The D’neeran Factor

by Terry A. Adams

  They came up under the trees, which quickly thickened and cut off the sky. Michael cast the light about, hesitating. His hearing seemed unnaturally sensitive; now he, too, listened for the sounds Hanna strained to hear, the noise of a spacecraft moving across the sky. But there was icy silence on the mountainside. There was only a small cold wind which they had come high enough to feel, a wind that did not touch the valley below. The dying leaves on their malleable trees rattled in the wind; they would not fall until spring.

  “This way,” he said with more hope than certainty, but when they had wound through a grove where the trees stood close together, he saw he had been right. The game trail he remembered had scarcely shifted. They followed it up.

  * * *

  The Avalon was as Henrik had remembered it, only worse in some ways. It was still dark, and it smelled worse than ever, as if no one ever bothered to clean any part of it up, and remnants of food had lain carelessly in corners for months. A bin of foodstuffs had gone bad—as Henrik discovered when he opened it, looking for something to eat, and the stench nearly knocked him over. He closed it quickly, but not before he got a glimpse of what was inside—a writhing heap of something white and wet.

  He tried not to think of the Golden Girl—the light and the music. But the music would not stay out of his head. Tambours and sackbuts. “It’s not my fault the bastard got born a thousand years too late,” Henrik said, but he only said it to himself. He couldn’t say it to anyone here. It was strange to think he could have said that to Theo, or Hanna, or even to Michael Kristofik; Kristofik would only have laughed.

  Since there was no one to talk to, he went back to his old cabin and crouched in a corner with his head in his hands, in the dark. Maybe he had done the wrong thing. But it did not seem to him that he had done anything at all. He had watched Michael leave the Golden Girl and plunge into the sea of trees and rain, tall and confident, with Hanna and Shen—leaving Henrik behind, like Lise, with Theo to babysit for both of them. There was nothing to do but wait, nothing but stay where he was put. He had resented it, and the resentment had grown through a day and a night until it filled him and burst out. He had been carried here against his will, and was he now to be left behind while the others were out in the rain and fresh air? Was he less of a man than the women? At the end of the second day Theo was dozing, Lise invisible. It took only minutes to get what he needed and get outside. He made his way to the road and started down it; maybe he would meet the others coming back. He did not, and the night came, and he meant to turn back, and then realized that he would never see, in the dark, the place where he must leave the road to get back to the ship. And the ship might take off before he reached it; what if it took off? He did not think Theo would wait for him.

  The rain came down drearily. The night was colder than he had expected. There was nothing to do but keep following Michael. There was shelter on this road, at least; he had heard the others tell Theo about it the night before. He had to find it. He kept walking.

  He did find it; found Orne, his suspicions now fully aroused; woke at dawn with Orne grumbling in his ear, was urged into the ramshackle truck. “I want to find the others, I just want to find them,” he said. Orne said, “Well, and this is the way they went.” And the town in the cold morning, the curiosity, the talk that went so fast he could not keep up with it. And the pretty brown girl, the radio hidden among her scant belongings, preset for the issuing of warnings. She had not wanted to use it, but her grandfather pushed her aside and took it, plain fear in his eyes. And then the Avalon came in across the sky, and it was too late for Henrik to run, too late for him to do anything even if he had been able to think of anything to do.

  So now he crouched in the dark, ignored, unimportant, trying to think. B would never go back to the Polity, and Henrik’s only chance was to get back to Michael and get away when the others did. Unless they had already gone on the ship B had failed to shoot down.

  But B did not think they were all on that ship.

  He had asked Henrik: “If some were on the ground, would the others go?”

  “No,” Henrik had said. He knew them well enough to be sure of that. He had lived with them long enough to know.

  He huddled in the dark and waited. No one came near him. No one had spoken to him except B. Ta had not said, “Where you been?” Bakti had not said, “Good to see you.” They had not looked the same. There was strained desperation in their faces—and it must have predated the Golden Girl’s coming here, it was etched too deep to have sprung up all at once. They looked like men who did not want to be where they were.

  The Avalon was moving, but no one had told him where. The door opened, the light came on, and he looked up. Maybe someone would tell him something. B stood there, the old empty smile on his lips.

  “I think I’ve got it straight what you did,” he said. “Think of anything else I ought to know?”

  His voice was toneless. Henrik was reassured. He had told B only what he had to, more than he wanted to; he had not dared to refuse. But he would not offer any more information. He could give Michael that, he could give Hanna that.

  “I don’t know any more,” he said gratefully. “There’s nothing more that would help.”

  “Sure?”

  “Sure.”

  B’s hand came around from behind his back. There was something in it, laser pistol or disruptor, Henrik never decided which and there was no time to think about the mistakes he had made; there was an instant of shock, and he was dead.

  * * *

  If the caverns had been too high on the mountain, they could not have made it. Michael was sure of that; sure the Avalon would be back in the night, whether it caught up with GeeGee or not. If it caught up with GeeGee—his first thought was of Shen, but he forced it down. Shen wouldn’t like that. She would call him soft. Well, then, even with Shen and GeeGee gone there would be a way out, though it would mean getting control of the Avalon.

  But all they could do now was hide. He urged the others up the mountainside, climbing, climbing. Old landmarks rose up in the dark and fell behind, it was a shorter climb than he remembered; no, his legs were longer, twice as long, an eerie echo of trance. Theo and Hanna went on steadily, breathing hard till the second wind came; then they seemed, as Michael felt, tireless. But it was hard on Lise. She leaned on his arm; he half-carried her.

  They came around the edge of a high bluff, and he turned and plunged into the brush at its base.

  The opening was still there, and hidden even better than in his childhood; a tree had grown up in front of it. He probed at the undergrowth, using the light openly now, and carefully. Not all the beasts in these mountains were harmless, and some visited caves. He heard Hanna behind him, listening. For bestial near-thought from the cave? For something in the sky? If the latter, there was nothing to hear but Lise gasping and wheezing, desperate for rest.

  Hanna said nothing about an animal presence, and there was no sign of a path through the dried grasses underfoot. He got on his knees—the opening was low—and crept in, flashing the light now ahead, now back for the others. His hands and knees sank into mud and scraped on pebbles. Lise objected to the mud, fretful, and he heard Hanna speak to her softly, encouraging, promising sleep.

  The mud dried up and faded into rock. A dislodged stone rolled ahead on a gentle downward slope; the ceiling lifted overhead. He got up and walked, crouching, then straightened fully. “Mind your head,” Hanna said to Theo or Lise; then they stood beside him in a clutter of loose rocks. The stone underfoot was cool and damp. There was the sound of water nearby, a slow-moving stream; he knew just where it was.

  He said, “This is far enough. Somebody’s got to be posted at the opening all the time. If Shen calls, we might not pick it up in here.”

  Theo said, “We can’t call her. They’d hear.”

  “Yes. We can only listen, till we know she’s close. I’ll take the first watch.”

  Theo looked relieved. He had had even less sleep than
the others. He kicked stones away and sat down on the rock without further discussion, leaning against the cave wall. “This feels soft enough,” he said. Lise nearly fell next to him. She put her head on his shoulder and he put his arm around her.

  Michael turned the light to a dim glow and left it with them. It would shine for months, maybe years; at least they did not have to fear the dark. “The water’s just down there,” he said, pointing downhill, and made sure they saw where he pointed. “If you need some, for God’s sake don’t get lost!”

  “I’m not that crazy,” Theo muttered, and closed his eyes.

  Michael crawled back to the mouth of the cave, Hanna following. They laid one of the communicators on a rock in the open and retreated just inside the cave, where they could hear it call but sit upright in some comfort. They swallowed nutrient tablets and took turns going to the stream for water, tiptoeing past Theo and Lise, already sound asleep. When Hanna came back, she had no coat; she had spread it over the other two for warmth. Michael took off his coat, too, and they huddled together under it.

  Hanna said, “Oh, God, how I want a bath!”

  “There’s the stream,” he said.

  She shivered. “It might come to that.”

  She leaned against him, still shivering, but not with cold. “Somebody’s dead,” she said.

  “What do you mean? Shen?” he said anxiously.

  “I don’t think it’s Shen. But somebody’s died. I felt it on the way up. I would have known if it was Shen. But somebody I know is gone.”

  Michael held her in silence. He was so accustomed to living with a telepath that she had ceased to seem strange, but sometimes he was reminded that her humanity was of a different order from most, from his.

  “It couidn’t have been anybody in Croft,” he said. “The Avalon hasn’t come back yet. Somebody at the Post? Somebody on the Avalon?”

  “I don’t think so. I don’t know any of those people well enough to feel it if they died. It might not even have been here, it might have been somebody at home. But I think it was here.” She paused. “I hope it wasn’t Henrik.”

  He moved involuntarily. He didn’t want it to be Henrik. He said as lightly as he could, “What the hell are we going to do about Henrik, anyway?”

  “Leave him,” she said. “He made his choice. If we get away and get the Polity here, he can go home. To prison, probably.”

  “I wouldn’t like to see that happen.”

  “No. I guess I wouldn’t either. He doesn’t really try to be the way he is. He just never knows what he’s doing,” she said, and Michael laughed.

  “I don’t either. Do you?”

  “Not till it’s over,” she admitted.

  “I stayed too long,” he said as if it were the logical sequel. “I couldn’t tear myself away.”

  “I know,” she said, forgiving him. She added, “Carmina gave me her gun.”

  “Is that what you were carrying? Do you know how to use it?”

  “I think so.” She dug in a pocket and pulled out a bulging pouch; something rattled inside it. “Ammunition,” she said.

  “That’s good. And we’ve got two stunners. But either way we’ll have to be at close range.”

  “We’ll arrange that if we have to,” she said.

  They sat in silence, waiting. At the end of the universe, he thought. Because of the stone overhead and the brush outside, he could not see the sky, not a single star to say there were other places. Run to ground—he knew what that meant, now. All the running he had ever done had been only a prelude to this.

  But he could not feel despair. Not with Shen out there, faithful; not with Hanna at his side.

  He got his hand under her chin, turned her head and kissed her. This night ought to belong to the painful, necessitous nights he had spent dragging himself through memories. But there were all the others, too. Luxury was where you found it, where you made it.

  He felt the tension begin to run out of Hanna, melting out like tallow. “I don’t want to take too many clothes off,” she said.

  “We’ll see what we can do,” he said, and they lay down together on the stony bed, cushioning each other as best they could.

  * * *

  The lights went out one by one in Croft, until the only one left was in the house where Carmina lived with Otto. They had talked for a time, but Carmina was not inclined for conversation, and Otto at length had left her alone. Now as the night wore on, they were silent. Carmina’s face was calm but watchful; her eyes moved at every sound. Anyone who knew Michael would have recognized that look.

  Her mind was not as quiet as her face and hands. Strangely (but it would not have been strange to anyone who knew Michael) she had no difficulty in accepting what had happened—and might happen. Her brother had come home. That was a fact. He carried the seeds of a revolution; if he got away he would make it happen, and Carmina’s life and the lives of everyone she knew would change. That was a fact. Carmina had always dealt in facts, some of them hard. These were better than most.

  But the bones of a hard fact, and the richness of the flesh that clothed it, were different things.

  Her mind wandered among riches. The man who shared her blood, looking no older than she in spite of the difference in their ages—how little she had learned about him! But much about Gadrah, and much about the worlds outside it. He had seen her thirst for knowledge and ministered to it; she was ashamed, thinking of it; she had not asked what she could give in return. But all he had seemed to want was to look at her.

  The candle burned low. The town was silent. There were many who slept, and Otto’s gray head drooped and his eyes were half-closed. But no doubt others sat awake in the dark, waiting for a return.

  Carmina dreamed, though awake. She dreamed of the worlds of which Mikhail had told her, the busy homeworld, the colonies unlike Gadrah where human life had thrived. She dreamed of governments, too, and law, and what they might do here, where there had never been any law but custom—or the caprices of power.

  She had been dreaming this last dream a long time when the sound began. She knew it at once, she had known it when she heard it in the afternoon, and it had brought a stark memory of danger, of screaming and terror and fire.

  In the afternoon it had only brought her brother home. But now it was night.

  She stood in the open door with the candle behind her, inviting danger. Her view of the landing was clear. One spacecraft looked much like another to inexperienced eyes, but she had studied the Golden Girl hungrily while she waited in the day at Otto’s back, and even in the dark she was certain this was not the same one. The hunters, then.

  She stood unmoving while lights came toward her, drawn by light. Two men came to the door and at last she gave way, backing into the room; there were weapons in their hands, and she knew, by description, what they did. She knew one of the men by description as well. The undying. Tistou.

  “Where are they?” he said. He looked at her strangely when the light flashed on her face. Otto had gotten up behind her. Tistou said, “Where are they, old man?”

  “Gone,” Otto said. “The gold ship came and got them.”

  The traveler said smiling, “The ship has not come back. It did not turn back soon enough, to have come back. They are here.”

  “Well, search, then,” Otto said.

  They did search; they looked in every house and byre, the spaceship hovering overhead and flooding the town with light. The searchers took Carmina with them, and at each cottage, when the householder was roused, they put the end of a weapon to the base of her skull, to show what would happen if there were protests. At each house she smiled, calm and unafraid, and endured it. She even endured (though she did not smile) a clumsy caress from the man with the gun at her head; but Tistou said, “There’s no time. Keep your eyes open.” After that there was only the gun, better than the heavy hand.

  One thing frightened her, though she did not show it. The ship at the rooftops, the light pouring down—she had seen
that a long time before, her earliest memory.

  When they were satisfied Croft hid no fugitives, they took her back to Otto. They put her against the wall and pointed the guns at her breast. “Where are they?” Tistou said.

  “I will not tell you,” she said, dreaming of law.

  “Well, old man?”

  “Sutherland,” Otto said. “They took the road—” he pointed—“that way. At least, they said they would go that way.”

  “Do you agree?” Tistou asked her, but she would not move or speak. He looked at her closely again, as if some memory or moment of knowledge were near.

  He stepped back and put the gun in his belt and went out, followed by the other man, who was very big and fair. Carmina moved to the door and watched them go. Otto said, “I had to tell them, child. They would have killed you.”

  “Yes,” she said. “But maybe Mikhail thought of that.”

  “He was a clever boy,” Otto said.

  * * *

  Theo had not looked at the time since nightfall, and he did not know how long he had slept when Michael woke him. His chronometer showed Standard time, and it could not tell him how long it was to dawn. When his eyes were fully open he saw that Michael was exhausted. Hanna stood there, too, heavy with sleep.

  “Your turn. Wake me in a couple hours,” Michael said.

  Theo went for water first. On the way back to the mouth of the cave, passing the others, he saw that Michael and Hanna were already asleep. Hanna had taken his place and slept with her arms around Lise, who had hardly stirred, and Michael held Hanna. The three were very close, very beautiful—and vulnerable. There was a mountain over their heads and it could fall and crush them in a moment.