The D’neeran Factor (22 page)

She whispered, “I cannot tell you anything,” and it took the negative from her terrified thought.

It said confidently:
You will.

It also heard her incredulous question—why pain?—and answered:
Will strength and spirit must end thus ending birth of the beast.

What it meant had nothing to do with questions. But when she tried to see the meaning, it added:
Thought is chaos, drugged thought worse, lest shaped by will. You will shape it as I ask until will fails.

I will not.

You will.

She licked her dry lips and thought:
You will kill me. You know not my physical being.

We do know. We have met not-People, the treecubs, before. Not like you; not outward-bound in space; lost, their ancestors abandoned. How did this happen?

It showed her a handful of people, half-primitive, half-sophisticated, settled in mist yet adrift as an uncaptured moon. Distracted by wonder, she thought:
There is a story that when my ancestors began to go into space, for a time small groups went from star to star and of some all traces were lost; yet some survived. I did not think it true.

It is true.

It turned away and she tried to understand. A Lost World was real. Myth was truth. Had been truth. She thought: the humans they
knew.
They are all dead.

Accumulated shock made an abyss and for a little while she fell through it. All the universe had changed in these few moments and there would never be a foothold again. She would not need footholds; the dead do not need them. When this thought crystallized into certainty she saw The Questioner had returned. It showed her and explained to her a picture in its thoughts. It said:
Do you know this instrument?

I know. I know in shame. I know.

She had not seen a neural stimulator that looked like this before, a square of silvery fabric, but she knew its principle. Her experience of it had not been pain, and the being added that knowledge to its store.

It looked away from her. It said:
My companion is the Questioner's Assistant.

Hanna turned her head and saw the other one coming toward her with the shining cloth. It thought of triumphs and transformations. The questions it would ask were secondary. Hanna did not understand and did not care. Her mouth was dry. The neural stimulator could cause excruciating pain, and although it did not damage tissue directly, the indirect effects were frightful. Convulsions of agony, she had heard, could tear muscles, break bones.

There would not be time to think about this or decide what to do, if there was anything left to do. Endure, said the deep voice of instinct. It was hard to hear past the clamoring crowd of things she did not want to give up. Protect, it said. Endure.

The Questioner said:
Show me the space of your Home.

The image was strange and shadowed and wrapped in on itself, but Hanna understood. She said:
I
will not tell you.

The Questioner's Assistant stood over her for a long moment, perhaps reviewing its knowledge of human anatomy. Then it leaned over and carefully molded the gauze over her belly.

The Questioner thought to a hidden control, and she screamed.

*   *   *

Tonight Henriette had worn a pale golden gown that glowed where it touched her skin. It lay near her now on the thick soft carpet, still shining a little with its own light. Henriette, chin propped on hands, looked up at Jameson in a way he knew well.

“Now?” she said, and he smiled at her from his chair.

“In a little while,” he said.

“It's almost four in the morning. I have to go home and start working in a few hours. You just mean you're still too high.”

“Possibly. Possibly.”

But it was only that he had no inclination to move for any reason. Moments when the universe was orderly and forgiving of pleasure were rare, and he was balanced now between pleasure past and pleasure future. Henriette, who was now future, would be present. Soon. Whenever he wished…

The Imagos in his blood was living up to its name. Nothing had disturbed his weekend on the waters of the rich and wind-chopped bay, and its blinding blue and gold still framed Henriette's long graceful body. When he closed his eyes the bowl of scarlet roses at his elbow drifted before him, and everything was heavy with their scent. In a few days he would go home to Heartworld, his first visit in several months. The great Siberian tigers flourished there under greenleaf skies, not knowing and not caring by how narrow a margin they had escaped extinction. He thought he saw Henriette's gown stir and become sunlight dappling pale fur. He felt the shaft of a spear in his hand, and forgot for a moment that he was no longer young enough or foolish enough to hunt tigers with the spear only.

He got up with a sigh and pulled Henriette to her feet and against him. Her hands moved on his back, and he felt
a tremor begin in her thighs almost at once. It was one of the things he liked about Henriette.

In his ear Rodrigues's voice said clearly, “Priority one,” and followed it up with a series of tones guaranteed to wake him if he were half-dead.

He cursed the transmitter implant violently. Henriette said, “Oh, no!”

“House! Tell Rodrigues to shut up!” The noise stopped. He said, “Be a good girl and get some clothes on, and bring me the Imagos antidote, would you?”

Tucked away behind an elegant bronzewood door was a private communications center. He disliked using it; it was a cold reminder that chaos was no respecter of his working hours. It would not open for anyone but him, and required palm, voice, and retinal identification. He gave it a slap, a curse, and a glare; there were certain liberties one could take with machines. Inside the lights were too bright, and a sharp reflection from somewhere shaped itself into a spearpoint before his eyes.

He said, “All right, Paul,” and blinked to focus the other man's face.

Rodrigues said without preamble, “Anja Daru and Charl Zeig are dead.
XS-12
is out of contact.” His face changed briefly to something else and back again. Jameson ignored it.

“What happened? Oh—”

Henriette was back. She injected the Imagos antidote with practiced fingers. She's used to this, he thought.

“Out,” he said, and made sure the door locked behind her.

Rodrigues said, “Apparently Zeig and Daru died about two hours ago. I tried raising
XS-12
myself, no luck. I got General Steinmetz out of bed and he's got Fleet Communications trying.”

“How did you find out about it?”

“Lady Koroth. D'neerans know when somebody they're close to dies, you know. She got a call from Daru's current, uh, spouse? He'd already been in touch with some of her other relations and they all thought she was gone. Lady Koroth then talked with Zeig's mother—same thing was going on in his circle. It took her a while to get to me. Central didn't know what to do and passed her on to Martinson first, and he put her through to me.”

Jameson's head was clearing. He let the blue-and-gold go without regret. He said, “Has there been any alarm from
XS-12?
”

Rodrigues shook his head. “They checked in Sunday morning as usual—twenty-two hours ago now. Nothing to report. No contact since.”

“Have you still got Lady Koroth holding?”

“Yes. I thought you'd want to talk to her.”

“I do. Get back to Steinmetz and see if he's having any luck. If he's not, get on to the Commission. Let me talk to Lady Koroth.”

It was midday at Koroth. Iledra, who must have been jolted hard by the news, appeared calm, but the younger woman at her shoulder looked anxious. Cosma ril-Koroth: Jameson remembered she was likely to be Iledra's heir if anything happened to Hanna.

He bit back the obvious question and said instead, “Rodrigues has filled me in. Did he tell you he's been trying to reach
XS-12?
”

“No, he didn't. We have not tried. It would go through Central, and be stopped. He has had no answer?”

“We're still working on it. Tell me what happened.”

It was only a more detailed account of what Rodrigues had told him. She recited it with precision, filling in names, times, circumstances, but she moved restlessly as she did so and once Cosma touched her hand. When she finished he said finally, “You have no reason to think Lady Hanna also is dead?”

“None. I would know; so would her parents and cousins. I've spoken with them, too.”

Jameson found it hard to picture Hanna with a family. She had grown up with her mother, he remembered, but likely had been close to her father; such relationships were common on D'neera. “Cousins” could be siblings or half-siblings or entirely unrelated people with whom one had intimate ties; D'neerans often did not distinguish among the categories.

He said, “Would you know if she were injured? Unable to respond to us, for example?”

“Probably not. It's nearly always clear and unmistakable when someone you love ceases to exist, no matter where they are. You seldom know of any trauma short of that, unless they're close at hand. It sometimes happens; not often.”

“All right.” The antidote had taken full effect now. He did not have to think about what to do next. “Unless we get some word from her in the next few minutes I'm going to get a search underway.”

“There is already a D'neeran ship on the way. Estimated time of arrival is seventy-two hours.”

Jameson blinked, taken by surprise. She was not supposed to know
XS-12
's location. He remembered Hanna's insistence on finding it out. She must have passed it on before she left Earth, probably without even thinking of security. It could not be undone, however. He said, dismissing it, “We'll have something there sooner. Can you keep this quiet until we know more?”

“No.”

There was no point in arguing about it. He could exert little influence on D'neeran public information policy. But it meant the news would be known on other human worlds in a few hours, and he would have to deal with that problem sooner than he would have liked.

He closed the call and paused, thinking. Hanna had not known, and Lady Koroth could not know, that
XS-12
had not been entirely unsupported. Sadam Aziz Khan in the Fleet warship
Mao Tse-Tung
was hours away. Clearly the communications blackout no longer was necessary. Better check with Steinmetz and get the
Mao
moving.

It was fruitless to consider what this disaster would mean to him personally. If
XS-12
had only blown up by itself it would not be so bad. If the aliens had something to do with it it would be the worst crisis for humanity since the plague years of the twenty-fourth century. And there would have to be a scapegoat, and he would be it. He would be lucky to end up an assistant to some village mayor in the wilderness; very lucky.

It was going to be a bad Monday.

*   *   *

The Questioner's Assistant shoved a nipple against her mouth, but it was still too short a time since the last red bout of pain, and the water dribbled unnoticed onto the tabletop, already slick with her body fluids. She could not scream any longer and her right arm, broken in some massive convulsion, hurt all the time now. Her body twitched and jerked uncontrollably even when they were not doing anything to her.

Her mind began to work a little again in a slow daze. She licked a drop of water from her lips with painful concentration. Her vision cleared for a moment and beyond the scarlet shape of The Questioner she saw others like him. They were not even trying to block out her pain; they were drawn to it, hungered for it, ate it, absorbed it. Always outside her own agony she felt their gluttonous satisfaction, and sometimes, dimly, savage flashes of joy and ancient victory.

When she could think—less often now—she knew it was impossible. Everyone knew it was impossible. She had accepted unquestioning the common wisdom that star-traveling aliens could not do things like this, that xenophobes do not take to the stars, that compassion and intelligence are inextricably linked. No telepath would know her suffering without sharing it, nor disbelieve her assurance of harmless intent. She had said so in “Sentience.” She did not think she would live to write a retraction.

The Questioner saw her limbs quiet, and felt the fog clear from her thought. He said (she knew now it was “he”):
Where in misted stars do the unPeople lair?

The thought was a glimpse of bloody fangs, and she shook her head weakly. A hank of sweat-soaked hair clung to her cheek.

We are not beasts, but People like yourselves.

With what arms would the not-People kill us?

It was utterly and absolutely impossible to avoid telling him something. Her perception of each question carried a partial answer within itself. The common barriers of her kind, which were all she knew, were nothing to The Questioner. She did not even have the privilege of thinking of the meaning of her death; there was nothing safe to think of for distraction.

Therefore she counted; did sums, remembered logarithms, cherished listings of the elements; that was all they would get, unless pain broke her. This death was slow and hard and worse than anything she had ever imagined, but she thought it could be endured. She was stubborn, adamant. Such qualities had given her trouble in life; they would serve her well in dying. The core of her was strong and inviolate. As long as it stayed so, she could keep silence. And no matter what they dripped into her veins to keep her alive, sometime she would die.

The Questioner said:
This tool has other uses.

She knew that. She remembered them very well, from one riotous trip to Valentine that had left her shaken and unsure and forced to the conclusion that D'neeran sexual mores, notoriously flexible, had their own rigorous limits for her.

She thought the being was going to try bribing her with pleasure, since pain so far had failed. It made her angry; but that would not work, either.