A World of Difference (42 page)

“Good,” Irv said. “Out.” He wanted Sarah as high as possible above the slings and arrows—to say nothing of axes and spears—of outrageous fortune. To Louise, he said, “Now what? Head over toward
Athena?
”

She was gathering up Sarah’s discarded outer layers of clothing. “I think we’d better,” she said. “We’ve never all been away at once before, and we sure as hell don’t want to have to try to talk or fight our way through to the ship if—if Reatur loses.”

“No,” Irv said, although the odds of Emmett’s getting free if Reatur lost were slim, and without Emmett, getting back to the ship didn’t matter in the long run anyhow. Louise, of course, could figure that out for herself as well as he could and doubtless had.

They had only gone a couple of hundred yards when their radios crackled to life again. Ice that had nothing to do with the weather formed in Irv’s midsection as he lifted his set to his ear—only bad news would make Emmett call back so soon.

But Pat was on the radio, not Emmett. She was in Reatur’s
castle, checking on Lamra. “Has Sarah taken off yet?” she asked.

“A few minutes ago,” Irv said. “Why?” He had a bad feeling he knew the answer before he asked the question.

He did. Pat said, “Because Lamra’s getting ready to drop those budlings
now
, and I don’t think she’s going to wait around.”

“Shit,” Irv said softly. He could still see
Damselfy
off in the distance. Sarah was banking into a long, slow, gentle turn, the only kind the ultra-ultralight could make. He could still call her back—and most likely throw away the battle and Emmett with it … and Lamra and her budlings, too, come to that, if Reatur’s males were beaten.

“What do we do?” Louise asked.

He kicked at frozen dirt, made his choice. “How are you at coping with gore?”

“I won’t lose my lunch, if that’s what you mean,” Louise answered at once. “You want me to help you try to save the Minervan?”

“That’s just what I want. Hang on to Sarah’s clothes. She’s got clamps and bandages in one of those pockets. Pat and I will coach you through as best we can. You’ve got to be quick and accurate twice. Each of us does, and if we are, we have a chance.” Irv wished he were as confident as he sounded. It hadn’t happened yet, not even once.

“I’m not the person you need,” Louise said.

“You’re the person I’ve got. Come on.” They ran for the castle.

The world wheeled under Sarah as she began another slow, careful clockwise turn. The cold breeze coming in through the fresh-air tube helped take away the stink of the gunk sprayed all over the bottom of the cabin.

A great circle, she thought—surely this was the long way around to deliver a surprise to the Skarmer. It had a couple of advantages, though. For one thing, it gave her plenty of time in which to make
Damselfly
climb. She knew she had sugarcoated what she had told Irv. Even in dense Minervan air, the ultra-ultralight climbed like a fat man going up a tall ladder. It wasn’t any worse now than it had been before they fiddled with it, though, so she hadn’t really lied.

The route she was flying would also let her come up from behind the Skarmer, as far as the idea of
behind
meant anything
when dealing with Minervans. This once, Emmett had argued—persuasively, worse luck!—it just might. Males in a battle ought to have sense enough to keep all their eyestalks pointed in the direction from which danger came—toward Reatur’s warriors, in other words. They shouldn’t spot her till too late.

Ought to, shouldn’t, ought to, shouldn’t … “If you’re wrong, Emmett, I’ll never speak to you again.” Sarah panted. That, she feared, was no joke. Her stomach did flipflops when she thought about what a burst of Kalashnikov fire would do to
Damselfly—
and to her.

Fighter pilots, she realized suddenly, earned every penny they got, and then some.

“Never seen this place so deserted,” Irv said, puffing. His footsteps and Louise’s echoed down the hallways of Reatur’s castle. On any other day, the noise of dozens of males would have drowned them out. Now he had only seen a couple, one barely full-grown and the other ancient.

“At the battle.” Louise, also getting her breath back, was short with words.

The usual racket pierced the doors of the mates’ chambers: mates were sheltered from worries about their fate. Or rather, Irv thought, they never got the chance to grow enough to understand what worrying about their fate meant. Maybe that would start to change today. Maybe.

The guard outside the doors widened himself as the humans came up.
He
was in his prime, standing by a post Reatur reckoned important enough to keep him out of the fighting. “What word?” he asked anxiously.

“I do not know,” Irv answered. “The battle still goes on. Let us pass now, please.”

The male unbarred the doors, shut them again behind Irv and Louise. Mates rushed from everywhere at the boom of the falling bar, then drew back, disappointed, when they saw only humans, not Reatur.

“Pat?” Louise called.

“In here.” Irv shook his head when he noticed from which chamber the answer came. It was the one in which Biyal had died. He did not think of himself as superstitious, but he wished Lamra were somewhere else.

Lamra lifted an eyestalk when he and Louise came in. “Hello,” the mate said. “Pat told me I should not say good-bye, not yet.”

“No, not yet,” Irv said soberly. Soon, though, maybe, he thought and scowled at himself. He could hear the unease in his voice when he asked Pat, “How’s she doing?”

“See for yourself. The skin is splitting.”

“So it is.” Irv stooped and switched to the Omalo language. “Lift the arm by me, please, Lamra.” Lamra did. The mate kept her fist closed, but Irv saw the gray-brown of Minervan wood between her fingerclaws: the precious toy runnerpest, he supposed.

He smiled at that a little and waved Louise down beside him. “See?” he said, pointing at the growing vertical slit over the bud. Louise nodded. “In a few minutes, as the opening gets longer and wider, you’ll be able to see the whole budling, and how it’s hooked on to Lamra by its mouth. When it falls away—when it’s born, I mean—it’ll drop off. That’ll be that, unless we can clamp the vessel it was feeding from, and the ones for the other five, too. With two for each of us, we may have a chance.”

“We can’t afford any fumbling, though.” Pat sounded as if she was talking as much to herself as to Louise. “We’ve got to be right the first time.”

Louise got clamps, bandage packs, and rolls of tape out of Sarah’s parka. “I’ll do the best I can,” she said. She didn’t seem nervous; she sounded intrigued, like an engineer sizing up a new and challenging problem. Only fair, Irv thought—she was one.

“Let’s take our places,” he said. The budling’s wiggling feet were already pushing through the opening in Lamra’s skin. So, through the other slits, were those of its brothers and sisters. Irv slid over to Louise’s right; Pat was on her left.

“What about the six vessels around each central one?” Louise asked. “Shouldn’t we clamp those, too?”

“The bandages should take care of them,” Pat said. “They’re all small, compared to the one in the middle. That’s the one—the two, rather—you’ve got to worry about. When the budlings drop, they’ll go like a fire hydrant hit by a car.”

Irv grimaced. That was a more graphic simile than he wanted to think about. He switched to the Omalo tongue again. “How do you feel, Lamra?” The mate, after all, was no experimental animal, but a person, too, and a young person, at that. She had to be wondering, worrying about, what would happen next.

“It doesn’t hurt now,” Lamra said after a moment’s pause, perhaps for taking stock. “Will it hurt later, when you stop me from ending?”

“I don’t think so,” Irv said, as reassuringly as he could. Actually, he had no idea. He hoped he—and Lamra—would find out. He also hoped the mate was as confident as she sounded.
When you stop me from ending
 … He knew that
when
was an
if
. If Lamra didn’t, more power to her, for as much time as she had.

They would soon know how long that would be. The arms and eyestalks of the budling in front of Irv were twitching now along with its legs; its mouth was tightly clamped round the big blood vessel that fed it.

“Any minute—” Pat breathed. If she was going to add “now,” she never got the chance. Lamra’s budlings all let go at once. Blood gushed forth in a torrent that astonished Irv anew every time he saw it.

The clamps were on the ground between his feet. He seized the spurting vessel in front of him with one hand, snatched up a clamp, stuck it on. That flood slowed to a drip. He shifted leftward, grabbing for the second bleeder and the other clamp.

At almost the same instant, Pat shifted to her right. Just as he had, she had started on the blood vessel further away from Louise so she could deal with both of hers and be in position to help.

Irv fumbled with the second clamp, got it on at last. He looked toward Louise. “How you doing?” he asked. “Need a hand?” From the engineer’s other side, Pat was using nearly the same words to ask the same thing.

“I’m done, I think,” Louise answered. Like her colleagues—like the chamber—she was spattered and dripping with gore. She wiped the back of a hand across her face, which only made matters worse. With an engineer’s caution, she went on, “Check me, will you?”

Irv looked at one of the vessels she had repaired, Pat at the other. Irv gave a thumbs-up a moment later; the clamp was on perhaps more securely than either of the ones he had done.

“This one’s fine, Louise,” Pat said. “Well done. I’m officially impressed.”

“You told me what to do, and I did it.” Louise seemed surprised anyone would make much of simple competence. “Shall we get the bandage packs on now?”

“Yeah, we’d better.” Irv started to walk over to pick up bandages and tape, but almost tripped on one of the newly hatched budlings. All six of them were scrambling around like so many little wild animals—which, Irv supposed, in essence they were.
Their squawks were calliope-whistle shrill. “When we’re done, we’ll have to catch these critters,” he said.

He was taping the first gauze-soaked sweat sock into place when he suddenly realized Lamra had neither said anything nor moved in some time. He could not afford to think about that, not until the other bandage was on. Then, with the emergency work done as well as could be, he took a step back—a careful step, so as not to step on a budling—to see how the mate was doing.

“Lamra?” he asked. She did not answer. All the eyes Irv could see were closed, and her eyestalks hung down against her body. So did her arms. They were not as limp, he thought, as those of the eloc mates he had failed to save. But the toy runnerpest had fallen in the blood between her feet.

“Lamra?” he asked again. Still no reply.

“Now what?” Louise asked.

Irv shook his head, baffled, fearful, but still hopeful. “Now we wait.…”

“Progress at last!” Fralk shouted. At the eastern end of the fight, the Skarmer warriors had finally forced Reatur’s males back from the barrier. But the Omalo, curse their stubborn ways, would not flee. They fought on, holding a line against Fralk’s warriors. Progress it was, but not enough.

And from where he was, Fralk could not help make it more. His males stood between him and the enemy. He could not use the rifle, not without doing the Skarmer more harm than the Omalo.

“We shall advance,” he declared. “From a position nearer the barricade, I will be able to pour a flood of bullets into the foe. They will surely break then, and our gallant males will be able to surround them.”

“We advance!” the males with him shouted. They shook their spears and axes. Most of them, Fralk guessed, had resented being kept out of the fighting.

“The pistol—” Oleg said.

“Shut up, coward! Come on,” his keeper growled, understanding the word the human had used before. He tugged on the rope. Oleg stumbled forward.

“Do not worry about the pistol, Oleg Borisovich,” Fralk said in the human speech. “It has not boomed for a long time now. Surely the human who has it is out of bullets.” He waited for Oleg’s reply. Oleg only made the gesture humans used for a
shrug. Fralk shrugged, too. “Toward the fighting!” he cried grandly, playing to the pride of the warriors with him.

“Toward the fighting!” they yelled back, and toward the fighting they went.

“He’s in among that little bunch near the center.… There! He just fired a burst. See the muzzle flashes?”

“I see them, Emmett.” Sarah wondered how Emmett’s voice could come so calmly through the radio. The battlefield ahead looked like 200-proof chaos, nothing else but. Down there, she knew she would have been scared shitless—she was scared plenty up here. But Emmett seemed in his element.

He had read the Minervans well, too. So far none of the Skarmer had spotted her, though she was less than half a mile behind their army, flying straight down its line of march. A minute to target, maybe a minute and a half. Time to get ready.

Her left thumb clicked the
POWER
switch to
ON
. She would need all the help she could get from the batteries, because her pedaling was going to have to suffer now.

She reached down, peeled up a square of mylar that was only taped in place. Cold wind blew into her face. She pulled a butane lighter from the waistband of her shorts and flicked the little metal lever till it caught. She lowered the flame toward the wick on the gallon bottle that hung just behind her front wheel.

The wind blew it out.

She swore, flicked the lever again, and then glanced up to see if the Minervans had spotted her yet. Damn, they had! She would never get to make another pass. The lighter lit. Thanking God for the fire-retardant chemicals that were stinking up the cabin, she made the flame Bunsen-burner big.

The wick was not soaked with fire-retardants—very much the opposite. This time, it caught.

“Move, curse you, you worthless traitor,” snarled the Minervan who had hold of Oleg Lopatin’s leash. Lopatin had no choice but to move. He glared at the warrior. If only I had you back in Lefortovo Prison, he thought longingly, you would learn just what an amateur at torment you are. The KGB man knew how futile such dreams of revenge were. But they helped keep him going, anyhow.