The D’neeran Factor (74 page)

He hesitated, replaying the blur of violence. He said slowly, “There was another one holding a disruptor on her. She got it away from him and killed him. I was starting to fire at B. But she was going to kill him. So I stunned her first. It was
that
close.” He held up two fingers close together. “And while I was doing that, B jumped back in the ship. And then she almost got me before I stunned her again. Shen, there's something wrong with the power pack in that gun. I shouldn't have had to hit her twice.”

Shen said, “Recruit her.”

“One of his monsters? You don't know what you're talking about.”

Shen shrugged. Michael got up and said, “I'm going to go see if Theo's got her up to talking.”

“Need help?”

“Maybe later. Somebody'd better stay here for a while.”

He had not told Theo where to take the woman. There was a medlab on
GeeGee,
as sophisticated as everything else on this ship. He went there first; when he opened the door the equipment hummed at him, but no one was there. He went to the two unoccupied staterooms, to Theo's room, and to the smaller quarters over the engineering section before he decided that he should have asked
GeeGee
in the first place where Theo had gone. Now there were not many
places left, and he went to his own cabin with some indignation.

He went in and said bitterly, “What's she doing here? Bleeding on my bed.”

“It was the first one I got to,” Theo said simply. He stood by the bed and peered at a reader in his hand, scowling. A scanner pointed at the woman's right side, looking more deadly than helpful. A tube in her left arm snaked across the bed and out of sight. Half a dozen metal cases of varying sizes littered the bed, some talking quietly to themselves. Theo had cut away what passed for the woman's clothes. The bruises ran into one another, except in one place. Michael said, “Nice of them to leave her jaw alone,” and the body twitched for the first time, startling him. He said, “Can she talk yet?”

“No.”

“How long?”

Theo looked up and shook his head. His eyes were watchful. Michael cocked his head and said, “You can't talk either?”

Theo said in an odd voice, “Maybe in a few days.”

“You can do better than that.”

Theo braced himself. “Her temperature's forty-two-point-four. That's critical. She's got broken bones. She's dehydrated and I don't know how long it's been since she had any nourishment. She might be dying.”

“There's heavy life support in the lab.”

“I don't know how to use it. I never got that far with the courses. You know that.”

“Then I want you to wake her up now. I can't talk to her if she's dead.”

“If I juice her nervous system now, she could be dead in an hour.”

The reader trembled in Theo's hand. Michael said experimentally, “I'm going to talk to her. That's what I want. Wake her up and the hell with it.”

“No,” said Theo. It was barely audible.

After a while Michael sat down on the bed and rummaged in one of the metal cases. He found a pouch and opened it and took out the saturated pad inside. He began swabbing the woman's bruised face. “I liked you better when you were a worm,” he said.

Theo took a deep breath. He started talking, not quite in a normal voice. “She's got Dawkins' fever. I don't know how she could, but she does. She's got two broken ribs. I'll have to go in. I'll need your help. Shen's, too, probably.”

“Blood all over my bed.”

“There won't be much blood. That's the other thing, her blood. I can't make any sense out of it. I'll have to take some to the lab where there's more to work with. Somebody has to stay with her.”

“All right. I will.”

Theo was silent for so long that Michael finally looked up. He said, “What's wrong with that?”

“It's just—look at her. Think she got that way falling downstairs?”

“I won't hurt her,” Michael said, shocked.

Theo said, “You haven't been yourself lately.”

“So tell me something new—” He waited a minute to make sure his voice would be steady. “Consider me under orders. Just tell me what to do.”

Theo looked into his eyes and relaxed. He said, “Keep doing what you're doing. Stay away from the right side. I don't want accelerated healing there till I've done the bones. Don't worry if she wakes up. There's no pain in the side, I took care of that, and what you're doing will block out the rest.” He started out with a vial of something red in his hand. At the door he said over his shoulder, as an afterthought, “I think she might have been raped, too.”

When Theo was gone the room was quiet, except for the boxes talking to each other. Michael touched the woman's side; the flesh had a spongy feel. How could he ever have thought of beating her? She wouldn't be the first terrorized innocent to escape from B.

The full impact of the possibility hit him; he dropped the swab and was still. When some time had passed, quite a lot of time, he felt heat under his hand. He looked at it and saw that it was cupped about the woman's cheek. Her skin was on fire.

He found a fresh swab and went on with the job very gently. When he touched her thighs, her eyes opened and she made the first sound of protest he had heard.

“It's all right,” he said. “I'm just trying to help you. That's the only reason I'd touch you.”

Her eyes focused on his face. He did not know if she had understood. He leaned closer to her and said softly, “Don't worry. We don't do things like that here. It's different here.”

She understood that time. She looked at him with intelligence; he might have said with recognition, if that were possible. Her lips parted and she said something he would not have heard if he had not been so close. It was:
“Not much improvement.”

He drew back and stared at her with astonishment, and then with appreciation. He said, “Look, I've got enough consciences hanging around here. I don't need another one.”

He thought she said something else, but her lips did not move and he did not know what the word was. He almost thought she had thrown a giant question mark into the air. That was impossible, too.

“What was that?” he said, but her eyes were closed again, and he did not think she heard him any more.

B returns to Revenge with caution. Sweeps land and sky for a trace of technology beyond that used by the People of the Rose. The other ship has gone. They hunt down Elder Rann again; the city prays and quakes. Rann cannot talk fast enough. “A golden ship, a man with a companion, he called himself your friend
—
”

B has a visual on the marauder. Enhanced, it shows name and registration clear on the bow. The
Golden Girl
out of Valentine. Who is her master?

Theo said, “You have to clean up.”

“Huh?”

“Nobody comes in my surgery that dirty.”

“You never had a surgery.”

“I do now.”

The picture of what was happening on Revenge faded. It was accurate; Michael was as sure of that as if he were there.

He said, “She's dirtier than I am.”

“Shen's going to clean her up.”

“My bathroom looks like a biosyn supply house. Thanks to you.”

“Use mine.”

Theo was implacable. Michael looked at him quizzically. He said, “Sure you're up to this?”

“It's not that hard.” To Michael's surprise Theo blushed. He said, “I was pretty good, you know. Before I got thrown out. I can handle this. But we ought to be heading home. She's really sick.”

“Before we go home I want to see what she says.”

“If she lives long enough to say anything, you mean. Look, I can only do so much. We need to head for Valentine and we need to get Rescue out for rendezvous. 'Cause I told you, I can't use the heavy stuff. And she might need to be on it real soon. If her heart stops.”

Michael looked at the face of the unconscious woman. It was less swollen, but she had not stirred again. He thought of her single-handed ruin of the plan that had almost succeeded. There was nothing to do but accept it. They could not go back to Revenge; B had heavy arms and was warned. He would watch the empty sky. There had been no time to think about the size of the disaster, the waste of two years' work, the hunt that should have ended on Revenge. So close. So goddamn close to the secret, the path that led back to the start.

“We have to do it all over again,” Michael said. But Theo did not know what he was talking about, so he said, “God knows where he'll turn up next. Maybe he'll go on Outside. It might be years before we pick up a trail—before I do. You're out if you want to be.”

Theo shook his head. “No.”

“Think about it.”

“I already know. I've been with you six years. Where would I go? I'll never do what I wanted to do, I doped it away. No med faculty in space'll let me back in. What would Shen do? Go back to Nestor? You're stuck with us. Mike, it's not as bad as you think. We can get something out of this woman. We have to keep her alive. Let me contact Rescue. Please. You said you were under orders.”

He was right. He was also anxious about Michael. Michael's face was treacherously transparent; he was desolate
and it showed. There were limits to what he wanted even Theo to see. He could not smile, not yet, but he rearranged his face somehow and Theo was relieved. He would have to fight the rest of it out later, when he was by himself.

*   *   *

He went to Control and called Rescue. He told a voice from Valentine there was a sick and injured woman, unidentified, aboard. Would Rescue pick her up? The voice balked.
GeeGee
was outside their customary range. They were shorthanded. Michael went on talking. He quoted regulations (making some up) and precedent. He appealed to humanity. Shen listened with a sneer and Lise, her interest caught, forgot to be afraid and came close and took his hand. Finally he did what he ought to have done at once. He reminded the voice who he was and mentioned a Valentine Ecomanager whom he knew personally. When it was over, he had what he wanted and Shen was as close to smiling as she ever got. “All right, all right,” he said. “I forgot the Kristofik theory of social structure.”

“What's that?” Lise said.

“Money always wins.”

“Ah,” she said, enlightened.

He gathered clean clothes and went to Theo's room, walking the corridor as if the stone of Revenge had gotten into his feet. The game he had played for the last two years was over. As soon as B knew who was after him, it would be a new game: not a private hunt but a private war. It would start soon. It might have started already.

The People of the Rose have no use for Inspace communication, but the relays come near Revenge, as on all norm-pattern routes in human space. The Interworld Fleet has sown relays like seed for centuries. B puts a query to a common-access information network. The request has low priority and traffic on the relays is heavy. Access is skewed by the demands of Fleet, which often commandeers great chunks of the system's capacity for an hour or a day. B waits.