Balance of Power (20 page)

I wished briefly that Mariel was there to read their faces. In all likelihood there would never be such a moment again. Piet registered horror, fury and—or so it seemed to me—outraged jealousy. Sexual jealousy.

Anyhow, whether that was so or not, he completely lost his mind. Presumably murder had not been in his plans when he entered the room, though it might have been lurking somewhere within his imagination. But there was no doubting as he came at me like a tiger that murder was what he intended now.

He cannoned into me and hurled me over backward. There was a table behind me, on which approximately half the contents of the medical kit I’d brought back from the lab were scattered. I’d just dumped them when I came in to find Anna waiting for me. Now the table went over with a crash and everything on it was thrown to the floor. I went over with a terrible crash, taking the fall on my shoulders. Had my head hit the floor direct I’d have been knocked unconscious, but as it was I just felt a lance of pain shoot through me, and then had to struggle as Piet landed on top of me, his fingers reaching for my throat. I managed to turn him aside and wrenched myself free. My first thought was to get away, and so I leapt back over the table and gripped the legs that jutted into the air, intending to use it as a shield.

It was a mistake on two counts. For one thing the table was so heavy I could barely drag it along the floor, let alone lift it to fend off the maddened Piet. For another, Piet was on the floor amid the scattered contents of the medical kit. Scalpels aren’t designed for killing people, but they can be pretty vicious weapons. When he came to his feet he had one in his hand, and there could be no possible doubt as to where he intended to stick it.

I let go of the table and backed away, looking for something I could use to defend myself. All that my groping hand found was the bag in which most of my spare clothes were stashed. I picked it up and held it before me, ready to try and take the cut of the scalpel in its soft bulk.

Piet came forward and I backtracked warily. Neither of us was moving fast. My one intention was to drag the fight out—to stop him cutting me up until he had at least the chance to calm down. Fury such as his can die down as fast as it arises.

He lunged, and I raised the bag to catch the tiny blade.

But I was too slow.

Suddenly, there was someone else between us, and when Piet’s arm lashed out with all the force he could muster it wasn’t my small bundle that absorbed the thrust but Anna’s body.

The blade went into her neck at the side and must have sheared straight through the carotid artery. Her arms were outraised, fingers splayed, in a gesture of prohibition that seemed almost a caricature.

He had not even seen her.

Blood flooded out of the cut, spilling over the shoulder of her dress and the back of Piet’s hands. He let go of the scalpel as if stung, and she crumpled to the floor.

For half a second it was an open question whether he’d resume his murderous attack on me or give way to the grief that was trying to displace his fury. But he was a defeated man, and he’d been defeated long before he’d come into the room. He crumpled to his knees, and bent over the prostrate body. Her eyes were open, and she blinked Once. But she couldn’t say anything, or even change the expression of devastated shock on her face.

She died, still spilling blood all over the floor.

Someone screamed. Not Anna, who had never made a sound, but Mariel, who’d come in to find out what all the noise was about.

Then Nieland arrived. Soon after that there was a crowd. I don’t know how death attracts so many people so quickly, but it always seems to.

I threw the bag on the bed with a gesture of utter disgust. Mariel, eyes closed, was clinging hard to Christian. Jan shut the door.

“Why did they let him go?” I asked, my voice caught in a half-whisper.

“He accepted the situation,” said Jan. “He asked them to release him so that he could prepare for the voyage. Nobody thought....”

“No,” I said, looking down at the silent form of the stricken Piet. “I don’t suppose anyone would.”

“You will come back?” I said, anxiously. “Someone has to bring the virus. I’d rather it was you.”

“I’ll come back,” he said softly. “Not as Bernhard Verheyden’s son. As ilah’y’su. In my own right. As myself. Jan and Charles...they haven’t really got selves to be. Because they
are
Bernhard Verheyden’s sons. And Piet—Piet most of all.”

I nodded, not pretending that I agreed, or understood, but merely accepting his declaration of intent.

“We haven’t solved anything,” said Mariel. She was talking to me, reacting to something she’d picked up in my thoughts.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“You’re accepting all this as if we’d achieved something,” she said. “But we haven’t. We haven’t altered the situation at all. We’re no closer now to making any kind of a bridge between the Ore’l and the colony than we ever were.”

“Christian is coming back,” I said. “Nieland is still here. There’s going to be a two-way crossing of the ocean at long last. That’s all worth something. It all counts.”

“For what? Can you honestly say that what has happened here will measurably influence the history of this world in the slightest degree?”

“We could never be sure of that,” I said. “Not even if we could track this world over the next thousand years. But what happened here could have been worse. And it would have been worse if we hadn’t been dumped on the doorstep when we were. We arrived at just the right time. A small miracle, in more ways than one. Maybe it’ll turn out to be an unnecessary miracle. Maybe a futile one. But don’t deny it. I don’t say we’ve achieved something here—we did what was here for us to do. But we did it.”

“And with Nathan to write it up for us we can pretend to be masterminds?”

I ignored that particular remark, and tried to find what was really worrying her.

“Do you want to stay here?” I asked. “With Nieland?”

She shook her head.

“There isn’t a real job to be done here,” she said. “Not any more. Everything’s already under way.”

She felt, in some peculiar way, as if she’d been cheated. It had all happened too quickly. It had happened all around her. It hadn’t been as she’d anticipated it at all. She’d been desperate for one more chance to use a power she was so afraid of losing. When the
New Hope
had first come to shore it looked as if she’d been robbed of the chance. When the forest savages picked us up it looked as if she’d got it back. Now...the situation had moved far beyond the simple matter of opening communication and learning to understand. All in all, coincidence had served us very well. But from her particular point of view...it wasn’t a victory, by any means.

“Saving worlds isn’t a simple business,” I told her. “Sometimes there’s a single problem and a single answer. But even when it seems as simple as that there’s much, much more. Nothing is guaranteed. Nobody guaranteed you a set of ritual opportunities with ritual answers. You can’t expect things to go by a carefully prepared script. We find what we find and we make the best of it. You’ve seen a good deal of the Ore’l. You’ll see a good deal more yet. There’s a lot you can learn and it will all be useful. Don’t be discouraged because it doesn’t fit your preconceived ideas about what ought to have happened. The world doesn’t work like that.”

Christian didn’t know what the hell we were talking about. She took mercy on him and let me change the subject. I was sure she’d come round, in time. At the moment, things looked to be in a hell of a mess.

“The Ore’l will contain the plague this year,” I said, aiming at Christian. “With what we were able to find out about it. The magisters will be able to muster some kind of resistance.”

Christian let go a dry, humorless laugh. “They will,” he said. “I know them. Do you know what they’ll do?”

“If they’ve any sense,” I said, “they’ll close the road.”

“They’ll do that,” said Christian. “And they’ll slaughter every single animal in every single herd within the area of infection. That won’t destroy the center of the infection entirely—too many people have caught the disease and the vector can transmit from person to person. But it will help. And it’s a good excuse. Their sympathies are with the farmers, you see. There’s always been trouble in that region between incoming farmers and the native nomads. This is an excuse for genocide...all the while maintaining the church’s front of total benevolence.”

He said it all quite emotionlessly, with no hint in his tone of moral censure. I took it all in the same way. It was logical. I’d have realized it myself, if only I’d thought.

“There’ll be some battles fought,” I said.

“The nomads are dying with the plague anyhow,” said Christian.

Another phrase echoed in my mind:
“They’re only forest savages.”

There was no point in worrying about it. No point even in feeling sick. Attica was a cruel world.

So are they all.

As Mariel said, we hadn’t actually
solved
anything. Sometimes, there are no neat answers. You just have to do what the situation allows you to do.

“We’d better get busy,” I said. “We still have a lot of packing to do.”

“She was upset,” I said, electing to censor the account somewhat—more (I assured myself) for their benefit than for mine. “I was trying to calm her down. She was crying. I was trying to reassure her. When Piet opened the door and saw us he leapt immediately to the wrong conclusion. He just went mad. He attacked me, and somewhere in the struggle picked up the scalpel. Anna was trying to stop him, trying to make him see sense. But he was just stabbing blindly. He didn’t know what he was doing. Until he killed her. And when he
did
realize what he’d done...the rest you know.”

By the way Jan was looking at me I could tell that while he didn’t quite disbelieve me, he was not wholly ready to believe me, either.

“He was trying to kill you?” he said.

“Yes.”

“And she was trying to stop him?”

“Yes.”

“Anna’s my sister,” he said.
“Was
my sister. She and Piet...well, it seems to me that if Piet had wanted to kill you she’d more likely have helped him than tried to stop him.”

“That’s a vile thing to say!” said Christian.

Jan transfixed him with a glare. “Why should Anna risk her life for him?” he said. “Is that how
you
see Anna?”

“In the heat of the moment...,” said Christian, defensively.

“Why else should Piet kill her?” Mariel intervened. The question cut through the burgeoning family dispute like a knife, challenging the foundations of Jan’s suspicion.

He had no answer. At least he didn’t want to argue that maybe Piet hadn’t done it.

“Look,” I said, “I feel pretty bad about this myself. She got killed, if you want to put it like this, instead of me. I don’t think she cared about me one way or the other. It was Piet she was thinking about. But she still got herself killed, and possibly saved my life in so doing. How do you think
I
feel? Delighted? Thankful? It hurts, for God’s sake...it really hurts. And out of that you want to build a family quarrel. What the hell for? What kind of people are you?”