Charles Ingrid - marked man 02 The Last Recall (37 page)

The Away Team commander patted her on the knee. "It's for the best."

"No." She shook her head vigorously. Her thick auburn hair threatened to come loose from its clip again. "I got a look at most of them . . . they're boys, Marshall. The oldest couldn't be more than twenty, twenty-two. What were they doing? Why did they attack?"

Kerry was lying down across two of the passenger seats. She lifted her head, the dusk obscuring the expression on her face. "Most of them were gilled."

"Gilled?"

The medic nodded shakily. She put a hand to her temple. "Immature. Another one I got a look at had had neck surgery, crude, but evident."

"Gills?" Marshall rolled the word about again. He looked at Dusty. "Gone back to the sea? Could they have survived the dust shroud by going back to the sea and farming it? We had sea lab projects."

"If the El Nino came down and kept the waters warm. ... I don't know. The El Nino does extend into the coastline, but it's an erratic current. I can remember the weathermen complaining about it. It affected sport fishing and weather fronts . . . too much of a good thing. Wouldn't the kelp beds have died back without sunlight?"

"I don't know, Dusty." Kerry gave a bleak smile. "One thing's for sure—none of them are going to answer any questions."

Dusty looked out where the nesters were piling bodies any which way on a pyre of deadwood and mesquite. She'd never smelled burning bodies before. The thought of it made her intensely sick to her stomach. "His men came back with pack mules and donkeys. Raiders don't carry packs, do they? And those kids were really weather-beaten. Cowboys, maybe?"

Marshall gave an impatient grunt. "It doesn't matter why they were out here, they attacked us without provocation."

Dusty hugged her knees. She said thoughtfully, "Who knows what kind of history these people have between them?" She kicked her legs free and shinnied down off the hover. Casually, hands in her enviro suit pockets, she sauntered toward the pyre. The dean was engaged in what she could only term looting, going through the saddlebags and packs brought in by Ketchum and some of the others. Ketchum stood alone in the darkness, building the pyre with bodies and more wood. The dry oily mes-quite would go up like gasoline, she thought, as she came up behind him.

There were empty packs at his feet. He tossed the last body on the pyre with a grunt and reached for the torches lit and stuck in the dirt at his feet.

Dusty leaned over as something fluttered out of the boy's jacket and struck the ground near her feet. She picked it up even as the nester threw a torch into the bonfire and the brush roared into flames.

She held a book of sorts. She flipped open the cover. Primitive paper, coarse and vanilla-colored, filled with charcoal and ink sketches. She recognized faces of the dead. There was talent here. Dusty looked up, remorse swelling in her throat. Which one of the bodies had been an artist, a quick and clever drawer of line and feeling?

The hot wind of the pyre set pages to flipping in her hands. She saw maps and topographical renderings. Knowledge flooded her. These boys were explorers, pushing outward from their homes toward the unknown. The artist was committing every step of their journey to these drawings.

A last page glowed in the fire's illumination. A man, a lean man, hair below his ears and a slight mustache, a man with a scarf about his neck (hiding his own gills, she thought), with competence and danger written into the very lines of his form the boy had sketched. He was most definitely not among the dead. Who the hell was he?

"No!" Ketchum grunted and tore the book from her hands. He threw it into the heart of the blaze before Dusty

could snatch it back. She watched in despair as the legacy of the unknown artist joined the fragility of his flesh. She backed up a step, the smoke and smell of the burning bodies reaching her.

Her eyes smarted. Ketchum glared at her before turning to jam his torch into another corner of the woodpile. Dusty fled back to Marshall and the others, too shaken to speak. She had found no answers and still more questions. Why would a group of scouts, of surveyors, attack without mercy?

She buried her face in her hands as she sat down next to Marshall, trying to filter out the stink as the night wind carried it to them.

Reynolds put an arm about her shoulders. "What is it, Dusty?"

Dusty only shook her head, unable to voice her feelings. The Earth and its people had become unrecognizable to her.

"What did you take from her, Ketchum?" the dean asked as the fire burned down and the forms of bodies had been reduced to sticks of char. The glow of the fire had brought out a sheen of sweat across the man's face. Ketchum saw him lick it away greedily from his upper lip, as though the smell of cooked flesh had been enticing. His flesh crawled and he looked away.

"It was nothing, Chieftain," he answered. "Papers."

"Papers? What kind of papers?"

"Papers, all stuck together. Like the shamen have—"

The dean's hooded eyes opened a bit wider. "A book?"

"Yes." Ketchum nodded. "A book."

"What did it look like?"

"Drawings and maps," the tracker said. "I cannot read."

The dean grunted. He took a stick and prodded the embers. "Drawings of what?"

"The boys. The Vaults. I saw one of the Marked Man."

"Who?"

"Protector Blade."

"Ahhh." The dean lapsed into silence. He muttered as if to himself, "I can't have that. I can't have her thinking these boys are innocents. I can't have her thinking about which side to take." He looked up abruptly. "Bide your time, Ketchum. Maybe when the rains come ... an accident for her. She knows too much and she doesn't trust me.'' The dean picked up the hem of his garish robe and walked away from the pyre.

Ketchum did not watch him go, though the hairs on the back of his neck let him know when his back was safe.

Watty crawled to a halt. He rolled over with a crackle of brush. His shoulder ached like fire and ground with every movement. He forced his eyes wide and looked up at a sky of stars. For a moment, they wheeled and blurred. He scrubbed his eyes with his good hand.

The night sky came into focus. By luck or by God's will, he'd been crawling in the right direction. He thought of Stefan and Bottom and Jeong and Machander and all the others. His eyes filled with hot tears and his nose swelled. Even if he could crawl all the way to the county's edge, he couldn't bring them back.

"Idiot!" he screamed. "You jerk, Stefan! You got us all killed!" His fury and sorrow stuck in his throat. He couldn't get another word out. He fell into silence in the dirt, arm flung over his eyes as if he could shut out his memories.

He was going to die here. Then the story of what had happened to them, of what had happened to the mapping expedition, would die as well.

His shoulder hurt like fire and he was hungry.

If his wound did bleed him to death or go septic, the coyotes would get him. Watty sniffled. He felt weak in every joint. He couldn't remember how he'd gotten out from under Bottom or how he'd run so far before he'd, gone down or why the nesters hadn't seen him. All he could remember was the screaming of the horses and the harsh, trumpetlike brays of the mules and donkeys and the dust that had risen like smoke from a brushfire.

And blood.

He blew his nose on the sleeve of his shirt and rolled over, endeavoring to sit up. A wave of genuine pain hit him, so strong he went sick to his stomach and his vision went dark.

When he looked up, he saw two glowering eyes looking at him from the night, not two paces away. He could smell the animal scent then, primal and musky.

Whatever it was, it was huge.

He wasn't going to die trying to crawl home and having the buzzards and coyotes pick his bones.

He was going to be eaten alive.

Watty heard the roar of his pulse in his ears. It drowned out even the growl of the beast as it reared toward him from the night. His eyes rolled back in his head and he keeled over before it reached him.

The Shastra paused before the fallen boy. It hesitated, muzzle wrinkled. It lowered itself to all fours and did a hesitant shifting of weight from side to side. Then instinctively, it reached for the boy and hoisted him in its arms. It turned southward, toward the boy's original path, and began to carry him along. It had no voice or language to express its thoughts or intentions. Watty hung from its arms as if dead.

They had the private bathhouse behind the Healers' quarters all to themselves, but Thomas was distracted with every move he made, every caress he served. Lady felt the sadness ingrained in their lovemaking. It was as though he said without words,
This is the last time I shall ever kiss this breast, stroke this thigh, taste this mouth. . . .

She held back her questions until they were finished and he lay resting in her arms.

"What is it, Thomas?"

He stirred, opening his eyes and looking up at her. He sometimes found it difficult to look her directly in the eyes. She knew full well why—her two-colored vision was disconcerting: the blue stone-cold and the brown warm and compassionate, just as disconcerting as her own nature was to her.

She said softly, "I do love you," thinking of the impasse they'd come to on the ghost road and wondering if it would stay unbreachable. They had not mentioned it since coming back.

"And I love wild strawberries." He sat up and slid into the bath water, this time to bathe.

"Strawberries?" She was both startled and amused, "what are you talking about?"

He paused, soap in hand. "I love them," he answered slowly, "but I can't eat them. They give me hives and welts. I've been told enough of them would even kill me."

Lady shivered and drew her towel about her. He fell silent and finished soaping. She waited until he had ducked under to rinse clean and then emerged, his hair and mustache dripping.

"Is that what I am to you, a slow poison?"

"I don't know. All I know is that you . . . cripple me.

Her throat constricted.

He did not wait for an answer. "I'm leaving tomorrow. I've sent some papers to you, some things I found in the Vaults and kept back. They're controversial. You may want to withhold them from the counties."

She interrupted him. "Thomas, I—"

He interrupted back. "And I'm taking Drakkar with me. You'll have to take care of Alma, but I can't let him court her openly, not just now. Bartholomew's crowd will string him up. When we get this nester problem settled, maybe I can get some acceptance for him. I don't dare leave him behind." He began dressing in brisk, efficient moves and she just sat on the decking and watched him, unable to stop him from doing any of the things he was doing.

Thoughts ran through her head as images, snatches of visions rather than coherent words. Thomas had had a reputation as a ladies' man before they had become involved, yet he had never been anything but faithful to her. She knew the anger that ran him, that fueled his ghost road, that he kept buried beneath a lonely and austere exterior. She had never turned her face from all that he'd revealed to her and she wondered if he would ever find another woman who could say as much. She loved him almost more than she loved life itself. But because she was committed to life, to the protection and healing of it, she had to let him go. She could not change any more than she already had. He either must change and accept it as growth rather than crippling, or he must leave her.

She cupped her hand over her stomach. Unlike Alma, she had known almost the moment of conception. Unlike Alma, she welcomed every difference within her body, disturbing as it might be.

If she told him now, Thomas would think it a ploy to keep him from his task. He would not take the comfort from it she wanted to give. So she kept her silence and prayed to whatever gods had not abandoned their shattered world to keep him safe and bring him back, at least long enough that she could tell him then.

He had almost finished dressing. He made a quick weapons check, looking at her. "No tears?"

"Not yet," she said. "It wouldn't help. I'm not a reed in the wind that must bend or break."

"No," he agreed. "You're one hell of a woman." He paused and then opened his mouth as if he would say one thing further.

She would never know what it was, because a sharp rap on the bathhouse door interrupted him.

Gray Walton pushed in. He looked to Thomas. "I need you, Blade. We've got news."

He slung his jacket over his shoulder and followed the DWP out of the tiny building.

Lady stayed alone for a long time, wrapped in her towel and her thoughts, her visions of the past.

Drakkar sat on the edge of Charlie Warden's antique old desk, a monstrous piece of hand-rubbed work from another era, and swung his booted heels as petulantly as any child. He had a copy of Macaulay's
The Way Things Work
in his hand, his lips moving slightly as he read as Gray and Blade entered the office.

Blade snapped, "Get off that desk!" even as Gray said, "What are you doing in here?"

Drakkar snapped the book shut and slid down. He bowed. "Yes, sir," to Thomas and to Gray, said, "you sent for me?''