Antagonist - Childe Cycle 11 (27 page)

Silence
followed.

Finally,
about
seven
hours
after
they
had
left
the
bunker,
it
came.

"It's
Henry,"
Toni
said.
Bleys
sat
up,
looking
over
at
her
control pad.

Determined
to
avoid
being
traced
through
their
communications,
Henry
had
instructed
them
to
send
out
no
messages,
but
to watch
for
his
instructions
to
come
in
piggybacked
on
the
signal from
the
broadcast
satellite.

"My
pad
is
still
decoding—there!"
she
said.
She
took
a
moment to
read
the
text
message
on
her
small
screen.

"It's
actually
not
for
us,"
she
said.
"Our
drivers
are
being
given orders
for
a
rendezvous
in—let's
see—just
over
three
hours."
She looked
up
as
Bleys
made
a
movement.

"Do
we
need
to
let
the
drivers
know?"
he
asked.

"No."
She
shook
her
head.
"They
have
their
own
pads—"
she was
interrupted
by
a
soft
double
tone
that
seemed
to
emanate
from the
lightstrips
inside
their
container.

"That
would
be
them
letting
us
know
they've
gotten
instructions,"
she
said.
"Leave
it
in
their
hands."

"All
right,"
he
said.
He
settled
back
on
the
mattress.
In
a
moment
he
spoke
again
from
beneath
the
arm
draped
across
his
face.

"This
is
the
hardest
part."

"Delegation
was
never
a
strong
suit
for
either
you
or
Dahno,"
she said,
smiling
a
little.
"But
you,
at
least,
are
learning.
Now
get
some sleep."

"And
you?"

"I
may
be
a
basket
case
tomorrow,"
she
admitted.
"All
the
more reason
for
you
to
be
in
top
form."

Part
of
him
was
uneasy
about
doing
as
she
instructed,
but
he could
not
come
up
with
an
objection
that
would
not
sound
lame even
in
his
own
ears.
He
settled
for
closing
his
eyes
again.
He
still wondered
if
he'd
fall
into
a
blackout
now,
or
soon—or
if
not,
whether he
might
wake
up
later
without
any
memory
of
what
had
occurred today.

After
a
while,
he
fell
into
an
uneasy
sleep.

Unimaginably
distant,
the
stars—maybe
they
were
entire
galaxies—were
so faint
that
they
would
not
be
noticeable
to
any
senses
not
sharpened
by
lifetimes
spent
in
interstellar
space.
But
as
he
watched,
in
his
comfortable
floating,
those
lights
were
a
dazzling
panoply
of
infinitely
varying
shades
of red—the
red
of
light
so
old
it
had
gotten
tired
on
the
way
to
him.

He
had
been
out
here
for
so
long
that
any
time
before
was—not
forgotten, but
forgettable
in
its
insignificance.

The
black
was
cold
but
not
unfriendly.
It
held
him
in
its
calm,
strong
embrace
as
comfortably
as
any
warm
ocean,
rocking
him
gently
as
it
drew
him, in
accordance
with
the
immutable
laws,
to
the
end
it
had
been
ordained
he would
share
with
all
the
Universe,
as
it
all
came
together
in
that
final,
gentle,
terrible
place
that
was
the
totality
of
the
infinitely
far
future.

But
there
was
a
blur
intruding
on
his
solitary
blackness,
a
barely
sensed perturbation
in
his
long,
slow
orbit,
that
incensed
him
with
its
wrongness
...
some
intruder,
out
of
place,
or
maybe
just
out
of
time....

CHAPTER
12

Well
before
midnight
the
Friendly
consulate
in
Abbeyville
had
received
permission
from
its
host
state,
the
Lancastrian
Commonwealth,
for
a
detachment
of
Friendly
troops
to
be
brought
in
from one
of
the
leased
units
Bleys
had
already
visited,
to
increase
security
in
the
consulate
compound.
All
parties
were
maintaining
a
strict silence
about
the
day's
events,
and
nothing
had
made
it
into
the media,
which
was
the
way
everyone
preferred
it.

The
two
vehicles
in
which
Bleys
and
his
party
left
the
battlefield had
proceeded
to
the
city
after
transferring
their
passengers,
and
by mid-evening
had
sped
into
the
consulate's
inner
courtyard.
The
subsequent
arrival
of
the
rest
of
Bleys'
official
party,
along
with
an
official request
for
a
deployment
of
local
forces
to
guard
the
consulate
from the
outside,
seemed
to
make
it
clear
that
Bleys
was
in,
and
intended to
stay
in,
the
consulate's
safe
confines.
But
no
official
statements were
issued,
and
communications
in
or
out
of
the
consulate
were scant
and
tightly
controlled.

The
consulate
had
already
been
buttoned
down
for
hours
when Bleys
and
his
companions
arrived
at
the
rendezvous
with
Henry and
his
Soldiers,
nearly
a
thousand
kilometers
away.
But
none
of them
had
any
intention
of
locking
themselves
into
a
potential trap.

Instead,
they
all
headed
for
a
tiny
regional
landing
pad,
where two
privately
chartered
suborbital
shuttles
awaited
them;
and
within four
hours
Bleys,
Dahno
and
Toni
were
smuggled
aboard
Favored
of God,
secreted
in
a
load
of
supplies
for
the
repairs
that
were
supposedly
in
progress
on
the
ship.
Favored
had
been
sitting
quietly
on
the pad
outside
Ceta
City
since
some
days
before
Bleys'
own
arrival
aboard
Burning
Bush,
ostensibly
awaiting
the
arrival
of
its
charter party.
Favored
WAS
listed,
in
the
port
records,
as
the
Konrad
Macklin,
of
Freiland
registry.

Kaj
Menowsky,
the
Exotic-trained
medician
who
had
killed
off the
genetic
antagonist
with
which
Bleys
had
been
poisoned
on Newton,
was
waiting
for
them,
along
with
a
few
of
the
ship's
personnel,
as
Bleys
and
Toni
were
released
from
the
crates
in
which they
had
boarded
the
vessel.

"Kaj!"
Toni
exclaimed.
"We
were
told
you'd
been
hurt.
How're you
feeling?"

"I'm
fine,"
the
medician
said
shortly.
Clearly
feeling
he
had
no time
for
being
sociable,
he
immediately
began
making
a
quick check
into
the
stability
of
Dahno's
condition.
"It
was
just
a
mild concussion,"
he
added,
almost
grudgingly,
without
turning
to
look back
at
her.

After
a
very
short
time,
though,
he
smiled;
and
directed
that Dahno
be
conveyed
to
the
ship's
infirmary.
Then
he
turned
to Bleys
and
Toni.

"How
are
you
two?"
he
asked.

"I'm
fine,"
Toni
said.
"Just
tired—we
haven't
slept
much
lately." "I'm
fine,
too,"
Bleys
said.

"Come
with
me,"
Kaj
said
to
Bleys.
"I
want
to
check
you
over, too."

"No,"
Bleys
said,
more
loudly
than
he
had
intended.
"I'll
answer as
many
questions
as
you
want,
but
later!
I
have
to
have
time
to think
and
to
get
some
things
under
way.
And
you
have
to
take
care of
Dahno."

And
I
just
can't
take
any
of
your
incessant
questions
right
now!
he added
to
himself.
The
medician,
for
all
his
good
work
in
combating the
genetic
attack
on
Bleys,
at
times
made
it
seem
as
if
keeping
his patient
talking
was
the
key
to
his
treatment.

"I've
already
confirmed
that
Mary
did
everything
necessary
to stabilize
Dahno's
condition,"
Kaj
said.
"It'll
take
only
minutes
to remove
the
needle
still
in
his
chest—in
fact,
Mary
could
have
done that,
even
under
field
conditions,
if
the
needle
weren't
lodged
in
a rib.
But
this
ship
has
all
the
equipment
we
need,
and
I
promise
you