It’s over, thought Jude. It’s over and the Koi are guiltless.
But Andreas rose, swaying. The beast was wounded but still on the loose. Its hunger for destruction was unsated, though its army had evaporated and its remaining loyalists lay cowed by the sudden reversal. It cast about for a target, saw Jude, and charged, roaring for blood. But Ra’an was alert, watching through her, and struck first.
The beast vanished from the web.
Andreas crumpled by the water’s edge. Ra’an leaped after him and went down on his knees beside him. He pulled the ragged body into his arms.
“It’s over, James,” he soothed, “it’s over. No more armies, no more violence. The Terrans took care of it themselves.”
Andreas shivered feverishly. “Not over. So much work left to do. All those in the colony…”
Ra’an tried to quiet him. He smoothed matted hair back from the translucent brow and settled him more comfortably in his arms.
But the madman would not be silenced. “You must finish it, continue it, only you can do the task I meant for you alone… ah, brother, understand that it could only be done this way. Do not hate me for the burden I’ve laid upon you, only you can do it…”
Ra’an raised his head to Jude. Help me. Help me to save him.
Jude touched her fingers to her bruised neck. How?
As I did at the Wall, for you. But I can’t do it alone. You are the bridge.
Jude hesitated. Anaharimel warns of the contagion of halm madness.
I saved you at the Wall! Would you refuse James that chance? Would you refuse me the chance to try?
She rose from the driftwood log, stumbled weakly across the sand to kneel beside them. Andreas fixed her with wide gray eyes and smiled a ghost of whimsical smile.
“Halm student,” he croaked. “Ana’s and mine. You did so well.”
Jude tried to smile but could not conjure one. “James,” she whispered. She touched his bony wrist, and suddenly his smile fled and he wrenched himself around in Ra’an’s arms and flailed out at her. “Terran!” he screamed.
Ra’an held him tight. His eyes implored. Help me. There are two of us and he is weak. Please…
She could not refuse him, seeing his brother love so nakedly exposed.
Come, then.
Andreas did not fight their entry. His power was spent. The beast lay insensate, though still breathing. His mind was like a leprous sore. It churned with hate and fear, feeding on its own sickness. Out of love for one man and compassion for another, Jude led the descent into hell, downward through layers of chaos, searching out some center where the soul might still live. She learned that fear smelled like death rot and hatred like burning flesh. Her stomach turned. She trembled, weakening, but Ra’an was beside her, urging and desperate. They staggered through a fog with a darkness ahead of them that pulsed and shuddered. To a Koi it might have appeared to be a void at the focus of the madman’s being, but these two recognized its Terran machinery. This was the dark engine driving his insanity. It was guilt, that fed on the pitiless energy of his halmgift, and bred like a ravenous parasite until it consumed the mind that nourished it.
Ra’an pressed her onward urgently, into the grinding shadow of the Destroyer-machine, and there at the very core, they found a clear flame burning: James Andreas, son to Daniel, brother to the Koi, not enough of a man left to ever be whole again, giving up the last of its energies to search with the desperation of the dying for a way to shut the engine down.
Now that tiny flame cried out in its agony for Ra’an to do what it could not.
Ra’an recoiled from what it asked. He argued with it, prodded it, pleaded with it, surrounded it with love to urge it back to life and health. He sang to it, of their past together, of the father they had shared. He wove promises for the future. But the flame knew only pain, had only strength to gasp for one final mercy.
Jude, the matrix and observer, wept, as she held in her mind the agony of the man who had planned his own destruction and the grief of the man who must carry it out.
And he must. She knew it before he did. The flame might die, slowly and in unutterable pain, but the madness could rage on unchecked as long as the body lived. The body must be silenced, the engine smashed. The not-so-madman’s purpose had been served. All around them, on the beach and in the halmweb, the reunited Koi rejoiced in a new appreciation of wholeness. The Balance that passivity and avoidance had allowed to slip righted itself once more.
Do it, she urged him. Your grief is a lesser cost than will be demanded of us all if you fail him now. Forgive him for understanding better than you what must be done.
The tiny flame flickered. Andreas stirred, the body reviving as the mad engine’s pulse quickened. Deep in the madman’s mind, the rising riptides of insanity swirled around them. In desperation, the flame leaped and sputtered. Blindly, Ra’an reached, cupped the hands of his mind around it, held it, though its dying fire seared his palms, until it went out. Then he turned to Jude that she might hold him steady as he called up ail the power within him and laid the engine to waste.
Andreas went limp in Ra’an’s arms. His jaw sagged as a final breath escaped. The sick hell that had been his consciousness sizzled and faded. The survivors were left alone. Instinctively they withdrew from each other, for the anguish of two was loo much for each to bear.
Jude bowed her head and gave in to her grief.
Ra’an did not weep. Only his hand moved, distractedly, to brush the sand from the pale dead face.
Then he gathered the body to him and rose, staggering, settled the weight, and walked off down the beach alone.
Chapter 47
Verde was still broadcasting when they dragged Ramos up to the station headquarters. He’d thrown on his dress tunic decked out with its ribbons and medals, over bare feet and pajama bottoms. Clennan winced at the handcuffs. Old habits of service stirred. He won’t even do me the honor of being surprised to see me.
“Unlock him,” he said to the men.
“Keep him locked,” ordered Jeffries behind him. Clennan shrugged, nodded. “At least get him a chair.”
Ramos sat. The four colonial police officers arrayed themselves in watchful positions. One offered Clennan a compact hand laser.
“He had this under his pillow. Burned two of us before we took him down.”
The cliché was somehow touching. Clennan had no desire to gloat. He had expected Ramos to rage in captivity, but he just sat there, neither meek nor defeated, just silently sitting.
He knows, thought Clennan. He won’t look at me.
“He knows,” murmured Jeffries.
The studio door slammed. “Damon’s relieving me,” called Verde as he came into the room. “If I have to read that announcement one more time…” He stopped when he saw Ramos. “Oh. What’s this?”
“Behold the archfiend,” Jeffries cackled.
“The man,” said Clennan slowly, “who taught me everything I used to know.”
Verde kept a wide berth. “What do we do with him now that we have him?”
Clennan shrugged, not able to be the one to say it.
“Answer’s in your hand, Bill,” Jeffries said flatly.
Verde spotted the pistol. “Now wait a minute…”
“I said nothing that wasn’t necessary, Mitch.”
Clennan said nothing. He stared at Ramos as if looking for some other answer, perhaps to an entirely different question.
“We can’t just execute the man, Ron,” Verde protested. “It’s wrong. This is a brand-new world we’re creating. Do you want it to be born in violence!”
“All birth is violent, Mitch. What’d you think’s going on out there in the streets right now?” He circled Ramos and aimed his words at the back of the big man’s head. “If we leave this guy alive, we ain’t got a snowball’s chance of getting off to a clean start. He’d dog us and fight us and sell us out every step of the way.” He came around and faced Ramos from the front. “Wouldn’t you, Julie?�
��
Ramos met Jeffries’ glare, pursed his bruised lips; and nodded stolidly.
Jeffries grinned. “Attaboy.”
Clennan stirred. “Ron.” He passed Jeffries the laser. “He’s yours. Mitch and I are going out for a little walk.” As he passed Ramos, he reached to grip the beribboned shoulder gently. “Look at it this way, boss. Your whole life has been a preparation for a moment like this.”
He guided Verde out the door and shut it quietly behind him.
Chapter 48
Jude hung back in the shade, behind the little crowd of Koi waiting in Quaire’en station as the huruss from Menissa glided to a halt. It carried the delegation from the colony. The only fanfare for their arrival was a cooling salt-spiced breeze whispering out of cloudless azure. Two weeks after the destruction of the Transport Corridor, the leaders of the takeover in the colonial city had entrenched themselves sufficiently to be able to look to the future and the problems of integrating a Terran city into a world of Koi.
First to appear as the doors slid open were a number of returning exiles. Since greetings and recent histories had already been exchanged over the halmweb, reunions with family and friends were warm and casual, but the last to emerge was a silver-faced old Koi who hesitated at the door to greet his home city with shimmering eyes. Yet he was not so lost in the emotion of his homecoming as to forget the several Terrans gathered at his side. The delegation stepped cautiously onto the station’s transparent floor and gazed about in wonder. As the rest of the population listened in on the halmweb, Luteverindorin introduced the Terrans to the members of the current Council, who were acting as the official welcoming committee.
Jude memorized names and faces dutifully. She would have preferred to remain in retreat at the halmschool, soothed by its anonymous seclusion. She did not feel quite put back together yet since the shattering events of the Gathering. But the Council had asked for her help, and she felt a great debt to these people who welcomed her so easily and gave her a home. Anaharimel had agreed that some useful work would be a healthy distraction for her, so there she was. She would serve as translator for the Terrans in the delegation, as both a linguistic and cultural intermediary. The delegation numbered twelve, to match the number sitting at Council in the Ring. Among them were six Terrans: a tall young black woman who supported an older woman on her arm, a gnomish man with a red beard, a saintly-looking black whose name she caught as Montserrat, and behind him, a vaguely familiar face confirmed as Mitchell Verde, still looking as harried as she remembered him. For the man beside him, she needed no introduction. Bill Clennan, trim and eager, blinked away his sun-blindness and stared with open curiosity at the city of Quaire’en.
“Fanfuckintastic!” she distinctly heard him mutter, and Verde chuckled his agreement.
Crisis makes strange bedfellows. She tried to match the Clennan she had known with the Verde she had heard so much about. She would have thought them oil and water, irreconcilables, but there was no mistaking their obvious camaraderie as they stood side by side in the sun, Verde wearing as satisfied a look as ever a chronic worrier could, and Bill Clennan positively euphoric.
Well, Quaire’en will do that to you… or is it the prospect of a new life?
She wanted to choose the moment for her reunion with Clennan, but as the crowd jostled her into the open sun, he spotted her. There was an exchange of uncertainty, then he grinned ruefully and dragged Verde with him as he strode across the platform to envelop her in an unexpected bear hug. He held her away at arm’s length, beaming, then fell momentarily inarticulate. “Well, girl…” was all he could manage.
Jude saw slight awkwardness in his handsome face but no remorse. He probably figures that since we’re both here alive, things worked out after he stranded me in the forest and that’s all that matters. Maybe he’s right. And she thought then that she would like to know exactly what had come over Bill Clennan to make him turn on his bosses, but was not sure she wanted to get close enough to him to find out.
Verde sized her up more soberly, extending a large hand. “Ms. Rowe. I hear we have a good deal to thank you for.”
Jude’s head dipped unconsciously. How much does he know?
“If I’d known I was sending a telepath…!” Clennan jogged her shoulder in jovial pride.
“If I’d known…” she replied sternly, then smiled. His euphoria was catching, and she hadn’t done a lot of smiling over the last two weeks.
Verde was immune to euphoria. He frowned slightly as he glanced around the station. “I expected Ra’an would be here.” Jude’s smile died. “Didn’t they tell you? He hasn’t been seen since he left the Gathering.” She felt her voice thickening and hastily cleared her throat. “Reports on the halmweb place him somewhere in the Ruvalan mountains.”
“Alive and well?”
“Alive. Not very well, I imagine,” she replied delicately.
Verde sucked his teeth, nodding. “He took the body with him?”
“Yes.”
“For burial.” Verde was brusque, and she saw that James’ death had hurt him too. She reminded herself that this man, a stranger, had known both Ra’an and James for a long time, longer than she had. “That’s just like Ra’an,” he continued tightly. “James probably would have preferred a Koi funeral. Cleaner. More final. But to Ra’an it would seem only fit for both Andreases to lie in the same soil. More or less.” Verde looked away, at the gulls and the green water. “James. Our poor lost soul. He said he would be Arkoi’s savior, but I wonder if he had any idea…”
“Oh, he knew,” Jude assured him quickly. “At least part of him did, the part he could still control. He used his madness as a tool until it overtook him, but even that he planned for, by assuring that the one who was stronger than he was would be there at the crucial moment.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Neither do I. Well, why, yes, but how…”
Verde turned back, searching her face. “Will you tell me about it sometime, how it all happened?”
“I will. Sometime. When it’s clear in my head. If you will tell me about Daniel Andreas.”
“Daniel?” Verde sighed heavily. “Yes. I guess there’s understanding to be found there, isn’t there?”
“Look at that water!” Clennan exclaimed suddenly, to break the melancholy that had settled over them. “Mitch, this city’s everything Lute said it’d be! Can’t blame him for coming home, but we’re sure going to miss him back there.”
“With the Menissa huruss tunnel open again, the colony is not so far away anymore,” Jude reminded him, grateful for the change of subject. “How long will you be in Quaire’en?”
He rubbed his palms briskly. “As long as it takes to get things squared away with the Council, no longer. It’s not exactly a peaceful city back there. We’ve still got pockets of resistance to clear out. Fortunately for us, most of the rich and powerful hightailed it back to Terra when Lacey started his Dark Powers routine. But Mitch and I have our hands full in the colony, uh, I mean, Menissa.”
Verde shook his head. “No, it’s the colony now, Bill, for always. A reminder to all of us of the way things would have been but for James Andreas.”
“And could be again, Mr. Verde,” Jude added. “Terra will eventually discover a way to reconstruct the corridor. James didn’t expect he could offer a final salvation. His gift was time, a chance for the Koi to ready themselves properly for the threat that’s always waiting there, as he put it, just a dimension away.”
Clennan’s eyes hardened over his smile. “Don’t worry, girl. When that time comes, we’ll be ready.”
Chapter 49
The tiled floor of her room was cool relief from the afternoon heat. She savored its dampness against her bare thighs as she sat with Theis, pampering her with a vigorous brushing. It was a pointless exercise, for the gria’s shaggy coat had a mind of its own that did not easily accept the disciplines of grooming. But Jude’s time alone needed filling with mindlessly absorbing tasks, to
distract her from the brooding that had consumed her since the death of James Andreas.
She knew she must resist the treacherous luxury of guilt. She had seen guilt drive one man to bitter hatred and another to insanity. Yet the taste of guilt was fresh in her mouth. She had helped to kill a man.
She set the brush down and shook her hand. She had been gripping the handle until her fingers ached. She had helped to kill a man. Not just stood by, but taken part. Without her brain to serve as the link, Ra’an’s lethal power would have remained locked inside him. She had unlocked it willingly, accepted murder as a necessity, to save him, to save herself, to prevent a greater massacre. It made sense. She could have made no other choice. And it was the choice that the victim himself had determined. But more than the murder, it was her easy acceptance of it that disturbed her, as if acceptance of murder was a given rite of passage into a more real world where professed ideas must be at last translated into action. Compared to this, her long-ago foray into espionage paled to an adolescent tantrum against boredom. Where would this new adulthood lead her? When one has accepted that it may be necessary to kill a man, what further violence might be approved by the same reasoning? Just when she thought she had found her morality, the very possibility of morality was being called into question.
She took up the brush and set to work on the thick knots in the gria’s tail. Anaharimel would say that morality was a matter of Balance. The Koi concept of Balance was attractive, but Jude still found its practical workings obscure. She absorbed what she could from her teacher and the other students, but so far it offered little balm to her conscience. The one thought that gave her comfort was the assurance that if she had not been there, James Andreas would have found another way to accomplish his purpose. In truth, James Andreas was responsible for his own death.
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