Heritage of Flight (17 page)

The settlers universally hated the caves into which they'd practiced evacuating most of the colony—everyone but the ones like Pauli, whose pregnancy made climbing impossible right now, or those people disabled by age or injury ... plus those few ablebodied who had to remain behind as decoys. The caves smelled of Cynthians. Living in them was like murdering a man, then sleeping in his bed. Rafe hated it too. Of the two options, searching for a downed Secess’ ship, or evacuating into the caves, he knew he had the easier task.

Lohr grimaced, then raised his head, testing the air like a wild animal.

Rafe flashed “thumbs up” at the boy, and heard a shaky laugh before Lohr stepped off the rock, dropped for a hideous moment, and then soared. The last of the moonlight gleamed on his wings.

"Damn! I hate sending out a kid while I'm stuck here,” he groused at ben Yehuda and his son. “Now we just sit here until he gets back. Dave, am I right that scanners could pick us up if we move?"

"There should be enough rock between us and that object to protect us. But assuming it's a ship, not a meteorite, even a quick flyby might have picked us out."

"What if it's not a ship, but just an escape pod?” Rafe asked. Pods were fitted with automatic distress signals and programmed to land as softly as possible. In that case, too, they'd be facing a live enemy.

David tinkered with the comms. “I'm not picking up anything ... not yet. Too much static."

"You know Lohr's going to want to check out that landing, don't you? What are you going to do about him?” asked ben Yehuda's son.

"First, I'm going to pray real hard that it's a meteorite. But if it's not,
you're
going to sit on Lohr so he doesn't get himself killed."

What if it is a downed pilot, and not one of ours?
Rafe worried. Pauli had passed on pilot rumors: that the characteristic Secess’ five-ship formations flew so fast and close that the pilots had to be hard-wired into their ships, and that the whole damnable cyborg was configured to a mammoth computer run by some sort of sadist. Highly colorful rumors, he had remarked at the time.

Secess’ raiders blew the power core on my own home station
, Rafe thought, as he did too often for his own comfort.
At least my folks died fast ... I hope they did.
Rafe shuddered as he always did when he thought of fading lifesupport, of the air growing foul and thin and cold before the lights went dead. He'd had nights where he'd waked gasping and shaking, dreaming of being trapped in such a place. The cold sweat of panic began to trickle and itch down his spine at the thought of meeting the sort of man who'd taken out his family's home.

"You've got our coordinates for the landing site?” Pauli asked Lohr again. The winds teased up a gust of cinnamon from the fields, their greens highlighted by the eerie shimmer of the electric shields.

She glanced enviously at Lohr's wings, then examined the boy more closely. There were deep circles beneath his eyes. Perhaps, after all, someone else should report back to the recon team.

Alicia Pryor strode up. “The first group to evacuate will leave for the caves in about ten minutes, right?"

Pauli nodded. “I'll be there to see them off."

"Afterward, we've planned for them to be followed by five-person units about every half hour."

"What about you?” Pauli asked. She had wanted their most experienced medic to join the evacuees. Even though practice had turned evacuation into a routine, she hated the thought of subjecting the children to it.

"Well, what about
you?"
Pryor retorted. “Lohr, get moving before Yeager here tries to pull rank on you, and I have to declare her medically unfit."

"Head up,” Pauli whispered as Lohr headed for the cliffs, passing the first group of fugitives with ease despite how tired he must be.

"The rest of you, back to camp. Let's make the place look lived in. Come on,” she called, turning on her heel. “On the double."

Their defenses now seemed very feeble, their communications link even more so. “I ought to be there—” she told Pryor.

"Forget it! If I thought you wouldn't miscarry, I'd get you up into those caves so fast—"

"They can manage without me.” Pauli spoke without bitterness. “Someone else would lead."

"Like Rafe? Or me? No, thank you very much. Look, I wish you'd get it through your head that while you've got opponents here, you don't have enemies. Think it through, Pauli. These are civilians! They're not used to orders, let alone to someone making those orders stick."

Pauli whirled to face the other woman.

"Even after..."

"Even after what we've all been through here. You didn't make the decision to wipe out the Cynthians on your own, despite the fact that you're trying to take responsibility for it. But now that the place looks safe, they want to sit down and try to argue things out again. Except for the littlest ones."

"Do you think,” Pauli brought up a familiar, poignant topic as they trudged back toward the domes, “that they will ever trust again?"

"They trust
you
,” Pryor said firmly. “Which is one reason why I'm staying down here. To look after you."

"What's the real reason?"

To Pauli's astonishment, Alicia Pryor's pale skin flushed, and the older woman stared off toward the distant hills.

"I'm sick of talk all the time. And besides, by staying here, I free up a spot for someone younger. How old do you think I am, Pauli?"

The shorter woman shrugged. “Forty-five, perhaps?” If she shielded her eyes, she could just see Lohr poised high overhead, waiting for the right current ... there! Sunlight danced on unfurled metallic wings as Lohr banked in salute before veering back up into the hills.

"Add twenty years,” Pryor chuckled dryly. “Balliol II had plenty of anti-agathics for senior faculty at Santayana."

"You're trying to distract me, right? Otherwise, if you haven't spilled your guts before this, why do it now?"

"Precisely,” the medic agreed. “As I said, I got sick of being safe, and of talk, talk, talk. Probably because I listened too hard to one person. Pauli, have you ever heard of Halgerd of Freki?"

Pauli allowed Dr. Pryor to steer her back to her quarters (so heartlessly bare without Rafe's gear) and ease her down onto a mat.

"Halgerd of Freki? Sure.” At one time or another, most educated people for six systems around had heard of Halgerd of Freki, laureate in genetics, who'd curtailed a brilliant research career when the war broke out, resigned his professorship on the safe haven of Balliol II, to return to his homeworld. His
Secessionist
homeworld.

"I wonder what sort of uses the Secess’ would put a brain like his to,” Pauli mused.

"It's likelier that he's using them. Or that he's dead.” Pryor's voice was muffled as she bent to activate the self-heat tabs on two food packs. “Halgerd's no martyr. He left Balliol for Freki only after his research group was ordered to disband.” She paused. “Freki's one of the throwback worlds. Did you know, it even used to be a military oligarchy?"

"Group Two headed out, Pauli.” That was Beneatha, shoulders hunched under the weight of a pack.

"Get Three ready to move."

"Right."

"Was your Professor Halgerd one of the oligarchs?” Pauli raised eyebrows as if delicately gauging Alicia Pryor's sympathy for her old colleague. A geneticist with military interests. God.

"Something like that. He never got over his aristocratic background. Yes, you can smile; but I'm allowed to say that. I'm also allowed to feel guilty for collaborating with him for as long as I did. There were a number of us, dazzled by him at first. Later—let's say he left before we could dump his computer. We never got around to it, but I wanted to. Some of his work on cloning—I thought it ought to be suppressed for the duration of the war."

"I thought Santayana never suppressed research."

"That's right, we don't.” Involuntarily, and with a sort of bleak pride, the “we” slipped out. For an instant, the Alicia Pryor of the settlement disappeared, and a younger, more arrogant woman sat opposite Pauli, sharing emergency rations with the fastidious manners more appropriate to a banquet. “But it didn't mean I didn't want to. That was another reason I resigned. I not only had lost my objectivity, I didn't believe it was worth the having in the first place. So now the Secessionists have all Halgerd's experiments. And him along with them. Part of that work is mine, Pauli. That means that part of the blame's mine too."

"If you're looking for absolution, I frankly don't envy the people hiding out in the caves. And God knows, you've come to the wrong person."

"That isn't it. For once, I don't want to be exempt because of my age, or my profession, or status, or some damned liability.” Pryor's lips thinned. “God, I sound like Halgerd did before he left. It got to be you couldn't be in the same room with him without hearing a lecture on the evils of noninterference. In the end, he convinced me. But not,” her voice was soft, sad, “as he hoped."

Pauli shook her head and smiled in a way she hoped was sympathetic. It was hard to imagine the medic as a privileged, sheltered member of Santayana University's dazzling faculty—or was it? But she had heard of the throwbacks. There were a few other such worlds like Freki, mostly settled by one racial or ethnic group, Freki and Tokugawa on the Secess’ side, and on their own, Abendstern and Ararat (come to think of it, Dave ben Yehuda had ties there). Usually driven by a dream of former glory to reanimate old languages and older customs, settlers of the throwbacks were generally too tough to be dismissed as eccentrics.

Freki prized aristocrats and warriors—and Halgerd had been both. He'd been Pryor's colleague ... what else? Pauli didn't even have to guess. The medic was pale and still patrician-looking; years ago, she must have been stunning.

Behind them, the last of the evacuees left the settlement, without Pauli. Pryor had achieved her goal of distracting the younger woman; but now she herself was lost in thought and a years-old sorrow.

Pauli patted Alicia Pryor's shoulder. “As the chaplain used to tell us, I haven't heard a word you've said."

11

A shadow across the noon sky drew Rafe's attention, and he froze against the rock, all but his gun hand.

Lohr dropped down onto a bight around fifteen meters above Rafe, his wings furling about his feet before he slipped off the flying harness. He scrambled down the slope, showering the recon team with pebbles and dust, and finished his descent with a dangerous skid that might have skinned the hide off him if Rafe hadn't caught him.

The boy was all legs, ribs, and eyes, Rafe thought. His skin was clammy and his breathing too rapid. “Now, rest,” he ordered, trying to force Lohr down with one hand even as, with the other, he holstered his sidearm, and snapped the protective flap shut.

Ben Yehuda began to rifle Lohr's pack. “These coords should save us about six, seven hours,” he grinned with satisfaction.

"You don't have to stop for me!” Lohr pushed against Rafe's chest, trying to stand on his own. “I can travel. Just let me catch my breath."

"You can travel? Really? Just you try it.” Expertly Rafe tripped the boy and eased him down onto the pad Ari ben Yehuda unrolled.

The boy's eyes glared with anger quickly suppressed as the comfort of the sleeping pad and the smell of food got to him. He submitted to being fed, and ate ravenously. But the instant he finished, he began to protest again.

"All right, then,” said Rafe. “Let me see you walk."

He managed to struggle to his feet. Turning pale, he got about four steps before his knees wobbled and he collapsed.

"Convinced now?” Rafe asked, with a smile.

"You go on ahead,” Lohr muttered. “I'll sleep, then catch up. I'll fly there ... you can trust me not to do ... ‘nythin’ stupid—"

Beneath the blanket, the boy's wiry body twitched with exhaustion.

"We'll give him two or three hours to rest, then wake him and see if he's fit,” Rafe decided. A more carefully reared boy would still be a wreck at the end of that time but a more protected child couldn't have completed the two flights Lohr had just made, or, probably, coped with the need for them.

The others settled down to wait, or sleep, or watch the monitors. No one spoke of meteorites anymore.

"Over this way,” ben Yehuda gestured, never raising his eyes from a small tracker. Pebbles scraped and slipped beneath his feet until finally, inevitably, he tripped.

"Man, are you trying to break your neck?” Rafe hissed. “Or announce ‘company coming’ to that Secess'?” His neck heated with ridiculous anger, and he jerked David back onto his feet.

"Get down!” Ari whispered, and both men dropped.

Up ahead, in charred and gouged-out scree, lay the emergency pod.

"Good thing there wasn't much brush about, or we'd have had a fire too."

"I'd rather have a brushfire any day than a firelight,” Rafe said.

One of the pod's landing struts had buckled. The pod lay canted over, dented, and scarred where it had scraped along the hillside.

"Pod that small—it's got to come from a fighter ship."