Children of Hope (77 page)

“Fath!”

“If things go wrong, tell Jerence Branstead I knew what I was doing. And get Randy to
Olympiad.
Mik will take care …”

No. Not this.

Fath worked his way into the suit.

Behind us, crewmen hosed the deck.

Fath offered me an apologetic shrug. “Someone has to … tell them. Avert war, however it may be done.”

Kaminski said vehemently, “Don’t sacrifice yourself!”

“That’s not my intention.”

“Liar.” My lips formed the word, but I didn’t say it aloud.

“Son, do we have a word for ‘sorry’?” He checked his clamps.

“No, sir.”

“For ‘reparation,’ or …” He gave it up. “I’ll play with ‘die’ and ‘equals.’”

“Let me help; I know all the symbols and how they—”

“Not this time.” Helmet under his arm, he leaned forward, planted a kiss on my forehead. “Fare thee well.”

“You can’t go, I won’t—”

Suited hands closed around my arms, tugged me inexorably toward the decon station.

“Wait, I have to see …”

Fath plodded to an empty lock. “Kaminski, I entreat you. Don’t fire on them. Not unless …” His eyes were grim. “Only to save your lives.”

“I’ll try, sir.”

Captain Seafort trudged into the airlock. In a moment, it began to cycle.

Kaminski’s thugs dragged me toward decon.

The panel blinked red. The outer hatch opened.

I kicked out, caught my guard in the shin, broke free. I dashed to the nearest porthole. “No, please let me look! Give me a second more—” I clawed, bit, twisted this way and that. “I’m begging—”

“Let him watch.” Kaminski’s voice was soft.

I pressed my nose to the transplex.

Fath emerged from the lock, into the unforgiving vacuum.

“You don’t have to go, there’s still time—”

He kicked off. As soon as he was clear he squirted his thrusters, headed straight for our host fish.

“I know the pictographs, I wrote half of them—”

With graceful skill he brought himself to a standstill a meter or so from the fish’s swirling skin.

“You leave me and find me, leave me and—”

An outrider emerged from the fish. It enveloped my father, all but his feet, took him inside the fish.

I stiffened. “The suit! It had only one air tank!”

They dragged me toward decon.

“Come along, son.” Kaminski’s voice was soft. “That’s all he’ll need.”

Decon. Stinging chemical showers, blood draws, needles.

Fresh clothes that didn’t reek.

Hot chocolate in a steaming mug, untouched.

Murmurs. Solicitous voices urging me to rest.

A cabin.

I curled in my bunk, slipped a Bible chip into my holovid. Twelve verses, Fath had given me, and I’d never complied. I’d show him. I’d learn thirty.

An hour or more had passed, and I could no longer bear the solitude. I burst out of my hatch. In minutes, I was settled at a corridor porthole. Outside, the fish floated silently.

A few hundred meters beyond, there drifted scores more aliens. Some three hundred of them.

“Randy?” Corrine Sloan, her voice soft.

I looked up, said nothing.

“None of us can stop him.” She knelt, her eyes glistening. “God help us, we’ve tried. Tolliver, you, me, Arlene, Derek … there, rest your head. Let it out.”

No, that would be too easy. With a struggle, I mastered myself. For Fath’s sake, I spoke with care. “Ma’am, if you don’t mind, I’d rather be alone.”

By the time I realized my cruelty, she was gone.

I sat brooding.

A flurry of activity. Outriders emerged, launched themselves at their compatriots. A dozen or so of the fish pulsed, blinked out. The others began a slow, ominous drift toward the Station.

I braced for Colonel Kaminski’s call to General Quarters, but it never came.

After a time, the corridor lights darkened to nominal night.

Massaging the ache in my neck, I trudged, unheeding, through corridors and passageways, up and down ladders.

The huge holoscreen in the Station’s comm room had a view of the fish. Unbidden, I watched from the hatchway.

A steady voice, so steady it had to be a puter loop. “Mr Seafort, please respond to Station. Mr Seafort, please respond to—”

After a time my calves knotted. I sat.

Eons passed.

“Here he comes!”

I bolted upright.

“Colonel, Comm Room, watch your screen!”

In the holoscreen, the fish floated alongside as before. A membrane was open in its side. Through it emerged a suit.

Thank Heaven.

“Focus tight.”

The view lurched, zoomed in.

I made a ghastly sound.

The suit was empty.

“Where’s Fath?” I grabbed the nearest tech. “WHERE?”

“Still inside.”

I recoiled. “They
digested
him?”

No answer.

I ran, Lord God knew where. After a time I found myself belowdecks near the machine shop, pounding a bulkhead.

Joey, this won’t do.

I trudged back to the comm room.

Morning found me curled in a console chair. If some hushed voice had murmured into the caller seeking permission for my vigil, I’d paid no heed.

“Breakfast, joey.” Hot cereal, in a tray.

“Thanks.” My voice was rusty. I tried again. “Thank you.”

The fish drifted in space, surrounded by its fellows. On another screen,
Olympiad
floated unmolested.

I asked, “How many hours?”

“Thirteen.”

Far too long.

“Mr Carr?”

I peered up. Colonel Kaminski, unshaven. I met his gaze.

“Let me take you to your cabin.”

I gripped the chair, as if they’d try to haul me out of it. “No.”

“Son, I know you’re—”

“I won’t let you call me that.”

He hesitated. “Look, joey, you need sleep. I promise we’ll call if—”

“Colonel, incoming traffic. The Manse.”

Kaminski frowned at the interruption. “Very well, I’ll take it here.” He listened. “Ah, Stadholder Bran—all right, then. Jerence. No, he’s …” A glance my way. “… visiting the fish. Not yet. We still hope—yes, right here.” A pause. “I could ask, but the SecGen’s last—his instructions were to put him on
Olympiad.
” He covered the caller. “Would you care to go groundside, wait with Mr Branstead? He says—”

“No.” Wait, Fath wouldn’t care for that. “I meant ‘No, sir.’ And thank him, please.”

I would do for myself what Fath had demanded. Too bad he wouldn’t be here to—

Not yet, Randy. Time for that later.

Lunchtime came and went. I might have been hungry, decided it didn’t matter. After a while the warm leather seat became unbearable. I walked, but the corridors were excruciatingly empty, sublimely boring. None of the portholes had seats where a joey could scan verses in his holovid when he grew weary of staring into space.

Back to the comm room. I rubbed the ache in my spine, and stared endlessly at the holoscreen.

Alarms chimed. I snapped awake.

More fish were Fusing in.

Dozens.

Hundreds.

More than a few joined the flotilla around the Station. Others floated toward
Olympiad.

Outriders flowed back and forth.

The comm room came alive with traffic.
Olympiad
calling the Manse, personal for Stadholder Branstead. Station to
Olympiad.
Venturas Base to Station. Chris Dakko to Colonel Kaminski, on open circuit: “Do you think, if we gave them the salt …?”

“No point. With Seafort dead, the treaty’s a board of blown chips.”

“Is he … have they …”

“No body yet. We’re keeping watch. Christ, the boy’s probably listen—” The line went dead.

An hour later,
Olympiad
sailed toward Fusion safety. On the screen, her lights slowly receded until they were as dim as the uncaring stars. The fish, left behind, returned to the flotilla. I marveled that they hadn’t gone for her tubes. Was it a sign of hope?

Minutes were eons, hours beyond the scope of comprehension. I walked. I slumped in chairs and jerked awake at the slightest sound.

“Come along, Randy.”

I peered sleepily. Tommy Yost.

“I’ll take you to your cabin.” He overrode my protest, guided me along the corridor.

Fath deserved more than he’d had. A monument, a grave, as future generations might contemplate the man who nearly saved them from themselves.

The fish, our enemy, would never give him back. Not for the asking.

Abruptly I dug in my heels. “No. Somewhere else.” What I contemplated made my stomach queasy. Mik. Corrine. Janey. They, at least, would appreciate what I would do.

Yost was waiting. “Where, Randy?”

I told him.

“I can’t.” He glanced about, though we were alone, and spoke softly.

I said, “Please.”

“The Admiral will have my … this is dismissal, joey.”

“This is Nicholas Ewing Seafort.” I held his gaze. Fath. The man who’d discovered the fish, fought them, served as Commandant of Academy, cleared the starlanes of fish at terrible cost to humans and aliens alike. The SecGen. The man who …

I had no need to say it. Tommy knew.

A sigh. “Scanlen was insufferable, but I never meant to forfeit my career.” He poked me. “Let’s go.”

I led him to the machine shop. Yost signed out an etching tool, and a couple of scrap sheets of alumalloy. I thought his excuse was weak, that he wanted to practice pictographs with me just in case … but he was an officer. People saw him as adult. I was but a joeykid.

Yost watched me write out the message. “You understand that folderol?”

I snorted. “Understand? I
invented
it.” For a moment, a glow of pride. Then I recalled why the plate was before us.

I handed him the tool. “Better return it, before someone comes looking.”

“While I’m below, locate a gig.”

The Station moored a handful of gigs, Tommy had told me, small craft seating six at most. It even had a launch of its own. And shuttles, of course, when they weren’t groundside.

The problem wasn’t the craft. Nobody bothered to lock a gig; where would one go with it? Ships called only twice a year, and only the shuttles could traverse Hope Nation’s atmosphere. Besides, locked craft would be useless for emergency evacuations.

But the Station was at a high state of alert, thanks to the menacing fish. We couldn’t just stroll through the lock, could we? Alarms would sound. Nervous techs would train their lasers. My shirt grew damp.

“Ready.”

I jumped.

Tommy frowned. “Where?”

I blushed. “I didn’t look.”

Lugging the plate, I let him take me on an absurd stroll through the Station, glancing out portholes. We found three possible craft.

I whispered, “Would they be fueled?”

“I can’t imagine why not.”

We settled on a gig at a Level 2 lock. There weren’t any service posts near—Comm Room, dining hall, or the like—and the corridor was, for the most part, deserted.

Yost peered into a nearby suit locker. “No thrustersuits.”

“Doesn’t matter. I won’t really need one.”

He said, “
I
might, if they eat the gig.”

Before putting on his helmet, Tommy awkwardly got down on his knees. He closed his eyes, and his lips moved.

I waited.

“Amen.” He struggled to his feet.

“What did you ask for?” A stupid question, born only of curiosity. It was none of my business.

His ears went red. “Courage.”

Christ, what was I doing? “You don’t have to go.”

“You can’t steer a—”

I said, “We’ll call it off.”

“For my sake?”

I nodded.

A long exhalation. “Thanks. But …” He handed me my suit. “I’m tired of comparing myself to you and Ghent.”

I worked my way into the suit.

I’ll say one thing for my prosth: thanks to the nerve grafts, I had nothing to learn. I just used my hand as if it were my own. It looked weird enough, but it sure beat climbing into a suit one-handed.

I sighed. Maybe Fath had been right.

In the end, it was as simple as cycling through the lock. The gig was waiting, and powered up without a hitch. A tiny craft indeed, it had a small lock, six seats divided by a narrow aisle, and a control panel for the pilot. No cockpit. No head.

Tommy strapped himself in, began breakaway.

A clean getaway.

But the moment I clicked on my radio …

“Randy, what are you doing?”
Kaminski himself. His tone held no anger, only worry.

“Going out, sir. We’ll be back in a few minutes.” At any rate, Tommy would.

“I promised Mr Seafort!”
Anguish.
“Come back, joey. Please!”

“On his behalf, I absolve you.” I giggled. “I suppose I’m his heir.”

“Son
…
”
Perhaps he forgot that he wasn’t to call me that.
“You’ll get us killed if you rile the fish.”

“That’s the last thing I intend.” For a moment I switched off the radio. “Hurry, Tommy, before they think of something.”

“We’re clear. I’m trying not to damage the Station.” Slowly, we glided away.

“Easy, Tommy, it’s that close one. No need to—”

“I know.” Already he was braking. I keyed the suit radio.

“Why, Randy? What’s the purpose?”

“To retrieve Fath.”

Tommy took me as near to the fish as he dared.

I swam to the lock, gripped a stanchion at the outer hatch, grateful for my working left arm. “Open, please.”

I gave the plate a last look: “Trade one-arm human / dead big-human.”

It was all I had that they might want.

Carefully, I released the plate, tapped it gently. It floated toward the fish. Surely they’d sense it, take it in. “Tommy, the moment I’m gone, sail the gig as fast as you—”

A membrane swirled. An outrider emerged, clung to the skin. The plate bumped it. An appendage shot out, snagged it.

Protoplasm rippled across the plate, read it, wiped it clean.

“Oh, no!”

The outrider launched itself. Straight for the gig.

I formed words: Tommy, go! But I said nothing. Heart thumping against my suit, I braced myself in the hatchway. At the last minute, I had the sense to duck aside.

“Laser room, prepare to fire on
—
”