The Loranth (Star Sojourner Book 1) (21 page)

Dancer whined at my raised voice and scurried under the table.

I ran my hands through my hair. “I never understood why sick animals just showed up at my sanctuary for treatment. Don't you see?”

His eyes narrowed.

“Kor was infecting them and then using his tel power to direct them to my sanctuary. Why the hell didn't I see it before?”

“You tell me. It might've saved some lives.”

“You should've believed me when I came to your house!” I paced the room. “The slug threw in some wounded animals just to keep me off track, hoping, hoping that one of his viral strains would affect an alien.” I stared at Hallarin. “A human. Me.”

“Are you telling me he can make viruses, like germ warfare? How?” Hallarin came around the table. “How? He lives in the goddamn ocean!”

I shook my head. “He doesn't need a lab. It's an evolutionary mechanism, probably developed to bring down prey or kill enemies. I don't know. What about Shayls? They can do it.”

“But they're not water breathers!”

I chewed a fingernail. “We're dealing with a formidable race here.”
No wonder they look down on Terrans and our technology,
I finished silently.

“You figure Kor already developed this virus?”

“We could all be breathing it right now if it's airborne.” I had an irrational urge to hold my breath. “Maybe it's only transmitted through water. But then what if it's contagious, carried in a sneeze or a cough? Did they do autopsies on the bodies of those kids yet?”

“What'll that prove?”

“I don't know. You've got to talk to the Institute people.”

Hallarin rubbed a thumb hard across his lips. I realized his face was pallid, his hand shaky. “We're bringing more people down to the goddamn planet.”

“All experts in their fields. Right?”

He was too busy staring at nothing to answer.

“Hallarin! They'll eventually return to Earth and the colonies to address heads of state, large audiences, right?”

“Wait a minute, Rammis. The ships' decontamination systems wouldn't let -“

“Croteshit they wouldn't! They've failed before. Some viruses can survive anything. If they're viruses. Maybe they're bacteria. Jesus, what's the incubation period?” I asked myself and paced. “What's the difference?” I answered. “It probably varies among individuals anyway. Where, where's the comlinks? I've got to call Life Sciences. Dammit, will you cancel all flights before another ship takes off or lands!”

“Administration,” he said.

“What?”

“The comlinks.”

He went out the door, puffing as he trotted down the hall. I followed him. Dancer ran behind us. Hallarin was already dialing when I strode up to a link.

“I'm going after that slug,” I said, “and this time I'm going to make sure the bastard's dead!” I dialed, then slammed a fist against the wall as I waited for Life Sciences to make the link.

Hallarin didn't answer. He was breathing too hard.

Like the body's own defenses, Leone's specialized systems were gearing up for protection, and for repelling invaders. It was a relief to no longer be needed by Hallarin.

The patients in the hospital's psychiatric ward conversed quietly as they strung beads, weaved mats and shaped clay into beasts even stranger than the real ones harbored by Syl' Tyrria. For all the advances in psychiatry, it seems the basics are still good therapy.

I kept Dancer inside my jacket. It must have felt like home to him by now, and held up my visitor's pass for the robot guard to scan.

“Are you going to spend the rest of your life moejoing?” I asked Jack, who sat on the other side of an easel.

He stared at the painting, unsmiling. “Guess they figure this is punishment enough for what I did.” He laid down the brush and looked up. “You're going to act like nothing happened, ain't you, Julie?”

“Nothing happened.” I opened my jacket and let Dancer jump down. “We're both still alive.” I thought on fatal diseases. “And I need your help, Jack.”

“I heard about Christine. Croteing shame.” He wiped his hands on a paint-stained rag. “That her pooch?”

I nodded.

“You figure Kor made her do it?”

“Only indirectly. He can't touch Annie and your kids. Well, not with tel power, anyway.”

“You want to put that in writing?” He looked away. “Damn funny, you start out to do the right thing, the honorable thing, but…”

“I wounded him last night, Jack. Maybe killed him.”

He stared at me, his expression intense. “You're not sure?”

“No, but his tel power can't influence your family without his neurochemicals. He couldn't even reach me in Leone from the reservoir.” I came around the easel, studied his seascape and frowned. The water was thick bright blue, the foam great gobs of white paint. “Jesus, that really sucks, Jack. You lay it on with a trowel, you know? I'll give you this, though, a ship wouldn't sink.”

He extended the brush to me.

“I'm not pretending to be an artist.” I took out the two toy mice I'd bought at Perverse Party Times, rubbed the soft brown faux fur and began to wind one mouse from a key on its metal belly. “Haven't you had enough BS yet?”

“Police are guarding my house, they're escorting Annie an' the kids everyplace they go. Long as they keep that up, I'll paint all the mudsucking pictures they can stand looking at.”

I wound the other mouse. “Has anybody in your family actually felt Kor's mindtouch?”

“Two of the kids think so.”

I shook my head. “If Kor had linked with them, they wouldn't be thinking. Anyway, you owe me.” I let my smile fade. “I'm going after him and I need -“

“Kor?”

I nodded. “Right now. If I wait, Hallarin and that slug might turn this mess into all-out war. Sometimes I wonder which of them is worse.”

His square face went hard. “I never liked killing, Julie, you know that, never even hunted scrabblers. But I want that groat dead! Like to do it myself.” He threw down the rag, stood up and glanced around. The seven patients were all engrossed in their arts and crafts. “You got a plan?” he whispered.

I hated to tell Jack that Joe Stol wouldn't sell me scuba gear on his credcount, and all I wanted was for Jack to buy it for me. If Kor had already released the viruses, going after him was just a case of knee-jerk revenge. Then again, why deprive Jack of that pleasure? Maybe because he had a family?

“Jack, you've got a family.”

“I know what I got, buddy, an' that's why I'm in on this!”

I knew better than to argue with that look. “You'll have to buy us some scuba gear, and, uh…” I shrugged, “would you deduct a few units for breakfast, too?”

“We going into the reservoir after him?”

“No. Right down the mudlumper's hole. The pool in his lair.”

Jack smirked. His eyes showed life again.

“I've got a hunch,” I told him, “that if Kor's still alive, he's headed home so his hunters can feed him. Have you ever dived?”

He shook his head. “Always been afraid of the water.”

“No shit?” I released the tightly wound mice on the floor. “You never told me that.” The mice raced across the floor, under occupied tables, squeaking loudly, their small jaws snapping metallically. Strings of colored beads and balls of wool flew. Chairs went over as the tables' occupants fled. Dancer skidded on the waxed floor and fell on his snout trying to catch one.

The ward's robot guard flashed on Alert and attempted to search out the cause of the disturbance. He could do associative thinking, all right, but fear elicited by metal toys was just out of his ken.

Dancer finally cornered and grabbed one mouse, then spit it out and yelped as its buzzer gave off a slight shock. Small wheels spun as the mouse righted itself and raced blindly toward a group of weavers leaving a table.

“Just remember not to hold your breath while you're coming up,” I shouted to Jack above the din as we walked past the distracted guard.

I'd spent years searching for mammalian life forms on Syl' Tyrria. Was this the reception awaiting a live mammal, possibly shrewlike, who might unwittingly blunder into town?

* * *

Jack bought the dive gear from Joe Stol, who tried to sell us two Carson hand-held adjustable stinglers.

Stol scratched his head. “All I know is, damned things have become popular lately. Fact, Officer Cole, our records show you already bought two.”

Jack slid me a look.

I became interested in depth gauges on a rack.

They work underwater too, tags,” Stol said, caressing the stingler. “Especially if you're going after big fish.” He gave Jack a discount as a preferred customer.

While Jack drove his police manta past the robot roadblock at the edge of town, and out toward Kor's lair, I told him everything that had happened since our last meeting at the reservoir. Everything except my fear that Kor had already released the plague viruses.

For some reason Jack couldn't believe that Kor would attempt to destroy all of humanity. Were we so lovable, or the prospect just too daunting to accept as reality? There'd been a pandemic back in the early twentieth century that had wiped out a hundred million people, about five percent of Earth's population. This time it could be worse.

But Morth would have contacted me if it was the end of everything. Wouldn't he? Take it minute by minute, Rammis, I decided as I ate a salami sandwich Jack had bought me for breakfast. I thought of Kor's pool and wondered if Jack realized just how thirst-inducing salami was?

The sky was bright and clear, almost violet overhead, hiding stars. Stars had always been mankind's dream. The promise. And we'd made it! A quantum leap in harnessing dark energy had given us the roads to the stars. It couldn't end this way!

I thought of dinosaurs, their long rule of Earth and their very sudden demise. Had anyone ever put forth a plague hypothesis? Maybe it wasn't an asteroid hitting Earth that killed them off. Maybe they all caught the flu from a bug that rode in on the asteroid. Bacteria have seeded planets with life, it was known, by asteroids.

An animal about the size of a large rat bolted across the road. Jack hit the brakes.

“Christ, teats!” I yelled. “Stop. Stop the manta!”

“What?”

I jumped out when he slowed.

“Where the hell are you going?” he yelled after me. “Jules!”

“She's got teats!” I shouted. I chased the shrew-like creature across an open field and down a rocky slope. Small by Syl' Tyrria's standards, the animal was not spectacular in appearance. She bore no plated armor, no razor tusks or deadly claws. A timid night scavenger by the look of her large eyes. I followed her through ferns and down to a marshy canyon floor. Jack was close behind. “What the hell is it?” he called. “What so fucking -”

“She has teats and she's probably warm-blooded!” I yelled back, splashing across a shallow stream she had forded.

“So?” he demanded, following.

“So, you scramballed lumper, she's mammalian!”

He paused in mid-stream. “But it's got no fur!”

She headed for a rock wall pockmarked with hollows and small caves, then disappeared behind a boulder.

“Where is it?” Jack panted, catching up, and threw me an angry look. “Couldn't it wait?”

“It was a female, Jack, full of milk.” I shaded my eyes and scanned the cliff side. “She must have young in one of those caves. Maybe born live!”

“So how are other animals born if not alive?'

“Eggs,” I told him disdainfully. I stared at the wall. Its hollows, like mute mouths, held a secret which was to me greater than the discovery of Loranths. Considering Sye Kor, much greater. She was still more reptilian than mammalian, but the small creature could prove that mammalian life forms do evolve on other planets. Fishes to amphibians to reptiles to whatever on this planet, to mammals. There
were
universal patterns, perhaps as the early concepts within Great Mind Himself.

“Let's go!” Jack said and strode back to the manta.

How many patterns were there? I wondered as I followed him, or were they endless? The creature raised more questions than answers.

“I'll come back when this is over with the Loranth,” I said, “and catch one of her babies. I still can't believe it.”

He took out a cigarette, lit it and peered at me.

But his dour look could not dampen my enthusiasm. “I knew it, Jack.” I slapped his shoulder. “I
knew
it.”

The mammalian pattern probably exists on many worlds, all over the galaxy! Maybe even the whole universe. “Why not?” I spread my arms to the sky. “Why not, Great Mind?”

Jack paused and exhaled smoke. “You saying that if Kor beats us here, somewhere else there's people?”

“You mean that Homo Sapiens is also a common pattern?” I chuckled as we walked back to the manta. “A tempting theory, but not likely.” I scooped up a twig as we climbed the slope and rolled it between thumb and forefinger. “The race of man probably wouldn't evolve again even back on Earth. Too many variables. Unless you believe that man is part of the Big Plan in Great Mind's Eye. Maybe so.” I flipped the twig away and wiped my brow on a sleeve. “Maybe so.” I glanced back at the wall and stumbled to keep up with Jack. “She's probably in there right now suckling her young.” I laughed, in spite of Loranths and genocide.

Jack threw me a funny look. “Glad as hell to hear it,” he muttered, opened the door of the manta and slid into the driver's seat. He ran a hand across his dripping brow. His skin was flushed and sweaty

“You feeling OK?” I hid a sudden fear as I got into the vehicle beside him and saw his hands tremble on the steering wheel.

“It's hot in the sun,” he commented. “Too Christcroting hot for a sprint across the countryside!” He threw the vehicle into gear. It lurched forward and we bounced down the dirt road.

“You ought to at least write to Althea an' tell her you found your mammal. After this is over.”

“I'll do better than that. I'll go back to Earth and tell her face to face after we…” My stomach felt queasy. Out of fear of our coming encounter with Kor? Or maybe the salami sandwich for breakfast.

Jack ground out the cigarette. “After we kill the bastard!”

“Yeah.” I relaxed back into the cushioned seat, my breath too warm in my mouth. There was a dull ache in my chest, I realized, just beneath the sternum. I pressed a hand to my cheek, then drew it away quickly. Hot! Too hot for that short run. And I spend my days in the sun.

“Yeah. After that,” I said.