Veddin pulled a tight orbit around Hydra and headed for the fleets.
Autumn's voice came through again. "I'm sorry, Veddin. More news. Veddin, my reading has changed. It's dropped to 7.7. The jammer's moving."
Veddin didn't have the time to be upset; the battle had already been joined. The Squishies were blasting into the system at an acceleration much too great for them to stand for long. Fanaticism was at work again. Veddin's fleet was only partly gathered, and they were retreating as fast as they could, waiting for reinforcements.
Fortunately the robot ships eould maneuver rings around the Squishies; but if they couldn't slow the Squishies down soon, there wouldn't be room to fight before Hydra was overwhelmed. Veddin inched his acceleration up another notch, and started skipping in and out of normal space like a drunk star racer; he was too far away, the lag time for his communications was crippling his fleet.
And then he decelerated as viciously as he had accelerated: the Squishies had already launched a salvo of planetbreakers! Veddin's own ships were strewn too thinly to catch them all; he would have to get them himself. The Squishies must have had planetbreakers to waste, to start shooting them already. Well, they'd keep Veddin tied down by Hydra, anyway.
"My detector is still reading 8.8," he told Autumn. "I'm gonna veer off now and get a third reading from another direction." He didn't tell her that he was heading that way primarily to stop the Squishy missiles.
There was something funny about the missiles; some of them didn't generate the radiation trace of planetbreakers. One of the senships he'd left in orbit around Hydra scanned them quickly; they were full of electroptics, but there was no warhead. Damn! "Autumn, the Squishies are shooting some strange missiles. I'll bet they're full of psi-jamming equipment." If he were right, the whole nightmare on Hydra was a Squishy plot. The ramifications were endless, but he didn't have time to think about them now. With several brief sweeps of his weapons this first flock of missiles disappeared, far in front of his own ship, very very far from their target. Veddin headed back out toward the battle.
And another volley of planetbreakers screamed toward Hydra.
Even as he turned his ship to intercept them, he received an image from one of the senships he'd put around Hydra. The image was of hellfire rising from the ocean. One of the fusion reactors had just blown sky high. Even as he watched, the senship's computers analyzed the tidal wave and calculated its future path; Pyrta, the island where Autumn waited, would be destroyed within minutes.
Veddin screamed in primeval rage, as he had when his sister died. "Autumn! Is there a plane around? There's a tidal wave coming toward you. You have to get off the island!"
"My detector reading has dropped to 7.6," she said. Obviously, she wasn't going to budge until they found the jammer.
Hardly coherent as a thinking entity, Veddin directed his ship to destroy the second wave of missiles. As he calmed, he looked back at the glowing readout on the psi detector. "It's still 8.8," he almost howled.
They now had six readings from two machines at three locations, at roughly three times. He shifted the numbers to the DareDrop's computer, but without much hope of a fix on the jammer. There were too many imponderables; and the jammer was moving! They might never get enough readings! Where could the jammer be?
Even as he realized where the jammer had to be, Autumn came to the same realization. "Veddin! The jammer is you!"
Of course! How else would the Squishies get something close enough to Hydra? Somehow they'd planted one aboard his own ship in that last battle.
Wait, there was another explanation. "Unless my detector's broken," he countered in misery. "I wouldn't be surprised if it's just junk now, after all that acceleration." To check, he'd have to go back to the island, to see if Autumn's readings went back up. Or scan the DareDrop in minute detail.
There was no time. Before he could get back to Pyrta he'd have lost them all: The island, the detector, and Autumn would all be gone.
A third salvo of planetbreakers came flashing toward Hydra.
A swarm of Squishy ships blasted their way through the screen of Veddin's fleet at last, and plunged toward the planet only seconds slower than the missiles.
Veddin cut power and unsnapped his webbing. "Autumn, listen carefully." He stepped free from his couch, and ducked out of the control room. "Go get the Shaylohs; you know, the Couple down the hall. Tell them that if we're lucky they're gonna get their powers back suddenly—but tell them that they don't have a moment to waste celebrating. First, they have to stop that tidal wave before it kills them and you."
"Okay."
"I'm not through yet." Veddin pulled down his space- suit. "Next, there's a bunch of missiles loaded with jammers, and if the jammers get close enough, you're dead. You have to stop those." He struggled the last inches into his spacesuit. He wondered how great the range of those jammers was; if it was as great as the jammer on board the DareDrop, Hydra was sunk. Fortunately, there wasn't enough room on each missile for a big power plant. Probably the one on the DareDrop had tapped into the DareDrop's engines.
"Okay."
"Wait. There's a bunch of planetbreakers coming with the jammers. If any of those get to your planet, there'll be nothing left but a dozen small moons." He plunged through the narrow passage to the airlock.
"Okay."
"Shush. There's a fleet right behind them, loaded to the gills with more of the same. And the rest of the fleets are breaking through now." The outer port opened up, and Veddin poised at the opening. "And Autumn, I love you," he sobbed.
"Veddin!" He heard her cry before he leaped from the ship.
He pointed his retrojet at the ship and pushed himself away as fast as he could accelerate; minutes before, when he first knew what he had to do, he'd had his fleet fire a dozen missiles at the DareDrop. Even one hit would obliterate the ship and any jammers that she might carry.
He didn't really have a chance of getting far enough away; the missiles were just seconds from contact when he jumped through the portal. One after another, twelve explosions sent blinding pulses of light that his helmet filters could only partially block off.
It had been stupid to try to escape, Veddin now realized. His radiation meters leaped to frenzied peaks. At least on board the ship his death would have been quick and painless. He sighed.
With faint curiosity, he turned toward the planet. There was no way he could see from here whether the tidal wave had struck.
He turned back toward the fleets and the volleys of missiles, glowing brightly as they needled toward Hydra. They were beautiful needles, quite hypnotic in their movements as they slowly bunched together.
The widespread points of light came together, and dissolved in a titanic explosion of brightness that excelled even the brilliance of the DareDrop s demise.
The planetbreakers had blown the jammers to smithereens, Veddin realized. Then he noticed Autumn s song in his heart, so soft now, yet so unforgettable. He felt like rejoicing, until he felt the guts of his radiation-torn body coming up his throat, looking for someplace else to go. He remembered he was dying.
Then he was gone from there, no longer a part of his dying body. Now he was trapped in a multiple mind.
He was dimly aware that the Shaylohs were a part of that mind. "We are sorry," the mind said, "we would request your assistance, but there is no time, and we know you would volunteer, if time permitted," With that the mind swept, not merely around him, but through him. Everything he knew of space, of war, and of alien beings, was theirs. There followed a contemplation too brief and too intense for Veddin to understand. The mind opened a window on a brightly lit scene filled with warships. On board the ships were points of light; points that were somehow more like the mind himself than they were like the flares of the engines, and as he watched, those points of light dimmed and disappeared by the thousands. Other forces, yet again different in their appearance, grasped the ships and twisted them into the distance. The battle was over.
&nb
sp; But the mind was growing; more and more Hydrans were finding themselves and joining the attack, With them they brought power, and hate. Soon the hate grew stronger than any of the other forces there, a lust for revenge that exploded as the members of that mind remembered and thought and searched, to see that other minds, the minds of friends and lovers, were missing, were gone forever. Wild with pain and hate, the mind shifted, passing thousands of stars to a planet covered with bright points like those once carried by the ships in the alien fleet. In a single shuddering pass through that planet, the mind snuffed out every last point of light.
The mind shifted again, to another system. Here there floated several planets covered with light. For a moment the mind paused. It considered which to destroy next.
Till now everything had moved too fast for Veddin to comprehend. But he understood the half-planned genocide that that mind would commit and, though Veddin too had reason to hate the Squishies, he was appalled at the totality of the coming annihilation. "Wait!" he cried into the agonized consciousness. "You can't just kill them all!"
The mind was well shielded. It fully expected some type of attack from the Squishies; it relished the thought of destroying the attackers. But the mind was not prepared for an attack from within. "You must stop!" Veddin cried with all his resolve and determination.
The mind stopped. And the people who composed that mind stopped, and thought, and saw what they had done, and were horrified.
The separate minds (for they were one no longer) turned to Veddin. "Thank you."
Veddin relaxed. The minds shifted away again, back to Hydra.
And Veddin found himself in a spacesuit filled with vomit and blood. His stomach still heaved to drive more forth. He had forgotten that he was dying.
Pain, blinding pain, fire screaming through every cubic centimeter of his soul. He tried to twist and turn, but couldn't even tell if he succeeded; he could feel nothing beyond the pain. He wondered if this was what it felt like to die of radiation. No, that couldn't be; he should already be dead. Could it be that the ancient religions had told the truth after all: Could this be Hell?
Somewhere amidst the pain there came a chuckle; certainly it was the Devil. "No," the voice said, regretting its earlier amusement. "Fear not. This is not Hell, and I am not the Devil, though I can surely understand why you might think that. Hold on to your sanity for just a few moments, and you'll be fine."
The pain subsided. A gentle rolling motion replaced the agony; he must be in a flotation tank. Ungluing his eyelids, Veddin looked up through the transparent case. A couple stood there holding hands, smiling at him. He rolled in the tank, reveling in his release from pain.
"We're sorry about the pain," the Couple told him, "but we haven't found a method to prevent it. It's a pretty wracking experience, for a human brain to have psikinetic Couples and receptor Couples stomp around, rebuilding each individual cell." The man shook his head. "It was pretty horrible for us, too."
"Sounds like it." Veddin marveled again at the powers these people had. He forced himself to remember their weaknesses as well.
He tensed as he felt the song in his heart growing stronger. "Autumn," he cried. "I have to get out!" As he beat against the tank lid, the Couple unlatched it. Veddin jumped out of the tank into the cool air, and became acutely aware of his nakedness.
The woman handed him a towel. The man turned to a closet and pulled out some clothes. "Autumn will be here in a few minutes," they thought soothingly, completely misunderstanding his panic. "We've found it unwise to let touched-ones be present during cell-rebuilding operations; often the pain damages them even more than it damages the person being worked on."
Veddin's thoughts were incoherent. Finally he considered his ship, and was horrified. "The DareDrop," he thought in anguish, "she's gone." He looked wildly at the Couple, his mind filled with need.
"We think they've rebuilt one of the alien vessels for you, a replacement for the DareDrop." They were puzzled by his interest. "It's not the same, but it should serve most of the functions. Frankly, it'll be more comfortable, if the images of the DareDrop in your mind are any indication." The Couple smiled. Veddin received from them an image of the hall outside. He saw himself walking down the hall to a door, through which the landing field could be seen. "It's just outside."
With a final tug at the sleeve of the ill-fitting shirt they'd given him, Veddin dashed from the room. "Thanks," he thought over his shoulder.
As he broke from the building, he could feel the gentle pressure from his embedded shiplink. He turned left as the DareDrop II told him which way to go. He ran with increasing terror. A different kind of shudder formed inside of him; Autumn knew something was wrong.
Suddenly he was fighting his way through molasses. He worked harder with each step he took. At last he could go no farther.
"Stop," a mind projected at him. He was trapped.
"Let me go," Veddin begged. Autumn's song was pure with love now, and it grew closer. He turned to see Autumn approach, concern on her face. She jogged toward him as she saw his agony. "No!" Veddin screamed in voice and thought.
Now Autumn slowed to a stop. Her muscles strained as Veddin's had. "What's wrong?" she asked. Her parents were coming up behind her; they too looked concerned.
"Don't touch me!" Veddin said.
Autumn choked. "Why?" her voice wavered.
"Surely you know why! Do you want to wind up like the rest of the creatures here?"
"Calm yourself," the Westfalls commanded, "Your thoughts are chaotic."
They were right. Veddin forced himself to breathe deeply, slowly. He had panicked back in the flotation tank, and the panic was irrational. Touching Autumn would not turn him into a vegetable. He remembered that Couple they had met near the spaceport, helping people get indoors. They had been together almost a year, and they had still been able to act in the crisis.
Perhaps he could Touch Autumn, to try to explain . . .
No, he couldn't. Emotionally, he wanted to Touch her, to become a Couple with her. She could fulfill needs that he'd never admitted needed fulfilling. If he Touched her, he would never let go. Better not to even try.
Why did he have to love the woman whose touch would leave him crippled?
"What a foolish thought," Tarn and Tara Westfall interjected. "Our reliance on psi is no more crippling than your reliance on electroptics, Kaylanxian. What if Kaylanx's central power generators disintegrated? We, the psis, would have to save you, as you saved us. The difference is minimal."
"No!" It wasn't the same, but it took Veddin a moment to put it into an organized thought. "There is a difference. If Kaylanx lost her generators, I'll grant that she would probably die. But I would have tried to save her." They had freed his arms; he swept them over all Hydra. "You didnt even try!"
The Westfalls withdrew in embarrassment for a moment; another Couple, the pair who controlled Veddin's bonds, came in. "That is not an indictment against us either, Veddin Zhukpokrovsk. That is a tribute to you as an individual. Do you really believe all Kaylanxians share your will to succeed? How many of them would work with you if the lights went out on Kaylanx? How many would stare in horror and amazement, waiting for salvation, as we did?"
Veddin had no answer.
The Westfalls returned. "We're all a bit overwrought from the past two days' nightmare. It's difficult to discuss this unemotionally. Wouldn't it be better to postpone decisions for a few days, to let the light of objectivity begin to return?"
If he stayed long enough, Veddin knew he would lose. Touching Autumn would be so easy.
Pity flowed from the Westfalls. "How deep your conflict runs, Veddin Zhukpokrovsk. One part of you feels you must stay, and another part thinks you must leave." They paused. "Stay, Veddin. The emptiness that holds you is ancient, born in Man's beginning, before Nature stole from us the right to Touch. Few men ever get the chance to share the joy once meant for us. You would search forever for the answers you can find here with ease. Without Aut
umn you will never be free."
"And with her, I will never be free." Veddin turned away, not even noticing that the molasses that bound him was gone.
"Don't go!" Autumn begged. "Come with me. Please. See Hydra through my eyes. It's beautiful here." She stretched her arms toward him. "I love you."
"And I love you." He shook his head. "But there must be another answer, a better answer. Don't you see—it's us, the isolates, that makes Couples strong! To forego our isolation is to make us just like the Squishies. Is that a worthy goal? The children who grow up here, Coupled from birth, are they lucky never to know what it's like to be men? The answers that Hydra offers are no better than the isolation most humans suffer."
There was the mental equivalent of a polite cough in Veddin's mind, and the Couple that had bound him spoke. With a start, Veddin recognized them: they were the Shaylohs. "We don't pretend to have any answers," they began, "but we do have an alternative for you to consider."
Everyone was alert to the new thought. "Yes?"
"We have studied the psi-resonance jamming technology in depth since the battle. We could give Veddin a small implant that would locally jam psi-resonances. That way, he could touch Autumn, without Touching."
"Ingenious!" the Westfalls thought.
"Marvelous!" Veddin replied.
"Not on your life!" Autumn shrieked.
The Shaylohs focussed their attention on Autumn. "Would you rather lose him completely? We will design the device so that, if you ever succeed in convincing your touched-one that it is unnecessary, he may deactivate it."
A long moment passed while Autumn considered the compromise. "All right," she muttered.
A twinge of pressure formed under Veddin's left temple, then disappeared. Autumn broke free of the restraining psiforces and ran into his arms. Again Veddin felt the dim echo of a true Touch. It would be so easy to complete the sensation . . . yet, he believed, it would be so wrong. There must be more to mankind's destiny than just being like the others. He was convinced of that, though he couldn't say why.
The Gentle Seduction Page 10
