The Host (55 page)

I took the cryotank from Jared, easing it rather than tugging it, turning it with care until it was vertical, and then I hugged it to my chest. The outside of the tank was the same temperature as the warm room. I cradled it to my body, protective as any mother.

I looked back at the stranger on the table. Doc was already dust-ing Smooth over the sealed wound. We made a good team: one attending to the soul, the other to the body. Everyone was taken care of.

Doc looked up at me, his eyes full of exhilaration and wonder. “Amazing,” he murmured. “That was incredible.”

“Good job,” I whispered back.

“When do you think she'll wake up?” Doc asked.

“That depends on how much chloroform she inhaled.”

“Not much.”

“And if she's still there. We'll have to wait and see.”

Before I could ask, Jared lifted the nameless woman tenderly from the cot, rolled her face-up, and laid her on another, cleaner resting place. This tenderness did not move me. This tenderness was for the human, for Melanie.…

Doc went with him, checking her pulse, peeking under her lids. He shone a flashlight into her unconscious eyes and watched the pupils constrict. No light reflected back to blind him. He and Jared exchanged a long glance.

“She really did it,” Jared said, his voice low.

“Yes,” Doc agreed.

I didn't hear Jeb sidle up next to me.

“Pretty slick, kid,” he murmured.

I shrugged.

“Feeling a smidge conflicted?”

I didn't answer.

“Yeah. Me, too, hon. Me, too.”

Aaron and Brandt were talking behind me, their voices rising with excitement, answering each other's thoughts before the questions were spoken.

No conflict there.

“Wait till the others hear!”

“Think of the –”

“We should go get some –”

“Right now, I'm ready –”

“Hold up,” Jeb cut Brandt off. “No soul snatching until that cryotank is safely on its way into outer space. Right, Wanda?”

“Right,” I agreed in a firmer voice, hugging the tank tighter to my chest.

Brandt and Aaron exchanged sour glances.

I was going to need more allies. Jared and Jeb and Doc were only three, though certainly the most influential three here. Still, they would need support.

I knew what this meant.

It meant talking to Ian.

Others, too, of course, but Ian would have to be one of them. My heart seemed to slump lower in my chest, to curl limply in on itself. I'd done many things I had not wanted to do since joining the humans, but I couldn't remember any this sharply and pointedly painful. Even deciding to trade my life for the Seeker's–that was a huge, vast hurt, a wide field of ache, but it was almost manageable because it was so tied up in the bigger picture. Telling Ian goodbye was a razor-sharp piercing; it made the greater vision hard to see. I wished there was some way, any way, to save him from the same pain. There wasn't.

The only thing worse would be telling Jared goodbye. That one would burn and fester. Because he
wouldn't
feel pain. His joy would far outweigh any small regret he might feel over me.

As for Jamie, well, I wasn't planning on facing that goodbye at all.

“Wanda!” Doc's voice was sharp.

I hurried to the bed Doc was hovering over. Before I got there, I could see the tiny olive hand fisting and unfisting where it hung over the edge of the cot.

“Ah,” the Seeker's familiar voice moaned from the human body. “Ah.” The room went utterly silent. Everyone looked at me, as if I were the expert on humans.

I elbowed Doc, my hands still wrapped around the tank. “Talk to her,” I whispered.

“Um… Hello? Can you hear me… miss? You're safe now. Do you understand me?”

“Ah,” she groaned. Her eyes fluttered open, focused quickly on Doc's face. There was no discomfort in her expression–the No Pain would be making her feel wonderful, of course. Her eyes were onyx black. They darted around the room until she found me, and recognition was quickly followed by a scowl. She looked away, back to Doc.

“Well, it feels good to have my head back,” she said in a loud, clear voice. “Thanks.” CHAPTER 53

Condemned

The Seeker's host body was named Lacey; a dainty, soft, feminine name.
Lacey.
As inappropriate as the size, in my opinion. Like naming a pit bull Fluffy
.

Lacey was just as loud as the Seeker–and still a complainer.

“You'll have to forgive me for going on and on,” she insisted, allowing us no other options.

“I've been shouting away in there for years and never getting to speak for myself. I've got a lot to say all stored up.”

How lucky for us. I could almost make myself glad that I was leaving.

In answer to my earlier question to myself, no, the face was not less repugnant with a different awareness behind it. Because the awareness was not so very different, in the end.

“That's why we don't like you,” she told me that first night, making no change from the present tense or the plural pronoun. “When she realized that you were hearing Melanie just the way she was hearing me, it made her frightened. She thought you might guess. I was her deep, dark secret.” A grating laugh. “She couldn't make me shut up. That's why she became a Seeker, because she was hoping to figure out some way to better deal with resistant hosts. And then she requested being assigned to you, so she could watch how you did it. She was jealous of you; isn't that pathetic? She wanted to be strong like you. It gave us a real kick when we thought Melanie had won. I guess that didn't happen, though. I guess you did. So why did you come here? Why are you helping the rebels?”

I explained, unwillingly, that Melanie and I were friends. She didn't like that.

“Why?” she demanded.

“She's a good person.”

“But why does she like
you?
”

Same reason.

“She says, for the same reason.”

Lacey snorted. “Got her brainwashed, huh?”

Wow, she's worse than the first one.

Yes,
I agreed.
I can see why the Seeker was so obnoxious. Can you imagine having that in your
head all the time?

I wasn't the only thing Lacey objected to.

“Do you have anywhere better to live than these caves? It's so
dirty
here. Isn't there a house somewhere, maybe? What do you mean we have to share rooms? Chore schedule? I don't understand. I have to work? I don't think
you
understand…” Jeb had given her the usual tour the next day, trying to explain, through clenched teeth, the way we all lived here. When they'd passed me–eating in the kitchen with Ian and Jamie–he threw me a look that clearly asked why I hadn't let Aaron shoot her while that was still an option.

The tour was more crowded than mine. Everyone wanted to see the miracle for themselves. It didn't even seem to matter to most of them that she was… difficult. She was welcome. More than welcome. Again, I felt a little of that bitter jealousy. But that was silly. She was human.

She represented hope. She belonged here. She would be here long after I was gone.

Lucky you,
Mell whispered sarcastically.

Talking to Ian and Jamie about what had happened was not as difficult and painful as I'd imagined.

This was because they were, for different reasons, entirely clueless. Neither grasped that this new knowledge meant I would be leaving.

With Jamie, I understood why. More than anyone else, he had accepted me and Mell as the package deal we were. He was able, with his young, open mind, to grasp the reality of our dual personalities. He treated us like two people rather than one. Mell was so real, so present to him.

The same way she was to me. He didn't miss her, because he had her. He didn't see the necessity of our separation.

I wasn't sure why Ian didn't understand. Was he too caught up in the potential? The changes this would mean for the human society here? They were all boggled by the idea that getting caught–the end–was no longer a finality. There was a way to come back. It seemed natural to him that I had acted to save the Seeker; it was consistent with his idea of my personality. Maybe that was as far as he'd considered it.

Or maybe Ian just didn't have a chance to think it all through, to see the glaring eventuality, before he was distracted. Distracted and enraged.

“I should have killed him years ago,” Ian ranted as we packed what we needed for our raid. My final raid; I tried not to dwell on that. “No, our mother should have drowned him at birth!”

“He's your brother.”

“I don't know why you keep saying that. Are you trying to make me feel worse?” Everyone was furious with Kyle. Jared's lips were welded into a tight line of rage, and Jeb stroked his gun more than usual.

Jeb had been excited, planning to join us on this landmark raid, his first since I'd come to live here. He was particularly keen to see the shuttle field up close. But now, with Kyle putting us all in danger, he felt he had to stay behind just in case. Not getting his way put Jeb in a foul mood.

“Stuck behind with that creature,” he muttered to himself, rubbing the rifle barrel again–he wasn't getting any happier about the new member of his community. “Missin' all the fun.” He spit on the floor.

We all knew where Kyle was. As soon as he'd grasped how the Seeker-worm had magically transformed into the Lacey-human in the night, he'd slipped out the back. I'd been expecting him to lead the party demanding the Seeker's death (I kept the cryotank always cradled in my arms; I slept lightly, my hand touching its smooth surface), but he was nowhere to be found, and Jeb had quashed the resistance easily in his absence.

Jared was the one to realize the jeep was gone. And Ian had been the one to link the two absences.

“He's gone after Jodi,” Ian had groaned. “What else?”

Hope and despair. I had given them one, Kyle the other. Would he betray them all before they could even make use of the hope?

Jared and Jeb wanted to put off the raid until we knew if Kyle was successful–it would take him three days under the best circumstances,
if
his Jodi still lived in Oregon. If he could find her there.

There was another place, another cave we could evacuate to. A much smaller place, with no water, so we couldn't hide there long. They'd debated whether they should move everyone now or wait.

But I was in a hurry. I'd seen the way the others eyed the silver tank in my arms. I'd heard the whispers. The longer I kept the Seeker here, the better chance that someone would kill her.

Having met Lacey, I'd begun to pity the Seeker. She deserved a mild, pleasant new life with the Flowers.

Ironically enough, Ian was the one who took my side and helped hurry the raid along. He still didn't see where this would lead.

But I was grateful that he helped me convince Jared there was time to make the raid and get back before a decision was made about Kyle. Grateful also that he was back to playing bodyguard. I knew I could trust Ian with the shiny cryotank more than anyone else. He was the only one I would let hold it when I needed my arms. He was the only one who could see, in the shape of that small container, a life to be protected. He could think of that shape as a friend, something that could be loved. He was the best ally of all. I was so grateful for Ian, and so grateful for the obliviousness that saved him, for the moment, from pain.

We had to be fast, in case Kyle ruined everything. We went to Phoenix again, to one of the many communities that spun out from the hub. There was a big shuttle field to the southeast, in a town called Mesa, with several Healing facilities nearby. That was what I wanted–I would give them as much as I could before I left. If we took a Healer, then we might be able to preserve the Healer's memory in the host body. Someone who understood all the medicines and their uses. Someone who knew the best ways to get to unattended stashes. Doc would love that. I could imagine all the questions he'd be dying to ask.

First the shuttle field.

I was sad that Jeb was missing this, but he'd have so many other chances in the future. Though it was dark, a long line of small snub-nosed shuttles drifted in to land while others took flight in an endless stream.

I drove the old van while the others rode in the back–Ian in charge of the tank, of course. I circled the field, staying clear of the busy local terminal. It was easy to spot the vast, sleek white vessels that left the planet. They did not depart with the frequency of the smaller ships. All I saw were docked, none preparing to leave immediately.

“Everything's labeled,” I reported to the others, invisible in the dark back. “Now, this is important. Avoid ships to the Bats, and
especially
the See Weeds. The See Weeds are just one system over–it takes only a decade to make the round trip. That's much too short. The Flowers are the farthest, and the Dolphins, Bears, and Spiders all take at least a century to go one way.

Only send tanks to those.”

I drove slowly, close to the crafts.

“This will be easy. They've got all kinds of delivery vehicles out here, and we blend in. Oh! I can see a tank truck–it's just like the one we saw them unloading at the hospital, Jared. There's a man looking over the stacks… He's putting them onto a hover cart. He's going to load them…” I drove even slower, trying to get a good look. “Yes, onto
this
ship. Right into the open hatch.

I'll circle back and make my move when he's in the ship.” I pulled past, examining the scene in my mirrors. There was a lit sign beside the tube that connected the head of the ship to the terminal. I smiled as I read the words backward. This ship was going to the Flowers. It was meant to be.

I made a slow turn as the man disappeared into the hull of the ship.

“Get ready,” I whispered as I pulled into the shadow made by the cylindrical wing of the next enormous ship over. I was only three or four yards from the tank truck. There were a few technicians working near the front of the Flower-bound vessel and others, farther away, out on the old runway. I would be just another figure in the night.

I cut the engine and hopped down from the driver's seat, trying to look casual, like I was only doing my job. I went around to the back of the van and opened the door a crack. The tank was right at the edge, the light on top glowing dull red, signifying that it was occupied. I lifted it carefully and closed the door.