The muttering grew. In a second, it might turn ugly. This was the danger point: while the settlers decided whether to turn vigilante or to maintain whatever law they had managed to preserve.
Pauli leaned back. “Sure, you can take matters into your own hands. No one will stop you. I'm damned if I'm turning weapons onto any of my own people. But if you do kill the prisoner, think what that makes you. And think what it'll cost the children once they learn."
People broke up into groups and started arguing afresh. Talk, talk, talk, as Alicia had complained. But it was slowing them down. Suddenly the civilian tendency to talk matters to a slow death struck her as a blessed thing.
She glanced around. The perimeter guards were changing shift. One signalled thumbs-up at her. The weather had been fairly chilly for the past few days; this made the stobor torpid. But today was warmer; and she had the field generators deactivated. Stobor might be out.
"Well, what do we do with him?” The question she had most wanted to have asked drew her attention back from the fields.
"What do we do with him? Dr. Pryor has proposed an answer to that. Shall we let her explain it?” Pauli sighed, readjusted herself, and resigned herself for a long, long argument about whether Thorn Halgerd was a killer or a victim.
The dome housing the communications gear stood somewhat removed from the rest of the buildings. Pauli crouched nearby, waiting. Her macrobinoculars dangled from her neck. From time to time, she raised them and scanned the sky. Flashes of light told her that one ship had apparently forced the other to turn and fight.
People planted near the “infirmary” in which Thorn Halgerd was confined had carefully let slip the information that high overhead his old ship and its quarry had met.
If that doesn't lure him out, nothing will, Pryor had assured them.
It was logical that Thorn Halgerd would want to rejoin his ship, team back up with his one surviving groupmate and—to borrow one of his own slogans—serve his Republic by giving them information on this settlement.
"I still don't like the risk you've let yourself in for,” she told Alicia Pryor for the tenth time that evening.
"He's conditioned not to hurt what he calls life-givers,” the physician retorted. “Besides, I think he trusts me."
What was more to the point: Pryor, remembering Halgerd, trusted his “son.” Perhaps too much. Halgerd had been ruthless, but never cruel, however. So she thought that Thorn Halgerd would use his greater-than-Halgerd's strength and speed to subdue her, not harm her unless she struggled. Which, of course, she would not do. Not, she reminded Pauli, at her age.
Pauli had started to protest further—arguing like a civ myself now!—until Rafe had grabbed her arm. “She's trying to absolve herself,” he hissed at her. Damned strange expiation, Pauli wanted to comment. If Pryor wanted to atone, she could do a better job practicing medicine, not putting her life on the line.
"Damn you, Halgerd, move it!" Hundreds of kilometers overhead, the warring Secess’ ships feinted and fired. Inside the commhut, Pauli had only to access the computer to see the battle on screen. She was aching to do just that, and she could bet—had bet—lives on her guess that Halgerd couldn't resist it either.
"We've freed up Alicia,” Rafe's voice from her earplug alerted her. “She's not hurt. Get ready, Pauli. He's on his way."
Ahhh, here he came. The tall, lean figure, bent almost double, slipped from the darkened infirmary's door, using every scrap of shadow for cover, and headed for the communications dome. Before Pauli could so much as stand up, he was inside.
Not that he could do any immediate harm in there. Ben Yehuda had reconfigured the comms. Now Thorn Halgerd could receive transmissions, but whatever he sent would only go to the infirmary where, by now, people would be listening in.
"Pilot Yeager ... Captain?” the Secess’ clone stated as she entered after him. “Should you even be up and around so soon?” His fingers caressed the commgear.
"I'm surprised at your concern,” she remarked. “I trust you left my medical officer in one piece?"
He nodded. “I hope you're unarmed. I should regret injuring you."
"And yet,” said Pauli, “you have no hesitation about telling your people—assuming they're still alive—where we are. Knowing what they'll do to us ... what you've done to groups like ours."
"Ah!” Satisfaction rang in his voice as the coordinates of Cynthia space glowed on-screen. Two red blips dodged and fired across it at one another. Thorn punched in codes for identification, drew the transmitter toward him, and then, slowly, laid it down again. Doubt flickered in the gray eyes.
"What happens if your home ship is the one destroyed in that firefight?” Pauli asked. “Will you tell the other ship about us? After it killed your own?"
"I serve the Republic,” Thorn recited absently, his eyes on the screen. One ship took a strong hit, and he flinched. His ship? The readouts he demanded didn't look good. That ship was probably venting air, sealing off the damaged compartments, never mind the crew who might be trapped. Or lost. For a treasonous moment, Pauli winced too at the death throes of a starship. Then she resumed her own attack.
"That ship killed your brothers! It turned on your Republic!"
"Quiet now—” he whispered, watching the silent, lethal barrage on the screen until the first ship went up in a tiny, brilliant sun that cast weird shadows on the dome's sloping walls.
Thorn punched up the survivor's identification code. With a growl of satisfaction, he reached for voice transmission.
"Thorn, Halgerd Group 6AA, to base ship. Aesc, are you there?"
"Are you sure he's alive?” Pauli asked. “You heard him cry out while the rest of your brothers were out getting zeroed. He sounded out of control to me. Don't they terminate you if you get that crazy?"
Halgerd increased volume on the receivers.
"They're short-staffed,” he muttered half to himself.
"You hope!” Pauli snapped. She had to get him to argue if she were to try to turn him. If they couldn't turn him, win his allegiance, they'd have no choice but to kill him. The clone's hair glittered in the dim overhead lights, and she wondered what went on in his brilliant, starved mind.
"Another thing, Halgerd,” she said, noting how he started and almost smiled at the name. “Assuming your people didn't kill him, what makes you think Aesc survived the deaths of the other four? You almost didn't. Do you know, though, Dr. Pryor thinks she's figured out why you lived?"
"You're getting to him." Pryor's voice overrode the pounding of her own blood in her ears. "Try to keep him talking. Make him realize that he's got no future with his old ship."
"Do you think they'll have you back?” Pauli needled.
"Shut up!"
"What if I don't? When I came in here, the first words out of your mouth were that you were worried I was moving about too soon after Serge's birth. Don't you see? That whole time you were turned loose in CompCenter, you and your groupmates differentiated yourselves from one another so much that the bond was strained. Then you hit your head, and your implant broke, dissolved, and was ultimately eliminated. That's why you survived."
"Aesc, please, Aesc, come in."
"Your Aesc is a stranger to you now,” Pauli told Thorn's back. “You have nothing to go back to. A broken group? Sure, so they decant another Halgerd-clone. Another six-group. Do you think they'll let you and your Aesc join it as older models? Will they give you another implant? And even assuming all of that, what makes you think this new group would accept you—especially knowing all that you know?"
She leaned forward slightly, as if she held a knife and were going to slide it into the place between his hunched shoulders where the gray cloth had darkened with sweat. “You're contaminated, Thorn. That's how they'll look at you and Aesc."
"Don't forget individuation, Pauli. Tell him they don't dare take him back, he'll poison all the groups," Alicia advised.
"You've individuated, that's what. You and Aesc, if he's still aliv
e. Do you know what your genefather, as you call him, did with contaminated subjects?"
"My life or death doesn't matter,” he mumbled.
"More chatter from your tapes? If you don't care, then why're you trying so hard to get to your ship?” Then revelation hit her. “Or is it Freki you're dreaming of? Look at what thinks it's human now—a cyborg clone!"
Thorn banged a fist down on the console. “Damn you, woman. Life-giver or not, if you don't shut up, I'll gag you!"
Rafe's voice broke in. “Lohr what, Dave? Check the blasters ... oh shit! Some security. Pauli, be careful. Lohr's managed to steal a weapon, and he's overheard ... and heading straight for the comms."
Damn. She'd have to push Thorn even harder. But as she started to move toward him, the comm went live.
"Thorn ... Thorn ... can you hear me? I got a fix on your distress beacon. I tell you, he's alive. I'd have felt it if he died, you know I would. Please let me try to raise him..."
"Aesc...” Thorn's voice was hoarse with relief and longing. “Aesc, I'm here ... at ... wait, here are the coordinates.” Again came the flurry of skilled fingers on the keyboards. “You were wrong!” he flung at Pauli.
It was only a matter of seconds, perhaps, before he realized that the comms had been tampered with. Get over here! she prayed silently, then shuddered to think that Lohr just might.
A different voice filtered through Aesc's pleas for contact.
"Told you ... Halgerd AA's broken. The last pilot died, and the liaison didn't feel it. I think his implant's deranged. With respect, sir, I think he's too unstable to be worth keeping."
"Look at that ship, Thorn,” Pauli whispered. “Listen to them; but look at the damage reports too."
"Thorn!” his groupmate's voice faded.
"Damage control!” Shouts of rage, distress, and fear blurred together, muffling the thud as Thorn's last brother fell forward onto his duty station. Then pure white flooded the screen, fading into a red-tinged haze. When it died, the screen was blank, the star system barren of ships.
Thorn Halgerd gagged and collapsed, but only for an instant. When he turned around, grief and anger battled in his pale eyes.
"He's dead."
"But you're not. Doesn't that prove what I said, Thorn? You're not just one of six anymore. You're unique. Alone!"
"Aesc—” it was a mournful whisper. Then Thorn tensed again and glanced back at the comm. “You rigged it—"
"We didn't dare let you contact the ship, Thorn. You trust Dr. Pryor, don't you? She said—"
"Lohr got away from us. He got a head start on Rafe and the others too."
Not now, for the love of God, Pauli raved silently. Not now, when I've almost got him. And if someone's going to shoot him, please, not Lohr, not after all we've done to turn him around too.
"Dr. Pryor explained about clone-groups and individuation to me, Thorn. I'm a pilot too ... and it's not real easy for people like us to understand the medics, is it?” Pauli let her voice go gentle and warm, almost the way she spoke to her son. “Aesc never really had a chance, Thorn. I'm sorry. Really, I am. But don't you think he'd want you to live? You've got a chance now to be alive, not a fighting machine kept in a stass tank until they need you to die for them. You can be Thorn Halgerd, not one of six identical faces, tapes, and bodies; unique, valued for yourself alone. My God, man, don't you want it?"
"You're doing just fine, Pauli. I think he's ready to break."
Thorn Halgerd whimpered and sank into the chair by the comms.
"What you're feeling is grief, honest, human grief. Not something filtered through an implant. That's gone forever. But it was never all that you felt for Aesc."
Static from the comm crackled in the tiny dome.
Thorn's shoulders heaved. Pauli could hear his strangled sobs. She took a deep breath to steady her nerves, then moved forward, her hand out, ready to lay it on his shoulder, to comfort and bring him back to the infirmary where Pryor could tend him and complete the change—
The door slid aside, and Lohr darted in, a blaster incongruously large and ugly in his thin hand. Pauli slapped the light panels to full strength. The semidarkness was too much like the burrows Lohr would never wholly forget. His eyes were all pupil, and he crouched as if he were hunting. Though he flinched instantly back at the bright lights, he didn't drop his weapon.
He blinked fiercely, but then his eyes adjusted, and Pauli saw in them all the fear and hatred of the feral child they had rescued, had tried to heal ... would have healed already, if the man who slouched sobbing across the comms hadn't broken his fragile peace.
"Lohr,” she said. “Please. Not you. Put the blaster away."
He glanced at her in dismay, then waved the weapon at Thorn Halgerd again, his dark, clever face intent on his prey. Yellow light shivered on the blaster's thick muzzle.
"I'm sorry, Captain. But when I heard he'd been at Wolf IV ... I have to do this!” his voice scaled up. “For those of us who made it through the fire as well as the ones who died.” He sobbed once, but then his voice cooled. “Get up, killer. Wolf IV was my home. Your boys used it as a target range for meteorites. And after you'd had your fun, you came in with lasers. Some of us lasted for months. But you're not going to. You ought to thank me for letting you die fast."
"Here's one way out,” Halgerd muttered to himself. He sounded relieved.
Gauging Lohr's grip on the blaster, Pauli decided she probably couldn't deflect his aim without frying herself, but she started moving forward anyhow. Why am I risking my life? she asked herself. Certainly not for Halgerd.
No, not for Halgerd. For Lohr, who had protected and foraged for his little sister on Wolf IV when he might have left her to die. For a boy who had learned love and decency from the settlers, and who, despite his protests, was still one of the “littlests” whom they must try to preserve from the consequences of destroying the Cynthians. Genocides they might be, but their lives would not be wholly evil if they could remind such children that law and humanity still existed.
Pauli thumbed the transmitter wired to her collar.
"The damned fool's here, friends. I'm going to try to talk him out of killing our guest."
She turned to Lohr. “You're good enough at eaves-dropping to know what we did to the Cynthians, and what we paid for it. Do you have to add to our burden by being no better than the rest of us ... no better than he?"
Lohr's face twisted, but his hand never shook.
"All we want, Lohr, all we ever wanted was a place where you kids could be safe. Halgerd's given up, now, Lohr. You can kill him. But all of the littlests will learn about it, and they'll know that we failed to protect you from turning animal on us. Are you really going to steal their comfort from them? After they thought they were safe?"
Lohr's hand began to shake, and his face twisted.
Pauli's earplug whispered.
"Don't come in,” she warned. Lohr was so unstable now he might fire on friends.
Thorn Halgerd looked over at her. “You stay out of range,” he said. His voice was very bleak but resolved. “I accept execution."
"Lohr's just a boy. He's not going to execute anyone,” Pauli snapped. Her nerves were jangling from this hateful mental warfare; and her breasts ached, a sure sign that Serge must be crying to be fed. “Lohr! You hand over that blaster!"
She was walking toward it, reaching for it, she almost had it...
"Stobor!” Shouts rang simultaneously outside the dome and in her earplug.
Pauli threw herself at the equipment.
"Not a life-giver!” she heard Thorn shout, and a hard shoulder hit her somewhere around the hips, sending her sprawling. Even as ozone stank in the dome, she punched up the field generator. At least she could stop any more stobor from getting through.
"Someone get ben Yehuda. His cub ... down by the river ... surrounded by them—"
Pauli started to crawl on knees and elbows toward the door. Even her teeth ached. Lohr was trembling violently, eyes on t
he blaster he had fired. It was only by the merest luck he hadn't wiped out Pauli, the equipment, or Halgerd, who levered himself up and balanced unsteadily, favoring his left leg, the one that had taken the burn that might have hit Pauli.
"Give me that thing!” Halgerd snarled. As light shrieked out again to score the dome's tough wall, his hand whipped out and slashed down across Lohr's wrist. He caught up the weapon, then stumbled forward, half running, half limping out of the dome at a speed amazing in anyone, let alone a man with a burned leg. Using Lohr as a prop, Pauli dragged herself to her feet.
"He break that wrist for you?"
"No, ma'am.” After scaring the hell out of all of them, damned near frying her, and coming close to ruining irreplaceable equipment, now here he was, back to acting like one of the littlests again.
"Luckier than you deserve. He must not have been trying. Come on!"
Pauli started toward the perimeters, but walked straight into Pryor's outstretched arms. Lohr darted past them both toward the river.
"And where do you think you're going?” she asked.
"Fields. Halgerd's got the blaster now, but Lohr marked him first. I have to get there."
She noticed that Pryor's face sported a fine bruise; and she was still a little unsteady on her feet. “Want to try to stop me, Alicia, or do you want me to help you get there too?"
"You've got yourself a deal, Pauli. Let's move it!"
Ari had found himself a rock to climb on, and he was trying to beat off the stobor from there. He had a stunner, true enough; but its beam flickered, a sign its charge was all but dead. Stobor swarmed out of the river, which ruled out that means of escape for him.
The wrong kid had a weapon! Rafe thought, enraged. Here Lohr was, playing mad blasterman, while Ari, who could use a blaster to fight off stobor, and was as stable as they came, was making do with a stunner, if it held out, and a stick, if it didn't. Rafe headed toward the river too, alert for stobor himself. Around him, lances of fire flared out as people killed stobor. The air was foul with burning ground cover and charred eat ... no, there were no eaters, anymore.
Heritage of Flight Page 16
