The D’neeran Factor (81 page)

The Fleet scouts got to Carrollis and someone added up the facts of Prissy's murder, the brass-colored ship, and the dark man from offworld who had been in Town on that day and no other. They talked about the fate of the child Prissy had owned. She had not been on Valentine long and her presence in Michael's household had gone nearly unnoticed, so that now she was said to have disappeared. There were speculations on Michael's reasons for taking her away from Carrollis. He did not recognize himself in them.

After that he thought:
I
had some good years. I knew it could end.

He looked up and saw that Theo watched him. He tried to make his face indifferent, but Theo said, “For a while there I thought you didn't know what it all meant.”

Michael was silent. Presently Theo went out.

Nostrorum scelerum tolle maliciam
—lift the weight of our transgression—

He wondered if, even after he was cleared of the present crime, I&S would take him from home one dark night and he would wake up in a cell on Earth and find out he had confessed to every unlawful act he had ever done, and everything he had ever tried to hide.

Probably.

The monks of a world far away from Alta, treasuring the ancient music, sang on.

Miserere nobis:
Have mercy on us!

I
t took Hanna a week to wake up fully. At first she understood only the music that surrounded her, which was not like any music she had heard before. The instruments were strange to her, and the oddly syncopated rhythms, and when there were voices the languages as well. On some level she knew they were very old. They reached into history, and even those presented in Standard breathed no modern spirit in their phrasing.
Sweet Robin, lend to my thy bow,
a man's voice sang;
I
must a-hunting with my lady go…With my sweet lady go
…That time there was no accompaniment; the song was not recorded, and the singer was nearby. Hanna rested in the music, at peace.

Later her eyes cleared and she saw the room she was in. It was colored in tones of earth and sun, and there were spaces filled with a patchwork of furnishings, paintings, fabrics, and oddments sifted by a curious, acquisitive hand. For sky there was a polished ceiling etched with bronze traceries of leaves like the shadowed roof of a forest. The little world breathed a personality: sunny and clever and brash.

And later still the anonymous hands that cared for her had faces with them, and the faces had names: Theo and Shen. The blue-eyed half-crazy girl, Lise. And finally Michael,
the one with the eyes,
Hanna thought, the man who was supposed to be dangerous. He wasn't dangerous now; he sat by her bed with lines of strain around those eyes, and the lines disappeared when the others were around, and she felt the effort it took to make them vanish and the reason behind it: the love.
Everything's fine,
he told them with his smiles. And therefore, for them, it was.

By the time Hanna began to think again, she had forgotten that she was supposed to be afraid.

“You're not a monster,” she whispered when the slow swell of thought finally crested in speech, and the man by her bed started, worry thick in his eyes, heavy on his mouth.

“You're not going to hurt me,” Hanna said.

“Of course not,” he said. He looked at her with diffidence. His mind was on what had happened to her on the Avalon—not so much the beating as the rape. She was too weak to explain that where she came from the two were considered much the same. It was not as large a thing as he thought. Killing Castillo's men would satisfy her.

For economy's sake she held to the important fact. “You almost did hurt me,” she said.

“Yes, well,” he said. His eyes pleaded with her. Gold filled her vision; her small stock of strength was exhausted. “That was a mistake,” he said. Hanna went back to sleep, unafraid.

*   *   *

Lise said, chattering: “You look pretty in that.” She meant the gown Hanna wore, a fragile white shift that slipped softly across her skin. “It's mine, that's why it's too small for you. But even Shen said you're pretty. Only she doesn't say much. It's because her tongue was cut out.”

“What?” Hanna said.

“Theo told me. Her tongue was cut out and when Mike found her he made her go to the Polity. He made Theo go with her because he couldn't go. And she got a new tongue. But she still didn't say anything for a long time.”

“Naturally,” Hanna said.

*   *   *

“How long have I been here?” she asked later, when she felt strong.

Michael counted on his fingers, childlike. “Eight days,” he said.

She was sitting up, propped up by pillows. She had decided it was time to ask questions. It had become apparent that Michael knew exactly who she was and what had happened to her. Therefore he must know that the Polity would be searching for her desperately; but he had not mentioned it.

“You haven't said anything about getting me home,” she said.

“There's a little problem,” he said, looking hunted; she had never seen so expressive a face.

“What problem?”

“Your friends in I&S think I'm responsible for what happened.”

“I can tell them otherwise. That isn't a problem.”

“It won't be enough,” he said. “They'll want me all the same—to find out about
him.
If they do—thirty seconds under probe and I'm finished.”

“Because of
him?
” she said, and answered herself: “No. Because of the
Pavonis Queen.
But what good does keeping me do?”

“Maybe you could persuade them not to probe me,” he said, looking away, not liking to ask. “And maybe”—this came harder still—“if that doesn't work, you could be used. As a hostage. If it comes to that.”

“Used,” she said, tasting the word. It had a familiar feel. “I don't want to be a hostage. I just want to get back.”

But that was a lie. She didn't want to get back to anything yet. The rest and the music were good. They were better than anything waiting for her in the Polity.

“At least I can tell them the truth,” she said.

*   *   *

Night: the eighth night? The ninth? She woke often, thinking of what she would say when the time came to speak. Her thinking kept sliding away from the point she wanted it to have. Her memory of the union into which she had drawn Michael was dim, but there was a bond she wished was not there. And he had a swimmer's body, broad-shouldered and sleek; his skin was the color of burnt sugar, his hands beautiful, the curve of his mouth a pleasure to her eye.
Oh, stop it!
she said, ordering herself, denying the bond and an astonishing physical pull.
Remember the point!
The point was that he had not asked much of her. Only to use her influence. She had enough, had some with people who had more. He had only asked her to help him survive.

And if he gave something in return? Told them what he knew about B? But she knew already that he would not tell it all. He would answer only to a point. A point of his choosing; not too far back. Would he go far enough? No.

She turned in bed, sighing. He would not tell them enough. Castillo would escape. Saving Michael Kristofik
somehow meant saving Castillo, too. And that meant her duty was clear.

*   *   *

In the morning Michael came for her. Shen had brought clothes and Hanna dressed and tried her legs, but they were unreliable. She had to lean on Michael's arm, and when they came to the spiral stair that connected
GeeGee
's two levels—a pretty, impractical conceit far beyond Hanna's strength—he carried her. He carried her into Control and said, “What are you going to say to them?”

“I don't know,” she said.

A little later she was telling her story to Gil Figueiredo. Figueiredo admitted (angrily, defensively) that one of the team that had studied the
Bird
's engineering was missing. Michael stood nearby, but far to one side and out of Figueiredo's line of sight. Control was nearly dark, and Hanna saw him as a shadow on the edge of vision. His head was bowed and he looked at his folded arms.

“He told you his name was Castillo?”

“Yes. That's not right, but I don't know what it is. Michael Kristofik,” she said, “knows more about him.”

“How much does Kristofik know?” Figueiredo said.

“Everything about him, I should think. It goes all the way back to—”

Michael moved as she started the sentence. She struck at his left hand and hit it as hard as she could. The effort made her dizzy; his right hand found its object, and Figueiredo's face was gone.
GeeGee
floated unconnected to anything.

He was rocked, tottering closer to death or Adjustment. “Why the hell'd you do that?” he said.

“It's your fight. Not mine.”

He did not take her back to his own room. He took her to another, smaller chamber that blazed with reflected light. There were many mirrors. There was no feel of habitation. There was a bed, though; he put her down on it. It pulled at her like sand.

He said, “It seemed like a good idea to get this room ready, so we did. The only thing you've got for communication is intercom. The only thing it talks to is this.” A wafer of metal appeared in his hand, disappeared into a pocket. “
GeeGee
won't respond to you. The lock's voice-controlled and you'd need a laser to cut a way out. If you want something
we'll get it for you. There's a gymnasium on the upper level and you can use it when you're stronger, but I'll be there, too.”

“I did what I had to do,” she said.

“I thought you might.”

“What I said didn't have anything to do with you anyway.”

“It did and you knew it. I asked you to help me keep out of the probe.”

“You go back a long way, you and that man.”

She felt a flash of pain. It showed on his face, too, so naked that it was indecent. But he said nothing. He left her there alone, to think about what she had refused to do.

The voices drifted windy and murmurous; through air, space, night, invisible; swirled into currents, spilled into windrifts; were patience, dedication, efficiency. The dark between the stars hummed with them. They made up a single thing, a thing in itself, a web or a net vibrating in the night.

One voice was light and toneless, except where the edges were rough. That was Figueiredo's.

A. woman's, soft, with a smile in it: the psyche expert from Admin, the negotiator.

Furred and slipping toward the guttural: Denkovitz, head of I&S.

Even, staccato, edging toward high harmonics: Edward Vickery.

A voice that was a deep bass bell: Starr Jameson.

Others. A woman's voice like the clear note of a violin. A man whose speech was a breathy sigh.

The voices cut in and out in a dance between Earth and points outward, points of light in the dark.

“What will he do now?”

“Bargain.”

“With what?”

“Her life.”

“He is innocent.”

“Only of this.”

“And maybe not this.”

“Conspiracies…”

“Plans gone wrong…”

“A struggle for mastery within…”

“He planned it and meant no loss of life, perhaps.”

“And lost control.”

“Even if innocent—”

“They are connected.”

“Clear on the evidence.”

“So Hanna said.”

“But how connected?”

“We'll learn how.”

“He has no power.”

“Nowhere to flee.”

“No escape this time.”

“Valentine will comply.”

“And her life?”

“We'll trade. After that—”

Michael sat in the lounge, which was lit up brightly, as if to shut out the spread of night and the Jumping stars. It was still littered with hand-held readers, music cubes, clothing and blankets, though it was no longer necessary for Michael to live in it.