The memory of standing outside an airlock, calling, calling. The memory of mind-voice screaming Jane, no! of not being able to reach, of feeling through mind link as her body imploded, as her blood boiled, as the all-too-loved companion vanished forever into the cold of space, possessed my mind, obsessive and unrelenting like a drumbeat signaling an execution.
And then loathing came, in waves. Loathing and regret for being too cowardly to follow her out there. To put an end to it. Because it was my fault. Mine. His.
What remained of Athena in this odd mingled mind screamed no. And Kit pulled away. He retreated. His presence vanished from my mind.
I looked at him. He looked very pale, very still. But his chest was still moving. And we were stopped on a private plot by a little hill.
Twenty
"Doctor Bartolomeu." The little hill had a door, a thick door that looked like oak held together with iron bands and rivets, but which was probably cleverly disguised ceramite. I pounded on it with both hands, before I realized that there was a knocker, and then I grabbed that—almost too large for my hand—and pounded that. "Doctor, please!"
What if he was out? What if he was gone? What if he didn't come back? What could I do to make Kit stop bleeding? The wound was on his shoulder. I couldn't use a tourniquet. What could I do? What if he died?
Another part of me, still shocked by the self-loathing and pain it had felt from him insisted it might be better if he died, if he rested, if he were at last healed of grief. But the other part of me, still reeling from the most intimate contact I'd ever had with another human being, refused to let him go. Forget that he would leave me alone. Forget what his family might think. Forget that I might be suspected of killing him. I didn't want to let him go. I couldn't let him die. "Doctor Bartolomeu. Please."
The door opened. The man who had come to the center to check us for bugs stood there, looking like he'd been asleep and had awakened to my pounding. "Who . . ." he said, then ran his hand backward through his sparse white hair. "The Earth . . . Sinistra. What is it?"
"It's Kit. Kit is wounded. Kit is dying."
I don't remember the next few minutes all too coherently. I know Doc Bartolomeu got his bag from the depths of the house and did something to Kit before he even tried to move him. And when he moved him, we laid him out on an antigrav platform, which he steered into the house.
The house itself was odd. I'd only seen the like in museums and holos and illustrations showing the mid-twenty-first century or older.
The room we entered was so low-ceilinged that, had Kit been on his feet, he would have been obliged to duck. It descended at steep angles, on both sides too, a strange affectation in a home carved out of living rock and lacking a traditional roof or, in fact, a roof of any kind. To the right was a dining table, just like in all those holos and reproductions, just big enough for four people, and doing a fine job of looking like innocently carved oak. Around it were four matching oak chairs, with high backs. Past it, a fireplace burned merrily and in front of the fireplace were two high, dark brown leather chairs. Past that again, a long, narrow living room, with a sofa covered in checkered material. The sofa had what looked like an honest to goodness paper book—I knew these because Father owned a library with hundreds of them—on its face, cover up. I read the title without meaning to. Dragon's Ring. Doc Bartolomeu removed it from the sofa and onto a low table in front it, and then I helped him lay Kit on the sofa, where the doctor proceeded to do other things to him, things that involved seaming and bandaging, and at the last threading an IV into the vein on the inside of his elbow and suspending a bag of blood nearby.
"Don't look so pale," he said. "Yes, there are other things I could have done, to make him produce more blood faster. But in a pinch the old treatments are the best, and this is what I first learned." He smiled at me, rearranging the wrinkles on his ancient face and looking gnomish.
Kit was naked from the waist up—smooth muscle with reddish-blond hair and skin disrupted by an irregular seam up his shoulder.
"It's a good thing that Joseph Klaavil is such a horrible shot. How far away was he?"
"Uh . . . Ten meters."
"At that distance, it should have gone through the heart," the doctor said, and shook his head as if the sheer incompetence pained him.
I heard myself say "No!" aghast, and Doc Bartolomeu gave me a curious look. "I assure you it should. However, I'm glad it didn't." And then, curiously, tilting his head to the side a little, like a bird thinking about something. "Are you worried about Christopher?"
I nodded and swallowed and then I said, "No," and then, "I don't know."
Doc Bartolomeu grinned at me as if I had done something particularly clever. "I see," he said, in an avuncular tone, which grated at some level I couldn't even identify and which prompted me to say, "It's not that. He's been . . . very kind to me."
He nodded. "Christopher is kind. A fool, but kind." And then with great curiosity. "Did you kill Klaavil? Joseph Klaavil?"
"No," I said. "Kit wouldn't let me."
"Christopher. Yeah. A fool." He walked to what looked like a kitchen straight out of an historical holo in the corner across from the sofa and washed his hands at the sink. Bloodstained water ran down. "He's going to be asleep awhile, and I think you are in shock."
"Uh. Me? No." I'd never been in shock before. Not even when I'd flown the broom against the wall and—
"Do you drink hot chocolate?"
"What?"
He was fumbling in what looked like a cupboard but which I realized was a cleverly disguised cooker. "Hot chocolate. Do you drink it?"
"You have chocolate?" I asked, because I hadn't even seen coffee in Eden, where the caffeinated beverage of choice was either tea or a clear, sickly sweet stuff that everyone called bug juice, and which might very well be just that. I preferred not to investigate.
"Almost everything that was once available on Earth is available in Eden. Sometimes it's expensive to synth," he said. "But I'm blessed with more money than I could ever spend." He looked at me, something like a smile flashing in the dark eyes, amid their nest of wrinkles, "And more time than anyone could wish for."
He removed two steaming mugs—that looked like handcrafted clay, thumb marks and all—from the depths of the cooker, and handed me one. "Mind you," he said, "it's hot. Hold carefully. Go on to the left chair by the fireplace, there's a girl."
I went. Normally I detested being treated with that kind of fatherly affection, but in this case it seemed genuine and also strangely well-practiced, as though he played father to half the world and more. Or as if he were extending to me the clear affection he felt for Kit.
He came along moments later, carrying a cup and two small plates held together in one hand. He handed me a plate, which had two cookies in it. "I surmise you like chocolate," he said.
I nodded, not knowing what to say. The hot chocolate was thick and sweet and as I sipped it, I was aware of calming down.
"How did you find me?" the doctor asked. "Christopher must have been unconscious for at least half an hour, wasn't he?"
"Ab-About that. He . . . was in my mind."
A small clatter as the cup came to rest on the plate. "Indeed?" he said, and his eyebrows rose. "How?"
I shook my head.
He took a deep breath. "My dear," he said. "I know the limited telepathy . . . if you wish to call it that, that's engineered into cats and navs. I worked in the team that . . . Never mind. It can only be activated by another cat or another nav, and even then, it usually requires a bonded couple. Married. Though it's been known to happen between best friends raised together from childhood." He took a sip of his hot chocolate. "Would you care to explain?"
I shook my head again. "I can't," I said.
"Is it something you can do?" he asked. "Something you were born with?"
"Not that I know," I said. "It's never happened before. And Earth has no ELFing."
"No," he said. And then. "They used to, but I suppose that
's been outlawed along with all the other modifications."
I didn't say anything. I thought even in Eden that was a matter of common knowledge. The fire crackled and from the sofa came the sound of Kit taking a deep breath.
"It interests me," he said. "Someday when we both have time, I'd like to examine you."
For some reason, his tone of deep interest made me think of scalpels and labs. I doubted that's what he meant. It would go oddly with the fatherly tone and the clearly kindly look in his face. On the other hand, he'd acted upset that Joseph Klaavil hadn't hit Kit's heart. I wanted to ask about Joseph; about Kit's wife; about the reason Kit loathed himself and Joseph Klaavil loathed him; about the reasons Darla had gone on about Kit's ancestry. Instead I said, "You thought you might have known one of my ancestors?"
"Alexander?" he said. "It would take a miracle for him to be your ancestor. But you do look a lot like him. Enough to make me wonder if a miracle happened. He was my friend . . . on Earth. Before we left. I . . . I tried to bring him with us, but there were . . . problems."
"You came from Earth?" I said.
"Yes. Oh, yes." He blinked. "More years ago than I like to think about."
"But you're not . . ."
He opened his mouth, closed it, then smiled, "What? Old?" He chuckled. "I am old, young lady."
"Yes . . . but . . . three hundred years . . ."
He shrugged. "I told you Earth had ELFing. And bioing. And Eden . . . we grow body parts when the old ones wear out. Three hundred years is . . . unusual, but not . . . impossible."
"Oh." I wanted to ask him about the turmoils. To ask him about what kind of people the Mules had chosen to bring with them—how grossly bioed they were, how odd. But I didn't dare. If he'd been one of them . . . Images of people killed, of heads on pikes, of men and women torn down on the streets swept through my mind from the old holos. And again I careened into the first sentence that crossed my mind. "Kit's middle name is Bartolomeu. After you?"
His eyebrows arched. "I decanted him."
"Is that normal? To name the child after the decanting physician?"
He looked like he was considering something, his eyes sharp and attentive. He's trying to determine what I will believe. "The Denovos are friends," he said. "I don't have many. And Christopher is their only son. They thought . . . I'd like the gesture." He frowned. "I did. Christopher is an interesting person to watch, as he matures." He looked towards the sofa, though he could not possibly see Kit from there. "Though more troubled than I'd like, and a lot of it self-inflicted."
I wondered how much self-inflicted. I remembered the pain at his wife's death, but also his certainty that he had caused it.
"The girl was a bad idea," the doctor said, as if he had read my mind. "He had to know it was a bad idea before he ever married her. He had to know . . . what he owed her." He chewed his cookie. "I wonder if he knows what he owes you, and if he'll honor it."
"He doesn't owe me anything," I said heatedly, feeling my cheeks flame and sure that this old man who looked like a gnome and lived like a relic was imagining me as the despoiled maiden prey to the handsome darkship thief. Kit hadn't touched me, except in fight practice. I suspected that other than the normal attraction of a healthy male for a healthy female about the same age, he didn't even like me much.
"Doesn't he?" the infuriating old man said. "I wonder."
There was a sound from the sofa. A moan, and then the sound of feet hitting the floor, and a grunt and what sounded like an IV line being pulled with a needle being allowed to dangle loose and hit the IV stand. Kit stumbled towards us, his fingers pressed to the IV site.
"Hello, Christopher," Doc Bartolomeu said, as if this were perfectly expected, and he stood up, even as he reached out and more or less pulled Kit into his chair. "You might not want to stand. I don't think you're quite steady yet . . ."
"I'm steady . . . I'm . . ." He shook his head. Looked at me. Then at the doctor who now stood by the chair. "What were you telling her?"
"Nothing," the doctor said. He ambled away to the kitchen and I heard plates knock together. Kit put his head back and closed his eyes, and I wanted to ask him what he was so afraid that the doctor would tell me, but I didn't want to ask, not while he still looked like death warmed over.
The doctor returned moments later, with yet another mug, bigger than ours. He touched Kit on the shoulder and, as Kit opened his eyes, handed him the mug. "Drink. You need it."
"I don't—"
"Drink or I pour it over your head. You had no need to tear out the IV."
"You were telling her . . . you . . . You were about to tell her . . ."
"Drink."
Kit drank.
"I hear you made her spare Joseph Klaavil."
Kit shrugged, winced. "He's his parents' only son."
The doctor made a sound that could normally be transcribed as umph. "Why don't you put an end to it all, Christopher? Why not depose under hypnotics?"
Kit looked surprised. "It's not my secret to tell," he said. "Even if I were willing . . . even if I didn't mind . . ."
"Do you mind?" the doctor asked. "So much?"
He shrugged again and this time the wincing was more pronounced. "I don't want it to splash on the Denovos. You know what people are."
This earned him a smile. "Oh, very well. Very, very well, Christopher. I saw it up close, remember?"
"Perhaps it was a bad idea," he said. "Me. My . . . parents. Everything."
Doctor Bartolomeu raised his eyebrows. "I've always thought there was a very good chance that it was all a very bad idea from the inception of life on Earth onward, but that's not the point, is it? You particularly"—the doctor's turn to shrug—"aren't a much worse idea than any of the rest."
Kit drank his hot chocolate and I felt that not only was I in a gnome's house, but I'd fallen down the rabbit hole like that girl in the ancient story, and entered a land where everyone spoke in riddles and where words didn't necessarily mean what I thought they meant.
"You should tell her," the doctor said at last, and on the assumption I was the her involved, I wanted to scream that I was right there, and shouldn't exactly be talked about in the third person.
But Kit sighed. "Why? Why should I? What is the point of it all?"
"Not to repeat a stupid mistake," the doctor said. "Once was an accident. Twice is stupidity."
"Once was not an accident," Kit said. "It was cowardice."
"Then what would you call the second time?"
Kit shook his head. A smile formed on his lips—seemingly without their cooperation—as though it had ambled onto his face and shaped his lips to it. "You want me to give fair warning?"
"Call it what you will."
He drank his hot chocolate. "I will consider it." He looked at me, his eyes narrowed, not so much with a speculative look as with an indulgent one. "I am sorry I took over your mind, Thena. I know it must have been disorienting."
Disorienting. Is that what he called it? And in calling it that, and in apologizing he made it impossible for me to ask about his feelings, about his wife's death, even about his music playing. "It's all right," I said, as I finished my own hot chocolate and handed the cup back to Doctor Bartolomeu. "It needed doing."
"I suppose," Kit said. Then looked at the doctor. "Not here," he said, as if he were continuing an interrupted conversation. He started to rise, first holding onto the chair and then, experimentally letting go.
"You shouldn't," the doctor said, "try to leave so soon."
Kit shook his head. "Piloting is second nature and driving is piloting," he said. He looked over at me. "Are you ready, Thena?"
As ready as I'd ever be. I nodded. We said our goodbyes, which seemed more formal and more prolonged than I expected. The doctor gave Kit a shot of something that was supposed to increase his blood production, recommending he drink a lot of water. He said the medicine was shockingly expensive and made a joking reference to deducting his fee from Kit's account, but I wasn't sure i
f he meant it, or if it was some elaborate verbal sparring between them.
I followed Kit out to the flyer and this time sat on the passenger seat, which had miraculously remained clear of blood, probably because most of it had gone on Kit's now discarded shirt and jacket.
"Are you cold?" I asked, though of course there was nothing I could do if he was. Except perhaps take off my shirt, which would probably make us both far warmer than we wanted to be. Or at least me. He was wearing a white bandage across newly seamed skin, put on by the doctor to keep the area undisturbed, he said. I understood though it was never explained the bandage was actually a bio construct and would drop off of its own accord when the wound was healed.
He shook his head. "It's no time at all to home," he said.
But when we got home, he parked the car and made no move at all to get out.
"Do you need help?" I asked. "To get out?"
He shook his head. "No." And gave a small, almost feral smile. "The grass is soft here, and the bio rug inside, should I fall." He took a deep breath. "Doctor Bartolomeu thinks I should tell you . . ."
"Doctor Bartolomeu assumes you and I are involved," I said. And, feeling my cheeks flame, "I think. He's very old-fashioned, isn't he?"
Kit drummed his fingers on the dashboard. "Yes, but . . . not in a way you'd expect. And no, I don't think he thinks we are involved. At least not if you mean physically."
"Uh. He said . . ."
"No. If we were involved physically . . ." Kit shook his head and looked away and out his side of the dashboard at the camellias in front of the flyer, as though they were worthy of a lot of attention and close scrutiny. "He'd probably have yelled at me."
"Because I'm an Earth—"
"No. Stop," Kit said. And his voice was so authoritative that I did stop before pronouncing the second half of the pejorative which he hadn't used for me in months. "No. Because I haven't told you . . . He thinks I should tell you . . ." He took a deep breath.
Darkship Thieves Page 14
