The D’neeran Factor (115 page)

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Now the days drew near to the shortest of the year and the hardest of the cold came on us early. There was no more dancing-master, nor did Portia come, and the players ceased their trade. The snow fell, and the world stopped. We did not go anywhere and what we needed was brought to us, though scanty enough, and brought in half-empty carts; but the seeming end of time had more to do with lack of news, which we could not get any more, except sometimes when a neighbor ducked through our door looking over her shoulder to make sure she was not seen. So we heard, but as if at a great distance, of death swelling in the town; how the newly sick might disappear, no one knowing where they were taken; we heard of the sealing of more of the great barracks, and how the inhabitants of one set it afire but were shot as they ran from the flames or forced back to burn alive; and we heard of empty factories, and how fuel might soon be short, as food already was. But these whispers were like tales of events that had happened far away. The Postmen who came with food and fuel would say nothing,
and we heard nothing of how things were behind the wall. There might have been no one there, all might have fled from the sickness—yet clearly someone remained to give the orders that kept us in isolation, and other orders that reduced the food the Postmen brought day by day—and our neighbors said the numbers of the fishers, too, had shrunk, so that there were fewer to bring food from the sea. And we weakened, and were often hungry, except Carmina who got shares of all our portions; and I began to think of how it might end.

But one night when I had only begun to think of the end, there came a rattle at the door, and a man put his face into it, and I saw that it was Willem. He spoke a few quick words to Kia which I could not hear, and then was gone without acknowledging my presence. Alban hurried to Kia's side and she whispered to him, and he said so that I could hear, seeming astounded, “He is running away? Where can he go? Can it be so bad?”

“His head is light with hunger,” Kia said, but she twisted her hands in her skirt, and her brow twisted, too.

She looked at Alban and he said, “In the morning we will try to find out more.”

“Morning will be too late,” she said.

And they began to argue the wisdom of going that same night for news of some kind—of the sickness, I thought, for what else could it be?—and then they spoke of Leren and of streets and passages that led out of sight, with luck, to his house; and I said I knew all the ways there were to get there.

So they sent me out into the cold with a question: I was to ask Leren what had happened (though I still did not know what they thought that was). I made the journey safely, treading ice in the dark, for the streets were not lighted, and came safely to Leren's house and asked my question—I did not even go in, he was in no way glad to see me, his mind was on other things, and he stood in the door looking into the dark with fear in his face.

He said, “One of those at Millside wanted to get out. To get out he betrayed us all. He was not satisfied with giving the names of Millside men already doomed with fever; no, he has given them every name he ever heard. I have it from a guard who was one of those named and now runs for his life. I cannot make up my mind to run. It is winter, there is
nothing but snow. It will be dying all the same; only the means will be different.”

Then he turned into the room and took a scrap of paper, and wrote some lines and gave them to me for Kia.

“What does it say?” I said.

“It says get out. Get out. Get out.”

“What does this mean?” I said.

“Do you know what they had at Millside?” he said. “There was a map of the wall that showed each place where weapons are stored. The locks are strange things, they are worked with numbers that are pushed with the hand. For some of them we had the numbers.”

I began to understand, and not all the ice in my back came from the winter.

“If we go, where can we go?” I said. But he did not answer, and shut the door in my face.

I did not know what it all meant, but I knew enough to be afraid as I ran back through the dark, though it was only the beginning of fear, born less of understanding than of what I had seen in Kia's face and heard in Leren's voice. So I hurried, scarcely heeding the ice underfoot; only as I came close to Kia's street, I saw light shining over the roofs; I saw, as I came closer still, light filtering between houses and other small buildings that lay between; and I heard voices on the wind, men's voices, some shouting to others. I did not feel any fear, did not feel anything, except an urgency to get to Mirrah and to Kia's house, and this carried me over the ice. But I ran without looking at the ground. My eyes were all for the sky. For when I had gone only a little distance, not far from Leren's house, I had seen a thing that hung in the sky not much higher than rooftop-level, a thing big as many houses put together. I could not make out what it was, I saw only one piece of it at a time, as the roofs between cut one part or another from my sight, but it was long and slender like a needle in the sky, and shafts of light shone downward from its belly.
They are not directed at Kia's house,
I said to myself.
They will not touch me.
And I continued to say this until I came around the last corner and saw all of it at once: the air and the street filled with light from the thing in the sky, the street filled with Postmen, too, all carrying weapons and looking about and shouting to each other, and Kia's door wide open, and
then, tearing from that door greater than the noise of the crowd, a woman's screams.

I did not know if it were Mirrah or Kia I heard, I did not know or feel anything, I only ran on blind to the Postmen and the thing in the sky. I was seized and hurled to the ground, though I fought, knowing for the first time what it was to wish to hurt men with my hands; for they stood between me and Mirrah. And a time passed which I could not measure. I felt no cold, though I lay bound on the ice and bound also to one of the Postmen's wagons; for I had continued to struggle and seek to drag myself toward the house after my hands and feet were tied, until they attached me to something that would not move. I wept and bit at the ropes and when anyone came near me, screamed curses, and the men, well-armed as they were, and helpless as I was, stood away from me with amazement in their eyes, as if I were a wild beast. And the sounds came from Kia's house in broken fragments, there would be a silence and then another scream, at each of which I thought my whole body would shatter; until there came the sound of guns, and after that, from that house, a silence that did not end.

At that the strength went out of me, to fight or do anything else. The street remained bright, but I saw all else that happened in colors of black. Men came from the house, the first of them being the traveler Tistou. And he waved the Postmen back, and as they removed to the farther side of the street they released me from the wagon and took me with them, dragging me across the ice; and the traveler spoke into something he carried, and a greater shaft of light came from the thing over my head, and Kia's house was not there any more. There was only fire where it had been.

Now none of Kia's neighbors had shown themselves, but the Postmen went from house to house ordering them into the street until it was filled with bodies and moving limbs edging away from the fire, and one shouted at them, a man dressed in clothes so fine that I knew he came from behind the wall; and he told them to look on what had been done and learn from it. After that for a further lesson he broke my hands. And I knew nothing for a little time after, but the cold woke me and in my pain I saw that the traveler knelt over me. He took my chin in his large cold hand just as Kia had once done; only when he looked into my eyes, which he
had not seen before in their natural state, he laughed and spoke to the man who stood by in his rich garments.

“They will not soon forget this night,” the traveler said. “I am glad to have been of help. No reward is necessary. But if you insist, then I will take this—”

And his mouth smiled at me. But his eyes were transparent, as I had suspected, and there was nothing behind them but a great emptiness. And how could anything else have been there? Because where Mirrah and Carmina had been, and Kia and Alban, and no doubt Leren, too, and their homes and their lives, now there was nothing, what marked his path was emptiness and absence and lack, where there had been life. And I knew in some way what he would do to me, how it would be done, what living would be like, such living as I had left, and I knew that when he was done he would kill me; but I knew also that if he did not I would never know fear again. There would not be anything worse that could happen to me than what had happened in this season, along with what this traveler would cause to happen in the waste he prepared for me. But not all of it had happened yet, and the agony of my hands filled all my body and mind, and I could still be afraid, because I was.

“Take him,” said the man from behind the wall. And the traveler took me away.

During the days it took for the last memories to come forward into light, Hanna did not leave Michael in body or in thought. She was a silent spectator (as he wished), and at the end of it he evicted her. Not forcibly, but by way of something that was half request and half order; in either case, she could not refuse it.

She told the others, “He is very sick.” But she was not sure how true that was, though he did not talk to her. He lay on his bed and it was difficult to tell whether he was awake or asleep, even when his eyes were open. But he ate, when Hanna brought food to the room. And as before, in the middle of the night he left it and wandered around the
Golden Girl
with an uncanny knack for avoiding anyone else who might be abroad in the night.

GeeGee
came to Heartworld, then left it far behind. They were nearly at the point of decision. Soon they must
turn back, or entrust themselves to a course known, in all the universe, only to the man who had as many names as there were stars.

Hanna always knew precisely where the
Golden Girl
was. She spent a third of her time in Control, dividing up each twenty-four hours into pieces with Theo and Shen. She did the slight work automatically and otherwise listened anxiously for Michael's voice, footsteps, even a thought. She did not hear any of those things. And once or twice she whispered her birthname to
GeeGee,
the code that would permit her to reach across space and establish a connection with her own past life—but she never went any further than saying the word. If Theo did it, too, in his own hours on watch, she did not know about it.

This half-a-life continued without change until they were a few hours from the relay which they had begun to call Theta, to mark its distance from Omega on the other side of space. In the early morning hours, not long after midnight, Shen watched
GeeGee
measure the distance to that endpoint. Theo could not sleep; he came to watch, too, not saying anything. Lise woke from a nightmare and joined them, seeking what comfort she could get from their presence. And Henrik, wide awake, got the notion that the walls of mirrors were looking at him with some purpose, and went out to escape. He did not mean to go to the others in Control, he wanted to keep away from them, but he couldn't shake the thought of the mirrors, the mirrors might follow him; so he went to Control, just in case.

Hanna woke up, too. Michael was gone. She went out shivering (she had been dreaming of winter) to look for him.
GeeGee
was waiting and silent. Hanna went into Control, into the middle of the waiting, and Theo looked around and said, “What next?”

How the hell do I know?

She was standing in the door, and she did not know the answer even when the footsteps finally came up behind her. Hands fell on her shoulders. She waited to find out whose they were.

“It's time to start feeding the course to
GeeGee,
” Michael said. So if she turned around, it would not be a twelve-year-old boy she saw, a poor fit in the man's body. But maybe it would not be Michael either.

Shen asked no questions; she began talking to
GeeGee,
preparing the ship for the new course. Michael said, “The language won't be hard. It's got a lot in common with Standard. If you could learn Ellsian, you can learn this.”

He turned Hanna around and spoke to her. The others didn't know enough to understand his next words; not yet. “I don't think what we're going to find is what I left. When I left, there was the blight, the epidemic, the start of a revolution. We don't know how they turned out. But I don't think anything's gotten better.”

Hanna said, “You mean to do something about it.”

“Something.”

“You would. But what?”

He shrugged. He looked just as he had always looked, except that he was very thin. He said, “B made a lot of difference. We could make a difference, too. You can let things happen, or you can make them happen.”