“Ruth, I cannot not be what I am.”
He watched as she nodded. And then he reached in the backseat for another shirt to replace the one he wore, and a jacket to cover him further, and after he had put them on, he opened the door and got out of the car.
Ruth did not speak to stop him. He wasn’t certain there were any words that she could say now that would make him change his mind. He closed the car door and walked back to the highway, crossed the road, and climbed to the ridge, not looking back.
Chapter 14
That the hover craft had been able to return to the mother ship at all was due only to Patricia’s superb skill as a pilot. The lightning had damaged most of the electrical systems. They could not climb, and so she had maneuvered them down the canyon, past Mount Jefferson, and out over the plains, where they could land safely even if they could not maintain enough altitude to reach the mother ship. Once they were safely over the desert, she had rewired the console to get ignition to the rocket lifters. And with little power to spare, they had glided into the covered deck.
Eleanor was waiting in the hangar when they had cleared the decontamination system. Paul questioned whether he had been too lenient to release her from her quarters. Jeffrey had been pressing him too hard. He had not been able to answer all his accusations, and so he had released Eleanor on a scientific pretext, certain that once Jeffrey had his own avenue of authority, he would cease to probe, cease to accuse him of fifth-column activities. He had been right. As soon as Eleanor’s guard had been removed, Jeffrey had been there demanding authority from her to raid the gorge. And she had conceded, just as Paul had known she would.
“We had given you up for dead, my dears. You have been away from the ship for four and a half hours. The antitoxin wore off at least two hours ago. But you seem healthy enough. I must have specimens. You’ve become my most noteworthy subjects.”
“Forget your tests, Eleanor. We have been in a self-contained unit. All the air in the craft came from the mother ship. We have not tasted Earth’s atmosphere this evening.”
Paul lied. The air-duct system in the hover craft had been set to circulate with fresh air from the environment. He and the other fifth columnists on the ship carried ample supplies of resistance antitoxin from the Bates laboratories. They did not use Eleanor’s concoction, and so he had not thought about the time limit he, too, must observe as commander. Now he could not risk Eleanor’s probing. He left the hangar, headed toward his quarters. If Eleanor wanted to talk she would have to follow him. Patricia had already left the hangar and disappeared into the flight-crew quarters below.
“Has Jeffrey returned?”
“Your concern for him is touching, Paul.”
“His well-being is not my concern, Eleanor. He had a mission. Self-appointed, I grant you, but a mission nonetheless. And as military commander, I am entitled to know its outcome.”
“Of course.”
They continued down the corridor. After about twenty yards, Paul turned and faced Eleanor, catching her arm to stop her.
“I asked a question, Eleanor. I am waiting for an answer.”
She looked up at him, opened and closed her mouth, looked down at the floor, back up at him, and swallowed.
“Yes. He’s back. He’s wounded.” She looked down at the floor again. “He was the only one who made it back.”
“That doesn’t surprise me. He ran into an ambush.”
Her eyes flashed up at him. “How did you know?”
“I leave my radios on, Eleanor. He doesn’t. He had plenty of warning from his point ship. Your ‘Captain’ is careless. And this time it’s costing him his rank. We can’t afford to squander fighter pilots to support his heroic gestures.”
“The priest is dead.”
“What makes you think so?”
“Jeffrey said no one escaped the fire.”
“Jeffrey said.”
“They couldn’t land. They burned tne whole canyon. I think it is a fair assumption that the dissident priest perished in the flames.”
“It might be a fair assumption. That does not make it a fact. We will see just how successful Jeffrey’s mission really was. Good night, Eleanor.”
The science officer stared at him. And then she left, turning down the corridor toward the medical support unit rather than toward her own quarters. So she is going to report my reaction to Jeffrey! Paul smiled. Tomorrow he would send a scout to find the car they had been following. He must know now if the priest had escaped the fire. He must contact him before Jeffrey gained strength to pursue his vendetta any further. Tomorrow.
Chapter 15
The sun cut across the morning rain and drew a rainbow over the green lake. The water was placid and each drop created a circle on the dark surface. Hadad sat in a tree on the northeast shore. The mountainsides were muddy. Snails and slugs rode on the slippery ground and ventured as far as the water would carry them. Hadad had taken his fill of the delicacy and then he had wandered back to the lake to watch the rain on the water.
He was tired, and cradled in the branches, hidden from the ground below, he slept.
“And they that recognize the light shall not see death.”
The words echoed in his head as though a voice had spoken them in a deep and hollow chamber. He woke and looked around the lake. There was no one. People moved in the streets, yards behind him in the town, but there was no one near him, no one near the shore, no one who could have spoken the words.
He closed his eyes and tried to return to sleep.
“And they that recognize the light shall not . . .”
He opened his eyes quickly, but there was no one.
“Shall not see death.” He completed the phrase aloud. He stared at the lake now reflecting the clear sky above, still green, deep green with the color of the trees that grew up the mountains that surrounded it.
. . the death you accept so . . . passively; so . . . passively; so passively; so passively.” Ruth’s voice echoed in his mind.
He traced the bark on the branch that held him.
When had he begun to accept death passively?
He thought of his dream, of the nightmare that had come again and again, of the balloon chasing him with the red dust.
When had he accepted that death was inevitable?
Had it been when the red dust had been released? When he had been abandoned on the planet?
Each time he had moved he had anticipated death, waited for it, and it had not come. He had assumed he had escaped the red dust. But he had come so far into the mountains. For the first time he considered that he might have been wrong. Perhaps the high desert had been dusted. Perhaps the toxin was permeating the food supply he had been depending upon. Perhaps it had not affected him. But why?
“And they that recognize the light shall not see death.”
The voice again. Where had he heard that voice? Why was he hearing it now?
“So passively.” Ruth’s accusation worked at him. Why did he accept death passively?
He closed his eyes, searching memory for some clue. Back he moved through the days at Vida, the months in Prineville, the weeks in Los Angeles, the years on the mother ship, the hours at The Leader’s compound, the— He stopped. He had spent two years with The Leader, why did he remember only a few hours at the compound? He had been a child when the soldiers had taken him to The Leader, why did he remember some recruitment speech? He had not been recruited. And who was Jeffrey? He could not remember Jeffrey at home in his village. Why had he always thought of Jeffrey as a childhood friend?
“The Leader’s is the cause for which I would die, but there is no cause for which I would kill.” That was Diana’s voice. Again and again, why was she repeating it again and again? Where was she? Why was he
hearing her voice? The words, they were wrong. They were the wrong words.
“Say it, Gclixtchp. The Leader’s is the cause for which I would die, but there is no cause for which I would kill.’ Repeat the covenant, Gcl
ixtchp. ‘The Leader’s is the cause for which I would die, but there is no cause for which 1 would kill.’”
No, those are the wrong words; that’s not right.” The child’s voice he remembered as his own. But where was he? Where was the child? He could not remember where he had heard Diana’s voice. She had to have been at the compound. He had been at the compound for two years. Why couldn’t he remember those two years? Who was Jeffrey?
“This is your friend, Jeffrey. You have known him all your life. He is your friend. And he has grown up with you. Now you will join The Leader’s cause together. You will be a king, and Jeffrey will be at your right hand forever; forever; forever.” That was Diana’s voice. What had her voice to do with . . . ? He had met Diana on the ship. He remembered being introduced. Meeting the—wait. He had met her on the ship. But she had looked familiar, like he had seen her before, but he couldn’t remember where. Where had he met her before?
“Say the words, Gclixtchp. ‘The Leader’s is the cause for which I would die, but there is no cause for which I would kill.’ Say the words, and I will make all the fire go away.”
“But they aren’t the right words.”
“Say the words, Gclixtchp, and I will make all the fire go away.”
The fire. What did she mean by “all the fire”? Where was the fire?
And then the fire surrounded him. There were flames everywhere. Flames that leaped out and burned at his lizard skin. Flames that consumed his mother, his father, tore at the house he had known as home. “The Leader’s is the cause for which I would die, but there is no cause for which I would kill.” That was his voice. He had said the words and the flames had disappeared. There had been no fire. His parents were still alive. He was just in a room, a room surrounded by glass. And there, beyond the glass, that’s where he had seen her before! There, beyond the glass, was Diana!
Those were the wrong words. She had made him say them in the conversion chamber. He had believed them because she had made him believe them. But they were the wrong words.
What were the right words?
He closed his eyes hard against the light of the day around him. He tried hard to remember the words and they would not come to him. He tried hard to remember.
The leather was still wet against his skin. The day was warming, but the night’s rains had soaked the legs of the deer that hid his own green flesh and the morning rains had soaked through the new jacket and the shoulders of the new shirt he wore. The rough leather lay against his shoulders like a yoke.
Like the ceremonial yoke that had been laid upon . . .
He had been seven, the time of. . . what were the words?
“Zon is the cause for which I would die, but there is no cause for which I would kill.” The voice of his childhood spoke the words clearly in the hall of the elders. He remembered the candles, the white robes, the bands of gold.
“Of course! Zon teaches compassion. Zon is the cause for which I would die, not The Leader’s cause. ‘And they that recognize the light shall not see death.’ The red dust doesn’t kill me. It doesn’t kill me. It’s all
around me and it doesn’t kill me.”
“I want life. And everywhere around me there is death. Even with you. Even with you. Even with . . .”
Now he could hear the words she had spoken earlier that he had closed away from his thoughts. She did not want to live with his preoccupation with death. It was that that had driven her away, not the lizardness that he had tried to deny and could not. He had to find her.
There was no one around and so he dropped to the ground rather than climb down the way an Earth one would. He walked back to the intersection. To turn to the right would take him back the way he had come from the mountains in the morning. He had not seen a ranger station there.
“Whatcha looking for, bud?” The voice came from the house to his left. He turned and saw the old man sitting by the window.
“A ranger station.”
“Just go left there. On out to the highway. It’s around on the north side of the lake. You can’t miss
it.”
“Thank you.”
“No problem.”
He took off the jacket as he walked and let the warm noon sun dry the shoulders of his shirt. There were a few houses by the road, and smells of bread rising, clothes drying, diapers unchanged, soap, roses, identified themselves for Hadad as he passed.
The highway was edged by spruce and firs. Rhododendrons spread their broad leaf clusters to catch the sunlight, and ferns hid in the dark shade of the tall trees. The air was warm and mosquitoes investigated him as he walked.
The station was on his right, marked with a sign that rested on stone. He crossed the pavement marked for parked cars and climbed the steps. The door was locked and the office was empty. He pounded on the door, but no one answered.
A driveway wound up the hill to the west of the building. He walked back down the steps, and looking back over his shoulder at the deserted building in case anyone should answer his summons, he followed the pavement to the back. There behind the office building was a large open shed, its roof almost reaching the top of the aspens that grew beside it. There were vehicles parked all around the drive, green cars that bore the same emblem as the sign in front, trucks with long derricks that could raise a man to the treetops, flatbed trucks that bore the trimmings of the forest around him, a bulldozer, and beyond, a truck with hoses wrapped in long coils. There was no one in the driveway or around the trucks.
To the left of the drive were houses behind a hedge of blackberries. A gray-and-white one faced the road, above it a green one faced the driveway, beyond that another green one nestled in the trees. Hadad walked toward the gray-and-white house and then saw Ruth’s car in the driveway beyond the farthest green one. He walked toward it.
The voices came to him clearly from the house before he reached it. He recognized the woman’s voice as Ruth’s.
“That’s not the point.”
“How can it not be the point?”
“You say it’s my baby.”
“Are you contesting it?”
“Well, if it’s my baby, then 1 should have some say over whether it gets born into this crazy world or not.”
“It’s not your responsibility.”
“How can you say it isn’t?”
“I’m not asking you to be responsible.”
“You just walked in here and asked if you can stay. I suppose the next thing you are going to tell me is that you aren’t asking me to be responsible for your well-being either.”
“I’m not.”
“Ruth, you can’t have it both ways.”
“Ron, I’ve been driving all night; everything I own except the leather and the car went up in flames; I’ve been shot at by lizards and almost struck by lightning. I need a roof over my head and a refuge and you have the audacity to say I’m welcome as long as I’m not pregnant. Especially with your child.”
“Which I said I didn’t want in the first place.” “I’m not saying you said you wanted it. I’m only saying I won’t take the responsibility for taking its life.”
“Ruth, you don’t want that child either.”
“That’s beside the point.”
“No, that is the point.”
“No, it’s not.”
“Ruth, we are living on the edge of time. We could die at any moment ourselves.”
“My point exactly.”
“I can’t see how you’ve even looked at that. There’s no food coming into the mountains. There hasn’t been for weeks. We’re stuck with what we have on the shelves and what we can grow in the fields. And we aren’t farmers, Ruth. We’re having to learn it all from scratch. You came here because there wasn’t anywhere else you could go. Okay, then you get to rake and hoe with the rest of us. You’re another mouth to feed. That’s all you are. And as far as I’m concerned, that’s already one too many. But you’re talking about two mouths to feed. And I don’t want to be responsible for that se
cond one.”
“It’s not as though the planet is overrun with people, Ron. More than a third of the inhabitants of the planet have been taken by the lizards already.”
“And the rest of us are going to get starved out, or wiped out by infection, or burned out, or shot, unless we can find ways to survive on our own. Ruth, the only reason we’re making it here is water. We’ve got water. This planet is starving for water and we’ve got it at our doorstep. But we haven’t got anything else going for us. You didn’t need to come back. If you had enough gas to get here, you could have gotten down into the valley. Why didn’t you go there?”
“I couldn’t.”
“Why not?”
“Someone was with me.”
“Who?”
“A friend.”
“Another person here in Detroit. Another mouth to feed.”
“You won’t have to worry about that.”
“Maybe not personally, but we’re all in this together. You haven’t gotten that yet. You still think it’s unlimited supply and demand. You’re crazy, Ruth. You’re living in a fantasy world. The rules have changed. It’s dog eat dog. And it may come to that with the lizards on one side of us and the army camped on the other.”
“Ron, your priorities are backward.”
“And I stopped worrying about your approval when you left me. I look out for me and mine, and that doesn’t include you anymore.”
Hadad took the steps to the house two at a time. “I don’t know what made me think you’d care.”
“I don’t either. I’ve got other worries now, Ruth. I’m a ranger. There are people I care about in Detroit, and we’ve got lizards on our doorstep. Your concerns just don’t reach me anymore.”
V 14 - The Oregon Invasion Page 14
