Event Horizon (Hellgate) (54 page)

“Darkness,” Vidal murmured. “Pain … ribs, first. Then the questions. Being beaten. Needles in my neck, my ass – antibiotic, for all I knew, or something like the
Triphenac
, or blockers, or all of ’em. Questions, more questions. Couldn’t answer.
Wouldn’t
. Some stuff, I never even knew.”

“But they kept asking, whether you knew or not.”

And like an inquisitor, so did Mark. The handy blazed with red, flooded into purple as the memories seized Vidal tightly enough to choke him. The display spiked into black as he felt again the fury that had kept him alive through scenes he described, now, in disjointed words, often barely coherent. The tumble of lurid adjectives was filled with such fear, fury, hate, Travers’s own mouth was dry, his heart thudding heavily.

It took less time than Vidal would have believed. Mark had fine-tuned the apparatus till he could follow every memory to source, and when he found the synapse clusters the drone would focus on them with the incredible precision of a Resalq instrument. The tip of the wand traced patterns over Vidal’s skull, but Mick did not seem to feel anything physical, and certainly not pain. By far, the worst of the process was forcing him to focus on the very memories that had tortured him for months. Speaking them aloud, concentrating on them strongly enough for hazy images to flash up into the handy, was as painful as the cane that stripped the skin off him, wire clippers that took off his fingers, pliers that pulled his teeth. His days were a dark haze of gryphon and abuse, physical, mental, sexual, until he lost track of time and death seemed the most viable alternative.

There were other memories, just as vivid, though less personal. The death of the super-carrier, when a drone freighter, generators on overload, rammed the engine deck; the loss of the Delta Dragons in an ambush where they flew into the geocannon from an asteroid miner which had been mounted in the guts of a disused Goldman-Pataki smelter. Memory by memory, Mark winkled out the rot and the drone patiently, methodically tracked back and forth across Vidal’s skull until Mick was hoarse from talking and tears, and the handy flooded into dense shades of purple and on into black.

“Mark,” Travers said urgently. “Mark, you better look at this.”

But Mark was done. He sat up, plucking the filaments away with deft fingers, both from Vidal’s scalp and his own. The drone returned to its place by the table; the handies reverted to the standby hues, blues and greens. Travers set them down and dragged both hands over his own face, not surprised to find himself trembling. Vidal was barely strong enough to withstand this procedure, and Neil was rolling a combug between his fingers. “Should I give Bill a call?”

“I think you’d better,” Mark began.

“No.” Vidal was blind, barely half aware. He turned toward Mark’s voice and Mark caught him, held him like a child while he shook and wept in reaction.

“It’s done now, Michael … let it go,
eleen
becahl
,
shures
. Just open your hands, let it run through your fingers like water. Don’t grasp, don’t try to hang on, let it fade away.” He murmured in the old language, soft sounds almost like the wind in the trees, and little by little Vidal calmed.

At last Travers realized he was asleep, and he set down the combug. Mark moved slowly, carefully, let Vidal subside onto the couch, where he did not stir even to rearrange his limbs. Deliberately Mark snuffed the candles and the
charab
, turned off the sub-
etherics
, and beckoned Travers out of the room.

The door closed over and Neil leaned against the bulkhead, dragging fresh air into his lungs. He was shaking, sweated, and gave Mark a rueful look. “You do this often?”

“Thank gods, very seldom,” Mark said quietly. “I did it for Jai Serrano, twenty years ago. Any agent is vulnerable, and the longer he does something like Dendra Shemiji work, the greater the chance he’ll be caught. Jai was, and his suffering was not very different from Michael’s. We repaired his teeth, his eyes, kidneys and … so on. You can guess the rest. It was an assignment gone disastrously wrong. When you’ve infiltrated a corporation to reach an individual, and your cover is torn apart, the consequences are always going to be dire. Curtis knew this when he joined us, and every risk he took was calculated – even, or
especially,
the Roy Neville sanction. Though I’ll be honest, if he’d conferred with me about that one, I’d never have authorized it. The risk factor was too high. But like Jai, Curtis was a free agent. They decide for themselves which assignments they’ll take. Training is no guarantee against error.”

Travers had not even recalled the name of Jai Serrano in six months. He was the Resalq agent whom Jo Queneau had shot down on Saraine, not very far from Mark’s house. Serrano was bringing intelligence out of Boden Zwerner’s fortress on Ulrand, at a time when Queneau had no idea who she was involved with. And Serrano, Travers remembered, was still in cryogen, waiting for a whole suite of cloned organs to be ready for transplant.

“He’s on this ship,” Mark said, as if he had heard everything Travers had not said. “The tank’s in the Infirmary, along with all the
canopic
vessels.”

“The what?” Travers echoed.

“Look it up.” Mark reached over, brushed his cheek with the backs of his knuckles as he forcibly stirred. “I performed this strange ritual for Curtis, too, and I imagine I’ll do it again – a long time in the future, I hope. Are you all right, Neil?”

“Yeah.” Travers shook himself hard.

“No, you’re not. You need a stiff drink,” Mark suggested, “and help that partner of yours finish packing.”

“Packing. Lai’a. Damn.” Travers pressed one hand to his eyes for a moment. “We’re waiting for the boarding call.”

“It’ll be very soon.” Mark looked around the familiar passageway which led forward to the Ops room and back to the engine compartments. “I’m going to miss this ship, these people. The
Carellan
has been like a home to me, as much as Saraine and Riga ever were. I know it’s a strange thing to say. Resalq of my generation were accustomed to … we used to call it ‘falling between the stars.’ Nowhere to go back to, no idea where we’d be next. A ship soon became home – and I’ll miss this one.”

“You say that as if part of you believes you’re not coming back.” Travers licked his lips. “Please gods, tell me you’re not having the proverbial bad feelings about the Lai’a expedition.”

“No,” Mark admitted. “I’m not prescient at all, Neil, and I like to think I can tell the difference between genuine foreboding and old fashioned fear and paranoia! The truth? We know enough about the Zunshu from their technology, right now, to give ourselves a very good chance of coming back. We’ve learned a lot recently. At this time, I’d put our odds at an even fifty-fifty. And those odds will get better if we can get aboard the
Ebrezjim
, get a line into the core AI, find out exactly what happened to my ancestors. The mistake they made … and the way they escaped,” he added. “This is our first priority, as soon as we’ve made a safe insertion through the Orpheus Gate.” He gestured Travers away. “Go on, get your things together – you don’t have long.”

“I’ll catch up with you later,” Travers promised. “And Mick. He’s just sleeping now, isn’t he?”

“Yes. He’s exhausted. I’ll let him sleep for a couple of hours,” Mark mused, “and then wake him before he begins to dehydrate. It’s not a pleasant process, but ask Curtis. It does work. Michael will have enough peace of mind to put the past back into its place and concentrate on the project he’s undertaken.”

“Transspace, the simulator, pilot training,” Travers said thoughtfully. “He ought to be on R&R, just recovering. He still looks like a ghost.”

“Work is better for him,” Mark judged. “I know Michael well enough to know leisure time is almost the last thing he needs.” He glanced at his chrono and clasped Travers’s shoulder. “I must give my own crew a little time. I’m handing over command this evening.”

“And I’m out of here.” Travers forced his feet to work. “Give me a buzz if Mick’s not well. Bill Grant’s probably on Lai’a by now, setting up the Infirmary. I can take Mick right there, if he needs it.”

“I think he’ll be all right when he wakes,” Mark said shrewdly, “but yes, I’ll call you if he’s not.”

The way back to the
Wastrel
took Travers past the rank of empty labs. The mounds of equipment cases that had blocked their doorways when he and Marin had made their way in were gone now. The
Carellan Djerun
felt empty and Travers found his hackles rising, his skin prickling. The
Wastrel
was much larger, with a vastly larger crew, so she felt much less hollow, but even there Neil was aware of a restless sense of movement, change. Nothing was the same. He found himself yearning for the old days of familiarity, stability. Safety?

He wondered what emotions were on his face as he stepped into the stateroom he and Marin had called home for so long. Four cases lay stacked by the door; two more were open on the bed. The closet was wide open and half empty, and Marin’s voice called from the bathroom,

“I wasn’t sure about the last things … check the closet.” His head appeared around the open door. A towel hung around his neck and his hair was still damp; he was barefoot, though he was in pale charcoal slacks. “Mick?”

“Sleeping,” Travers told him. He leaned on the bulkhead by the bathroom, watching as Marin splashed face, throat, chest, with the aftershave he liked. He was waiting for Neil to speak – more than likely guessing how difficult it would be to find words. Travers gestured mutely back toward the
Carellan
, still hunting for any way to phrase what he felt when Marin said softly,

“It was that bad?”

“Bad enough,” Travers allowed. “The crap that was in his head, it’s a wonder he’s been sane.”

“And who says he’s been sane?” Marin threw the towel into the chute and came to slide his arms around Travers. “Mick’s been holding it together as long as he was wide awake. But the moment he closed his eyes – well, I’ve been there, Neil. Your own mind turns into alien territory. Pray you never have to go there.”

Travers’s arms went around him, held him tight enough for Marin to grunt as the air was forced out of his lungs. “Gives you a new respect for Mick, doesn’t it?”

“Oh, I’ve always known what he was up against.” Marin breathed a kiss into Travers’s left ear. “Are
you
all right?”

“Yes. No.” Travers permitted himself a groan. “Just let
me
forget about it now.”

“Mark didn’t tell you the remedy? Double scotch, hold the ice,” Marin said perceptively. “Or a couple of Mountain Mists. Or both.”

“He told me. And I’ll take the booze,” Travers decided. He let Curtis go far enough to look into his face. “I guess I expected some kind of arcane ritual, a lot of mumbo jumbo and muttering in the ancient Resalq language.”

“You mean hypnosis, the power of suggestion? That’s part of it. The
charab
, the sub-
etherics
, the 34-Triphenac-A, all have a synergistic effect. The brain settles down into patterns like deep sleep. The mind becomes enormously responsive to instructions. Trust me – I know this. Mark would have asked a lot of questions about Mick’s childhood and youth, yes? Specifically, about various traumatic events … the death of a loved one, a spat with parents, the virgin’s first time, getting dumped by a lover or arrested for some dumb ‘crime of stupidity,’ the kind kids commit so casually. Mick answered?”

“It didn’t occur to him to hold anything back or answer in single syllables.” Travers’s mouth compressed. “Mark never pumped him for the juicy details. Didn’t have to, they just tumbled out. Which is why we used to call the stuff ‘Babble-on.’”

“Not really.” Marin frowned, obviously thinking back to his own passage through this rite. “The shot of
Triphenac
is actually much too small to make you say something you don’t want to. But when you’re full of
charab
and the sub-audio vibrations are in every bone in your body, you just open right up. You strip yourself naked and gut yourself with a small, blunt knife. And that,” he sighed, “is the only way to align the apparatus so tightly, the bad memories can be fogged over without dulling the good times we
want
to remember, and the critical things we
have
to remember. How’d you like to forget being beat up, and at the same time also forget the time you won big on the roulette wheel and spent a whole night with one of StarCity’s patented palomino Companions?”