Clay's Ark (6 page)

"Bring the knife if you want to," she said. "I don't care." She turned and walked to the hall door. There she stood,

waiting.

"Dad," Keira said anxiously. "Please ... do what they say."

He looked at her, saw that she was frightened too.

She looked from him to Eli, but Eli would not meet her eyes. She faced Blake again. "Dad, don't make them hurt you."

What was it about these people? How were they able to terrify when they did nothing? It was as though there were

something other than human about them. Or was it only their several guns?

"Dad," Rane said, "do it. They're crazy."

He looked at Eli. If the girls were hurt in any way-any way at all-Eli would pay. Eli seemed to be in charge. He could

permit harm or prevent it. If he did not prevent it, no circus trick would save him.

Eli stared back, and Blake felt that he understood. Eli had shown himself to be unusually perceptive. And now he

looked almost as miserable as Blake felt.

Blake turned and followed Meda. He kept the knife. Everyone saw it now, and they let him keep it. That alone was

almost enough to make him leave it. They managed to make him feel like a fool for wanting a weapon against armed

people who had kidnapped him and his children at gunpoint. But he would have felt like a bigger fool if he had left the

knife behind.

Meda led him into a back bedroom with blue walls, a solid, heavy door, and barred windows.

"My daughter is going to need her medication," he said, wondering why he had not spoken of it to Eli.

"Eli will take care of her," the woman said. Blake thought he heard bitterness in her voice, but her face was

expressionless.

"He doesn't know what she needs."

"She knows, doesn't she?" In the instant before he could lie, Meda nodded. "I thought she did. Give me the knife,

Blake." She said it quietly as she locked the door and turned to face him. She saw his refusal before he could voice it. "I

didn't want to tear into you in front of your kids," she said. "Human nature being what it is, you probably wouldn't be

able to forgive me for that as quickly as you'll forgive me for ... other things. But in here, I'm not going to hold back. I

don't have the patience."

"What are you talking about?"

She reached out so quickly that by the time he realized she had moved, she had him by the wrist in a grip just short of

bone-cracking. As she forced the knife from his captive hand, he hit at her. He had never hit a woman with his fist

before, but he had had enough from this one.

His fist met only air. Inhumanly fast, inhumanly strong, the woman dodged his blow. She caught his fist in her crushing

grip.

He lurched against her to throw her off-balance. She fell, dragging him with her, cursing him as they hit the floor. The

knife was still between them in one of his captive hands. He fought desperately to keep it, believing that at any moment

the noise would draw one or both of the men into the room. What would they do to him for attacking her? He was

committed. He had to keep the knife and, if necessary, threaten to use it on her. His daughters were not the only people

who could be held as hostages.

The woman tried to get him off her. He had managed to fall on top and he weighed perhaps twice what she did. As

strong as she was, she did not seem to know how to fight. She managed to take the knife and throw it off to one side so

that it skittered under a chair. Angrily, he tried to punch her again. This time he connected. She went limp.

She was not unconscious; only stunned. She tried feebly to stop him when he went after the knife, but she no longer

had the strength.

The knife was embedded in the wall behind the chair. Before he could pull it free, she was on him again. This time, she

hit him. While he lay semiconscious, she retrieved the knife, opened a window, and threw it out between the bars. Then

she staggered back to him, sat down on the floor next to him, hugging her knees, resting her forehead against them. She

did not look as though she could see him. She was temptingly close, and as his vision cleared, he was tempted.

"You start that shit again, I'll break your jaw!" she muttered. She stretched out on the rug beside him, rubbing her jaw.

"If I break your bones, you won't survive," she said. "You'll be like those damn bikers. We had to hurt them because

there were too many of them for us to take it easy. All but two wound up with broken bones or other serious injuries.

They died."

"They died of their injuries ... or of a disease?"

"It's a disease," she said.

"Have I been infected?"

She turned her head to look at him, smiled sadly. "Oh yes."

"The food?"

"No. The food was just food. Me."

"Contact?"

"No, inoculation." She lifted his right arm, exposing the bloody scratches she had made. They hurt now that she had

drawn his attention to them.

"You would have done that even if I hadn't had the knife?" he asked.

"Yes."

"All right, you've done it. Get away from me."

"No, we'll talk now. You're our first doctor. We've wanted one for a long time."

Blake said nothing.

"It's something like a virus," she said. "Except that it can live and multiply on its own for a few hours if it has warmth

and moisture."

Then it wasn't a virus, he thought. She didn't know what she was talking about.

"It likes to attach itself to cells the way a virus does," she continued. "It can multiply that way too. Don't tune me out

yet, Blake," she said. "I'm no doctor, but I have information for you. Maybe you can use it to help yourself and your

kids."

That got his attention. He sat up, climbed painfully into the antique wooden rocking chair that he had shoved aside

when he tried to reach the knife. "I'll listen," he said.

"It's a virus-sized microbe," she said. "Filtrable. I hear that means damned small."

"Who told you?"

She looked surprised. "Eli. Who else?"

He could not quite bring himself to ask whether Eli was a doctor.

"He was a minister for a while," she said as though he had asked. "A boy minister at the turn of the century when the

country was full of ministers. Then he went to college and became a geologist. He married a doctor."

Blake frowned at her. "What are you going to tell me now? That you're telepathic?"

She shook her head. "I wish we were. We read body language. We see things you wouldn't even notice-things we didn't

notice before. We don't work at it; it isn't a conscious thing. Among ourselves, it's communication. With strangers, it's

protection."

"Why haven't you gotten treatment?"

"What treatment?"

"You haven't tried to get any treatment, have you? What about Eli's wife? Hasn't she-"

"She's dead. The disease killed her."

Blake stared at her. "Good God. And you've deliberately given it to me?"

"Yes," she said. "I know it doesn't make sense to you. It wouldn't have to me before. But now . . . You'll understand

eventually. And when you do, I hope you'll accept our way of living. It's so damn hard when people don't. Like having

one of my kids go wrong."

Blake tried to make sense of this. Before he could give up on her again, she got up and went over to him.

"It isn't necessary for you to understand now," she said. "For now, just listen and ask questions if you want to. Pretend

you believe me." She touched his face. Repelled, he caught her hand and pushed it away. His cheek hurt a little and he

realized she had scratched him again. He touched his face and his hand came away bloody.

"What the hell are you going to do?" he demanded. "Keep scratching me as long as you can find a few inches of clear

skin?"

"Not that bad," she said softly. "I don't understand why- maybe you will-but people with original infections at the neck

or above get the disease faster. And infected people who get a lot of attention from us usually survive. The organism

doesn't use cells up the way a virus does. It combines with them, lives with them, divides with them, changes them just

a little. Eli says it's a symbiont, not a parasite."

"But it kills," Blake said.

"Sometimes." She sounded defensive. "Sometimes people work hard to die. Those bikers, for instance .... I took care of

Orel-Ingraham, I mean. His first name's Orel. He hates it. Anyway, I took care of him. He didn't like me much then, but

he let me. He survived okay. But the other biker who had a chance was a real bastard. Lupe stuck with him, but he kept

trying to kill her-strangling, smothering, beating . . . When he tried to burn her to death in her sleep, she got mad and hit

him too hard. Broke his neck."

Blake put most of this aside for later consideration and focused on one implication. "Are you planning to sleep here?"

he demanded.

She smiled. "Get used to the idea. After all, I can't very well rape you, can I?"

He did not answer. He was thinking about his daughters.

She drew a deep breath, touched his hand without scratching this time. "I'm sorry," she said. "I'm told I have the

sensitivity of a hunk of granite sometimes. None of us are rapists here. No one is going to take your kids to bed against

their wills."

"So you say!"

"It's true. Our men don't rape. They don't have to."

"You haven't had to do any of the things you've done."

"But we have. Like I said, you'll understand eventually. For now, you'll just have to accept what I tell you. We're

changed, but we have ethics. We aren't animals."

Blake thought that was exactly what they were, but he kept quiet. There was no point in arguing with her. But Rane and

Keira . . . What was happening to them?

Meda took a chair from the desk on the other side of the room and brought it over so that she could sit next to him. He

watched her swing her thin body around. She moved like a man. She must have been a powerful-looking woman before

her illness. Yet the illness had reduced her to wiry thinness. What would it do to Keira who had no weight to lose, who

already had a disease that was slowly killing her?

Meda sat down and took his hands. "I wish you could believe me," she said. "This is the worst time for you. I wish I

could help more."

"Help!" He snatched his hands away from her, disgusted. She was still perspiring heavily. In a cool room, she was

soaking wet. And no doubt the perspiration was loaded with disease organisms. "You've 'helped' enough!"

She wiped her face and smiled grimly. "You still bring out the worst in me. You don't feel or smell like one of us-like

an infected person-yet."

"Smell?"

"Oh yes. Part of your body language, part of your identity is your odor. And one of your earliest symptoms is going to

be suddenly smelling things you never consciously noticed before. Eli found our place by following his nose. He was

lost in the desert. We had water, and he smelled it."