The D’neeran Factor (129 page)

When the physician was gone she said to the child who was not present yet,
You'll be a handful, then.

The Polity's ship came to Theta and crossed into the relay system of human space, and Hanna spoke for the second and last time on that voyage. She asked for and got permission to contact her House, and, not meeting much resistance, resigned what remained of her tenuous position
there. Her son would not be a telepath, and D'neera was no place for a true-human.

After that, there was nothing to do but wait for the journey to be done.

It was summer when Hanna got to Earth. The year had come round and started again since she rested under a tree with Rubee and Awnlee. She was put into a medical center and continued to be silent until she was left alone in a room of her own. There were no windows and it was impossible to see the summer. She had acknowledged to herself that she would have to start talking sooner or later; when she tried the door, determined to walk out of the place, and found it locked, she thought she might have waited too long. But it opened suddenly from outside. She stared up in horror; it was too much like what had happened at the end on
GeeGee,
her mind slipped and she thought Michael would be there, his eyes a blaze of gold and sick to death. The vision passed; Starr Jameson stood in front of her. She leaned against him in relief. “Oh, you came,” she said.

“Your people at Koroth asked me to. Come on, then,” he said.

So she finally came back to his house, the new weight in her belly making her steps nervous, though the swelling was scarcely visible yet. It was not a homecoming, but at least she could talk to Jameson, because it seemed that she had known him all her life, and he was not new as Michael had been, but a constant. All the same, she was slow to find her voice. She had been at Jameson's house for a week before it returned. One evening just at dusk he came to her and suggested they sit in the garden. She went outdoors for the first time since coming here, and was overwhelmed. On spaceships the air had all the life filtered out of it, and no wind ever moved. The garden on this summer evening was fragrant; there were grasses and leaves and flowers to smell. A breeze pressed against her skin, and moonlight made everything silver and black. She was dizzy with the night. Questions crowded to the end of her tongue. She tried to hold them back; to ask them, to be answered, to hear new things, would be to start living again. She had thought herself unready to do it. But she had promised. The child growing under her heart was proof of that.

And then she could not hold it back any longer.
“What happened?” she said. “I don't know anything. What happened to Theo? To Lise? To Shen?”

“It's too early for anything to happen. Nothing's happened,” Jameson said. “You nearly cost me Contact; don't you want to hear about that?”

“No. I don't care,” Hanna said, feeling an enormous relief. Jameson would not change. Some things remained predictable. “What's going to happen to them, then?”

“Probably nothing,” he said. “They're not very important any more, in the view of I&S. They'll soon be free to do whatever they like.”

But they'll have to learn to live without Mike,
she wanted to say, but instead, as still sometimes happened, a fit of sobbing overtook her, and now that she wanted to talk she could not do it. They were sitting at a table and she put her head down and felt the cool wood against her cheek. Jameson came closer and began to rub her back, and she turned and pressed her face against him. When she could talk, she said, “We could have gotten away. He stayed in Croft and stayed and stayed and I tried to get him to leave. I tried so hard.”

“I know,” he said.

“You can't know. I didn't tell anybody.”

“Jadinow was there. Unlike you, he was willing to tell the story. I heard about it from the reports that came back with you.”

“You know everything, then…” Because the others had seen everything—except for that last night on the mountainside. She had not been able to think about it consciously, though she had dreamed about it, as if the erotic bond that held her to Michael had reached its flowering then. She supposed her son would be a permanent reminder of that night; she supposed that was when it had happened.

Jameson dropped to the ground by Hanna's chair, an unaccustomed pose. He looked out into the night as if he were waiting to fend off whatever came out of it. There were thoughts she had not let herself think because it had not seemed safe to have them. They came on irresistably as speech, as the smell of the grass.

“I
told
him so,” she said. “I told him it was dangerous to go there the way we did. I told him so!”

“I expect he knew,” Jameson said. “He was not a stupid man.”

“But it was stupid to stay so long in Croft. Stupid!”

Jameson still looked into the dark, though the moonlight must blind him to whatever waited there. “I was not surprised to learn you had gone to Uskos,” he said. “I rather thought you would, after the failure at D'neera.”

He was starting for some point. Hanna waited.

“You had the necklace,” he said. “I worried about it. I mentioned it once or twice. Eventually I&S thought of it themselves, and finally approved the mission to Uskos. By the time it got there, you were gone.”

She repeated, “You mentioned the necklace once or twice. That we might go there.”

“Yes. Once, I think.”

“It's on record, of course. That you did warn them.”

“Of course. But they paid no attention. I knew they would not, if they were not reminded often. Daily, perhaps.”

“I wondered why no mission came…”

They were quiet, watching the moon climb. The silence went on until Hanna said very quietly, the words pushing themselves off her tongue, “Did Mike stay too long in Croft on purpose?”

“I've wondered,” Jameson said. “But why would he? His chances were good, after Uskos.”

“He never believed that,” she said. “He did kill that man so many years ago. In cold blood.”

“Did he?” Jameson said. He looked up, but it was hard to make out his expression in the ambiguous light.

“Was he right, then, not to believe?”

“He was probably right,” Jameson said. He added, “To wait was understandable, in that case. To seek a final confrontation. I suppose the decision was unconscious, or you would have known. But he risked your life, too. I cannot forgive him for that.”

She had no answer. Instead she said, “I dreamed you told me he had no center. It was before I even knew I loved him.”

“Well,” he said, “you do learn. Slowly, but you learn.”

He took her hand and held it, still watching the night, an unshakable guard. “What will you do next?” he asked.

“I don't know. I am truly homeless now.”

“You've seen too many deaths,” he said.

“I don't want to see any more!” It was awkward to lean
against him, crouched at her side as he was, but she managed it, bending to press her head to his shoulder. He reached around to touch her hair. He said, “I could give you only, some time too soon, another death.”

“I know,” she said. “That's no reason to withhold all the rest you could give.” But her hand rested on her belly, waiting for the quickening.

“You can stay here, you know,” he said. “Until you're ready to go.”

“I will. For a while.”

She had no worries about the means to live; Koroth would take care of its own. But where she should go after the child was born, and what else she should do with living, were different questions.

“I could go to Willow,” she said. “Or live on Uskos for a while; I've never met an Uskosian I didn't like. Or I could just travel, or…”

Her voice trailed away. It did not matter what she said. Something would come up. Something always came up.

Jameson said, “Your plans seem very uncertain.”

“What other kind is there?” she said.

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Novels of Science Fiction
by Terry A. Adams:

THE D'NEERAN FACTOR

(
Sentience | The Master of Chaos
)

BATTLEGROUND
*

*
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