The D’neeran Factor (79 page)

He had never ridden a horse in his life. He had never even seen one that was close enough to touch.

Theo pottered among the tubes and metal boxes. The light was dim now because Michael, waking, had tried weakly to shield his eyes, which were filmed and unfocused; he might have been drunk. Hanna's temperature was in a safe zone, but Theo worried over the incision, which had suffered in the tumult of her first panic. At intervals he asked Michael questions. “What's the name of this ship? What's your name? What's my name? Where do we live?” The answers were accurate, but they came slowly.

“I'm not crazy,” Michael said.

“Of course not.”

“I just feel a little funny.”

“Sure.”

“It's like double vision.”

“Really?”

“Or like—like being expanded.”

“Expanded,” Theo repeated with a glint in his eye.

He waited for more, but Michael shut up. He slouched by Hanna and stared at her. He knew more than how to ride a horse. He knew what it was like to communicate telepathically with an alien intelligence; he knew what F'thalians and Zeigans and Uskosians were like in ways his reading had never told him. He had a name for the hand that had striven with his for control of his life: the Master of Chaos. He knew what hid behind the library's portrait of Hanna. He knew what he looked like to her: half threat, half comforting guide.

There was a sound like the ocean in his ears.

Shen came to him and said, “She's better. Gonna live. Cancel Rescue?”

He looked at her helplessly. Somewhere in his slow brain he remembered learning something that made canceling Rescue a good idea. He could not remember what it was, though, and he said, “No.”

“She doesn't need 'em.”

“Does she?” he asked Theo.

“Need Rescue? Maybe not. I'd feel better if somebody else looked at her, though, and she's so weak she could get worse again, or get sick with something else. Anyway, you
said yourself we can't keep this quiet. She's got to be identified sooner or later.”

“Later!” Shen said.

“How long to rendezvous?” Michael said. He was dizzy.

“Two days now,” Theo said, “You slept a long time.”

Sleep still sounded good. “Stay on course,” he said.

Shen said, “Wish she'd died.”

“I don't.”

He eyed the space beside Hanna with longing. Lise said from the corner, “Wish she'd died.”

Emma Maurello was an assistant to Valentine's chief liaison official in Admin's External Trade Affairs Department. That department was a cell of a larger congeries that dealt with nuances of trade within and outside of the Polity. Somewhere there must be a clear organizational chart, but in two Standard years Emma had not found out to whom, in the long run, External Affairs answered. In any event Emma's offices ordinarily did not care. It was enough, said the transplanted citizens of Valentine in Liaison, to go along at a quiet clip, maintaining routine without expediting it unnecessarily. The work was easy, the surroundings comfortable, there was more talk of leisure than of work, and Emma lived a quiet life which had nothing disturbing in it.

Today was different. Today was an uproar. And Emma, when she had found out what it was about, got away. She slipped away from the towers of Admin, not without frequent glances over her shoulder; she skulked (or felt that she did) through the walkways, the parklands, the structures that housed services for Admin, to a public message center looming against the hazy autumn sky. Here she took a cubicle, placed a call to Valentine, and watched the charges mount against her credit. Private interstellar calls were expensive and Emma was not rich. There went a dress she coveted; there went all her luxuries for a week, and for another week—

She took her eyes from the racing figures. It was a hot morning, though in the fall of the year. The message center's environmental system was poorly programmed and the cubicle was hot, too, so that her hair stuck to the back of her neck. She looked anxiously behind her again, because
she was doing (or supposed she was doing) an illegal thing for the first time in her life.

In Shoreground it was (she remembered too late) the middle of the night. When Kareem Mar-Kize answered, there was no video and she knew from the sound of his voice that she had gotten him out of bed. He sounded as if she had better have a damn good reason for this.

“It's about Mike,” she said, and in the silence she heard the unspoken answer:
Reason enough.
Because her voice must give it away, and her face, which Mar-Kize could see though she could not see his.

She plunged into her story with no other preamble. Halfway through it he activated video and she saw the bronze face, the intelligent black eyes robbed of sleep. He asked questions. She answered them as best she could for her nervousness. She was not used to listening for footsteps behind, or waiting to be caught in an illegal act.

At the end he said, “Why are you telling me this?”

“Because I know Mike—”

She felt herself blush. Mar-Kize had been at Mike's house that night, must have seen some of the evening's long flirtation. Mike was not easy to get: as if she had ever thought in those terms before! As if she would! Finally the others left. She went with Mike into the garden, helped him extinguish the glittering starpoints of light in the big old trees, and he kissed her just as she began to think she would have to start it herself. They stayed outdoors. The sea pounded distantly, the wind sighed through the long night hours, the thick moss was soft on her bare skin. Near dawn she said, “I must go.” “Dear Emma, stay and rest. You've had no sleep.” But she went, not wanting to face the mid-day light later, the disinterested courtesy of the persons of his house, the amicable acceptance of the animals (who had come to the trees from time to time to see how they got on)—

“—very good of you,” Mar-Kize was saying.

“I can't believe he'd do what they say. Can you?”

“Good God, no. Does anyone know you've called me?”

“What? Oh. I don't think so, I'm at a public call center, I don't think I was followed or—they don't tap these places, do they?”

“Not routinely. Do they know you know Mike?”

“Everybody knows Mike. Don't they?”

“Seems like it. All right. Thank you. I'll try to get a message to him.”

“Can you? Do you think you can? The I&S people, I heard they said they've got the ship's access codes tagged, so if the relays pick up any transmission for Mike it can be stopped. Can you do it anyway?”

“I'll try,” Mar-Kize said neutrally, but Emma did not know how much hope he had.

The call was over. Emma sat in the heat, afraid to find out what it had cost her but not regretting it. It was the right thing. Even if the affair had been brief, even if Mike had not been her lover for long; because better than that, he was her friend.

A hand fell on her shoulder, and when she looked up she was more afraid than she had known she could be. The man behind her wore the uniform of Admin Security. Behind him was a woman, not uniformed but with the look of I&S; and behind the woman was a robot with a Domestic Enforcement patch where its head should be. It was the end of Emma's future.
Maybe Mike will give me a job.

She went with them without protesting. She thought that if she were docile, what happened to her could not be as bad as anything that would happen if she fought.

She was wrong.

*   *   *

Kareem Mar-Kize placed Emma when the call was finished, not before. He had met her at one of the parties Mike occasionally gave for a handful of old friends and new acquaintances. Maurello was one of the recent acquaintances. She had had a hard time keeping her eyes off Mike; that was not unusual, though hers was a worse case than most. What was unusual was Mike's response. It was (Kareem had decided then) sweet innocence that did the trick. Mike was adept at dodging the predators, the sophisticates with hungry eyes, but Emma had made him helpless for a while.

Kareem's wife, who had waked near the end of the conversation, said, “What's wrong?”

“Mike's in a little trouble.”

“Trouble? What kind?” She sat up in bed suddenly. “It's not that old thing, is it?”

“It's related. Never mind. Go back to sleep.”

“I won't be able to now. Where is he?”

“Somewhere in space in that flashy toy spaceship. I've got to get in touch with him—and the Polity's fixed it so I can't.”

He told her everything Maurello had told him, on the principle that two heads were better than one. He was right; she said immediately, “Some of those luxury craft scan all the newsbeams and flag the crew if there's something interesting. Does
GeeGee
do that?”

“Of course. That's common for a ship that class. Why?”

“Well, will what the Polity's doing prevent Mike from getting information that way?”

“Shouldn't, but I don't see—Wait a minute. One of the things she scans for is his name. He set her up that way. I told him it was paranoia. He said he was being realistic. This is top secret, though. It's not out on the 'beams.”

“Not yet,” said his wife, “and wouldn't any 'beam service just love to get it first?”

He gave her a hearty kiss and made a call. It only took one.

Shen shook Michael awake. He came up out of a deep sleep, without dreams this time; it was a black cave, and it sucked at him. The tension in Shen's hard right hand was a warning. He turned to Hanna in anxious reflex. The room was dark, but there was a soft glow near the bed. It showed Hanna's face and he saw that she slept in peace, her breath coming easily.

“Gotta hear something,” Shen said. Her mouth was tight. He got out of bed reluctantly and found that his knees shook. So Theo had been wrong and what he had done with Hanna had hurt him somehow after all, at the least had drained him.

Someone had relieved him of his shirt and boots. He found them in the dark, fumbling, and put them on while Shen waited impatiently. Lise and Theo had disappeared.

“What time is it?” he said.

“Fourteen hundred hours.
GeeGee
's back on Standard time. Another day to Rescue. Rescue!” she said bitterly.

“What's wrong?”

“Come on.”

He followed her to Control. The brighter light outside his room hurt his eyes and the climb up the spiral stairs seemed long; his strength was not at norm. Lise was in Control, her nose almost touching a display surface as she scowled at the words there. She could read, but not well. Shen flipped a switch and a perfectly modulated voice (robo, he thought automatically) said, “Rigorous identification procedures are in effect for incoming traffic to Nestor and Lancaster as well as Valentine. Private vessels approaching Polity ports should be prepared for security checks and possible boarding.”

Shen stopped it and said, “Newsbeams.” He didn't know what it meant; he didn't want to have anything to do with it. He looked at Shen, baffled. She touched another key and he saw a face that made him blink; it was gaudily painted and the eyes glowed with artificial light. It was human, though. He had seen it on the 'beams before, slashing at more or less deserving targets. It said, “My contacts inside I&S admit Kristofik is the man who robbed a Polity vessel in deep space of a fortune in '23. They don't say why he's been allowed to spend it unmolested all these years. They say there was advance warning of danger to the
Far-Flying Bird.
They don't say why Kristofik wasn't detained before the
Bird
started her flight.”

Shen shut that off, too. “More?” she said. Michael shook his head, a reflex action; he was dazed. What he had heard percolated and sank in slowly. So they'd found out what had happened to the
Far-Flying Bird
and—

His head was stuffed with dust. He needed to think clearly and could not.

He said, “They thought I was going to do it ahead of time. They don't know about
him.
”