The D’neeran Factor (34 page)

The Fleet, rather early in the night, had issued a directive that none of its personnel were to allow themselves to be taken alive by the aliens. Certain other things had been accomplished also, more to the immediate point. Fleet vessels were leaving D'neera and streaming back to the Polity worlds, for now an attack could come at any point. They left behind a contingent of some two hundred Polity troops who descended upon Koroth and quietly took over. No one was hurt, but the soldiers were armed and alert, and no one who
was at the House left it, and no one came in. Their commander did not bother with diplomacy, and the word “occupation” was used freely. In the unlikely event that Hanna managed to come undetected to the city, she would not be able to shelter in her home. There was a scant possibility, Jameson thought, that she would go there, and the troops were ordered not to harm her if she did.

“Because,” he said to Peter Struzik some hours after the occupation began, “if she goes home it will mean she has some measure of control. That is not where the alien wants to go. And, of course, if it's at all possible she must be taken alive.”

Struzik appeared to be standing in Jameson's office, but he was in his own suite. It was only a few hundred meters away, but Struzik was lazy. There was a petulant look on his face. He said, however, “You've been right so far. I suppose you're right about that.”

Jameson held his tongue. Not the least of his concerns this night had been making it clear to the Commission, to his own government, and to Fleet how right he had been; how wrong, by extension, others had been. He had gone after Morisz with a savagery that surprised even him. Somebody would have to pay for the events of this night, and Jameson did not intend for it to be himself. The unfortunate Morisz, responsible for Visharta's stupidity, was handy. A long and honorable career was about to end in disgrace. Jameson, without vindictiveness, motivated by pure self-preservation, would make sure of it.

Struzik said, “Anyway, it's done. One down.”

He meant one point in the plan he and Jameson and the others had hammered out in the hours since Hanna's escape. So far they had met no serious opposition; not because any of them were loved, especially not now, but because they had a formidable weapon in reserve. They had not formally declared a state of emergency. If they did their power in the Polity worlds would be frightening. They would have the power in theory, at least; no past Commission had ever invoked emergency rights, and who knew what the reaction would be in practice? Not even Jameson wanted to find out—though it might be something to be one-sixth of a god.

His office was very quiet. There seemed to be a great
deal of noise in his head, however. Some of it was left over from the frantic activity of the past hours, but some of it was the echo of Hanna's pleas. He said, to shut it out, “Let's have a quick review, Peter.”

“All right,” Struzik said discontentedly. He began ticking items off on his fingers. “Defense. Saturation of the Polity. Steinmetz is still working out the details. The non-Polity worlds are getting the idea something's wrong. Nothing's leaked from here or D'neera yet, as far as I know, but they're starting to get worried. Their reps'll have to be briefed pretty thoroughly and pretty soon. Search. Steinmetz wants a dozen vessels searching
Endeavor
's route—”

“Nonsense.” Jameson did not pound his desk. He would save that for Steinmetz.

“If we don't search,” Struzik said reasonably, “how are we going to explain not trying?”

“We've got to give the appearance of trying, but I see no reason to waste more than one or two ships on a hopeless task. I dislike tying up even one.”

Struzik had liked the idea of a search from the beginning. He said, “Well, it
is
a clear interface between us and them.”

“An interface many light-years long, where Hanna may be lost effectively as a single drop of water in the sea. There is an infinite volume of space in any direction from it, which Species X may have explored though we have not.”

“The rendezvous must be a pretty recognizable point—”

“There are thousands of easily recognizable points. Peter, it is a truism of space flight that an interstellar vessel is simply invisible unless it wishes to be found. In effect, it's just not there. And suppose there is no rendezvous? Suppose she goes straight to their homeworld? No, Peter. I'll talk to Steinmetz.”

Struzik gave up. “Public information. Are we ready?”

“Nowhere near it.” Jameson looked away from Struzik. A gray day at last grew over the gray ice. Plenty of expert propagandists had been working hard all night, but he did not think they would concoct anything that would soothe the public. Hanna's possession and escape could not be kept secret, not with D'neera involved. The prospect of warfare would be terrifying enough to a population largely free of it for centuries. The revelation of what Species X could
do—what they had done with Hanna—would rouse the latent xenophobia of a whole species. Plans for martial law were being updated everywhere.

“Koroth,” Struzik said, and Jameson looked back at him quickly, waiting for news. But Struzik only said, “Still no physical resistance. They're talking our people's ears off, though. Lady Koroth's hopping mad.”

“I can imagine.”

“Why won't you talk to her?”

“I am the wrong person to talk to Lady Koroth.”

“She thinks you're the right person. As you know,” Struzik said pointedly, “she has talked to
me.
And to Andrella. And to Muammed and Katherine. At length.”

“Not Arthur?”

“Not Arthur. But she really,
really
wants to talk to you.”

“I'm sure she does.” On a panel out of Struzik's sight, a light had been blinking all night. Lady Koroth was waiting. If he pressed a key and said “Fourteen” she would be there.

“What else, Peter?”

“That's it, for now.”

“All right. We meet in an hour. I'll talk to you then.”

Struzik vanished. Jameson looked at the winking light. Other, more productive lights were flashing too. He wondered what Lady Koroth had ever expected; wondered if she had thought she could move D'neera into the tumultuous mainstream of human history without paying for it. The price, it was true, seemed high.

He also wondered what she wanted so badly to say to him. He knew Andrella Murphy had told her of Hanna's escape; did she want to speak to him of Koroth? Or of Hanna?

He discovered then that his reluctance to face her was rooted in the latter possibility; and with the thought he touched the key and said “Fourteen,” and a video screen came to life and floated into position before him.

He did not see Iledra at once. He saw a shadowed room, a burst of light near the video pickup, more light farther away, a window open to white daylight. It was late afternoon there; snowing, someone had said. The shadows were a tunnel between the two lights and in it, suddenly, Iledra appeared. She came closer quickly. The nearer light fell on her face, and he saw it was cold as the snowlight.

She came as close as she possibly could, as if a hands-breadth
mattered in the light-years between them. Her eyes were swollen, and her sleek fair hair was disarranged for the first time in Jameson's experience. He recognized instantly that Struzik was wrong, or the reports he quoted stale. There was more than anger here.

She said without preamble, voice hard, jaw hard, “I want you to tell me about H'ana.”

For a moment he had felt kinship with her, which had something to do with Hanna, but it was gone. He said, “There is nothing to say you have not already heard. I know Tharan has told you of all the questions she answered, and those she did not answer. This is the final answer. This somehow was the reason for what was done to her, the one thing she could not remember. They made her over in their image.”

“You saw her. You spoke to her. I do not believe she could be controlled as completely as I am told.”

“Believe it,” he said. “If you'd seen her face when she attacked me—”

“You don't know her.” The woman actually clenched her teeth. “She is strong. Strong!”

He took a deep breath, for once disconcerted. He wondered fleetingly if Iledra had passed some endpoint of sanity. He said, “The alien persona, entity, whatever it is—it's very strong too.”

Iledra seemed not to have heard. “Why did she run from you?”

“It was
not
she,” he said emphatically. “It was the alien. I suppose its intention, when its work was done, was to get away from Earth as quickly as possible. Perhaps it was anxious to get to D'neera or just into space, where escape would be easier. But it found out I suspected its existence and knew I would not let it go. It had to escape then, or never.”

She stared at him, the gray eyes so sharp he wondered if she heard him thinking. He said, watching her face, “Lady Koroth, you said I don't know her. I think now she is a stranger to you too. When you spoke to her last, was she herself? You know she was not. She was fighting something she did not understand. She did not know she was fighting; but she sensed she was losing.”

Iledra looked at him with abhorrence. She said, “You are coming out of this very well.”

“Yes?” he said, taken aback.

“I think in the end the consensus will be that you are brilliant. That no one took you seriously enough, and the only man who did gave you an incompetent for backup.”

“Very true,” said Jameson, who had spent a good portion of the past hours encouraging just that point of view.

“I think you are mad. Mad to keep power. I think you would do anything to get your way.”

“You are entitled to your opinion,” he said quietly.

She made a sound in her throat that was almost a growl. She said, “I once thought to find in you an ally. I have found instead a creature that cares for nothing except its own ends. I forgot the lessons of my ancestors, who came here renouncing your ways. We are not experienced with the hidden motive, we D'neerans. We do not always love one another, but each of us knows what another is about. I don't have the habit of disbelief. When you spoke of your hopes to me and to H'ana, I believed you. I gave her to you for your ill-fated Project with some thought of the unity of man. I was a fool to trust you or any true-human.”

He should not be taking this from her or anyone, a personal attack that was at best a distorted reflection of reality. It was advisable to measure her enmity now, rather than wait for more drastic proof; but he had had enough. He was reaching for the key that would end it when she said, “You destroyed her. There is no difference between you and the aliens.”

He should not answer at all. But he said as if compelled, “She made her own choices.”

She said venomously, “Choices! Her choices have been those you gave her, or drove her to. Ruin and suffering and the waste of a life precious to me as my own—she was lost, and she wanted to come home. She only wanted to come home!”

He saw the anguish behind her fury, and understood. No one had to tell her some of Hanna's choices had been made by her Lady. He said, because it would be easier for Iledra if she could believe it, “She was not herself even when she told you that. The woman you knew as Hanna may no longer have a real existence.”

“You can't mean that! When I am told she might have killed you, and refrained—”

“But she is gone,” he said. “If she comes to you I will admit she has some measure of control, or if she returns here—”

“Returns! She would never go back to you. She was escaping from you!”

“The alien—”

“There is more to it than that,” Iledra said. Her eyes glittered.

“No,” he said, impassive from long habit.

“I think you are lying.”

He said deliberately, “She struggled and lost. The path she made in the short time she was on foot looked as if she had been fighting a physical entity. I'm sorry. But those are the facts and you must accept them.”

“I don't believe you. I saw her heart before she went away. It was turning toward you. She would have turned to you in her pain. What did you do?”

He cut her off, with finality. “Nothing.”

“She was running from you.
She,
not the alien.”

“No. Good-bye, Lady Koroth.”

He closed the call without ceremony and was still for some time, staring into space. The guess was too close for his liking. Iledra could not know of his promise to Hanna that she would be safe, and her pleas when she knew he had lied. Iledra could not know he had taken Hanna in his arms and comforted her—and then put her away. Several people knew of that intimate little scene, to his profound discomfort, but none of them would have described it to Lady Koroth, not even Andrella.

And if someone did, what did it matter? His only mistake, he was told, lay in having been too kind. He should have had Visharta knock her out as she clung to him.

Oh, hell, he thought. If I had it to do over again that's the only thing I would change. Otherwise I'd do the same damn thing. There was nothing else to do.

He reached for the key that would call Rodrigues so he could get on with his job: Steinmetz next, another commission meeting, another attempt to get heedless F'thal to understand the danger. But he paused at a last thought of Hanna, words Iledra had used: the waste.

For an instant he saw clearly the woman Hanna had been becoming. Wonder had outweighed her fear, until she saw a new danger in him. She had had a chance to kill him after that, and warned him instead, with passionate concern. And then made a clean, straight escape, with that thing in her head and the hounds close behind her.

The waste, he thought. The waste.

After a while his hand descended, and Rodrigues said, “Yes, sir?”

“Steinmetz,” he said, and leaned back to wait, thinking rigorously of organization.