The D’neeran Factor (108 page)

In the silence at the end of thought, Hanna struggled from the past in a daze. The memories had never been so powerful
before; coming back was like a great Jump between worlds with no sense of transition. Michael had done what Hanna had not been able to do to him: draw her forcibly from that place of the mind. She had to fight to sit up and speak.

“What happened?” she said, meaning what had happened there and then, not now and here.

His gaze was still fixed in that great distance. He scarcely saw
GeeGee,
scarcely saw Hanna even though she was directly before his eyes. She twisted her hands together, all she could think of was the end, there must be an end, it must come sometime. “What happened?” she repeated, unheard; she said it over and over again. What happened? What happened?

He heard the question finally. He was lost in the dark and did not look at her. “I think I went with my father to Sutherland,” he said.

He was looking into a cloud. It would be easier to die than go into it; it would be preferable; she saw how thin he had gotten, as if looking on disaster in the first hours after it occurs, when the mind refuses to believe that everything has changed and things will never be as they were.

“Went to Sutherland,” she said. “What happened there? What happened?”

“I think I never saw Croft again,” he said.

*   *   *

For once Hanna had taken her turn in Control. At least that was what Michael thought when he woke alone, looked at a chronometer, and saw the time.

He sat up slowly, shaky and hungry. It had been some time since he ate, a day or longer. He only ate when Hanna insisted and sometimes refused food then. He did not know what day it was; only he knew that they had been in space a long time. He tried to remember his last meal. And met only mist.

He sat on his bed in the dark for a long time. His mind was not clear, but seemed more clear than it had been; clear enough to know that it was clouded. He remembered—a true, new memory, this—reaching for Hanna—an hour ago? Days ago? She had pulled away. “What's wrong?” he had said.

“Last time you hurt me—”

She had been afraid of him, in her eyes there were recollections of the
Avalon.
He said he could not have hurt her. She insisted until he thought she had imagined it, had lost her mind, and then it seemed to him that the only firm thing in the world had collapsed and gone away from him. But then she had convinced him that it was true, that he had betrayed her trust, given her pain not pleasure, retained no slightest memory of the incident—and then he knew that he was the one who was mad, and with it a monster.

But even that was better than the other thing, than Hanna's clear sanity being lost to him, even if she could not love him any more. And certainly after that she could not. She was gone because he had hurt her (he forgot about Control); she was gone because he was a monster.

Another memory crept into his despair: Theo seeking help for Lise. He had turned Theo away, abandoned Lise. He got up quickly at the thought, and staggered at a surge of dizziness. When it cleared he was bending over cold water, splashing it on his face. He lifted his head and saw a monster in the mirror, a tragic mask, a face that had forgotten how to smile.

He got out of the room somehow and went to look for Lise. He found her in her cabin, seated at a desk with a reader before her. She looked up calmly, not at all as if she were surprised to see him.

He said, “Puss, are you all right?” His voice did not come out the way he wanted it to.

She nodded. He found a place to sit and then could not think of anything else to say. He tried to talk anyway, stammering out some apology for his neglect, but she did not let him finish.

“I know,” she said. “Theo told me what you're trying to do. I know it's hard. You don't have to worry about me.”

Tears of weakness blurred his eyes. It was the saddest thing he had ever heard. He was used to worrying about Lise, he was used to taking care of people, that was what he did, that was what he was. Now Lise said he should not do it. He would have to be a monster.

Lise said critically, “Have you been eating?”

He shook his head.

“I thought Hanna was taking care of you,” she said. She
was surprised at Hanna, she disapproved; he heard that in her voice.

He managed to say, “I can still feed myself.”

“I don't think you can,” Lise said. “Wait.”

She slipped out. He did not have the strength to follow.

She came back with bread and butter and cheese and strong, hot tea. He ate and drank automatically. It was hard work getting the bread to his mouth at first, but he was stronger even before he finished, and the mists cleared a little more. He really had been very hungry. He could talk more easily, ask Lise about her studies. She answered with that same calmness, but came to sit beside him and drink tea from his cup, more like herself; still he thought she was subtly older, edging toward maturity.

A picture of a baby named Carmina rose up before his eyes, and he choked on a mouthful of bread. Lise pounded his back, though it wasn't necessary. He wanted to grip her in a tight embrace to keep her safe, forever safe. But he was afraid of what he might do to her. He swung toward tears again. “Where's Hanna?” he said, though she was afraid of him and did not love him any more.

“Control,” Lise said.

“Yes, it's her watch.”

Lise said doubtfully, “They're all Theo's now, I think, except he makes Shen stay up and do more. But he went to get Hanna. He said he needed her.”

There must be something wrong. But not too badly wrong or they would have come to get him. Or would they? Why would they?

He got up and went out, followed by Lise; made it up the spiral stairs and into Control. Hanna and Theo were there, their backs to him. It was blindingly bright. There was a high, regular sound in the room; it was familiar, he ought to know what it was.

He did. It was an audible accompaniment to some contact
GeeGee
had made, carrying no information but providing certain psychological benefits for the novice in space—or for a wanderer long out of reach of human sounds.

“A relay,” he said to the pair of backs, so weakly he thought they wouldn't hear him.

They did, though. Hanna said, “It's Omega. We've
crossed over.” She glanced around and went very still. She had not seen him in full light for two or three days. She said in an ordinary voice—but her eyes studied him sharply—“It's a complicated course from here. There's no prime route between here and where we need to go. We'll change course several times. The interpolations are complex; it will take nearly four weeks.”

Four weeks were nothing to Michael who blundered through forty years. Theo also turned around; he looked at Michael narrowly and said, “We can get news now.”

Michael looked at him stupidly. Theo said, “We can find out if the situation's changed. Maybe they've made new offers, public offers. At least we can find out about the mission to Uskos.”

It was too much; he swayed and they came to him, Theo alerted by his face, Hanna by something more. He clutched Hanna, trying to talk. He said, or thought he said, “I'm sorry I hurt you. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry!”

“Satisfied?” Theo said to Hanna savagely, when they had got him back to bed.

“Shut up,” she said.

*   *   *

He heard Theo say he was not diseased and talk about what had been done for Henrik. He put out a hand and got hold of Theo's wrist. He was weak, for a man not diseased, but it was not that his body had failed him; rather, the air here, in the present, was a thick liquid hard to push through.

But he did not have to talk. Hanna translated to Theo what he thought.

“He doesn't want to be drugged like Henrik was.”

“Am I supposed to just stand here and watch this happen?”

“It has a natural course.”

Somehow, through Hanna, he felt Theo's incredulity.

Hanna's voice. “I don't say that. He says it. He says: let him finish.”

They argued. In the end Theo won; won something. Michael knew that because he felt Theo inject something into his arm. Maybe it was supposed to connect him with some kind of reality.

He felt it begin to work. And saw reality, all right, only not the one Theo had wanted him to have.

The sense of Theo's presence faded. But Hanna's was strong.

Stop it,
she said to him,
stop!

He wouldn't; he couldn't. Hanna could not know the favor she had done him, opening the past; nor Theo just now with the stuff he had forced into Michael's veins. He saw like an open door the gate of trance Hanna had shown him long before.

Don't do it. Stop—

—walking in the dark morning, the days were shorter, we left before dawn to reach Sutherland by dark. Bitter cold but we were warm enough with movement and furs. We'd eaten before we left, hot cakes Mirrah baked on the hearth; we had more packed away for mid-day, and meat, fresh-cooked for a journey of only a day and that in the cold; but I always pitied the little caged animals killed for meat, I couldn't do it, couldn't slash the small furred throats, though Pavah said it had to be done, I'd have to learn to do it, praying maybe in apology as many did acknowledging kinship; but he'd never made me do it.
Time enough
he said— Cheese Mirrah had sent, fruit from the winter store, water and strong wine, till Pavah laughed and groaned: “You'll kill us of surfeit, woman! It's only lunch we want!”

“It's hard walking on an empty stomach,” she had said. “To be warm you need to eat.”

For a long time we talked little, warming with the walking and the rising sun. We did not speak of the Post till almost midday. And Pavah would have said nothing had I not asked, and when I did it was no great question; only, “What do we do at Sutherland, Pavah?”

“Tell them what happened,” he said. “Find if they've thoughts on it.”

“How much thinking can there be?” I said.

“Thoughts of resistance, perhaps. There might be some. But it would be folly.”

“Why?” I said. “Would it be like Fairfield?” But Fairfield wasn't real to me, it was only a name.

“You heard of that? Of course you did,” he said, answering himself. “Croft's small, we all hear what the others hear.”

“I don't know what they did at Fairfield,” I said. “I heard of killing, but how? There are strong men in Croft and Sutherland; Fairfield must have had strong men, too.”

“With no weapons but hunters' knives,” he said, “or woodsmen's axes.”

“Hunters have bows, too, and spears.”

“That's not what I speak of.” We walked on in silence. I did not break it; I knew he would speak again. He said, “It's time you knew of such things. I thought to wait till you were older, but you grow fast. And maybe you'll age faster still, if—”

He didn't go on from “if”; he started over. “They've weapons that shoot projectiles that pierce to the heart, fired by a burning powder. They've weapons that pour out a light that burns. Those I've seen, in the hunts in the forests beyond the Post. And I've heard of a weapon that seemingly does nothing at all, except when it's pointed at a man, he dies. That I've not seen. Nor have I seen another thing they talk of, a weapon that stops and crumples a man in a step, though later he wakes unharmed. It might be true. It might not.”

“The hunts you saw, was it when you went to the Post for Croft?” I said, but I knew it was not.

“They were before you even were, before your Mirrah and I married; when we lived there.”

“What did you do there? How did you come away?”

“We were servants of the masters, Lillin and I. It was a hard life, though not as hard as some. When I came to know Lillin, I asked permission to leave, to go away west of the mountains, and it was granted.”

“That doesn't sound so bad,” I said.

“Well, you ought to know this; maybe you'll need to know it one day. That's not something that happens often, a servant permitted to leave. To leave without permission is against the law. A man can be punished for it, or a woman; they can even be killed. But they let me go because I was an embarrassment.”

He grinned, his teeth white as cloud in the winter sky.

“Why an embarrassment?” I said.

“These eyes. Yours and mine and Carmina's. My mirrah, your grandmother you never knew, was a servant, too, and a pretty thing. A son of a master's house took a liking to her.
I was the result. These are known eyes, one family's eyes, though they've spread through intermarriage. When you see them, you know whose blood runs in the veins. And you see them in the fields and factories, too; but they were willing enough to get them out of the house. And so we were allowed to leave. We had to leave behind all we had, though; came to Croft with the clothes on our backs.”