Dirge

by Foster, Alan Dean;

  "I am not sure that any of us ever do, dear." The older woman sighed. "I won't say anything. As long as it does not appear to be interfering with your professional duties, I will not raise any objections to your staying on."

  Reaching up, Tse took the other woman's hand in hers and mustered the best smile she could. "Thank you."

  With a last nod, Nadurovina turned and pushed back into the crowd. This time she was held up by a guard, but from within the room Chimbu must have seen her because she heard his voice call out for her to be admitted.

  The hospital room did indeed look as if a bomb had gone off within. Of the patient there was no sign.

  "We moved him across the hall into fifty-two." A weary Chimbu looked harried and strained. "Along with anything else that was worth moving. He's sleeping now, under sedation." Without further comment he indicated their surroundings.

  The destruction was impressive, Nadurovina saw. Hard to believe one short, malnourished, sick patient still in the middle stages of recovery had been able to wreak so much havoc in so brief a span. Chimbu saw the question in her face.

  "Nurse Tse called the medtech staff on duty immediately, but they hesitated to interfere out of concern he might seriously injure himself. It took the duty physician a few minutes to get here and issue orders. At that time the patient was still going strong. Five orderlies needed to coordinate their efforts to get him down long enough for one of them to administer a sedative. They finally made the decision to jump him when it looked like he was going to make a run for the window."

  Nadurovina glanced in the direction of the specially retrofitted safety glass. It was strong enough to stop an explosive shell. She found herself wondering if it would have been enough to thwart the crazed Mallory. The window was still closed. "What about self-inflicted damage?"

  "Nothing too serious. Minor cuts and bruises. I've talked to Tse, and I think it's pretty clear what set him off."

  The psychiatrist nodded. "I have also spoken with her." As she conversed with the chief medical officer she scanned the room. Expensive instrumentation had been smashed, cables ripped from the walls and monitors, furniture crushed. Bent and twisted, a chair lay in one corner like a beached anemone. Even the bed coverings had been shredded. Bending to pick up a plastic cup, she saw that pieces had been chewed out of the rim. The tornado that had gone back to sleep in Alwyn Mai-lory's brain had reawakened. Remembering the shaken, frightened nurse, Nadurovina was thankful no one had been hurt.

  What would Mallory do when he began to come out of his sedative-induced sleep? By that time if the hospital staff had done its job properly a new set of monitoring equipment should be in place and operational. There was no guarantee the patient would not resume where he had left off, raging and destructive, endangering all those around him as well as himself. Tse's intervention could be crucial, she knew. Steeling herself, she headed for the hallway to talk to the nurse.

  Her considerable powers of persuasion were not required. Tse was anxious to return to Mallory's side. She listened quietly to the older woman's instructions, taking on that advice she thought useful and wordlessly ignoring the rest. By this time she felt she knew Alwyn Mallory better than anyone else. Ultimately, when he next awoke she was the one who would have to make the first, critical decisions.

  In furniture, facilities, and layout room fifty-two was a mirror image of the one a berserking Mallory had wrecked. Under the influence of the powerful sedative he slept all through the rest of the day and on into the night. Tse dozed off beside him, unwilling to make use of the inflatable bed that had been provided for her. When she awoke, it was to find the first tendrils of daylight creeping through the window and the patient lying with eyes open, staring silently at her.

  Surprised, she started slightly, relaxing only when he smiled.

  "I was a bad boy, wasn't I, nurse?"

  "How are you feeling?"

  Even before he could answer she was automatically checking the monitors alongside his bed. She knew they would read more or less normal. If anything serious had manifested itself during the night, doctors and other nurses would have attended to the problem, invariably waking her in the process. But she had to ask.

  "Tired. A little sore." Reaching up, he felt of the pellucid epidermal seal that had closed a cut on his forehead. "I don't remember many details. Just a lot of noise."

  Her tone was quietly reproving. "That would have been you smashing up everything within reach in the other room."

  "Other room?" Raising up slightly, he scrutinized his new surroundings, noting the reversed layout and the altered view through the large window. "I don't remember being moved."

  "They had to knock you out. It took five orderlies."

  "Five, eh?" He seemed perversely pleased. "I imagine this is going to go on my bill."

  Putting a hand over her mouth she covered the laugh she was unable to suppress. This was supposed to be a serious moment, one in which she admonished the invalid for his unacceptable actions and discussed with him how to prevent a recurrence. Instead, she found herself giggling and grinning at the irrepressible patient's every other comment. Furthermore, she discovered that she didn't give a damn about the reactions of those individuals whose attention might be fixed to distant peeping monitors.

  "I have a feeling the government is picking up the cost of your stay."

  "Really?" Pushing down against the mattress, he sat up. "Maybe I'll trash this one later. Yeah, one room a week. That would fit the way I'm feeling."

  Making an effort to be serious, she wagged a warning finger at him. "I'd think twice about that. Keep it up and you'll be spending most of your time under sedation. You won't be any good to anyone in that condition."

  His smile evaporated and he looked away from her, "Who gives a good goddamn?"

  "I do," she replied simply.

  That brought his head back around. Outside, the equatorial sun was climbing rapidly, flooding the room with diffused but still sharply defining light. The window glass darkened slightly in response, moderating the illumination and temperature level in the room.

  His tone was subdued, thankful. "I'd like to be able to say it was worth everything I went through just to hear those two words."

  She put a hand on his. "I don't expect that kind of oblique praise, Alwyn. I don't need it."

  "Then you believe me?" Despite his outward bravado, she could sense that veiled desperation underlined his words.

  "I believe you," she replied sympathetically, "but to convince others will require more than your word. Surely you can see their side. You can't accuse an entire species of genocide and inconceivable acts without something more to back it up than the word of one man. Or even the words of a shipful.

  You mustn't feel singled out."

  "But I do feel singled out," he told her. "I was singled out. I survived. I'm the only one who survived. Why me? Why not someone with a better nature, or great artistic talent? Why not a composer or a writer, or a mother with three kids? I'm a cynical, misanthropic, short-tempered, semiretired son of a bitch. If there was any justice in this universe I'd have been one of the first to die."

  "That would have been a pity."

  His gaze narrowed slightly. "Yeah? Why?"

  Her fingers tightened around his. "Because then we couldn't be having this conversation."

  He stared at her for a moment longer. Then he began to cry. Not silently this time, nor in great racking sobs, but normally, the way any man would cry when overwhelmed by irresistible emotion. The very ordinariness of it was a profound relief to her.

  He stopped so suddenly that she was alarmed.

  "Alwyn, what is it, what's wrong?"

  "Nothing's wrong." He wiped at his eyes almost angrily, as if trying to punish them for their betrayal of his fancied indifference. "I just remembered something."

  "Is it important?"

  "I think so." He was nodding slowly. "It's proof."

  Nadurovina was not the first into the room. Rothenburg w
as faster. Chimbu followed behind, accompanied by an orderly. There were others who wanted to join them, but the chief medical officer had ruled against any more being present at any one time. Given the patient's recent deranged outburst, the doctor did not want to do anything to make him feel pressured. That included crowding his space.

  On the bed, Mallory was nodding wisely to himself. "This is about as much privacy as I thought I had."

  Rothenburg would not be denied. "You said you remembered proof. I heard you. I heard you distinctly. What kind of proof?"

  Mallory eyed the intelligence officer unflinchingly. "You think I invented that story about the Pitar. You all think I'm nuts, that my mind is conjuring illusions to cover what I actually saw. That's what that smiling Pitarian bastard you flew in to confront me with would like you to think, too."

  "Change our minds." Ignoring the cautioning looks he was receiving from Nadurovina, Rothenburg challenged the other man openly. "Make us look stupid. Go on, do it! Shove the truth right in my face."

  Mallory held the Major's eyes for a moment longer, then dropped his gaze and looked down at the bed. "I can't. Not yet."

  An exasperated Nadurovina kept her voice level. "Why not? You said you had proof."

  "That's the right tense, Colonel. Had is the operative word here."

  Rothenburg wanted to lurch forward, to shove the seated nurse away from the bed, reach down, and violently shake the infuriating man hiding beneath the covers until he made sense. "All right. You 'had' proof. What kind? It would have to be convincing beyond doubt."

  Mallory coolly met the officer's angry glare. "How about a few hours of verifiable media-grade recording of the Pitar ravaging Treetrunk? Shooting down adults and children, razing buildings, stalking through the streets in body armor? Surgical teams carefully eviscerating women and preserving their internal organs?" His body had begun to tremble again, but his voice held steady. "How about it, Major? Would that constitute sufficient 'proof'?"

  "Yes." Rothenburg straightened. "Yes, once cleared beyond doubt of possible falsification and professionally verified, that would probably suffice. Where is it?"

  The man in the bed was shaking his head slowly. "I don't know."

  "You don't...?" Rothenburg began, but held himself back when Nadurovina grabbed his shoulder.

  "I mean," Mallory muttered as he struggled with himself, "I know, but I don't know. I think I can find it." He wore a look of honest helplessness. "I hid it."

  Glancing up at a small dot in the ceiling, Rothenburg barked directives. "Security recheck! I want to know that this entire building is scan-shielded, not just this room. Do it now." When a reply in the affirmative sounded from a concealed speaker, he nodded sharply and turned back to Mallory. "Very well.

  You have a recording, but you hid it somewhere. You think you can find it. Where do we look?"

  "You'd never locate it. I'll have to do it. Retrace my steps." He smiled wanly and gripped Tse's hand tightly. "It's the only way."

  "Why?" Rothenburg prompted him. "Just tell us where on Treetrunk you concealed this recording and there'll be a recovery team on site within days."

  "It's not on Treetrunk," he told the officer. "It's on the inner moon." His expression turned apologetic. "Under a rock. I didn't want to leave it on the lifeboat in case the Pitar detected my emissions and picked me up."

  Rothenburg looked like a fighter who had just taken a combination to the head and body. "After the Unop-Patha delivered you to the Ronin, your lifeboat was brought aboard and thoroughly checked over. Nothing was found, of course. But if that was your reference point for what you buried, how are you going to find it now? As moons go, I understand that Treetrunk One is pretty small. But it's still a moon."

  "All I can do is try."

  "You'll have help." Rothenburg's mind was racing ahead -planning, directing, plotting logistics. "What kind of container did you bury the recording in? Metal?" he concluded hopefully.

  "Sorry. I used a small composite sealtight. Impervious to extremes of heat and cold, maintains a good vacuum."

  "What was the recording medium?" Nadurovina asked.

  "Standard home-recording mollysphere. A big one, centimeter in diameter. High grade - I could afford quality stuff. Also composite material, of course."

  "Which means we'll have a hard time running a materials scan through rock." The major took a step back from the bed. "It doesn't matter. We'll find it if we have to take the whole planetoid apart grain by grain."

  "I think I can save you a lot of time." Mallory leaned back against the pillows. "At least, I hope so."

  "Just a minute." Chimbu broke his silence. "I'm not sure that's such a good idea. If you go back to where you were found, there's no telling how you'll react. The experience could cause you to flash back and relive the trauma you originally suffered. You could lapse back into coma."

  "I'm sorry, Doctor," Rothenburg began, "but the overriding importance of this dictates that your authority is..."

  Mallory cut him off. "Take it easy, Major. I'm coming." He shifted his attention to the troubled Chimbu. "I don't have any choice. I owe it to six hundred thousand dead neighbors."

  "If you experience a serious relapse," the chief medical officer warned him stiffly, "this time you might not come out of it in as little as a month's time. You might not come out of it at all." He looked sharply at Rothenburg. "Then you'll have neither proof nor witness."

  "A witness without proof is worthless," the officer shot back. Remembering the man in the bed, he added less stridently, "Nothing personal, Mallory."

  "Up yours," the patient responded without hesitation. "I'm going."

  "Good. I'll initiate the necessary arrangements." Rothenburg eyed the doctor. "You'll certify that he's well enough to travel."

  "Since that wasn't phrased as a question," a diffident Chimbu replied, "I don't suppose it matters what I say."

  "You'll come along," the officer continued inexorably, "to supervise his medical care." His gaze shifted to the side of the bed. "As will you, Nurse Tse."

  "I have no problem with that." She continued to hold Mai-lory's hand in hers.

  "A one-centimeter diameter composite mollysphere." Exhaling slowly, Nadurovina rubbed tiredly at her forehead. "I hope his mind will be clear enough to remember its location."

  "Screw his mind," Rothenburg snapped. "His sense of direction is all I'm concerned about." Remembering the figure in the bed he added, "No offense."

  "For a repeatedly offensive person, at least you're appropriately apologetic," a serene Mallory informed him.

  Chapter 16

  he long journey to the Argus system was accomplished via military transport. Mallory was given a commanding officer's suite with two adjoining orderly's quarters. Tse was ensconced in one and Chimbu in the other. Though he objected strenuously to the profusion of monitoring instrumentation that had been placed in the suite, his protests were courteously ignored. Until the greater matter at hand was resolved, Alwyn Mallory would not be allowed to go to the bathroom unsupervised. He was too important - so important that the KK-drive dreadnought conveying him back to Treetrunk traveled englobed in a cruiser-and-destroyer convoy.

  It was an incredibly costly escort for one man. But Rothenburg could have asked for half a fleet and had the request granted. Out of concern for secrecy, he did not. The movement of a small task force would not be overly remarked upon. Military vessels made the run to Argus periodically. Mallory's escort was certainly of unusual size, but not aberrantly so.

  As one by one the ships executed the drop from space-plus back into space-normal, there was outwardly nothing wrong with the convoy's first passenger. How much he was holding inside only he knew. Nadurovina worried herself sick about him. To a lesser extent so did Chimbu and Rothenburg and the few others who knew what a full-strength task force was doing visiting the devastated Argus system. Of those close to medical science's most important patient, only Tse was relaxed and confident.

  "He's stronger
than you think," she told Nadurovina one morning over real coffee and calorie-free beignets.

  "Taxonomically speaking, I realize that Alwyn Mallory is one tough son of a bitch." The psychiatrist sponged coffee with a beignet. "I also know that he puts up a strong defensive front that conceals what he is really feeling. He would not be human if it were otherwise. We are both aware that despite his jaunty demeanor and tough exterior he is never very far from the edge. He proved that when he became violent and wrecked his original hospital room." Her voice fell slightly. "What happened before can happen again. As the physician nominally in charge of overseeing his state of mind, I am far from prepared to piss off that possibility."

  "I didn't mean to make light of it." Tse had lost weight during the past weeks, Nadurovina noticed, while Mallory had put it back on. Diet, concern, or fear? "I know Alwyn's sanity has survived a terrible shock." She smiled hesitantly over the rim of her cup. "He likes to say that the hinges of his mind are intact, but rusty."

  "Has he said anything more about the location of this recording he claims to have made?"

  Around them, crew shuffled back and forth from the food wall to tables, chattering in small groups or eating in solitude. The crew of the dreadnought knew only that they were making a visit to Treetrunk. Rumor had it that the stop was intended as a grisly object lesson, to emphasize that those who staffed the giant military KK-drive starships must never stray from alertness. This erroneous scuttlebutt was encouraged.

  Not 'claims to,' " Tse countered primly. "Made. It's real. All we have to do is find it."

  Nadurovina sipped at her coffee. She had taken quite a liking to the younger woman, motherly concern she kept well hidden. Nothing could be allowed to affect their professional relationship.

  "I wish I had your confidence. This is a very expensive little excursion. We have no choice, of course, but to follow up on the only clue that has bequeathed itself to us. The world council realizes that. Even so, they were reluctant to authorize the escort force that Rothenburg insisted on. For his part, he refused to take your Mr. Mallory off-world without it."