The D’neeran Factor (39 page)

But Leader-in-her-thoughts was Leader too, and they paused to hear him, and he said:
I
do not think there is aught to fear, for We have claimed her.

Only Bladetree stirred uneasily, remembering personal
hatred. Hanna felt his movements clearly as those of her own body as Leader-in-her-thoughts made it rise. He/she wore the knife. He did not know it. She hid it from him though it lay at his very hand, and laughter bubbled deep within all that was still Hanna. She thought with pure joy of what she was going to do to Bladetree, if she had half a chance.

Bladetree said,
You are strong,
and fear lurked in their thought.

Yes, Hanna thought, but only to herself. As you will see.

I
am Leader. I am strong. I have been long alone, save for Wildfire.

Steersman said:
Docking is complete. I pressurize the bay.

The space filled with air that she and they could breathe. Pseudo-Leader waited, barely restraining himself, eager to run to their arms. A secondary hatch opened at last (the primary having been destroyed; he had not forgotten that) and he leapt from it lightly in his new body. Hanna looked with savage alien eyes on the alien ship. Pseudo-Leader climbed stairs, with some unsureness; the risers were made for longer legs than Hanna's.

True-Leader said suddenly:
Save for Wildfire. She colors this change.

Their attention shifted from pseudo-Leader. He passed through wavering passages whose bare-sketched living images leered distorted and the face of Sunrise transformed by stony fear made him stumble and—was forgotten. Did not exist. Had not happened.

He laughed. He did not know where the laughter came from.

True-Leader said:
In the work of the Students there was only negation of the Treecub, and identity. I do not understand this change.

Pseudo-Leader walked on. Hanna waited in shock. He was too close to truth; what if they regained the balance of their unity, and pursued Leader's doubt with all its force?

But the command chamber of the First Watchsetter approached and surrounded her, and the moment of danger passed when they saw her, and forgot fear in common wonder.

Hanna watched it, and waited for her moment.

*   *   *

Deep in Our thought, Leader's thought, not-his thought, since Steersman's alarm, was this body. Surely We knew it would be she. Yet We are unprepared, for its thought is Ours. And its wholeness is wonder, because We remember a mutilated carcass, and memory sickens Us. Nothing could have made Us believe it would live a day past Our disposal of it; nothing but her conviction, until she passed beyond hope of life, that she could be repaired; and despite Our conviction We think now We had not believed.

Their skill in killing We believed, for that was Our long-present fear. But how can Renders be so skilled in healing? How can their biological science so far surpass Ours?

She looks as she looked when first she came into Bladetree's hands, small and smooth and fragile and unharmed. But the destruction had been so great that now We think:

It stands before Us and it is cruel as the junction of two universes. The color of its eyes is impossible. We did not see that before. How can such a small thing be so dangerous? But it bears a Render's spirit or would if it were not displaced by Ours:

We must know these things,
it says,

these things!
We answer in awe, and are distracted: drift helpless and suspended in a vision of knowledge and techniques past all Our experience. Machines move and hum, glistening; fluid bathes unfeeling limbs and the transparent air glows with energy; the Treecubs move around Us, shaping Us; cells dutifully reform remembered patterns: the tiny flame of life, almost extinguished, swells and grows steady.

And before it is time, before We are ready, he says/We say/it says from the alien flesh:
I
will show you what We have learned.

There is an edge of anxiety and uncertainty in the thought and We do not see its source. We mill restless and wary in the chamber, the heart of the First Watchsetter. It seems there are not five of Us but six of Us, seven of Us, not
seven! The air is faintly acrid with Our odor. What does this mean? A life-support flaw?

A Student long-ago remembers and all of Us remember:
The disjunction of alien senses,
and We did not experience this before because then Wildfire's terror filled her and suppressed all else.

So this is right; but true-Leader says,
It is wrong.

The alien that is We looks at Us with impossible eyes and says:
You will not have to bear me long. When this is done you must kill me. How can I look on Sunrise through these eyes?

We tremble with many-edged grief for Hearthkeeper of Leader's Nearhome who is to true-Leader Sunrise, to pseudo-Leader Sunrise too, beautiful and unfailing as the dawn. His other self's loss is Leader's own. He is gone from Sunrise too long, and in this moment his longing is doubled, rebounding from pseudo-Leader and gaining strength each moment from each of Us:

Not sundered forever!
he thinks despairing,

but the other weeps,
forever,

and the chamber shatters and the air trembles and Sunrise appears but to each she is his own and longing overcomes Us; for Our bonding is endless and unchanging as the stars, and the unPeople's lack of it marks them beasts.

I did not mean to remember her!

Do not think of that!

We rock, are steadied, slowly make the vision fade. So slowly! Our weakness is greater, Our danger more each day. There can be no more storms of emotion. The bonds on which Our functioning depends cannot survive many more.

The alien body slumps in shared sorrow and apprehension. It says:
We must finish quickly.

Clearly it is right; its very presence disrupts Us.

In Our acknowledgment of its reasoning it crosses to Steersman's place. He moves aside and awkwardly it takes his seat. Wrongness nibbles at the edges of the aftermath of grief, but We cannot bring Our selves near it. The alien looks at an input bank and its confusion tugs and jerks at Us, distracting. It says apologetically:
I
cannot translate quickly from their terms. And this is not made for these hands.

At last the stunted paws (pretty hands) ill-made and
fumbling move (in lost grace) and symbols stand before Our blurred eyes. We crowd together and all of Us long-ago crowd closer too, watching Our hope (or destruction) Our fear; it is clear fear was right. The locus references are clear, starbeacons ineradicable. There will be no escape for the Treecubs, who can no longer hide from a hidden enemy and must wait for Our blow to fall.

Here is one world, their birthplace, bursting with life. In alien memory it glitters with snow.

Here a second, long-settled and nearly as strong and its name is the graceful soft name of a tree.

What have We to do with sounding names?

Lights glow with acknowledgment from Home. The vigil there is ending, the data pouring into the Generals' hands—

The alien hands falter. Wrongness gathers in corners like smoke.

We have no such function
—

We do but We do not. Something like it, since the Students' time; but not this; not quite. The new concept is pseudo-Leader's

contamination,
Bladetree says, and all of Us fall back in alarm.

The alien says through Our great uneasiness:
I
will show you how to translate the data in the human vessel
—

Human? What is Human?

—
a clear course program for these worlds
—

Its vision dazzles Us with wrongness—

—
while We sought them their power increased. Five Homes rich and powerful are their heart and the heart of danger
—

Five! We are frozen, the fear, the power, corruption, wrongness, aloneness resonating together. The fragile balance rocks. True-Leader struggles to anchor it:
Five but not that of the Wildfire-thing
—

And the alien says:
She might have been someone's Sunrise.

Sunrise among Us again is created from his/its/Our longing and caught in tumbling currents of grief and fear the alien throws back its alien head as at a mortal blow

I
did not think of her! It was not I!

Do not, do not!

When I am dead
—

Stop, stop!

you must tell her I loved her even in this form
—

*   *   *

The thought hurt them physically and sliced them in two. True-Leader, wrenched apart, existing twice, relinquished Sunrise to himself. He stumbled desperate toward the alien, reaching out, and the others reached for him, overcome with sorrow and altogether unbalanced with this last blow.

But pseudo-Leader's thought impossibly winked out, and the alien rose and reached for them too.

*   *   *

In that instant they understood the wrongness, the thing hovering behind this changed Leader, and the understanding was too late; the alien moved convulsively; something glittered in its hand; true-Leader's agony flared in his knowledge of certain death, and the knife ripped through flesh and membrane and all of them felt it, impaled and transfixed by horror. The alien was among them free and strong as rushing water, and Steersman stumbled toward the creature, fumbling at his belt, but he failed in the chaos of Leader's dying, and he also died. Then all of them were blinded, and it caught the weapon from Steersman as he fell, and killed Flametender and wounded Bladetree, and sprang for Bladetree with the knife while Apprentice sought to flee and could only crawl.

A weapon,
Apprentice thought,
I must get a weapon lest it escape.

But he could not, prisoned by the weakness of his kind and reeling in the dissolution of other minds dying without solace, the unbearable disruption of the last worst horror. And it took its time with Bladetree and Apprentice writhed with his agony, and Leader screamed both alive and dead and reality began to die about Apprentice. The corridors were a marsh in which he sank and drowned in hate. He clutched for support but there was none, the universe was ending, and he did not even know Hanna had come for him when she shot him in the back and he too died.

A
word drifted through the dark, half-transparent air, drawn out into many syllables and at first meaningless. Hanna saw clearly that it was a material and perhaps living thing.

It flared against the darkness; shortened, wavered, crystallized; settled into solid reality, and vanished.

Just before it disappeared it spoke. It said: “Blood.”

When it was gone time was uniformly gray and blank. Not even memory marked it.

Presently she saw that time was the gray flooring of the corridor, centimeters from her eyes; saw blood on it; saw that some was subtly lighter than the rest, and remembered.

The lighter patch was
her
blood.

She lay unmoving and watched a pageant of fantastic deaths behind her eyes.

Thus have you wrought…

Dreary droning voice from nowhere. Her own thought.

Presently she considered turning her head. To do it, or not to do it, was a most profound question.

At last, because her right arm hurt horribly, she moved. Her cheek was sticky and stung as it pulled loose from the floor. Her flesh was insubstantial, but it responded to her will.

Only yours only yours only yours!
cried the voice, and she shuddered and cringed from it.

Leader was dead. In her mind there was a whimpering where he had been. But he was dead. The whimpering did not stop.

Presently another word appeared. “Up,” it said. She clung to it, used it for support, climbed it slowly, and was sitting. It disappeared.

Apprentice's torn corpse lay near her. There was a gaping hole in his back; Steersman had been carrying a projectile weapon. The custom was associated with a past shadowed by Renders, which responded unpredictably to any defense save having big holes blown in them.

“No. No,” Hanna muttered. That bit of knowledge could not come from
anywhere.
They were all dead.

She stretched consciousness cautiously. The effort cost an almost physical pain. Nothing living met her. She reached inward and was empty, like this spacecraft, like the universe.

She preferred it to the frenzy of their dying, which had gone on for some time even when their bodies were certifiably dead and past reviving even with human techniques. It ought not to have been so much like the
Clara.
These things were not human. But the blackness was the same, and the wailing ghosts. She had thrown herself on the floor in shattering hysterics and clawed at her ears to shut them out. Her throat was raw from screaming. None of it did any good at all, and in the madness she had nearly died too.

Now it was finished, and to what end? Sunrise would wait forever, a whole Nearhome subject to her grief. That was all.

Hanna sat on the cold floor and looked inside her right forearm, which was on fire. It was clear true-Leader or Steersman had turned the knife back on her somehow, though she did not remember it. The wound was ugly, but it had missed the big veins and nearly stopped bleeding. Her whole arm hurt and was stiff, but she could use it.

Use it, she thought, for…

And quailed. She did not want to use it for anything. She wanted to lie down again and go to sleep, rejecting thought and purpose.

The whimpering went on and on and grew into a howl of pure and untainted despair. For a moment, in slow confusion, she looked at Apprentice's body; but he would never speak in thought again.

Leader still lived in her mind. He did not want her to stop. He did not want to die a second time.