Limits (32 page)

He ate lightly, then got dressed and left the house. Although she was concerned, Elise did not follow him.

He went out to the distillery, where Greg spent much of his time under
the sun, drunk and playing at being happy. “Would you?” The pain still muffled Doc’s words. “Would you sterilize them?”

Greg looked at him blearily, still hung over from the previous evening’s alcoholic orgy. “You don’t understand, man.” There was a stirring sound from the sheltered bedroom behind the distillery, and a woman’s waking groan. Doc knew it wasn’t Jill. “You just don’t understand.”

Doc sat down, wishing he had the nerve to ask for a drink. “Maybe I don’t. Do you?”

“No. No, I don’t. So I’ll follow the herd. I’m a builder. I build roads, and I build houses. I’ll leave the moralizing to you big brains.”

Doc tried to say something and found that no words would come. He needed something. He needed…

“Here, Doc. You know you want it.” Greg handed him a canister with a straw in it. “Best damn vodka in the world.” He paused, and the slur dropped from his voice. “And this is the world, Doc.
For us.
For the rest of our lives.
You’ve just got to learn to roll with it.” He smiled again and mixed himself an evil-looking drink.

Greg’s guest had evidently roused
herself
and dressed. Doc could hear her now, singing a snatch of song as she left. He didn’t want to recognize the voice.

“Got any orange juice?” Doc mumbled, after sipping the vodka.

Greg tossed him an orange. “A real man works for his pleasures.”

Doc laughed and took another sip of the burning fluid. “Good lord. What
is
that mess you’re drinking?”

“It’s a Black Samurai.
Sake and soy sauce.”

Doc choked. “How can you drink that?”

“Variety, my friend.
The stimulation of the bizarre.”

Doc was silent for a long time. Senses swimming he watched the sun climb, feeling the warmth as morning melted into afternoon. He downed a slug of his third screwdriver and said irritably, “You can’t do it, Greg. If you sterilize the children, it’s over.”

“So what?
It’s over anyway. If they wanna let a drunk slit the pee pees of their…shall we say atavistic progeny? Yeah, that sounds nice. Well, if they want me to do it, I guess I’ll have to do it.” He looked at Doc very carefully. “I do have my sense of civic duty.
How about you, Doc?”

“I tried.” He mumbled, feeling the liquor burning his throat, feeling the
lightheadedness exert its pull. “I tried. And I’ve failed.”

“You’ve failed so far. What were your goals?”

“To keep—” he took a drink. Damn, that felt good.
“To keep the colony healthy.
That’s what. It’s a disaster. We’re at each other’s throats. We kill our babies—”

Doc lowered his head, unable to continue.

They were both silent, then Greg said, “If I’ve gotta do it, I will, Doc. If it’s not me, it’ll be someone else who reads a couple of medical texts and wants to play doctor. I’m sorry.”

Doc sat, thinking. His hands were shaking. “I can’t do that.” He couldn’t even feel the pain anymore.

“Then do what you gotta do, man,” and Greg’s voice was dead sober.

“Will you…can you help me?” Doc bit his lip. “This is
my
civic duty, you know?”

“Yeah, I know.” He shook his head. “I’m sorry. I wish I could help.”

A few minutes passed,
then
Doc said drunkenly, “There’s got to be a way. There just has to be.”

“Wish I could help, Doc.”

“I wish you could too,” Doc said sincerely, then rose and staggered back to his house.

It rained the night he made his decision, one of the quick, hot rains that swept from the coast to the mountains in a thunderclap of fury. It would make a perfect cover.

He gathered his medical texts, a Bible and a few other books, regretting that most of the information available to him was electronically encoded. Doc took one of the silent stunners from the armory. The nonlethal weapons had only been used as livestock controllers. There had never been another need, until now. From the infirmary he took a portable medical kit, stocking it with extra bandages and medicine,
then
took it all to the big cargo flyer.

It was collapsible, with a fabric fuselage held rigid by highly compressed air in fabric structural tubing. He put it in one of the soundless electric trucks and inflated it behind the children’s complex.

There was plenty of room inside the fence for building and for a huge playground with fruit trees and all the immemorial toys of the very young. After the children had learned to operate a latch, Brew had made a lock for
the gate and given everyone a key. Doc clicked it open and moved in.

He stayed in the shadows, creeping close to the main desk where Elise worked.

You can’t follow where I must go,
he thought regretfully.
You and I are the only fully trained medical personnel. You must stay with the others. I’m sorry, darling.

And he stunned her to sleep silently, moving up to catch her head as it slumped to the table. For the last time, he gently kissed her mouth and her closed eyes.

The children were in the left wing—one room for each sex, with floors all mattress and no covers, because they could not be taught to use a bed. He sprayed the sound waves up and down the sleeping forms. The parabolic reflector leaked a little, so that his arm was numb to the elbow when he was finished. He shook his hand, trying to get some feeling back into it, then gave up and settled into the hard work of carrying the children to the flyer.

He hustled them through the warm rain, bending under their weight but still working swiftly. Doc arranged them on the fabric floor in positions that looked comfortable—the positions of sleeping men rather than sleeping animals. For some time he stood looking down at Jerry his son and at Lori his daughter, thinking things he could not afterwards remember.

He flew
North
. The flyer was slow and not soundless; it must have awakened people, but he’d have some time before anyone realized what had happened.

Where the forest had almost petered out he hovered down and landed gently enough that only a slumbering moan rose from the children. Good. He took half of them, including Jerry and Lori, and spread them out under the trees. After he had made sure that they had cover from the air he took the other packages, the books and the medical kit, and hid them under a bush a few yards away from the children.

He stole one last look at them, his heirs, small and defenseless, asleep. He could see Elise in them, in the color of their hair, as Elise could see him in their eyes and cheeks.

Kneading his shoulder, he hurried back to the ship. There was more for him to do.

Skipping the ship off again, he cruised thirty miles west, near the stark ridge of mountains, their sombre grey still broken only sparsely by patches of
green. There he left the other seven children. Let the two groups develop separately, he thought. They wouldn’t starve, and they wouldn’t die of e
x
posure, not with the pelts they had grown. Many would remain alive, and free. He hoped Jerry and Lori would be among them.

Doc lifted the flyer off and swept it out to the ocean. Only a quarter mile offshore
were
the first of the islands, lush now with primitive foliage. They spun beneath him, floating brownish-green upon a still blue sea.

Now he could feel his heartbeat, taste his fear. But there was resolve, too, more certain and calm than any he had known in his life.

He cut speed and locked the controls, setting the craft on a gradual d
e
cline. Shivering already, he pulled on his life jacket and walked to the emergency hatch, screwing it open quickly.

The wind whipped his face, the cutting edge of salt narrowing his eyes. Peering against the wall of air pressure he was able to see the island coming up on him now, looming close. The water was only a hundred feet below him, now eighty,
sixty
…

The rumbling of the shallow breakers joined with the tearing wind, and, fighting his fear, he waited until the last possible moment before hurling himself from the doorway.

He remembered falling.

He remembered hitting the water at awful speed, the spray lipping into him, the physical impact like the blow of a great hand. When his head broke the surface Doc wheezed for air, swallowed salty liquid and thrashed for balance.

In the distance, he saw the flash of light, and a moment later heard the shattering roar as the flyer spent itself on the rocky shore.

Jase was tired. He was often tired lately, although he still managed to get his work done.

The fields had only recently become unkempt, as Marlow and Billie and Jill and the others grew more and more inclined to pick their vegetables from their backyard gardens.

So just he and a few more still rode out to the fields on the tractors, still kept close watch on the herds, still did the hand-pruning so necessary to keep the fruit trees healthy.

The children were of some help. Ten years ago a few of them had been
captured around the foothill area. They had been sterilized, of course, and taught to weed, and carry firewood, and a few other simple tasks.

Jase leaned on his staff and watched the shaggy figures moving along the street, sweeping and cleaning.

He had grown old on this world, their Ridgeback. He regretted much that had happened here, especially that night thirty-some years before when Doc had taken the children.

Taken them—where? Some argued for the islands, some for the West side of the mountain range. Some believed that the children had died in the crash of the flyer. Jase had believed that, until the adult Piths were captured. Now, it was hard to say what happened.

It was growing chill now, the streetlights winking on to brighten the long shadows a setting Tau Ceti cast upon the ground. He drew his coat tighter across his shoulders and walked back to his house. It was a lonelier place to be since June had died, but it was still home.

Fumbling with the latch, he pushed the door open and reached around for the light switch. As it flicked on, he froze.

My God.

“Hello, Jase.” The figure was tall and spare, clothes ragged, but greying hair and beard cut squarely. Three of the children were with him.

After all this time…

“Doc…” Jase said, still unbelieving. “It is you, isn’t it?”

The bearded man smiled uncertainly, showing teeth that were white but chipped. “It’s been a long time, Jase.
A very long time.”

The three Piths were quiet and alert, sniffing the air of this strange place.

“Are these—?”

“Yes.
Jerry and Lori.
And Eve.
And a small addition.”
One of the three—God, could it be Eve?
sniffed
up to Jase. The soft golden fur on her face was tinged with grey, but she carried a young child at her breast.

Jerry stood tall for a preman, eyeing Jase warily. He carried a sharpened stick in one knobby hand.

Jase sat down, speechless. He looked up into the burning eyes of the man he had known thirty years before. “You’re still officially under a death se
n
tence, you know.”

Doc nodded his head.
“For kidnapping?”

“Murder.
No one was sure what had happened to you, whether you or
any of the children had survived.”

Doc, too, sat down. For the first time the light in his eyes dimmed. “Yes. We survived. I swam to shore after crashing the flyer, and found the place where I had left the children.” He thought for a moment,
then
asked quietly. “How is Elise?
And all the others?”

Jase was unable to raise his eyes from the floor. “She died three years ago, Doc. She was never the same after you left. She thought you were dead.
That the children were dead.
Couldn’t you have at least told her about your plan? Or gotten her a message?”

Doc’s fingers played absently with his beard as he shook his head. “I couldn’t involve her. I couldn’t. Could you…show me where she’s buried, Jase?”

“Of course.”

“What about the others?”

“Well, none of the people were the same after the children left. Some just seemed to lose purpose. Brew’s dead. Greg drank himself under. Four of the others have died.” Jase paused, thinking. “Do any of the others know you’re here?”

“No. I slipped in just at dusk. I wasn’t sure what kind of a reception I’d get.”

“I’m still not sure.” Jase hesitated. “Why did you do it?”

The room was quiet, save for a scratching sound as Jerry fingered an ear.
Fleas?
Absurd.
Jill had never uncrated them.