The D’neeran Factor (99 page)

Michael considered it. There was enough, God knew, to go around. If it were as simple as that—

But it was not. The man who wanted a partnership today could want control tomorrow. And Tonson suggested, more delicately this time, that there were other things he might want. So Michael still was for sale after all, only now the payoff was silence.

He shrugged and said, “I'll think about it. Want a drink?”

“Delighted. Delighted you're being reasonable, but I
knew you would…” The man's eyes said:
What else could you do?
“We'll drink to our new relationship, my boy.”

Michael nodded, walked past Tonson without looking at him—and turned on his heel and struck. Tonson slumped where he sat, unconscious.

It was the start of another nightmare, the kind he had thought he would never have to live through again. There were enough of them already, more than any human being should have. Unless he were being punished by some ruthless god for unspeakable crimes, though he could not remember committing any that bad: until now. The voice in his head, now when it might have been helpful, was gone. He had been right, Tonson was armed, and with a laser pistol, nothing as harmless as a stungun. Michael took it away, poured water over Tonson's head to wake him, and asked questions. Tonson did not want to answer them. But Michael had to know the answers, the extent of his danger, whether it stretched beyond this one man. To find out he used the pistol, setting the output low, not intense enough to burn through metal but easily hot enough to cook meat. It was (until then) the hardest thing he had ever done and the smell of scorched flesh gagged him, but there was, fortunately, little courage in Ivo Tonson, and not much pain was required to force him to answer. And perhaps in his terror he was not capable of understanding that fortitude, or lies at least, might mean he might keep on living. But he did not even lie, though the truth condemned him. He had not insured his life by leaving his dangerous information with anyone else, and he had relied on the weapon for protection. He had not had anything to do directly with the
Pavonis Queen
and had not seen Michael's cold efficiency there. He had only known Michael in Carnivaltown, and he had not really expected resistance from the compliant, uncomplaining boy he remembered. No one had known he was coming to Valentine, and he had come using another new name. He had flown from Shoreground in an autocab and sent it back to its base, having expended (the terrified Tonson said) the last of his cash on the long ride, converted from the last of his credit; so he could not even be traced that way. It was possible (he admitted toward the end, with the little breath screaming left) he would not even be missed.

“You're making it easy,” Michael said. He was hunched against the wall next to Tonson then. Except that Tonson's hands and legs were bound, an observer would have had a hard time deciding which of the two sweating, wretched men was the victim.

“I won't do it, won't do anything, it's a mistake, all a mistake, you know I couldn't do it, I care for you too much, dear boy, I swear I won't—”

The short night moved on, the sullen air hardly moving. The hollowness under the world was unmistakable, and the lights in the cabin were yellow and dim and resembled eyes. Michael knew what he was going to do. But not just yet, because he could not. And he thought of finding something to use to soothe Tonson's burns, but that was ludicrous, in view of what he was going to do, and maybe (he thought) the pain even was a blessing, because Tonson knew what was going to happen, too, and pain might distract him from the worse agony of fear.

Finally—hours had gone by—he got up, because one thing he had to do was best done in darkness, and the ocean was far away, and morning dangerously near. He got the pistol, which he had put well out of the bound man's reach, and came back and stood over him. Ivo Tonson began to plead. Michael stood there for a long time. The delay was the worst torture he could have inflicted on Tonson, but that was not why he waited. He waited because he could not make himself do the necessary next thing. Where was the murderous rage when he needed it? He listened to the sobs and whispers until they ran into one another and turned into a meaningless babble. He waited until he had convinced himself that the thing at his feet was not human, not even alive, was a bundle of old clothes that did not even move of their own accord but only rocked with the floor, which seemed to move in sickening waves.

Then he knelt on the uneasy floor, put the pistol to the base of Tonson's skull, and burned out his brain. It was a quick business, and very clean.

He loaded the body into the aircar that had brought him here. He would not come back, had brought nothing with him but his flute, and he took that away, too. He also took heavy stones from the bed of the stream. He flew out to sea and just before dawn threw the weighted body into the water,
now really a bunch of old clothes, as limp and as tousled. Then he flew back to Shoreground and got rooms at an inn, because he could not remember if he still owned anything that might pass for a home. He had to sleep, but before he did, he took up the flute. To his surprise, it allowed him to play it; or, more accurately, it played itself. He did not think about what to play. The melodies came by themselves, the gentlest and most peaceful tunes he had heard in all his years, and they came for hours. After a while the music began to talk to him. It said that this was just like everything else, one more thing to be left in the past. It said there was now no reason, none at all, not to act on possibilities, because there were no worse places to go than he had gone, no worse things to do than he had done, no worse man to be than he was. And what was done was finally, irretrievably done, and the future would be better because it had to be, because if it were not there was no justification, never would be, never, for the things he had done, especially this last act. But the music was forgiving, and held out hopes of penance. When it finished talking he put down the flute and slept for two days; after which he began to live, but not to live again because that was not what he had been doing before; he only started, for the first time, to live.

It took Michael a long time to tell this story. Hanna listened to the words, and also to the memories that went along with them. She knew that he had never told anyone about it before, and she knew he was not sure that when she had heard it, she would continue to love him. But it made no difference to her in that respect.

At the end, when he talked of sleep and was so exhausted that he finished the tale hardly awake, she went to the pallet where he lay—they had returned to their own rooms—and sat down beside him. She took his hand, and told him it made no difference. But he wanted to be sure she knew she could not save him, never could have saved him. “Amnesty for robbery's one thing. The Uskosians don't know about this because you didn't know. This is something else.”

“Not if the Polity doesn't know either.”

“But how can you know they don't know?”

The forgotten chill of the rain penetrated to her bones. She heard a voice from a summer on Earth:
Don't forget the man he's believed to have killed…

Michael had one more thing to say. She bent over him to hear it. “I hate pain,” he said quietly, and it was not only his own pain that he meant; and he turned his head away from her and escaped into sleep.

By next day the rain had begun in earnest. It fell in sheets for hours, sometimes with thunder and lightning and sometimes not. The reason the city was sited on high ground became apparent. The streams that wound through it were not entirely decorative; they were a necessity at this season, supplementing the underground storm sewers which were inadequate for the coming of autumn. The waters were full of miniature shrubs and trees that washed down and down to fetch up at last at high-water mark somewhere else, fresh and healthy after their journey in the nutrient-laden waters. The water also spurred the growth of fine rootlets that would cling to damp soil long enough for taproots to strike into the soil hard and fast.

So the rain was useful and necessary, and it was accepted with such fatalism that the City of the Center essentially shut down. Many inhabitants removed to drier places. Those who did not stayed in their homes. Only indispensable personnel were expected to be at their places of work at this season. The storms were early this year, however, and adjustments had to be made for a day or two. By pleading the suddenness of the onset of the storms, Hanna even got her chauffeur to take her to Norsa's offices one more time. The chauffeur was depressed about it; he would have been more depressed if he had known that she went only to ask Norsa to arrange a journey for Michael and herself. “I wish to see a place of which Awnlee told me,” she said. “I wish to travel to the Red Forest of Ree.”

Norsa had been looking out the window and twiddling his fingers, a sight in itself worth the trip.

“But why?” he said. “For the weather in Ree is even worse.”

“Nonetheless I must go, and immediately.”

“Then we will all go tomorrow,” Norsa said, “and, at the least, will be over the rain for a time and not under it.”

So Hanna went home through the rain, hoping that tonight would be better than the night before, that Michael would not wake again and again tense as a beast of prey that feels the hunter closing in, and that, with luck, the excursion to Ree would shake him from his despair.

*   *   *

Heavy cloud brought the evening on them early. After dinner Shen disappeared into the thickening night, clad in an Uskosian rain garment that made her look like a shiny robot not even of human shape. Lise prevailed on Theo to take her to the home of a friend who lived farther away than most. When they, too, had gone, Hanna packed a few necessities for the journey to Ree and afterward tried to settle to work; but she could not work. She gave up and wandered through the enormous house and thought of the Red Forest of Ree, its great plumes sodden and drooping to the ground. That was not how Awnlee had wanted her to see it. In his mind, when he spoke of it, there had been sunlight.

I must get Michael away from here altogether,
she thought; she thought it often. But each time there came another thought:
There is nowhere left to go.

Presently the house warbled over the noises of the storm, startling her: someone was calling in. Henrik would not answer. Michael would, but he did not, at least not before Hanna had hunted down the warble in a nearby room where the utility panel was concealed behind a bronze plaque more or less in the form of a being of Uskos.
Aliore as Pure Art,
said an explanatory legend on the side, which she had to press to open the panel. She fumbled with the tiny dials behind the plaque.

Theo's voice roared at her; she jumped and got the volume down. “What? What?” she said.

“Can't you hear me? I said, young Binell's sire wants us to stay the night. He thinks it's crazy to try going home. I think he's right. Listen, if the power goes out, don't worry. I hear they're putting skeleton crews on infrastructure and sending everybody else home.”

“What? All right. Is it getting worse?”

“This is only the start. Listen, you'll be all right without the Box, won't you?”

That was what they called the vehicle Theo had taken; Shen had left in the one they called the Little Box. They had all learned to drive them, more or less.

“We're not going anywhere.”

“All right. You know where we are, if you need us.”

“I'll see you tomorrow, then.”

But the last words echoed back at her, a yellow light twinkled from the panel, and the lights in the room at her back dimmed suddenly. She leaned over and found that her Uskosian tutors had taught her enough so that she could just read the engraving. It said:
At present there can be no connection save with the Emergency Contact Locus nearest this site.

What was left of the light began to fade. Spurred by a memory of something that had not seemed important when she was shown it, she flew through the house to an alcove under a stair. She got her hands on an emergency lantern just as the lights went out altogether, and turned it on with relief. It was shaped like a candle, and the light at its tip even acted like flame, bending and wavering and casting swooping shadows; but the light was cold.