The D’neeran Factor (87 page)

Hanna's fingers went to the chain at her throat. The links pressed into her skin. “There's Uskos,” she said.

He shook his head, uncomprehending. She said, “I'm a citizen of the nation of Ell. There's a story I promised Rubee I would tell. Would the Polity risk an incident to get us back? I don't know. I don't think so.”

She waited while he absorbed it. She knew when he had grasped it, because she felt a little of the laughter revive in him. It was a giant joke on the Polity, and he turned toward her in the dark, almost smiling.

“I'd rather run toward something than away,” he said. “But I seem to remember the course was secret.”

“They gave it to me, though.” She lifted a hand to her throat and spoke a word in Ellsian. The silver chain parted and slid into her hand, shining in the faint starlight. She held it out to him.

“It's in here,” she said.

He did not take it at once. He said, “You know what you're doing?”

“Yes. Take it.”

“I know what you had back there. You can say goodbye to all of it if you do this.”

She was barefoot and wore another woman's clothes. The last thing she possessed was in her hand.

“I know,” she said. “Take it.”

After a minute he did. He did not speak again. She lay
close beside him and presently he fell into a quiet sleep, still holding the chain. Hanna did not sleep; she looked out at the stars and seemed to hear the blowing of a clear strong wind.

*   *   *

Hiero-volan Mencken was told nothing. He had been told nothing from the moment he woke, tingling and dizzy, in the dark little room he identified as part of the
Golden Girl
's staff quarters. His shouts did no good, except perhaps to relieve his own feelings, his head hurt and he stopped shouting quickly. There was nothing in the room or on his person that would help him get away. If he ever got his hands on Hanna ril-Koroth—

He did not know what had happened. He thought it was Hanna who had stunned him somehow. But perhaps she had been doped, drained, brainwashed and filled up again, her personality altered; no other explanation was conceivable.

He waited for ten days, subject sometimes to concerts his captors may have considered entertainment, or torture.

“What the hell does that mean?” he said when it broke in on his lunch, and got nearly the only piece of information he was given on the
Golden Girl,
for what good it did him. While he drank the excellent soup—the food was good, he had to admit—Michael Kristofik smiled and translated: “I've found one who wants to love me; if I should love, as the dark lady with the bright face told me I'd have her love, I'm to be praised for her.”

It made no more sense in Standard than it had in whatever the original language was. Kristofik looked happier than he had any right to be. He had only put off the inevitable, he was a dead man so far as his present antisocial personality was concerned, but he looked as if he'd forgotten that. But Mencken could not take advantage of the lapse because Shen Lo-Yang did not take her eyes off him, she did not even seem to blink, and the stunner she leveled
at him was set for full power, which at this range could be fatal.

The next thing Kristofik told him, when he had been there nine days, was that on the morrow he would leave the
Golden Girl.
He was told that someone would come for him when it was time, and he was advised to go quietly. He was told he would then be safe, and free to pursue justice as he chose.

So he waited through the next day, but nothing happened; at any rate not to him. For a time the sounds of the ship changed in a way he recognized as a difficult but slickly accomplished set of maneuvers; the self-contained gravitational field of the spacecraft did not waver, but Mencken thought they were in an atmosphere. This was it, he thought. But then it ended and time went on and on into the night, hour after hour without activity or news; he did not even get any dinner.

Went wrong somehow, whatever they planned.
He had mixed feelings about that. Some of it was grim satisfaction; was Hiero-volan Mencken to be shoved off a pirate ship with a gun in his back, while the pirate laughed at him? Never. On the other hand—the other hand was not good to think about. He had a family waiting for him. He did not like thinking of how long they might have to wait.

“What happened?” he said next morning when they brought him breakfast. There was a lot of it, as if they were making up for the meal missed the night before.

Kristofik and Lo-Yang did not answer. They looked at him as if—he saw this acutely—he were a problem. He was by no means a coward and he ate his well-made omelet with deliberation, studying the black-clad man and woman who had his life in their hands. He thought he detected in Shen Lo-Yang a certain pleasure, which was a nasty thought, considering her history. Kristofik was pale and his mouth showed the trace of a shallow cut. Trouble from outside?—but the
Golden Girl
had not landed anywhere or been boarded; he was sure of that. Perhaps Lady Hanna had slipped out of control, a heartening possibility.

Some hours afterward the
Golden Girl
stopped. He had not heard for some time the characteristic stresses and puffs that meant Jumps; instead there were the louder but less abrupt sounds of movement in realspace. Suddenly there
was almost silence, as all movement ceased; life support alone did not make much noise. His door opened. In it this time there were three people, not two, and all of them were armed. They wore spacesuits, but their helmets were not in place. Kristofik and Lo-Yang, of course; but the third was Lady Hanna ril-Koroth. She looked beautiful and calm. He said, “Are you sure you're pointing that gun the right way?”

“Come on out,” she said.

They marched him toward the tail of the
Golden Girl,
not leading him but telling him where to go, staying a safe distance behind. Michael Kristofik said, “You're getting out of this safe and sound.”

“What did you do to Lady Hanna?”

“It's what he
does,
” she said sweetly. “Several times, when he's having a good day.”

Mencken glanced around. He did not understand, but Kristofik evidently did, and looked scandalized. Kristofik said, “Your own suit's waiting for you, and your maneuvers pack. We're next door to a relay. I'll tell you the number if you want to know, but it doesn't matter; you can't broadcast from on-site anyway. We'll wait till you've got yourself anchored and then we'll move out. We'll contact Fleet and tell them where you are. You should be picked up in less than twenty-four hours.”

“How'd he do it?” Mencken said to Hanna. “Drugs?”

“Is that what they're all going to think?” she said. “Tell them this. Tell Lady Koroth and Commissioner Vickery and Gil Figueiredo and Starr Jameson especially, tell Starr in person, give him this message: I quit.”

The suit was outside an air lock whose indicator lights showed ready. Mencken put it on and waited while the others fastened their helmets, one at a time, so two of them always had him covered. There was no haste or confusion; the teamwork reminded him of his colleagues in I&S. They escorted him into the lock and out of it. Free fall caught at his stomach and he fumbled for the maneuvers pack, switching it on. He saw that they were indeed close to an Inspace relay, close enough for a searchlight to pick out the details of its platforms and antennae.

He could not help saying, “I hope you really are going to contact Fleet.”

We will,
said a voice in his head, so clearly he might have
mistaken it for speech, except that he had had contact with telepaths before; also it carried the absolute assurance of truth that speech could never have.

He gave up, having no longer any choice. They stayed where they were while he glided the short distance to the relay. He had no way to tell when the others went back into the ship; the
Golden Girl
did not move and kept the searchlight shining while he hooked his utility belt to a steel stanchion. After that the searchlight blinked out. The
Golden Girl
moved away; its other lights became fainter and disappeared.

He only had to wait seven hours. It was not even long enough to get hungry, after the breakfast he had had; it only seemed like an eternity.

G
aaf the medic, a former physician of Fleet, was trapped in the
Avalon,
and trapped by more than metal. There were the dreams, and waking nightmares, too.

First there was the uproar on Revenge. Gaaf watched it. All of them went to the warehouse to retrieve the treasures stored there, but all the things were gone. Castillo made certain statements about what would be done to the People of the Rose. There would not be much living in the City of the Rose when he was finished. Gaaf would have preferred not believing the threats, but he believed them. Castillo's face was scarlet and he screamed at Suarez to bring him the headman of the town. While he waited he paced and snarled, and then he said more about what he was going to do. Gaaf started to go away but thought:
What if he notices I'm gone? What if he knows I left because of him? What if he gets angry at me?
—and so he stayed. He stood just inside the
Avalon
and watched Castillo interrogate Elder Rann. He saw the D'neeran woman again, walking in front of Juel to her death, and turned away as if that would make it not real and sink it into dream.

And then there was the shocking end of it, he heard the sounds outside and hesitated, thinking he ought to go see, and Castillo came back, running and yelling orders through an intercom to Wales on the flight deck. Gaaf was in his way and was shoved aside. The push was hard enough to knock him into the wall and bruise his shoulder, and the first instant of shock and pain brought tears to his eyes. He collected himself and followed Castillo slowly to the flight deck. But they were taking off when he got there, in a hurry, jabbering. Later he found out Juel was dead.

The
Avalon
left Revenge behind and moved out into space. There was no more talk about the People of the Rose. Instead they talked about the
Golden Girl.
The Avalon had gotten a good look at her: a pretty ship, an expensive, sophisticated toy. A Dru-class yacht. Gaaf had never seen one before. He stared at the pictures and tried to imagine the luxury inside. You had to be born to wealth to have one, he thought. But why would anyone who could own one be on Revenge? What interest could anyone like that have in stealing Castillo's store of trade goods?

Far away from Revenge, in deep space, the
Avalon
waited. The men asked: for what? But Castillo kept his own counsel. Besides Castillo there were five of them now that Juel was dead: Suarez, Wales, Gaaf, Ta, and Bakti. They passed time with gambling and watching the 'beams. What the 'beams had to say was going to be crucial. What was the golden ship going to do with the woman who was the only witness to the aliens' deaths?—it was a mystery. The
Avalon
filled up with the stink of fear. If Oversight had come to Revenge between scheduled visits, if a Fleet representative had been there to warn them off, that would have been one thing. But the golden ship could have nothing to do with Fleet. And nobody knew about Castillo and Revenge. Except—Castillo in those early hours looked at the men of his crew with (it seemed to Gaaf) something new in the ice-blue eyes—

They waited, watching the 'beams. They waited for information about the golden ship. It did not occur to any of them that Hanna might be dead and the secret of their identities gone with her—to any of them except Gaaf, the only one who knew how sick she had been. He did not tell the others, because he did not dare tell Castillo that he had eased her pain and thus, surely, helped her turn on them. But he was haunted, and his dreams were haunted, too, by the swollen brutalized face, the stripped fever-hot body; by knowing he had played God and given her (though he had not known it then) a chance at life. A voice echoed in his mind, fuzzy with fever and drugs. Equally without fear or gratitude she called to him:
Wait!
Still he was afraid that she was dead. But she might get treatment in time. But from whom?

The name of the
Golden Girl
's owner came finally. Gaaf
was on the flight deck when it came. There was a picture with it, a routine identification shot. Gaaf looked at the face and wondered what it would be like to be handsome and rich. The man in the picture looked gently amused. Castillo barely glanced at it. He knew the name; he did not have to look at the face that went with it. Suarez also knew it, and cursed bitterly. Castillo only said: “Him!”—as he had said once before, laughing then.

“Who is he?” Gaaf asked, but softly, so that Castillo could choose to overlook the question. And he did overlook it, or did not hear it. He looked at the image with cold hate.

The
Avalon
went nowhere for a time. “What are we waiting for?” said the others.

“You'll see,” Castillo answered in his soft voice.

Gaaf wondered if that meant Castillo didn't know, had no ideas.

Castillo and Suarez talked together privately a great deal. They did not tell anyone what they talked about.

*   *   *

Twelve hours after Hanna's escape:

Gaaf slept fitfully, an hour at a time. The aliens died over and over in his sleep. Hanna's eyes were blank with shock and blue as meadow grasses in the clear morning light after a night of storms. She threw herself at Castillo and Wales turned the stunner on her and she fell, the distant sleepiness of stun softening her face.

Twenty-four hours:

Castillo was calm. There was nothing on the 'beams. The men gambled and drank. “If he's smart, he'll kill her,” Suarez said. “He doesn't need the attention.”