Catch the Lightning (44 page)

I stared at her. “That’s awful.”

She sighed. “You are so young. So unguarded. You must learn to cope with a way of life so complex that at times it will seem nothing could ever make it worth the trouble.”

I felt a pit opening up under me. “Are you trying to say you don’t think Althor and I can make it?” '

She considered before answering. “If all I knew were the facts' of your background, I would say yes.” Her face gended. “But seeing the love you two share—it may be that my initial reaction was pessimistic.” Her silent laughter made a spray of sparkles in the air. “After all, you treated him well even when you thought he was a ‘fruitcake.’”

I winced. “I’m sorry I said that.”

Dehya squeezed my hand. “Both you and Althor seem comfortable with this reversal of roles you have chosen. But whatever roles you take, you still each come, in your respective cultures, from the side of the union expected to compromise, to adapt, to please. Put two people like that together and they just might make each other very happy.”

Despite what Althor had told me, I hadn’t really thought of our relationship as role-reversed. She was right about compromise, though. For all Althor’s intimidating demeanor, he has always been flexible with me, adapting to my differences as I try to adapt to his.

“Have you found anything out about the mercenaries who kidnapped us?” I asked.

“We captured one, an officer who was Althor’s CO years ago. Althor thought he recognized the man’s way of speaking.”

“Do you think you’ll get the others?”

She regarded me steadily. “Yes.”

Watching her, a chill ran along my spine. The mercenaries would pay for their crimes against her son. I wondered if she suspected what Bloodmark had intended to do with her if his plan succeeded.

The soft colors of her mood shredded. “I have my spots of… blindness.”

That was all she said. But her reaction was so intense that I picked up more despite her defenses. She had loved Ragnar Bloodmark, not in the way he wanted, but as a friend. The wounds of his betrayal went too deep to ever fully heal.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

She just shook her head, dismissing the subject.

“What will happen now?” I asked.

“Threats will be exchanged among our governments—Imperial, Eubian, and Allied. Impassioned speeches will be made. But if we remain calm behind the posturing, I think we will avoid war.” She paused. “Restitution will be demanded and must be given.”

“Restitution?”

She regarded me. “Minister Iquar’s defenses destroyed two of the Jag’s tau missiles and the third failed to explode. The fourth hit.” Quietly she said, “Kryx Iquar is dead. A third of his Cylinder was destroyed. The civilian sections weren’t hit, but his military force was wiped out. Several hundred thousand people died.”

I stared at her. “I tried to stop the Jag. It wouldn’t listen.”

“Yes. We know. Your protest is in its files.” She shook her head. “We don’t yet fully understand what went wrong. The El link between Althor and the Jag has evolved to a more advanced level than previously achieved, more even than believed possible. Its brain is a new model, and Althor has more extensive biomech than any other Jagernaut. He’s also Rhon. Apparently in combination, they attained a remarkable symbiosis.”

“It loves him,” I said.

“Yes, it appears so.”

“Are you going to destroy it?”

“We must. We can’t have Imperial warships bombing colonies.”

She was right, of course. Although they didn’t physically destroy the Jag, they reworked its entire brain. It was several years before it returned to duty with Althor, and ISC now periodically checks all Jags to ensure they remain rational. Althor’s passes every test. I have to admit, sometimes I suspect it simply gives them the answers they want, and that if Althor were ever harmed again it would seek vengeance with the same single-minded intensity as before. If that is true, though, I have no proof.

Dehya also told me that as soon as Jag notified her people about my Rhon genetics, the Assembly charted the history of Mesoamerica from 1987 onward. Virus wars in the late twenty-first century wiped out a quarter of Earth’s population. When the United Nations finally established peace, Earth was exhausted, her people grateful for the respite and terrified of losing it. So after centuries of fighting for lands lost to the Spanish in the sixteenth century, the Maya reached an agreement with Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, and Honduras. Large tracts of our ancestral lands were returned.

Under the Isolation Act of 2192, the Maya formed a closed nation, choosing to live independent of Earth’s international community in much the way the Abaj sought isolation on Raylicon. In a sense, they ceased to exist as far as the rest of Earth was concerned. That was why Ming, and many others, mistakenly believed they were extinct. The Imperialate was the first government the Maya Independent State agreed to open relations with, and that was only because of the Abaj. We still don’t know what universe the Abaj’s ancestors came from or why they were brought here.

“Even so,” Dehya said softiy. “Just to know the identity of their ancestors means much to the Abaj. Eldrin and I, Althor, all of the Rhon—we feel it too. We have found our lost siblings.”

“Your kin. My kin.” I tried to absorb it. “Or not kin, but our people.”

“For you, Tina, kin. Your descendants are spread throughout the Allied Worlds.”

“Descendants?”

She regarded me. “Althor didn’t tell you, did he?”

“Tell me what?”

“He discovered it when he checked the Jag’s files on the Caltech students. We verified it. Heather James discovered the inversion drive in this universe without prior knowledge of it. No record exists that an alternate Althor came here in 1987.” She paused. “Perhaps the Ragnar of his universe never betrayed him. Or perhaps Althor died as Ragnar intended.” Pain touched her voice. “Or he may never have existed. Given the genetic problems Eldrin and I bequeathed to our son, a good chance exists that in other universes he never lived. Whatever the reason, he never came here. You married a man named Joaquin Rojas.

He wasn’t Rhon, so none of your descendants are either. But hundreds of them are alive now.”

Jake and I married? It made sense. But after knowing Althor, I could never imagine a life without him.

Dehya glanced past me. Turning, I saw Althor and his father a few yards away, talking to each other. As they came over, Althor regarded his mother warily. “Well?”

“Don’t frown so,” Dehya said. “I haven’t been terrorizing your bride.”

Althor snorted. “I’ll bet.”

Her face gentled. “You chose well, my son.”

Althor smiled and held out his hand to me. “Bienvenido, ’Akushtina. Welcome home.”