Pawn’s Gambit (4 page)

Her answer was a faint grunt of painful exertion. “Goode?” she asked sharply.

“Trouble, Captain,” his voice came faintly, as if from outside the boat. Chandra boosted both power and gain, and Goode's next words were clearer. “One of the lines of the boat's cradle is jammed—something's dug into the mesh where I can't get at it. I'll need a laser torch to cut it.”

“Damn. The nearest one's probably in the forward hobby room.” Chandra briefly considered dropping back to one gee while Goode was traveling, but immediately abandoned the idea. At this late stage that would force extra high-gee deceleration to still get to the rendezvous position on time, and there was no guarantee they had the fuel for that.

Goode read her mind, long-distance. “Don't worry, I can make it. What's the latest on the Intruder?”

“As of four minutes ago, holding steady. At a light-minute to the nearest tachship, though, that could be a little old.”

“I get the point. On my way.”

The minutes crawled by. Eyes still on the read-outs, Chandra mentally traced out Goode's path: out the bay, turn right, elevator or stairway down two decks, along a long corridor, into the Number Two hobby and craft shop; secure a torch from the locked cabinet and return. Even with twice-normal weight she thought she was giving him plenty of time, but she was halfway through her third tracing when the drive abruptly cut off.

The sudden silence and weightlessness caught her by surprise, and she wasted two or three seconds fumbling at the radio switch. “Goode!” she shouted. “Where the hell
are
you?”

There was no reply. She waited, scanning the final location figures. Sure enough, the
Origami
had overshot the proper position by nearly eighty meters. She was just reaching for her power controls when the radio boomed.

“I'm back,” Goode said, panting heavily. “I didn't trust the elevator—didn't realize how hard the trip back would be. Sorry.”

“Never mind; just get to work. Is there anything you can hang onto? I've got to run the nose jets.”

“Go ahead. But, damn, this torch is a genuine
toy.
I don't know how long it'll take to cut the boat loose.”

A chill ran down Chandra's spine, and it was all she could do to keep from hitting the main drive and getting them the hell out of there. “Better not be long, partner. It's just you and me and a runaway monorail out here.”

“Yeah. Hey—couldn't you call for a tachship to come and get us?”

“I already thought of that. But the nearest tachship is only a light-minute out, way too close to get here in one jump. He'd have to jump out a minimum of two A.U., then jump back here. Calculating the direction and timing for two jumps that fine-tuned would take almost twenty minutes, total.”

“Damn. I didn't know that—I've never trained for tachships.” A short pause. “The first three strands are cut; seven to go. Minute and a half, I'd guess.”

“Okay.” Chandra was watching the read-outs closely. “We're almost back in position; I'll be down there before you're done. The boat ready otherwise?”

“Ready, waiting, and eager.”

“Not nearly as eager as I am.” A squirt of the main drive to kill their velocity as the nose jets fell silent; one more careful scan of the read-outs—“I'm done. See you below.”

Goode was on the second to the last of the cable strands when she arrived. “Get in and strap down,” he told her, not looking up.

She did, wriggling into the pilot's couch, and was ready by the time he scrambled in the opposite side. Without waiting for him to strap down, she hit the “release” button.

They were under two gees again practically before clearing the hull. Holding the throttle as high as it would go, Chandra confirmed that they were moving at right angles to the Intruder's path. Only then did she glance at the chrono.

Ninety seconds to impact.

Next to her, Goode sighed. “I don't think we're going to make it, Chandra,” he said, his voice more wistful than afraid.

Chandra opened her mouth to say something reassuring—but it was the radio that spoke. “Avis T-466 to
Origami
lifeboat; come in?”

A civilian tachship? “Lifeboat; Captain Carey here. Listen, you'd better get the hell out of—”

“I know,” the voice interrupted. “I eavesdropped a bit on your problems via radio. You're running late, but I'm right behind you. Kill your drive; I think I've got time to grapple onto you.”

Chandra hadn't bothered to look at the 'scope yet, but even as she killed the drive Goode was pointing at it. “There he is. Coplanar course, intercept vector, two-five gee. …” The blip changed direction slightly, and Chandra realized suddenly that an amateur was at the controls.

Goode realized it, too. Muttering something, he jabbed at the computer keyboard, kicking in the drive again. “Tachship, we're shifting speed and vector to match yours at intercept; just hold your course,” he called. “You've got standard magnetic grapples?”

“Yes, and they're all set. Sit tight; here I come.”

The seconds ticked by. The blip on the scope was coming up fast . . . and then it was on top of them, and the lifeboat lurched hard as the grapples caught. “Gotcha!” the radio shouted. “Hang on!”

And with seconds to spare—

The universe vanished. Blackness filled the viewports, spilled like a physical thing into the lifeboat. For five long seconds—

And the sun exploded directly in front of them, brighter than Chandra had seen it for weeks. A dozen blips crawled across the 'scope, and the lifeboat's beacon-reader abruptly came to life, informing them they were six thousand kilometers north-west-zenith of Earth's Number Twelve navigational beacon.

Beside her, Chandra felt Goode go limp with released tension. “Still with me?” the radio asked.

“Sure are,” Chandra said, wiping the sweat off her palms. “I don't know how to thank you, Mr.—?”

“Dr. Louis Du Bellay,” the voice identified himself. “And don't thank me yet. If what you did out there didn't work, there's a worse death coming for all of us.”

Chandra had almost forgotten about that. The thought sobered her rising spirits considerably. “You're right. Can you get us into contact with Peacekeeper HQ? We need to report in.”

“I can maybe do better than that. Come aboard and we'll find out.”

They were given special priority to land, and a car was standing by for them at the field.

General Carey was waiting outside the Situation Room. “I ought to pull your pilot's license for going out there against specific Peacekeeper orders,” he told Du Bellay half-seriously, even as he gave his daughter a bear hug. “If Mahendra hadn't confessed to helping you get hold of that tachship I probably would. But he's too good a man to lose to a court-martial. Let's get inside; the Chasers have been reporting in for nearly twenty minutes.”

Mahendra looked up as the group approached. “Captain Carey and Officer Goode? Congratulations; it looks like you've done it.”

Chandra felt a lump the thickness of ion shielding in her throat. “We slowed him?”

“No, but you deflected him a couple hundredths of a second in the right direction.”

“Confirmed?” General Carey asked sharply, as if not daring to believe it.

“Confirmed, sir,” Mahendra nodded. “He'll be passing through the upper solar chromosphere instead of deep into the photosphere. We'll get some good flares and a significant radiation increase for a few weeks, but nothing much worse than that.”

“And the Intruder hasn't tried to correct his course?” Du Bellay asked quietly.

Mahendra's expression was both sad and grim. “No, Doctor.”

Puzzled, Chandra glanced between her father, Mahendra, and Du Bellay, all of whom wore the same look. Even Goode's face was starting to change … and suddenly she understood. “You mean … the impact killed
all
of them?”

Carey put his arm around her shoulders. “We had no choice, Chandra. It was a matter of survival. You understand, don't you?”

She sighed and, reluctantly, nodded. Goode took her arm and led her to a nearby chair. Sitting there, holding tightly to his hand, she watched with the rest of the Situation Room as the computer plot of the Intruder's position skimmed the sun's surface and shot out once more toward deep space. What had they been like, she wondered numbly … and how many of them had she killed so that Earth could live?

She knew she would never know.

Behind the
Dawnsent,
the star receded toward negative infinity, its light red-shifted to invisibility. With mixed feelings Orofan watched its shrinking image on the screen. Beside him, Pliij looked up from the helmboard. “We're all set, Shipmaster. The deviation's been calculated; we can correct course anytime in the next hundred
aarns
.”
He paused, and in a more personal tone said, “You did what was necessary, Orofan. Your honor is unblemished.”

Orofan signed agreement, but it was an automatic gesture. The assault gun, he noticed, was still in his tentacle, and he slipped it back into its sheath.

A tentacle touched his. “Pliij is right,” Lassarr said gently. “Whatever craft that was, its inhabitants had almost certainly been killed by our scoop before we detected it. You could have done nothing to help them. Refusing to accept the ship's mass at that point would have been dishonorable. You did well; your decisions and judgments have been proved correct.”

“I know,” Orofan sighed. It
was
true; fate had combined with his decisions to save the system from destruction without adding appreciable time to the
Dawnsent's
own journey. He should be satisfied.

And yet … the analyzers reported significant numbers of silicon, carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen atoms among the metals of the spacecraft the
Dawnsent
had unintentionally run down. Which of those atoms had once belonged to living creatures? … And how many of those beings had died so that the Sk'cee might reach their new home?

He knew he would never know.

The Giftie Gie Us

The sun was barely up as I left the cabin that morning, but it was already promising to be a beautiful day. Some freak of nature had blown away the usual cloud cover and was treating the world—or at least the middle Appalachians—to an absolutely clear blue sky, the first I'd seen in months. I admired the sky and the budding April greenery around me as I made my way down the wooded slope, long practice enabling me to avoid trees and other obstructions with minimal effort. It was finally spring, I decided, smiling my half-smile at the blazing sun which was already starting to drive the chill from the morning air. Had it not been for the oppressive silence in the forest, it would almost be possible to convince myself that the Last War had been only a bad dream. But the absence of birds, which for some reason had been particularly hard hit by the Soviet nuke bac barrage, was a continual reminder to me. I had hoped that, by now, nearly five years after the holocaust, they would have made a comeback. Clearly, they had not, and I could only hope that enough had survived the missiles to eventually repopulate the continent. Somehow, it seemed the height of injustice for birds to die in a war over oil.

The sun was barely up as I left the cabin that morning, but it was already promising to be a beautiful day. Some freak of nature had blown away the usual cloud cover and was treating the world—or at least the middle Appalachians—to an absolutely clear blue sky, the first I'd seen in months. I admired the sky and the budding April greenery around me as I made my way down the wooded slope, long practice enabling me to avoid trees and other obstructions with minimal effort. It was finally spring, I decided, smiling my half-smile at the blazing sun which was already starting to drive the chill from the morning air. Had it not been for the oppressive silence in the forest, it would almost be possible to convince myself that the Last War had been only a bad dream. But the absence of birds, which for some reason had been particularly hard hit by the Soviet nuke bac barrage, was a continual reminder to me. I had hoped that, by now, nearly five years after the holocaust, they would have made a comeback. Clearly, they had not, and I could only hope that enough had survived the missiles to eventually repopulate the continent. Somehow, it seemed the height of injustice for birds to die in a war over oil.

I had reached the weed-overgrown gravel road that lay southwest of my cabin and had started to cross it when a bit of color caught my eye. About fifty yards down the road, off to the side, was something that looked like a pile of old laundry. But I knew better; no one threw away clothes these days. Almost undoubtedly it was a body.

I regarded it, feeling my jaw tightening. I'd looked at far too many bodies in my lifetime, and my natural impulse was to continue across the road and forget what I'd seen. But someone had to check this out—find out whether it was a stranger or someone local, find out whether it had been a natural death or otherwise—and that someone might just as well be me. Aside from anything else, if there was a murderer running around loose, I wanted to know about it. I took a step toward the form, and as I did so my foot hit a small pile of gravel, scattering it noisily.

The “body” twitched and sat up abruptly, and I suddenly found myself looking at a strikingly lovely woman wrapped up to her chin in a blanket. “Who's there?” she called timidly, staring in my direction.

I froze in panic, waiting for her inevitable reaction to my face, and silently cursed myself for being so careless. It was far too late to run or even turn my head; she was looking straight at me.

But the expected look of horror never materialized. “Who's there?” she repeated, and only then did I notice that her gaze was actually a little to my right. Then I understood.

She was blind.

It says a lot for my sense of priorities that my first reaction was one of relief that she couldn't see me. Only then did it occur to me how cruelly rough postwar life must be for her with such a handicap. “It's all right,” I called out, starting forward again. “I won't hurt you.”

She turned slightly so that she was facing me—keying on my voice and footsteps, I presume—and waited until I had reached her before speaking again. “Can you tell me where I am? I'm trying to find a town called Hemlock.”

“You've got another five miles to go,” I told her. Up close, she wasn't as beautiful as I'd first thought. Her nose was a little too long and her face too angular; her figure—what I could see of it beneath the blanket and mismatched clothing—was thin instead of slender. But she was still nice-looking, and I felt emotions stirring within me which I thought had died years ago.

“Are there any doctors there?”

“Only a vet, but he does reasonably well with people, too.” I frowned, studying the fatigue in her face, something I'd assumed was just from her journey. Now I wasn't so sure. “Do you feel sick?”

“A little, maybe. But I mostly need the doctor for a friend who's up the road a few miles. We were traveling from Chilhowie and he came down with something.” A chill shook her body and she tightened her grip on the blanket.

I touched her forehead. She felt a little warm. “What were his symptoms?”

“Headache, fever, and a little nausea at first. That lasted about a day. Then his muscles started to hurt and he began to get dizzy spells. It wasn't more than an hour before he couldn't even stand up anymore. He told me to keep on going and see if I could find a doctor in Hemlock.”

“When did you leave him?”

“Yesterday afternoon. I walked most of the night, I think.”

I nodded grimly. “I'm afraid your friend is probably dead by now. I'm sorry.”

She looked stricken. “How do you know?”

“It sounds like a variant of one of the bacterial diseases the Russians hit us with in the war. It's kind of rare now, but it's still possible to catch it. And it works fast.”

Her whole body seemed to sag, and she closed her eyes. “I have to be sure. You might be wrong.”

“I'll go and check on him after we get you settled,” I assured her. “Come on.”

She let me help her to her feet, draping the blanket sari-style around her head and torso and retrieving the small satchel that seemed to be her only luggage. “Where are you taking me?”

That was a very good question, come to think of it. She wasn't going to make it to Hemlock without a lot more rest, and I sure wasn't going to carry her there. Besides, if she was carrying a Russian bug, I didn't want her going into the town anyway. Theoretically, she could wipe the place out. That left me exactly one alternative. “My cabin.”

“I see.”

I had never realized that two words, spoken in such a neutral tone, could hold that much information. “It's not what you think,” I assured her hastily, feeling an irrational urge to explain my motives. “If you're contagious, I can't let you go into town.”

“What about you?”

“I've already been exposed to you, so I've got nothing to lose. But I'm probably not in danger anyway—I've been immunized against a lot of these diseases.”

“Very handy. How'd you manage it?”

“I was in the second wave into Iran,” I explained, gently pulling her toward the slope leading to my cabin. She came passively. “They had us pretty well doped up against the stuff the Russians had hit the first wave with.”

We reached the edge of the road and started up. “Is it uphill all the way?” she asked tiredly.

“It's only a quarter mile,” I told her. “You can make it.”

We did, but just barely, and I had to half-carry her the last few yards. I put her on the old couch in the living room and then went and got the medical kit I'd taken when I cleared out of Atlanta just hours before the missiles started falling. She had a slight fever and a rapid pulse, but I couldn't tell whether or not that was from our climb. But if she'd really been exposed to one of those Sidewinder strains, I couldn't take any chances, so I gave her one of my last few broad-spectrum pills and told her to get some rest. She was obviously more fatigued than I'd realized, and was asleep almost before the pill reached her stomach.

I covered her with her blanket and then stood there looking at her for a moment, wondering why I was doing all this. I had long ago made the decision to isolate myself as much as possible from what was left of humanity, and up till now I'd done a pretty good job of it. I wasn't about to change that policy, either. This was only a temporary aberration, I told myself firmly; get her well and then send her to Hemlock where she could get a job. Picking up the medical kit, I went quietly out.

It was late afternoon when I returned with the single rabbit my assorted snares had caught. The girl was still asleep, but as I passed her on my way to the kitchen she stirred. “Hello?”

“Its just me,” I called back to her. I tossed the rabbit on the kitchen counter and returned through the swinging door to the living room. “How do you feel?”

“Very tired,” she said. “I woke up a couple of times while you were gone, but fell asleep again.”

“Any muscle aches or dizziness?”

“My leg muscles hurt some, but that's not surprising. Nothing else feels bad.” She sat up and shook her head experimentally. “I'm not dizzy, either.”

“Good. The tiredness is just a side effect of the medicine I gave you.” I sat down next to her, glad to get off my feet. “I think that you're going to be all right.”

She inhaled sharply. “Don! I almost forgot—did you get to him in time?”

I shook my head, forgetting how useless that gesture was. “I'm sorry. He was already dead when I found him. I buried him at the side of the road.”

Her sightless eyes closed, and a tear welled up under each eyelid. I wanted to put my arm around her and comfort her, but a part of me was still too nervous to try that. So I contented myself with resting my hand gently on her arm. “Was he your husband?” I asked after a moment.

She sniffed and shook her head. “He'd been my friend for the last three years. Sort of a protector and employer. I'll miss him.” She swallowed and took a deep, shuddering breath. “I'll be okay. Can I help you with anything?”

“No. All I want you to do right now is rest. I'll get dinner ready—I hope you like rabbit. Uh, by the way, my name's Neil Cameron.”

“I'm Heather Davis.”

“Nice to meet you. Look, why don't you lie down again. I'll call you when dinner's ready.”

Supper was a short, quiet affair. Heather was too groggy and depressed to say or eat much, and I was far too out of practice at dinner conversation to make up for it. So we ate roast rabbit and a couple of carrots from last summer's crop, and then, as the sun disappeared behind the Appalachians, I led her to my bedroom. She sat on the edge of the bed, a puzzled and wary look on her face, as I rummaged in my footlocker for another blanket. “You'll be more comfortable here,” I told her.

“I don't mind the couch,” she murmured in that neutral tone she'd used on me before.

“I insist.” I found the blanket and turned to face her. She was still sitting on the bed, her hands exploring the size and feel of the queen-size mattress. There was plenty of room there for two, and for a moment I was tempted. Instead, I took a step toward the door. “I've got another hour's worth of work to do,” I said. “Uh, the bathrooms out the door to the left—the faucets and toilet work, but easy on the water and don't flush unless it's necessary. If you need me tonight, just call. I'll be on the couch.”

Her face was lifted toward mine, and for a second I had the weird feeling she was studying my face. An illusion, of course. But whatever she heard in my voice apparently satisfied her, because she nodded wearily and climbed under the blanket.

Leaving the bedroom door open so I could hear her, I headed for the kitchen, tossing my blanket onto the couch as I passed it. I lit a candle against the growing darkness and, using the water from the solar-heated tank sparingly, I began to clean up the dinner dishes. And as I worked, not surprisingly, I thought about Heather Davis.

All the standard questions went through my mind—who was she, where did she come from, how had she survived for five years—but none of them was really uppermost in my mind. Five years of primitive hardship and self-imposed solitude should have pretty well wiped out my sex urge, or so I would have thought. But it was all coming back in a rush, and as my lust grew my thoughts became increasingly turbulent. I knew she would accept me into her bed—if not willingly, at least passively. In her position, she couldn't risk refusing me. Besides, I'd given her food and shelter and maybe saved her life. She owed me.

And then I glanced up, and all the passion left me like someone had pulled a plug. Reflecting dimly back at me from the kitchen window, framed by the bars I'd installed for security, was my face. I'd lived with it for over five years now, ever since the Soviet nerve gas barrage near Abadan that had somehow seeped through my mask, but it still made me shudder. The reactions of other people were even worse, ranging from wide-eyed stares to gasps of horror, the latter especially common among women and children. Frozen by some trick of the gas into a tortured grimace, the left side of my face looked more like a fright mask than like anything human; the right side, normal except for three parallel scars from a mortar fragment, only made the other half look worse. My hair and beard followed the same pattern: a normal chestnut brown on the right, pure white on the left. And if all that weren't enough, there was my left eye; mobile and still with perfect vision, it had turned from brown to a pale yellow, and sometimes seemed to glow in the dark.

I stared at my reflection for a long minute before returning to my work. No, I couldn't take advantage of Heather's blindness that way. It would be unfair of me to go to bed with her when she couldn't tell how horrible I looked. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I was aware that this was the same argument, in reverse, that I used to avoid approaching any of the sighted girls in Hemlock, but that was irrelevant. The discussion was closed.