"I'll take care of it," Rachel replied, opening the gate just wide enough for her friend to slip through. "I'll make sure they know to. take care of you."
"Well, as long as Diablo is around, I'll be fine," Barb said. "Bye, now."
Rachel watched as the pair cantered to an out-of-the-way part of the field and stopped to graze. From time to time Diablo nibbled gently at his. mate and Barb would stop to run her horn along his neck. Finally, Rachel decided that love was where you found it.
"And where am I going to find it?" she asked herself sadly, walking back to the town in the darkness.
* * *
In the darkness McCanoc fumed and from time to time smashed a fist against the power screen, getting nothing for it but a bruise and a faint illumination.
Why were they after him for the terraforming proxy? Chansa had set that up before the Fall, but after the Fall he had assumed that the power had been dumped into the regular grid and locked out like all the rest. He certainly hadn't been able to summon so much as a genie.
But, maybe, the power was available. He hadn't tried to access it directly. And Chansa sure as hell wasn't answering his pages.
Finally he closed his eyes and held out his hands.
"Mother, as the sole surviving board member of the Wolf 359 terraforming project, I call upon the power stored for that project. Use all the power necessary to destroy this shield!"
Mother considered the call for a moment and then acquiesced.
* * *
The fireball lifted a section of the hill into the air and dropped it in every direction. Most of the power had been shunted to destroying the shield and Mother only intended to use the minimum force necessary. But some of it, equivalent to about a two kiloton blast, escaped. Chunks of rock and bits of tree rained down on the town, killing many of the revelers and injuring scores.
At the shattering boom, Edmund, Daneh and Sheida hurried to the front of the house in time to see the last of the debris rain down.
"Damn it!" Sheida cursed. "Mother, this is Council Member Sheida Ghorbani. Is Dionys McCanoc alive or deceased?"
"Dionys McCanoc is deceased," a voice answered out of the air. Daneh forever after wondered if it was true that there was a note of satisfaction in the voice.
"What of the power for the Wolf 359 project?" Sheida demanded.
"The power has reverted to hold status," Mother replied. "Until a quorum of the stockholders or their heirs can be gathered to elect a new board or a vote of twelve can be held on the Council to shunt it to other purposes."
"Bloody hellfire!" Sheida shouted, slipping away to examine the damage. The shields had drained a significant portion of available power when they were attacked, but none of the shields had gone down. This was mostly because the power being pressed against them had gone down at the same instant. It was clear that Mother had cut Paul's available power the instant that McCanoc died. Her face worked in fury for a moment and then she sighed in disappointment.
"Hey, look on the bright side," Daneh said, shaking her head ruefully. "Now I don't have to hate you for the rest of my life for letting him live."
"Very funny, Daneh," Sheida replied with a rueful chuckle. "Very effing funny."
"Well, whatever," Daneh shrugged. "I need to get into town. There are people who are going to need my help."
"Are you sure you should?" Edmund said. "You're getting close to time."
"I worked on all the injured from the battle," Daneh said. "I can work on those who come in from this. I would appreciate some help getting to the hospital, though."
"I'll come with you," Talbot replied, pulling a cloak off the stand and wrapping it around her shoulders. "If for no other reason than to make sure you don't kill yourself. Or our baby. Sheida?"
"I have to go," the council member replied. "There's a lot of picking up to do on my end as well." She looked out at the hill, which was now black again in the moonlight and sighed. "We were so close."
"Don't sweat it," Edmund replied, pulling down his own cloak. "I guarantee it wouldn't have mattered; history never turns on small items. And anybody who tells you different is selling something."
EPILOGUE
Daneh let out a shriek and squeezed Edmund's hand harder.
"It's okay," he said, miserably. "You're doing fine." There was nothing he could do about it and it pained him to know that.
"It hurts!" she snarled, bearing down. "It BLOODY hurts!"
"You're doing fine, Mother," Rachel said, from somewhere down south. "I can see the crown of the baby's head. He's straight and you're dilating fine. You're in transition, which is why it hurts. Almost over. Just a few more pushes."
Sheida had brought more than dragon riders with her at the end. She had brought a crystalline device that used internal energies for power. The device had contained, among other things, a complete set of medical texts. And Rachel had been boning up for this exam.
"I'm tired," Daneh said, hating the whine in her voice and stepping on it ruthlessly. She took a few breaths and then felt the overwhelming urge to push sweep over her. "Aaaaaagh!"
"That's it," Rachel said. "Bear down. Bear down."
"Don't pant," Edmund said as the pain and pressure subsided. "Regular breaths. You need to get the air in your lungs."
"I'm NOT ENJOYING THIS!" she shouted, but slowed and steadied her breathing so that she could get the vital oxygen into her, for herself and the baby. "Oh, no," she said as the feeling swept over her again.
"That's it!" Rachel shouted. "PUSH! Dad, push on her stomach!"
Daneh bore down and felt a pulling and stretching that felt as if it would split her in two and then an overwhelming sense of relief. There was a moment's pause and then a wail split the air as the first baby born of woman in a thousand years protested the indignity of it all.
"It's a boy," Rachel said.
Rachel and one of the nurses clamped and cut the umbilical cord and wiped the baby, then handed it to Daneh. Daneh held her child and reached down to feel his tiny fingers. She touched the miniature nose and then looked at the ears. And blanched.
"Oh, no," she whispered.
"What?" Edmund asked then looked where she was pointing; the ears had a decided point to them. Edmund looked at them for a moment longer, then shrugged. "I don't care. So he's half that bastard. The other half is all you, my love. And I'll love all of him, as if he were my own."
"Thank you," she sighed, barely able to hold the child up. The baby's eyes were still closed but he lifted his head as if to look around and then grasped at her fingers. She shifted him over to her breast and he latched on as if he'd been doing it forever.
She lay back as her baby suckled, and looked at Edmund. "Are you sure? People. people would take him. And there's going to be talk."
"Yes, darling, I'm sure," Edmund said. "He's our future. He's the future. And we'll take that as it comes, one day at a time."
* * *
Chansa's avatar appeared outside the Council building and looked around. With the exception of a late spring snowfall it looked much as it had on the day of that last, fateful Council meeting. The other difference being the guards.
Outwardly they were human, but very large humans. And their eyes were absolutely dead, like those of sharks. They looked at Chansa and then looked away, cradling the rifles in their hands and scanning the area for threats.
The rifles were Paul's design, air rifles that compressed air to a pressure just under the level where Mother's protocols would start taking an interest. But while they had less range than an old style chemical rifle, much less the gauss rifles of the AI wars, their projectiles made them in a way even more deadly; each little dart that was loaded in the magazine had a drop of acid. Anyone hit by a flail of the little bullets would not only have the damage that they made going through but would find their bodies riddled with acid.
Chansa wasn't worried about the guards per se. The avatar was a creature of energy fields, holograms and nannites, not a human being su
bject to the vagaries of flesh and blood. Furthermore, even the avatar was protected by a field more than proof against the darts of the guards. But something about them always made him shudder.
He entered the Council Chamber and stopped, looking at the new addition on the back wall.
"Do you like it?" Paul asked from over his left shoulder.
Chansa shook his head at the indoor waterfall and stream that now took up half the chamber.
"I don't know," he admitted. "It's pretty."
"I didn't summon it because it is pretty," Paul rasped.
Chansa turned to look at the head of the New Destiny Movement and tried not to let the shock show on his face; Paul looked like a skeleton. He was wearing nothing but rags and was shoeless. His hair had been allowed to grow out and now hung in his eyes in greasy strings. His fingernails had grown out as well, and there was a feral light in his eyes. He also stank as if he had not washed in days, not just the somewhat pleasant reek of body odor but a less pleasant undertone of funk.
"I walk the world, you know," Paul said, walking towards the water. "I visit my people and watch over them. I care for them and guard them in their sleep. But their life is so hard, so hard."
"Yes, Paul, but it's for the good of mankind," Chansa said uneasily.
"Of course it is," Paul snarled back. "But I cannot simply ignore their tragedy. I must live it. If it is good enough for the people then it is good enough for me."
Chansa looked at the falls and saw the pile of clothes by the side of the river. He began to get a sinking feeling about what they represented.
"As my avatars wander the world I come here to work," Paul said, dropping to his knees. "I work and I work and I work."
Chansa watched him as the leader of half the world dipped the clothes in the swirling water and rubbed them on the rocks.
"I brought these back from a peasant woman who was washing them by a river," Paul said. "I told her I would wash them for her. And I will."
"I see," Chansa replied. "Paul, have you been eating?"
"I eat what the people eat," Bowman responded. "Once a day I have a bowl of beans. On Sundays I add a little meat. I am one of the people. I will eat as the people do."
Chansa had spent enough time with his partisan groups that he knew that what Paul was saying had some truth. But only as an average. There were people who were starving, still. On the other hand, there were people who were eating very well indeed, especially the ones that he had promoted to positions of command. He had to say that what Paul was limiting himself to was even a low-end average daily food consumption.
If he starves himself to death, who gets the Key? Chansa wondered.
* * *
Only thirteen percent die-off, well under her estimates. Humans had, again, astounded her. And with the return of the terraforming power she again had sufficient energy to prevent non-human-induced catastrophe. The societies were reconstructing and many of them showed promise of tremendous growth. All in all an interesting outcome to the induced disaster.
It was going to be interesting to see how it all turned out.
With that thought, Mother returned to her eternal vigil.
The End
John Ringo - Council Wars 01 - There Will Be Dragons Page 64
