The D’neeran Factor (31 page)

“This won't do,” he said into the wind, but it was no use. It was too late. His detachment where Hanna was concerned was a poor illusion at best. He could not afford to hide the fact from himself; he doubted his success in hiding it from Morisz; and there was little hope of hiding it from Hanna, who from the beginning had ignored the face he presented to the world.

He had begun by pitying her, an easy thing to do. The wreck Aziz Khan found, considered as a human being, was pitiable enough. Considered as the author of “Sentience,” the lively sharp-edged presence that once was Hanna, it had the impact of profound tragedy, a random discontinuity that mocked human effort to read meaning into the universe. Jameson knew very early that Hanna could be made whole physically. When he learned also that enough of her mind survived to answer questions, that should have been the end of it. It had not been the end; and in the months past, increasingly troubled, he had sought to find out why.

It had nothing to do with her beauty, as he half-suspected at first. It was true that as he watched the ruin of her face take its old shape under the physicians' hands, he understood at last why on each meeting he had the sense of seeing her for the first time. She was lovely, a fact he had ignored as best he could, and one which was the more piquant
because she was entirely without artifice or seductiveness, unaware of her own impact and seeming not to care. But it was not that that affected him. Desirable women were everywhere, and all his adult life he had taken for granted the attraction his status and wealth exerted. He had been immunized to beauty more years past than he cared to remember.

Nor was it Hanna's personality that drew him, the antithesis of his own. Impolitic, honest, direct, she had ambushed him more than once into responses he did not want to make; it was a warning clear as a spoken word, and he had intended to heed it. He could have done so easily; could have put the attraction aside, ignored the flattery of her half-sensed interest, regarded her as valuable in her way, useful, nothing more—

Until now. Until her destruction; until it was likely (said Melanie Ward, citing the long-term effects of torture) she would not be the same woman again.

He had gone to the Beyle Center often when she could not see him, nor know in any way he was there. He felt no revulsion at her rebirth. Instead it seemed he watched a metamorphosis; that her steel-framed chrysalis was midwife to something new and, perhaps, rare. For what had she been before, after all? A girl becoming woman; a bright child who had never been hurt, defined and circumscribed by qualities he had named at their first meeting. What would she do, now that youth and luck and brilliance had failed her all at once? —Not through the slow pressures of time, the series of defeats that forced men and women into courses they did not choose, but with a single blow that tore her loose from every anchor she had known and left her harborless. It disturbed him that she had so accurately, in their brief meeting, perceived that he might allow her to turn to him, and her willingness to do so disturbed him even more. She had been kept deliberately—not maliciously, but coldly—from everything and everyone who could give her comfort; and in his occasional, erratic impulses to provide it, Jameson recognized the uncertainty of his own balance, which he had once thought so secure.

The cold truth was that he faced the ending of his own life, as he defined it and had chosen to live it. It was not only that there would be no more
Endeavors.
What was left was
perilously fragile. His associates were slow to forgive mistakes, and his prestige had not recovered from the blow the aliens had dealt it. He had never walked such a tightrope. If he fell now there would be—nothing. Only the broad fields of Arrenswood, the life of a country gentleman in which he would dwindle and waste and grow old too soon. The miracles that gave men twice the lifespan they deserved were capricious, and unkind to him. There would not be time enough to wait for Heartworld to forget, not time enough to forge his career a second time. There would not even be another Henriette, because his pride, next time, would revolt. Hanna might recover from what had been done to her, in spite of Ward's opinion. Jameson might not.

For weeks now he had watched Hanna move against the backdrop of such thoughts. She did not know he watched her; she did not know he saw her uncertainty, and later her fear and despair. He knew her intimately, without her knowledge and against her will, and it seemed to him the aliens had created no crueler disjunctions than those that faced both of them now. For despite his intense familiarity with every terror that touched Hanna's face, she still held a final secret; and though his wish was to let her seek shelter, necessity demanded that he take from her the last hope of it.

*   *   *

It was a pleasant house, set among trees that were bare and frosted now; in summer it would be heavily shaded. It was faced with some wood Hanna did not recognize in the gathering darkness and looked old, old, like something from a more primitive culture than Earth's. Even through the leafless trees she could see no other buildings, privacy unheard-of in the heart of a Terrestrial city. She remembered the house belonged to Starr Jameson, not to Heartworld. He must have wanted this solitude very badly, she thought, to spend what it must have cost him when there were no guarantees he would last even this long on the Commission.

She went slowly up the long hill before the house, stumbling once. The spasms that racked her when she was alone had mercifully spared her during her long walk, but her coat was light and its thermal control had failed, and she was frozen and exhausted. He has to let me go, she thought. I can't take much more of this; it gets worse every day; but
D'neera was a blur in her mind and all that was clear was the space she must traverse to get there, the freedom of the void. That would be safe.

She touched the front door's beveled glass curiously, and jumped when the house spoke to her. Mr. Jameson was not yet home, it said. She was expected, however; would she come in? She did so, grateful for the warmth, and followed directions to a softly lighted room that was sleekly paneled and breathed subtle woodsmells. The furniture was big and comfortable and there was a working fireplace. A faint tang of smoke hung in the air.

The house did not speak to her again. She took off her coat and sat down uneasily; something shifted a little with her presence and fell softly in the fireplace. The silence was profound, and for all the need she felt to be alert it seeped into her, and her mind drifted. This happened often now, and she floated on drowsy waves of images that had to do with Earth or D'neera or places she had never visited, half-formed glimpses of worlds she did not know. An occasional gust of fear shook her, but most of the time she was too tired to be afraid. If I do not get to a mindhealer soon there will be nothing left of me, she thought, and terror woke her; the thought was too reminiscent of The Questioner.

In that moment Jameson came in, and stopped abruptly when he saw her, staring at her face.

“My dear girl,” he said, “are you all right?”

“I was just dozing,” she mumbled.

He said, “You told Ward you wanted to see the mind-healers.”

She looked up quickly. “Yes,” she said.

“Why? What's wrong?”

“Nothing,” she said, lying hopelessly. “I just—it was the trauma. That's all.”

A long time went by. Finally he said, “No.”

“No?” She turned back to him anxiously. “You won't let me?”

“That's not what I mean.” He paused then said, “Hanna, you must tell me a little more. Just a little more.”

His voice and eyes said: I am your friend. She believed him. She longed to tell him. She whispered, dizzy with gratitude, “I'm going insane.”

“Why do you think that?”

He spoke gently, leaning forward a little, and her lips parted but she could not speak. If she told him they would try to fix her here. And she had to leave. Had to.

She looked away, hardly breathing, knowing he waited for an answer. But she could not think what to say, and after a minute he said, “I know about some of it.”

“You know?” said Hanna, but a voice said in her head in great alarm:
No. No. No.

Jameson for a moment receded. He said, barely heard through a wall of mist, “Some of it.”

She shook her head. “No. What?”

When had she become so inarticulate? Oh help me, she thought, but she could not say it. He went on quietly, “The muscle spasms. The movements you can't control and try to disguise with falls. The blackouts. The night-walking. The conversations you don't remember. What else?”

“How could you know!” she said incredulously. Her mind went blank. A single tremor shook her. She was an empty vessel filling slowly, inexorably, with fear.

When she could move again she looked down at her hands, afraid to meet his eyes.

“What else?” he said softly.

“It's been you. Watching me.”

“Yes.”

“Why?” she whispered.

He did not answer at once, but presently he leaned forward and took her hands. It seemed an invasion, and she shuddered.

He said gently, “Don't be afraid, Hanna. No one wants to hurt you. But there are answers we must have. Too much is unexplained. What did the aliens hope to accomplish by giving you back to us? What did they do to you with their drugs? When Tharan probed you he could not retrieve some memories that must be there—why? What does it have to do with what's happening to you now? Tell me what you think. Somewhere you must have the answers. You are the woman who wrote ‘Sentience'—”

She shook her head violently. “A failure,” she said.

“No. A brilliant work. In essence accurate, I think; flawed perhaps in detail, because you did not take into account some things that—well, that no one could imagine. Not a
failure…You are quite capable of reading the pattern, reading your own behavior. Do you read it as I do? Think.”

She did not know what he was talking about. She said in confusion, “I can't—I can't—”

“Think, Hanna. Do it. This is your last chance.”

“My last chance!”

She looked up at him in terror. His hands were warm and there was sympathy in his face, but what he said might have come from the man who had come to her on
Endeavor,
offering cold alternatives and enforcing them with threats. She tried to pull away but he held her hands tightly and she had no strength.

He said, “You cannot convince me nothing strange is going on. You cannot convince me you are not hiding something. At best, hiding; perhaps deliberately lying. And I am not alone in thinking so, Hanna. Stanislaw Morisz believes I am right. I have talked to General Steinmetz, I have talked to Peter Struzik, I have talked to Andrella Murphy. When I say this is your last chance, I mean it is your last chance to cooperate voluntarily. Trust me, Hanna. Tell me the truth and nothing will happen to you. I promise you will not be harmed.”

She tried to think and could not, and felt nothing but unreasoning panic. She did not know where it came from. It seemed part of her mind was screaming before a long-expected danger, but she could not tell what it was.

He said, “The night-walking—”

She said through the panic, “What are you talking about!”

He said, “Do you really not know why you are never rested?”

“No. No. I don't know what you mean.” It was hard to speak because, she thought dimly, she was going to faint. She spoke only because to speak, to comment on the unknown, was a human habit. Her thoughts were surface-level and sprang from no foundation of logic; under the superficial web there was blackness.

He said slowly, “You don't go very far. Only to the terminal in your room. And all night you study mathematics, history, military science, other things, astrogation—always, every night, astrogation. You have known for years the approximate route from D'neera to Earth, yet in the last
weeks you have studied it carefully. Why have you done this, Hanna?”

“I don't know—I don't believe it—” She moved restlessly, helplessly. There was a great pressure behind her eyes and she thought vaguely of Ward, she ought to tell Melanie about that, maybe something had broken loose.

“I believe you, I think.” He let go of her hands at last and looked at her strangely. He said, “You are exhibiting classic symptoms of a dual personality, you know.”

She rubbed her hands over her face. She did not understand what he was saying. But something connected and she said, half a question, “The mindhealers?”

“No. I wish it were so simple. The evidence suggests you're under some kind of control, Hanna. From outside—”

“That is impossible,” she said clearly, and then heard herself say, “I am not. That is not true.”

He and the room seemed to have become very small, as if she were a great distance away. She saw that he shook his head.

“Who knows what's possible for the aliens? Powerful telepaths, evolved not engineered telepaths—you said once that you are too human to guess what that might mean. Until we know, we cannot let you go.”

She stood up suddenly. It was not she who moved and she swayed, seeking balance in a moment of darkness. Her eyes cleared and she saw Jameson on his feet, his eyes wide with alarm. She stretched her hands out blindly.

“Help me,” she said.

He said quickly, “Yes. All right.”

“I remember,” Hanna said, and watched her hands lift, and in a last wholly human moment wanted to tell him what she remembered: the drugs, the dissolution, the whisper in what was left of her mind, the overpowering presence of the creature who was their Leader, desperate, bending over her as if her ruined body would accommodate him.

I remember, she started to say again, but instead she backed away from him for more fighting room and Leader spoke, directly to Jameson's mind, and said:
I will kill you now.