For Love of Mother-Not (20 page)

“I promise you we’ll do our best,” the woman assured him. “We don’t want to see innocent bystanders hurt. We don’t even want to see noninnocents hurt.” She favored him with a maternal smile, which for some reason did nothing to make the nervous assistant feel any better about the situation.

T
he tracker hummed quietly, the single glowing dot showing clearly on its screen as the skimmer rushed northward. It was clipping the tops of the tallest trees, more than eighty meters above the bogs and muck that passed for the ground. They had crossed Lake Patra, then an intervening neck of dry land, then the much larger lake known as Tigranocerta and were once more cruising over the forest. A cold rain was falling, spattering off the skimmer’s acrylic canopy to form a constantly changing wet topography that obscured much of the view outside. The skimmer’s instruments kept its speed responsive, maintaining a predetermined distance between it and its quarry to the north.

Awfully quiet, Lauren Walder thought. He’s awfully quiet, and maybe something else.

“No, I’m not too young,” he said into the silence that filled the cabin, his tone softly defensive.

Lauren’s eyebrows lifted. “You can read minds?”

He responded with a shy smile. “No, not that.” Fingers stroked the head of the minidrag sleeping on his shoulder. “I just feel things at times. Not thoughts, nothing that elaborate. Just the way people are feeling.” He glanced up at her. “From the way I thought you were feeling just now, I thought you were going to say something along that line.”

“Well, you were right,” she confessed, wondering what to make of the rest of his declaration.

“I’m not, you know.”

“How old are you?” she asked.

“Sixteen. As best I know. I can’t be certain.”

Sixteen going on sixty, she thought sadly. During her rare visits to Drallar, she had seen his type before. Child of circumstance, raised in the streets and instructed by wrong example and accident, though he seemed to have turned out better than his brethren. His face held the knowledge withheld from his more fortunate contemporaries, but it didn’t seem to have made him vicious or bitter.

Still she felt there was something else at work here.

“How old do you think I am?” she asked idly.

Flinx pursed his lips as he stared at her. “Twenty-three,” he told her without hesitating.

She laughed softly and clapped both hands together in delight. “So that’s what I’m helping, a sixteen-year-old vengeful diplomat!” Her laughter faded. The smile remained. “Tell me about yourself, Flinx.”

It was a question that no stranger in Drallar would ever be so brazen as to ask. But this was not Drallar, he reminded himself. Besides, he owed this woman.

So he told her as much as he knew. When he finished his narrative, she continued to stare solemnly at him, nodding her head as if his words had done no more than confirm suspicions already held. She spared a glance to make sure the tracker was still functioning efficiently, then looked back at him. “You haven’t exactly had a comfortable childhood, have you?”

“I wouldn’t know,” he replied, “because I only have hearsay to compare it with.”

“Take my word for it, you haven’t. You’ve also managed to get along with the majority of humanity even though they don’t seem to want to have anything to do with you. Whereas I’ve had to avoid the majority of people who seem to want to have a lot to do with me.”

Impulsively, she leaned over out of the pilot’s chair and kissed him. At the last instant, he flinched, nervous at such unaccustomed proximity to another human being—especially an attractive member of the opposite sex—and the kiss, which was meant for his cheek, landed instead on his lips.

That made her pull back fast. The smile stayed on her face,
and she only blinked once in surprise. It had been an accident, after all. “Take my word for something else, Flinx. If you live long enough, life gets better.”

“Is that one of the Church’s homilies?” He wondered if she wore some caustic substance to protect her lips from burning, because his own were on fire.

“No,” she said. “That’s a Lauren Walder homily.”

“Glad to hear it. I’ve never had much use for the Church.”

“Nor have I. Nor have most people. That’s why it’s been so successful, I expect.” She turned her gaze to the tracker. “They’re starting to slow down. We’ll do the same.”

“Do you think they’ve seen us?” Suddenly, he didn’t really care what the people in the skimmer ahead of them decided to do. The fire spread from his lips to his mouth, ran down his throat, and dispersed across his whole body. It was a sweet, thick fire.

“I doubt it,” she replied. “I’ll bet they’re close to their destination.” Her hands manipulated controls.

“How far ahead of us are they?” He walked forward to peer over her shoulder at the screen. He could have stood to her left, but he was suddenly conscious of the warmth of her, the perfume of her hair. He was very careful not to touch her.

She performed some quick calculations, using the tracker’s predictor. “Day or so. We don’t want to run up their tail. There’s nothing up in this part of the country. Odd place to stop, but then this whole business is odd, from what you’ve told me. Why bring your mother up here?”

He had no answer for her.

They dropped until the skimmer was rising and falling in concert with the treetops. So intent were they on the actions of the dot performing on the tracking screen that neither of them noticed that not only had the rain stopped but the cloud cover had cracked. Overhead, one of the rings of Moth, the interrupted ring which encircled the planet, shimmered golden against the ceiling of night.

“What makes you so sure they’re stopping here instead of just slowing down for a while?” he asked Lauren.

“Because a skimmer operates on a stored charge, just like
a mudder. Remember, they had to come from here down to Patra. Our own charge is running low, and we’re not on the return leg of a round trip. I don’t know what model they’re flying, but I saw how big it was. It can’t possibly retain enough energy to take them much farther than we’ve gone the past several days. They at least have to be stopping somewhere to recharge, which is good.”

“Why is that?” Flinx asked.

“Because we’re going to have to recharge, also.” She pointed to a readout. “We’ve used more than half our own power. If we can’t recharge somewhere around here, we’re going to have some hiking to do on our way out.”

Flinx regarded her with new respect, if that was possible; his opinion of her had already reached dizzying heights. “Why didn’t you tell me when we reached the turnaround point?”

She shrugged slightly. “Why? We’ve gone to a lot of trouble to come as far as we have. You might have argued with me about turning back.”

“No,” Flinx said quietly, “I wouldn’t have done that.”

“I didn’t think so. You’re almost as determined to see this through as I am, and at least as crazy.”

She stared up at him, and he stared back. Nothing more needed to be said.

“I vote
no.”

Nyassa-lee was firm in her disagreement. She sat on one side of the table and gazed expectantly at her colleagues. Brora was thoughtfully inspecting the fingernails of his left hand, while Haithness toyed with her eyelashes.

“Really,” the tall black woman murmured to her compatriot, “to show such reluctance at this stage is most discouraging, Nyassa-lee.” Her fingers left her eyes. “We may never have the chance to manipulate another subject as promising as this Twelve. Time and events conspire against us. You know that as well as I.”

“I know.” The shorter woman leaned forward in the chair and gazed between her legs at the floor. Cracks showed between
the panels; the building had been assembled in haste. “I’m just not convinced it’s worth the risk.”

“What risk?” Haithness demanded to know. “We’ve still seen nothing like a demonstration of threatening power. Quite the contrary, I’d say. Certainly the subject had the opportunity to display any such abilities. It’s evident he does not possess them, or he would doubtless have employed them against us. Instead, what did we see? Knife.” She made it sound disgusting as well as primitive.

“She’s right, you know.” Brora rarely spoke, preferring to let the two senior scientists do most of the arguing. He stepped in only when he was completely confident of his opinion.

“We don’t want another repeat of the girl,” Nyassa-lee said. “The Society couldn’t stand another failure like that.”

“Which is precisely why we must pursue this last opportunity to its conclusion,” Haithness persisted.

“We don’t know that it represents our last opportunity.”

“Oh, come on, Nyassa-lee.” Haithness pushed back her chair and stood; she began pacing nervously back and forth. Behind her, lights shone cold green and blue from the consoles hastily assembled. “Even if there
are
other subjects of equal potential out there, we’ve no guarantee that any of us will be around much longer to follow up on them.”

“I can’t argue with that,” Nyassa-lee admitted. “Nor can I argue this Number Twelve’s statistical promise. It’s just those statistics which frighten me.”

“Frighten you?” Haithness stopped pacing and looked over at her companion of many hard years. The tall woman was surprised. She had seen Nyassa-lee wield a gun with the cold-blooded efficiency of a qwarm. Fear seemed foreign to her. “But why? He’s done nothing to justify such fear.”

“Oh, no?” Nyassa-lee ticked off her points on the fingers of one hand. “One, his statistical potential is alarming. Two, he’s sixteen, on the verge of full maturity. Three, he could cross into that at
any
time.”

“The girl,” Brora pointed out, “was considerably younger.”

“Agreed,” said Nyassa-lee, “but her abilities were precocious.
Her advantage was surprise. This Number Twelve is developing slowly but with greater potential. He may be the kind who responds to pressure by reaching deeper into himself.”

“Maybe,” Brora said thoughtfully, “but we have no proof of it, nor does his profile predict anything of the sort.”

“Then how do you square that,” she responded, “with the fact that he has by himself—”

“He’s not by himself,” Brora interrupted her. “That woman from the lodge was helping him out on the lake.”

“Was
helping him. She didn’t help him get to that point. He followed us all the way to that lake on his own, without any kind of external assistance. To me that indicates the accelerated development of a Talent we’d better beware of.”

“All the more reason,” Haithness said angrily, slapping the table with one palm, “why we must push ahead with our plan!”

“I don’t know,” Nyassa-lee murmured, unconvinced.

“Do you not agree,” Haithness countered, forcing herself to restrain her temper, “that if the operation is a success we stand a good chance of accomplishing our goal as regards outside manipulation of the subject?”

“Possibly,” Nyassa-lee conceded.

“Why just ‘possibly’? Do you doubt the emotional bond?”

“That’s not what concerns me. Suppose, just suppose, that because his potential is still undeveloped, he has no conscious control of it?”

“What are you saying?” Brora asked.

She leaned intently over the table. “With the girl Mahnahmi we knew where we stood, once she’d revealed herself. Unfortunately, that knowledge came as a surprise to us, and too late to counteract. We’ve no idea where we stand vis-à-vis this subject’s Talents. Suppose that, despite the emotional bond, pressure and fear conspire to release his potential regardless of his surface feelings? Statistically, the subject is a walking bomb that may not be capable or mature enough to control itself.
That’s
what worries me, Haithness. The emotional bond may be sufficient to control his conscious self.
The unpredictable part of him may react violently in spite of it.”

“We cannot abandon our hopes and work on so slim a supposition, one that we have no solid facts to support,” Haithness insisted. “Besides, the subject is sixteen. If anything, he should have much more control over himself than the girl did.”

“I know, I know,” Nyassa-lee muttered unhappily. “Everything you say is true, Haithness, yet I can’t help worrying. In any case, I’m outvoted.”

“That you are,” the tall woman said after a questioning glance at Brora. “And if Cruachan were here with us, you know he’d vote to proceed too.”

“I suppose.” Nyassa-lee smiled thinly. “I worry too much. Brora, are you sure you can handle the implant?”

He nodded. “I haven’t done one in some time, but the old skills remain. It requires patience more than anything else. You remember. As to possible unpredictable results, failure, well”—he smiled—”we’re all condemned already. One more little outrage perpetrated against society’s archaic laws can’t harm us one way or the other if we fail here.”

Off in a nearby corner, Mother Mastiff sat in a chair, hands clasped in her lap, and listened. She was not bound. There was no reason to tie her, and she knew why as well as her captors. There was nowhere to run. She was in excellent condition for a woman her age, but she had had a good view of the modest complex of deceptive stone and wood structures as the skimmer had landed. Thousands of square kilometers of damp, hostile forest lay between the place she had been brought to and the familiar confines of Drallar. She was no more likely to steal a vehicle than she was to turn twenty again.

She wondered what poor Flinx was going through. That had been him, out on the boat on the lake far to the south. How he had managed to trace her so far she had no idea. At first, her concern had been for herself. Now that she had had ample opportunity to listen to the demonic trio arguing in front of her—for demonic she was certain they were—she
found herself as concerned for the fate of her adopted son as for her own. If she was lost, well, she had had a long and eventful life. Better perhaps that her brave Flinx lose track of her than stumble into these monsters again.

One of the trio, the short, toad-faced man, had spoken of “adjusting” her and of “implants.” That was enough to convince her to prepare for something worse than death. Many of their words made no sense to her. She still had no idea who the people were, much less where they had come from or the reasons for their actions. They never spoke to her, ignoring her questions as well as her curses.