You must believe me. More than anything, our baby is precious to me. This I do promise, Truly.”
It was the end for Hamon. Another cunning trick, or truth? Either way, it was more than he could bear. With a gasped exclamation, he tore himself from the wall. One last, hunted glance, and he was gone.
For a long time, Marthe stayed where he had left her, trying to understand. He seemed to hate her still, but she would swear that there was something else there too. If she could just hold on to that.
She stood silent, remembering all he had said. For the first time in weeks, she started to think of a future. To believe that there might be one that held joy. She began to plan, but one thought only stood clear. How much there was to do if she was to be ready for this little one. She made lists, then discarded them again. No use. She couldn’t come to the decisions she needed here. Not in this bedroom which would now remind her so vividly of Hamon. No, she knew where she must go.
Quickly, she packed all those things she would need. Including, with a wry smile at her thin face in the mirror, some high value rations. Soon, after a last, practiced check of her room and gear, she slipped from the house as silent as the night. A little while later, her small craft sped off into the air.
In strident impatience, the door chime rang and rang and rang. Hamon cursed, then harshly ordered whoever disturbed his tortured rest to go away. The chiming continued. Bitterly, he released the lock and the next moment, Jacquel des Trurain shoved forward into his room.
“Where’s Marthe?” the man blurted, looking hurriedly round the room.
“Hardly likely to be here,” snapped back Hamon. “Now I’ll thank you to leave.”
“She must be. There’s nowhere else.”
Hamon suddenly noticed the other’s face. “What do you mean?”
“She went missing yesterday. No one’s seen her since before lunch.”
“No, I spoke to her in the afternoon. You have asked around?”
“Of course. I tell you, no one has seen her.”
Without another word, Hamon threw on his clothes and strode out. “I’ll contact you at the an Castres’ when I have news,” he threw over his shoulder.
He made it one step outside his door before the two large guards stationed there blocked him, weapons up and ready for use. He looked them over. Both bigger than he and as well muscled, he didn’t have a chance of getting through. He tried anyway.
One very unproductive instant later, he was on his back and forced to admit the pair had the equal of his own street thuggery.
They dragged him up and back into the room to face des Trurain.
“If you’ve finished time wasting, do you have anything useful to tell me?” said his enemy, looking as frustrated as he felt.
“Let me out of here long enough to find something, and maybe I could.”
“Don’t be a fool, Radcliff. Let you loose on Hathians? Not likely.”
“You have plenty of guards, my face is too well known thanks to your razzing journos, and I’m sure you have a tracker planted in me. Escape is impossible, even if that’s what I planned.” He thrust his hands on his hips, daring the Hathian to contradict him.
He wanted to. You could see it on his face.
“Damn it, man. That’s my wife, my child out there. Not yours.”
Des Trurain's face lost its pale coolness, a dark flush spreading angrily over it. “And Marthe’s my oldest friend left alive.”
Hamon couldn’t answer that; but she was his wife.
For long moments, neither of them said anything, deadlocked in fury. Hamon could feel his hand clenching. “By the stars, des Trurain, anything could have happened to her!” He could see the Hathian’s hands, fists forming in parallel to his. “Can you find her?” Hamon demanded. “If you could, why come here?”
“And you think you can do better?”
“Yes.”
“What can you know about her that I don’t?”
Her face came to him again. There was no choice. “I know how she feels.” he said. “I feel the same.”
It took too long, too many precious minutes lost when he needed to be on his way. Then finally des Trurain nodded. “The guards will go with you and you’re limited to this complex, her home and unsecured parts of headquarters. And yes, we have you under full surveillance.”
Hamon nodded back. “Just let me in to your flight records. On a view basis only.”
“Agreed, but you don’t get to operate the access. Tell the technician what you need to see. I’m setting your tracker to kill mode. You make one wrong move, and I will personally hit the button to end your miserable life.”
They were wasting time, and Hamon could feel the anger in him growing. He was only surprised des Trurain thought to warn him. But he could see the look on the man’s face. Des Trurain meant every word he said and would love nothing more than to rid Hathe and Marthe of his presence—permanently.
“You’d have to join the queue. How long is it?”
Des Trurain sneered back. “Almost every Hathian except one is in that queue. Unfortunately, she’s the one who counts.” Des Trurain breathed in hard, his eyes hot with anger. Then nodded a ‘Yes’. “One wrong move, and I will kill you. Do you accept?”
It was the best deal he would get. He had to agree. His child could be at risk, and throttled down hard on any other reason.
Des Trurain gave the guards his orders and linked in to his central command, communicating in that infuriating mix of coded taps and single words that Hamon still hadn’t managed to work out.
“You’d better change,” said des Trurain. “You’ll be recognized in an instant in those clothes. We don’t need a riot.”
Hamon glared but knew it to be true. His face had been splashed all over the newsvids for weeks now, despite the Hathian government’s best attempts, and in his Earth gear he had no hope of hiding. He had to stand around even longer while one of the guards fetched an overwrap from his room. Hamon was too big to wear anything of des Trurain’s and would have refused if offered. He tugged a hat over his dark hair, pulling it down low. Then finally he could go.
His child was at risk. That’s what he told himself as he rode through the streets in a darkened security car, as he forced himself to question her family and learn exactly how deeply and how long they had worried over her, as he scoured her room in her home.
It wasn’t the same room. She had moved out of the one where he’d taken her body so brutally. Where he’d forced her to abandon the seductive pose of her subterfuge and face the honesty of what lay between them. He had never forgiven himself for it, and never would, but today he made himself enter her old room and search for clues to her disappearance. It hadn’t changed. Untouched, even to the traces of dust from the occupation. The only thing removed was the vid cube of her twin brother.
My child is at risk, he told himself repeatedly, and yet again as he bullied the technician in the flight control room into checking the log-ins of every single flyer that had left The City in the last hours.
“Does she have a flyer code?”
The technician glared at him and turned to his guards for help.
“Check the routes to the plateau,” Hamon added on a sudden thought.
“Stand back first, Major, out of the s
ight line,” ordered the taller guard. The man was about as happy as the technician at having to help a Terran. He didn’t care. It wasn’t their family at risk; but he stepped back and turned away to let the man enter the search code he needed.
“I have it, Major.”
Hamon swung round and studied the screen. A single flyer, lightly laden and with no destination entered. He looked at her route as far as it was entered and remembered her face as he’d last seen it—the shock and despair—remembered how small and fragile she’d looked. The missing clog inside his heart was suddenly and painfully wrenched back into place.
“Oh, stars.”
Chapter Six
Less than an hour after he’d left his room, he faced des Trurain again. He fought to keep his voice cool and steady “She headed off in her skimmer, coordinates set to the desert region. Your surveillance records show her course as far as the middle of the fourth sector. After that, she disappears.
“To ground. That’s where she’s gone,” said Jacquel, his relief showing openly on his face. “She’s taken to her hide. She’ll come back when she’s ready.”
Hamon glared in disgust at the tame rejoinder. This, after the way the man had barged into his room? “The baby is due in less than two weeks. What if something has happened? If you know where she is, then take me there. Right now.”
“That’s just it, I don’t. She’ll have gone to her own hide. All the special operatives had one. A secret place of refuge for when life became too interesting, or to rest between assignments. The location was known only to the owner.”
“What about your much vaunted technology? Can’t that find her?”
“Only if Marthe lets us.”
“Well I’m going anyway. You coming?”
Jacquel nodded, giving way to the urgency in Hamon’s voice. Hamon wasn’t surprised, but he was relieved. The Hathians weren’t going to let him follow her without des Trurain running security, nor would they let as prominently connected a Terran as himself wander off unaided in to the hostile high plateau country.
“She can look after herself. She’ll come back when she’s ready,” des Trurain said again, almost as if trying to convince himself. Hamon gave that the attention it deserved. Des Trurain didn’t know the cause of her flight. Fear shot through him, and not for the baby alone.
Scarcely an hour later and with full emergency kit on board, their skimmer winged its way upward, over the lowland and set for the same gap in the hills through which the reports said Marthe had disappeared; but even at maximum speed, it was a long trip. Two gut-wrenching hours were to pass before they hovered over the sector where Marthe’s craft was last sighted.
Jacquel looked out at the endless vista of waving tussock grasses and grey rocks. “What now?”
“We survey the sector in strips until we get a reading. Unless you have another suggestion. You did work with Marthe. You must have some idea of the kind of spot she would have chosen.”
Jacquel sat thinking a moment then said he supposed she would have looked for the same kind of terrain as he. “…with something to confuse detection devices: hills, rocky outcrops, that kind of thing, and clay or rocky soil to build into. She’d need a water source, too, though she may have been able to tap into an underground stream.”
“How big a place are we looking for?” asked a dumbfounded Hamon.
“A large cave, or something similar—big enough for a kitchen, living area and sleeping compartment.
Hamon stared. “How the— No, don’t bother. I had thought we were looking for a simple cave or shelter, not a razzing luxury apartment.”
He laughed shortly, some of the tight knots of tension in him loosening. So she had gone to earth with all modern conveniences. What a fool he’d been to worry so much, yet he couldn’t rest, some nameless warning driving him onwards.
They began the long search, backwards and forwards over the bleak desert landscape. Beneath them, the harsh scrub spread unbroken over the rolling plain to the horizon and the hills. Always the wind whipped the land. Occasionally, a promising outcrop would warrant a closer look, but for the rest, it was bone wearyingly the same. Nothing.
After what seemed hours, they finally picked up a signal.
“That’s Marthe,” yelled Jacquel. “I told you we couldn’t find her unless she let us—not the best damned agent in all of Hathe.” Suddenly, his jubilant cry ceased. The tone of the beep had changed, tapping out a new cadence.
“The distress signal. She’s in trouble.”
The two men looked at each other. “But she’s two weeks early,” was all Hamon could say.
Hastily, Jacquel locked on to the signal. “If you pray on your world, then pray she’s keyed the signal to guide us.”
Hamon waited the longest minute.
“Got it.” Relief swept briefly across des Trurain’s face as Marthe’s system locked onto their machine, and Hamon felt the pull as it was hauled down into the ground. At the last moment, they were abruptly wrenched sideways and dived down and over the lip of a hidden ridge concealing beneath it a twisting, almost subterranean stream, only one thin crack revealing the sky above. The skimmer whipped along the narrow gully, twisting from side to side to squeeze through places where Hamon would have sworn it couldn’t pass.
“I told you that Marthe would have hidden it well. No one would ever think to follow her along here.”
“No,” agreed Hamon, holding on grimly to the contents of his stomach. Just at that moment, the craft stopped dead, dropped vertically, then veered sideways into a narrow gap. They passed through an echoing blackness before again rising suddenly, and coming to land in a softly lit alcove.
A desperate sense of urgency gripped Hamon. “How do we get in?”
“Over there. You can see the doorway in UV light.” Sure enough, in the luminous glow Jacquel shone upon the wall, a doorway appeared and silently slid open in answer to Jacquel's ‘friend in succor’ signal. Quickly, the two ran in. Hamon barely glanced at the rooms as he rushed through them, never noticing how uncannily the decor resembled his own tastes.
At last he came to her bedroom, and found what he had feared. Sitting cross-legged on the bed was Marthe, a grim look of concentration on her face.
It was the strained intensity he saw first. In the second instant, he saw what only he could see—deepest fear etched in to every weary line of her body, fear such as never before had she shown him.
It wiped out what little bitterness remained after the anxiety of the search, and his voice as he called to her was the calm, soft voice of the ally she so badly needed. “Marthe?”
Relief flooded her face as once more his arms enfolded her in secure comfort. Tears flooded her gaunt eyes.
“Oh, my precious one,” murmured Hamon.
He held her tightly, the buttress of his shoulder a solid touchstone as the convulsive sobs overcame her, stopped only by the cramping spasm seizing her womb. His muscles carried her through it, and he would not allow himself to relax his hold until long after her sobs abated. The fear had almost gone from her face, but still lay there, ready to swoop with the next contraction. He waited, holding her close till she looked able to speak of the essentials. Then he saw her remember, and she struggled to untangle herself from his arms, her head twisting to hide her face.
“I’m sorry. They shouldn’t have bothered you with this nonsense. The baby will be fine. You can go back now.”
“Don’t be stupid,” he shot back, guilt lancing through him. “I’m here because I want to be, and I’m staying—for always.”
She looked up at him, studying his face intently. Looking for truth, he guessed. He returned her gaze in full, and when he spoke, it was with the solemnity of an eternal promise.
“These last weeks have been the worst of my life. I need you. Now and forever.”
“But what I did to you? I can’t apologize for it. It was the life of my people against my own happiness.”
His mouth creased grimly. “I know. I m
ade the same choice, remember. Did you betray me on that day? Yes, as I did you. That feeling, it’s still there; but I will not live without you again. Somehow we will find a way to make us work. Though right now doesn’t seem an ideal time to figure out how,” he added with a wry smile. “Our son isn’t going to wait that long. Just know that I love you.” He held up his hand, one finger rubbing over the twisted band shining there. “This ring never left my finger, no matter how black the day. Nor will it.”
She held up her own, touching gold band to gold band. “Nor has this.” She drew his hand to her, lips gently touching his ring in promise, then the palm of his hand. He closed it on her face, encompassing it within the shield of both hands as his mouth completed the pact. Then pulled her firmly once more into the protection of his arms as his eyes traced her body and face in uneasy appraisal. She was so thin. He held her close, feeling her trust in him return. He had come so near to losing her.
“How long ago did the pains start?” he said quietly after a while.
“About four hours, I think. They’re still reasonably far apart.”
“Why didn’t you call in?” demanded Jacquel, bringing a black look and rapid interruption from Hamon. She was still too fragile, the tension barely submerged.
“It doesn’t matter. We’ve found you now,” he said firmly.
“But it does,” she gasped, the tears resurfacing. “I panicked when the first contractions started. I rushed around trying to do something, and in my hurry I knocked the long-range transmitter off the table. It won’t work now. I thought I was stranded!”
“Well, you’re not,” said Jacquel brusquely. “There’s a transmitter in my ship—and one in yours, too, Marthe.”
“Oh. I forgot. My stars, I’m going crazy. I should have thought of it.” Her fingers plucked in confusion at the bedcover.
“No you’re not,” said Hamon, holding her close again. “Des Trurain, instead of upsetting her, why don’t you make yourself useful by putting a call through to the medicos.”
Pay the Piper: Hathe Book Two Page 8