The D’neeran Factor (47 page)

“Hanna,” he said, and pushed the moment aside with an almost physical effort.

I want you to stop doing that, she thought, but not so that he could hear her, and looked up obediently.

“Show them,” he said.

“Show them what?”

“What happened when they met the colonists. What they saw in us. You showed me a little. I don't think you knew you were doing it. It wasn't all in words.”

She thought back slowly. Trying to concentrate on a single memory from the past hours, days, months, was a matter of slow drunken circling, an absent-minded bird looking for a landing place, distracted by currents that had nothing to do with its goal. She found it at last, and shook her head.

“I can't,” she said. “I'm too tired.”

“You can.”

“It's not the same as with one person. It's harder. I'm not an Adept.”

“I think you're something more than an Adept now. Something different. You can do it. Show them,” he said, and she resented his certainty.

She bowed her head and said against his heart, “How often have you made me do things I did not want to do?”

“I have never ‘made' you do anything,” he said, and then
could not hide the thought that if she pulled this off perhaps he would survive after all, and
Endeavor
would go out again.

You only want to use us for your dream, she said, or remembered saying, or he remembered it, and when she looked up he would not meet her eyes for the first time in all their acquaintance. But she stood groggily with her arms around him and knew she was going to do it anyway.

Behind her she heard Murphy speak anxiously. The words meant nothing, but she understood the vector of communication between Murphy and Jameson.

She has reached her limit, let her rest.

There is no time for rest, we must resolve this now.

It is not so urgent.

It is. If we do not immediately present a solid front to our governments and the military, I do not think we will ever do it. And if she is wrong about the timing, it could begin tomorrow, or today. We do not know their capabilities in unknown space.

But if she is right we have the firepower.

To attack. But we do not know what there is to defend against. I do not think she knows, except in the most general terms. And how many lives does that mean?

Yes. I see. I see.

*   *   *

They stood on a broad river plain and looked at the sky. The plain was fertile, washed annually by spring floods that left rich deposits of soil. They were not ill-fed. They had that much to thank the river for.

The thing in the sky had been there a day now, and sometimes seemed to move nearer. It was no longer a dot visible only to the sharpest-eyed of the young, but clearly an oval.

(Murphy moved uneasily. Is this apprehension what they felt, she wondered, or is it Lady Hanna's, knowing what happened? Or my own, guessing what is to come?)

The radio worked well enough, and was all they had. Some of its parts were pirated from the useless Inspace communications equipment that still bore Eden Unlimited's logotype. This third generation joked about the name; the company that had found this world, and dropped their grandparents here with (they discovered too late) second-hand,
shoddy equipment, had passed into their jerry-rigged culture as Flybynight Inc.

This would not be Flybynight coming back. It had to be from Earth, or maybe Colony One or maybe another colony, maybe there were hundreds of colonies now. But if the radio worked, why did it not answer them?

(Hanna sat on the floor, so limp in Jameson's arms he knew she would topple if he let her go. He knew where he was, sheltered in his own invaded home, but the river was there too, and he was highly critical. Stupid to build there. No wonder they lost their computer. As sensible to build on a volcano's slope as on a flood plain.)

They swarmed from the stilted wooden houses, calling back and forth through the thick bright air. My God, it's coming closer. Oh, Jesus. Tell your mother, tell her to stay inside, no, come out, oh, Jesus.

Do you read, said the radio, come in Overhill, do you read. The UFO's descending, we'll keep in touch. Have you heard from N'Gomba's group, are they sending anybody, what, wait a minute, it's landing, I never heard of anything like, they must have changed the design.

(The air was hazy and Struzik blinked into the sunlight, trying to see. Featureless metal; it must be damned claustrophobic inside. No markings, nothing like that in the Polity, then or now or ever.)

They gave it plenty of room to land. As soon as it was down they started running toward it, laughing and crying. Sometimes they had been sure they were forgotten and now it was all right. They wouldn't leave, it was a good place to live, unless some of the youngsters, well kids are like that, even some of the adults, but it didn't matter, it was all right, they could get machines, a grant, a doctor, news, they could make a world, it was all right now.

There were two hundred of them here and when they were all quite close they waited for the crew to come out, but nothing happened. Nobody came out for a long time.

(al-Nimeury wiped sweat from his face. Is it really taking this long, he thought, or is she making it seem that way? The gray hull shimmered in the sunlight and through it he saw, very far away, the D'neeran woman. Jameson held her tightly and his eyes were closed, his face pressed against her hair. My God, al-Nimeury thought, he's in love with her, how
extraordinary; but something began to open on the hull, and he waited to see what would come out.)

There was a hole of black nothingness in the sunlight and something huge and gray showed in the opening. The first ripple of fear struck it and was flung back redoubled. They thought it threatened them, not knowing they were the threat, and some screamed and ran, and others surged forward. Round and round went the loop accelerating in an instant of thought, a paradigm of cornered fang and claw. The People saw Renders, the first weapon was fired and it was confusion, warfare, death and dying, red blood in the hot hazy morning and happening so fast they had only time to hate and did not even know why they died, D'neera's time was just beginning and they knew nothing of telepathy and each felt the things' terror as his own, the instant response of murder to danger, savage animals spilling from the grayness, savage animals twisting on the grass, and the pleasure of their dying
proved
it—

(STOP, STOP—)

“Stop!” cried Katherine Petrov, weeping and gasping, rocking back and forth.

The vision shivered and was gone. al-Nimeury made an inarticulate noise, and into the frozen silence came other sounds: a sigh from Murphy, Petrov's sobs. Feng stared into space, ignoring Petrov moaning at his side. Morisz started to curse and changed his mind.

Jameson eased Hanna's head into his lap. He thought she was unconscious, but her eyelids fluttered and for a moment she looked at him. Then her eyes closed and she lay still.

He waited for the others to say something. Morisz said at last, “That's—that's what's going to happen every time we make contact?”

Jameson looked down at Hanna and saw that she could not or would not answer.

“Presumably,” he said. “That's how they see us, you know. All of them, in a great collectivity. They've been searching for us as a deadly danger ever since that day.”

“Then how in hell are we ever going to get anywhere with them?”

Jameson said, “Either Hanna will, or maybe nobody ever will.”

Murphy's head was buried in her hands. She said indistinctly, “How is she going to do that?”

Jameson started to stroke Hanna's hair, hesitated, and went on with it. The hell with it, he thought; I've gone too far already.

He said, “She was in intimate contact with one of them for some time. You all understand, I think, that she was under the control of a non-human personality. I have learned tonight that it was not altogether non-human. It was partially created from elements of Hanna's own personality; it was not entirely imposed from outside. She succeeded in integrating it, in making herself a kind of hybrid. She hopes she will be able to forestall the instant-feedback effect.”

al-Nimeury said, “What about—how did she get them to agree to negotiation anyway?”

Jameson said, treading a narrow divide between fact and fiction, “She has one important contact.”

“I don't see why they won't just kill her on sight.”

“They didn't the first time. They didn't kill all of the colonists immediately. They kept some alive long enough to interrogate and experiment with them. They found nothing but the hatred and fear they expected, of course, under the circumstances, and the same has been true for Hanna. If she can control her own reaction, perhaps…” He left the thought unfinished.

Murphy said in an odd voice, “Perhaps?”

He said bluntly, “The only risk is hers.”

Murphy stared at him, upright and indignant. “You'd send her to them again? After what they did before?”

Jameson shrugged. It cost him more than he would have cared to admit to her.

Petrov was recovering. She said querulously, “We'd better send the whole damned Fleet with her.”

“No,” Hanna said unexpectedly. “Nobody.”

She tried to sit up and Jameson helped her. She held his hand and said without looking at any of them, “I've got to make them restructure reality. Not frighten them. All I need to do is convince a few we're not what they think, really convince them, and it'll spread through the whole population. They must have gone a lot faster than we did. No war, that kind of communication—it took us longer every time we did it.”

Struzik said, “Did what?”

“Changed the shape of the universe. Like knowing Earth goes around the sun, like accepting evolution or the size of the Milky Way or meeting F'thal. It changes everything for a whole species.”

Murphy said in astonishment, “
That's
what you're going to try to do?”

“Well,” said Hanna, “what else is there to do? Except kill them?”

She listened to the voices drifting around her as if they were a kind of music, sense forgotten. The room was very bright now. They were arguing about her nebulous contact, about studying and waiting and the gathering of intelligence, about weaponry human and alien, about what Co-op would say and what Fleet would want, about the course to Home and—with Jameson picking a most delicate course—about Leader's impact on her.

They would go on arguing for a long time (humans talk so, she thought) and then they would let her do it. Jameson still was not sure of them, but he could not feel what she felt: the bare tilt of a balance to one side, the change in al-Nimeury's reality, at least, that would make the difference.

She struggled to her feet and found herself looking into Jameson's face. She said:
I'm going to sleep now.

“Don't do that,” he said, not meaning, don't sleep.

She could argue with his constraints later, if there was a later. She found her way back to his bedroom and opened it to the sunlight which had bred her ancestors and his, and fell into his bed and into sleep.

H
anna slept so soundly she did not even wake when Melanie Ward came in with her flickering instruments and began the series of feather-touches that would tell her if Hanna was fit to go on or not. Hanna woke at last not because of pain but because of its cessation. The varying ache in her right arm, which had become part of the landscape of her body, was gone. She dreamed that she was well and whole and when she woke and turned her eyes to where the pain had been she thought for a moment it was true; she had never gotten in the way of the knife, the fight had never happened. But Leader-in-her-thoughts whispered to her and she saw in harsh noon light that the wound was only hidden under a neat strip of false human hide. Then she saw Ward, and behind her Jameson silhouetted against the light. They were talking as if Hanna were still asleep.

Jameson was saying, “But there is nothing immediately life-threatening?”

“Not immediately.” Ward spoke with the irritation of a physician who already knows her advice will be ignored.

“Well, then…”

“I won't be responsible for the consequences. And I won't be responsible for starting the sequence of stimulants.”

“You will. Or must I have your commanding officer give you a direct order?”

They converged on Hanna, tall shadows, and she shrank away in irrational alarm. There was the slight pressure of an injection in her uninjured arm. After a moment her head cleared with a rush that threatened to suck her into the sky,
she was sitting up and looking wide-eyed at Jameson, and Ward was gone. The immense relief of new energy seemed to touch every cell of her body.

She sighed with pleasure. She had forgotten what it was to feel well.

Jameson said, “The vote was four to one.”

She had been admiring the new steadiness of her hands. She looked up, distracted.

“Who didn't—?”

“Petrov. Who still can see that you are stopped, if you don't leave at once.”

“At once—” She stood up obediently. Artificial strength steadied her legs, and she nodded in satisfaction. She had never liked using stimulants, even when the need was urgent. Why? They were a fine thing.

She took a step, her head swimming, and he stopped her.

“Not this instant,” he said. “
Heartworld II
's not ready. And there are things you should hear.”

“All right.” The first burst of well-being was settling down, curling into the corners of her body. Her vision was sharper than usual. She saw that Jameson looked tired and careworn, and said, “You ought to've had Melanie give you some of that stuff.”

“I'll be taking enough of it, I assure you. So will you. Ward advised against a direct booster implant, and you will have to be very careful about giving yourself injections at frequent intervals. You'll have no time to sleep. How do you feel? Can you attend to what I say?”