Clay's Ark (12 page)

"A disease?" She frowned. "You came back sick and gave us a disease? Did you know you had it?"

"Yes."

"And you knew we could catch it?"

He nodded.

"Then you gave it to us deliberately!"

"No, not deliberately."

"But if you knew . . ."

"Meda . . ." He wanted to touch her, take her by the shoulders and reassure her. But if he began to touch her, he would

not be able to stop. "Meda, you'll be all right. I'll take care of you. I stayed to take care of you."

"You came here to give us a disease!"

"No!" He turned his head toward the well tank. "No, I came ... to get water and food."

"But you-"

"I couldn't die. I wanted to, but I couldn't. I can go out of my mind; I can become an animal; but I can't kill myself."

"What about the others, the crew?"

"All dead like I told you, like your Barstow news said. The disease took some of them-before we found out how to help

them." A half-truth. A deletion. Disa and two others had died in spite of the help they got. "The others died here-with

the ship. Someone-maybe more than one-apparently managed a little sabotage. I wish they'd done it in space, or back

on Proxi Two."

"How do you know someone sabotaged the ship? Maybe it was an accident."

"I don't know. I don't remember. I blacked out."

"How did you get off the ship?"

"I don't know. I have off-and-on memories of running, hiding. I know I took shelter in mountains of volcanic rock,

lived in a half-collapsed lava tunnel for three days and two nights. I nearly starved to death."

"People can't starve in just three days."

"We can. You and me, now."

She only stared at him.

"It was raining," he continued. "I remember we deliberately chose to land in a storm in the middle of nowhere so we

could get away before anyone found out what we were. Even with speeded up reflexes, increased strength, and

enhanced senses, we nearly disintegrated, then nearly crashed. We kept them from shooting us down by talking. God,

we talked. The brave heros giving all the information they could before they crashed. Before they died. We could no

more imagine ourselves dying than we could imagine not coming straight in to Earth. It was a magnet for us in more

ways than one. All those people ... all those . . . billions of uninfected people."

"You came to infect . . . everybody?" she whispered.

"We had to come. We couldn't not come; it was impossible. But we thought we could control it once we were here. We

thought we could take only a few people at a time. A few isolated people. That's why we chose such an empty place."

"Why would you think you could have any . . . any luck controlling yourselves here in the middle of all the billions if

you couldn't control yourselves on Proxima Centauri Two?"

"We weren't sure," he said. "Maybe it was just something we told ourselves to keep from going completely crazy. On

the other hand . . ." He looked at her, glad she was alive and well enough to be her questioning, demanding self. "On

the other hand, maybe we were right. I don't want to leave this place to reach anyone else. Not now. Not yet."

"You've done enough damage here."

"Do you want to leave?"

"Eli, I live here!"

"Doesn't matter. Do you want to go to a hospital? See if somebody can figure out a cure?"

She looked uncomfortable, a little frightened. "I was wondering why you didn't do that."

"I can't. Can you?"

"What do you mean you can't?"

"Go if you can. I'll ... try not to stop you. I'll try."

"This is my home! I don't have to go anywhere!"

"Meda-"

"Why don't you leave! You're the cause of all this! You're the problem!"

"Shall I go, Meda?"

Silence. He had frightened and confused her, touched a brand new tender spot that she might not have discovered on

her own for a while. She wanted to stay with her own kind. Being alone was terrifying, mind-numbing, he knew.

"You went away," she said, reading him unconsciously. "You left the rest of the crew."

"Not deliberately."

"Do you ever do anything deliberately?" She came a little closer to him. "You got out. Only you."

He realized where she was headed and did not want to hear her, but she continued. "The one sure way you could have

known when to run is if you were the saboteur."

His hands gripped each other. If they had gripped anything else at that moment, they would have crushed it. "Do you

think I haven't thought about that?" he said. "I've tried to remember."

"If I were you, I wouldn't want to remember."

"But I've tried. Not that it makes any difference in the end. The others died and I should have died. If I did it, I killed

my friends then made their deaths meaningless. If someone else did it, my survival made the sacrifice meaningless

anyway."

"The dogs died," she said. "Remember? One of them was hurt, but not bad. The other wasn't hurt at all, but they died.

We' couldn't understand it."

"I'm sorry."

"They died! Maybe we'll die!"

"You won't die. I'll take care of you."

She touched his face, finally, traced the few premature lines there. "You aren't sure," she said. "My touch hurts you,

doesn't it?"

He said nothing. His body had gone rigid. Its center, its focus was where her fingers caressed.

"It must hurt you to hold back," she said. "Your holding back hurts me." There were agonizing seconds of silence.

"You probably were the saboteur," she said. "You're strong enough to hurt yourself, so you thought you were strong

enough to kill yourself. I want you. But I wish you had succeeded. I wish you had died."

He had no more strength of will at all. He seized her, dragged her behind the well, pushed her to the ground. She was

not surprised, did not struggle. In fact, with her own drives compelling her, she helped him.

But it was not only passion or physical pain that caused her to scratch and tear at his body with her nails.

PRESENT 12

When Orel Ingraham grasped Rane's arm and led her from Meda's house, she held her terror at bay by planning her

escape. She would go either with her father and Keira or without them. If she had to leave them behind, she would send

help back to them. She had no idea which law enforcement group policed this wilderness area, but she would find out.

All that mattered now was escaping. Living long enough to escape, and escaping.

She was terrified of Ingraham, certain that he was crazy, that he would kill her if she were not careful. If she committed

herself to a poorly planned escape attempt and he caught her, he would certainly kill her.

She noticed no trembling in the hand that held her arm. There were no facial tics now, no trembling anywhere. She did

not know whether that was a good sign or not, but it comforted her. It made him seem more normal, less dangerous.

As they walked, she looked around, memorizing the placement of the animal pens, the houses, the large chicken house,

and something that was probably a barn. The buildings and large rocks could be excellent hiding places.

The people were spooky; she saw only a few, all adults. They were busy feeding the animals, gardening, repairing

tools. One woman sat in front of a house, cleaning a chicken. Rane watched with interest. She planned to be a doctor

eventually, and was pleased that the sight did not repel her. What did repel her was the way people looked at her. Each

person she passed paused for a moment to stare at her. They were all scrawny and their eyes seemed larger than normal

in their gaunt faces. They looked at her with hunger or lust. They looked so intently she felt as though they had reached

for her with their thin fingers. She could imagine them all grabbing her.

At one point, an animal whizzed past-something lean and brown and catlike, running at a startling speed. It was much

bigger than a housecat. Rane stared after it, wondering what it had been.

"Show-off," Ingraham muttered. But he was smiling. The smile made him look years younger, less intense, saner. Rane

dared to question him.

"What was that?" she asked.

"Jacob," Ingraham answered. "Stark naked as usual."

"Naked?" Rane said, frowning. "What was it?"

He led her onto the porch of an unpainted, but otherwise complete, wooden house. There he stopped her. "Not 'it,' " he

said, "him. That was one of Meda's kids. No, shut up and listen!"

Rane closed her mouth, swallowing her protests. But the running thing had definitely not been a child.

"Our kids look like that," he said. "You may as well get used to it because yours are going to look like that too. It's a

disease that we have, and now you have it-or you'll soon get it. There isn't a damn thing you can do about it."

With no further explanation, he took her into the house and turned her over to a tall, pregnant woman whose hair was

almost long enough for her to trip over.

Lupe, the woman's name was. She was sharp-featured with thin arms and legs. In spite of her pregnancy, she clearly

belonged among these people. She wore a caftan much like Keira's. Her pregnant belly looked like a balloon beneath it.

She reached for Rane with thin, grasping hands.

Rane drew back, but Ingraham still held her. She could not escape. The woman caught Rane's other arm and held it in a

grip just short of painful. The thinness was deceptive. These people were all abnormally strong.

"Don't be afraid," the woman said with a slight accent. "We have to touch you, but we won't hurt you." Her voice was

the friendliest thing Rane had heard since her capture. Rane tried to relax, tried to trust the friendly voice.

"Why do you have to touch me?" she asked.

"Because you're not one of us yet," Lupe said. "You will be. Be still." She reached up so quickly that Rane had no

chance to struggle, and made scratches across Rane's left cheek.

Rane squealed in surprise and pain, and, too late, jerked her head back. "What did you do that for?" she demanded.

They ignored her. "You're in a hurry," Ingraham said to Lupe.

"Eli says the sooner the better with this one and her father," Lupe told him.

"While he takes his time with his. Treats her like she'll break if he touches her."

"She might. We never had anybody who was already sick."

"Yeah. I got us a healthy one, though."

They talked about her as though she were not there, Rane thought. Or as though she were no more than an animal who

could not understand.

She tried to pull free when Lupe took her away from Ingraham and sat her down on a long wooden bench. There,

finally, she released Rane and stood before her studying Rane's angry, hostile posture. Lupe shook her head.

"I lied," she told Rane. "We are going to hurt you. You're going to fight us every chance you get, aren't you? You're

going to make us hurt you." The corners of her mouth turned downward. "Too bad. I can tell you from experience, it