Armor (53 page)

It was Lewis. It was the drunk. He was sober. I remembered the hatch.

He didn’t bother to take us all the way back to the Control room table. He left us lying where we were and used the medical supplies stacked against the wall.

“Lewis?” asked Holly suddenly.

I turned, surprised and delighted to see he was still alive.

“Holly! You made it!”

He grinned, winced from the pain. “Why not? You did,” he asked.

Then we both laughed.

Lewis did not. He didn’t speak at all, in fact. He tended to us in grim silence, darting back and forth from body to body with grips and packs and an air of urgency. We weren’t much help. Too tired and too hurt and, come to think of it, too amazed at being alive.

When it was over and we were going to live for another short while, he sat us up against the wall and gave us some water. Then he hauled over a chair and sat down and lit a cigarette and looked at us with that same grim expression, of a parent furious with naughty children, and asked: “Why?”

Holly tried to tell him. About Borglyn using mortars on the Cityfolk again and again and about how horrible that was and what it meant. About how Borglyn would be so hated now that he would have to be even more brutal later on and how, no, we didn’t think we could beat him exactly, but slowing him down would surely mean something. . . .

He interrupted once. In a cold tone he nodded at me. “All this for you, too?”

I nodded, feeling strangely embarrassed.

Holly seemed embarrassed, too. He went on, really wanting Lewis to understand.

“It has to be done, Lewis.”

Lewis sighed. “It always does. Holly. That’s no reason to do it.”

“But all those people!”

“What about them?”

Holly frowned, stuck. He turned to me. But I couldn’t think either. He turned back to Lewis.

“Lewis, there just isn’t anyone else? Can’t you see that?”

He stood up, walked a couple of steps. He puffed a puff.

He looked down at us. “Shouldn’t that tell you something?”

Holly faced him. “I just didn’t see any way out, Lewis. I still don’t.”

Lewis frowned. “Don’t you?”

“I don’t,” replied Holly in an odd tone.

I looked at him. Tears were starting from his eyes. I shook my head. What the hell was going on?

And then Lewis was there, right in front of us and crouched down and peering at us with eyes I didn’t know he possessed and he said: “You can’t? Neither of you? You don’t see any way out?”

We shook our heads. And then Holly said, in a calm clear voice: “There isn’t one.”

Lewis dropped his face into his hands. He rubbed it hard.

But then, when he lifted it back up, the grimness had gone.

It was replaced with. . . what? Reckless abandon?

He smiled. “I was afraid you’d say that.”

Then he stood up and stripped off his jumpsuit. He was naked underneath. I heard a groan behind me. I looked and saw that Holly was openly crying now. He must have known then.

But I didn’t until Lewis walked naked to the far comer of the room and did something that only one human creature in all the universe could do. He touched his open palm to that of the black suit and it opened.

Felix.

VIII

It couldn’t be.

“I want to know how come you’re not dead!” I demanded idiotically.

Lewis Felix laughed. It was that same carefree abandon as before. Then he winked at me. “You got a couple of minutes?” he asked, indicating the door to the outside.

That wasn’t what I meant. I said so. Holly helped. He asked about Kent.

“Kent’s dead,” was the uncarefree reply.

“I know that. He died on Banshee. But what I …”

“He didn’t die on Banshee. He died on the Terra.”

We looked at each other. I went this time. “Lew. . .

Felix? Is it Felix?”

He nodded. “ Of course.”

“We thought Kent killed you.”

He frowned. “He saved me. They killed him.”

“Who?”

“Fleet,” he said in a dead voice and knelt down to fiddle with the suit. It had sprung, spread-eagled open, off the wheelchair onto the floor.

In a hurried voice. Holly told him what we meant, why we had thought what we thought. When he got to the part about immersing, Felix cringed.

“You really did that? You went through the whole thing with me?”

Holly said we had. “Except between drops. But everything in the suit.”

Felix shuddered. “Still. . .” He shuddered again, made an effort to regain his former humor. “I hope you guys had more fun than I did,” he said and laughed.

We didn’t know what to say. We didn’t want to say anything. But we had to know. Holly told him about being there when Kent had struck him and then everything going blank, the Alpha readings dropping out of sight.

Felix smiled. “I can see your problem. But all that happened was that Kent popped my suit when he hit me. I guess he was afraid I would struggle or something. As if it would have made any difference. Damn! but that man was strong.”

We nodded, watching in silence as he continued to both talk and work the suit.

“Then he put me in a ship. It was. . . He’d stolen it from someone I … ‘ ‘ “From Allie?” Holly prompted.

Felix looked at him, surprised. Then he nodded slowly.

“That’s right. You know everything. The whole story.”

I really wanted to disappear. But Holly didn’t seem the least bit embarrassed.

“Everything in the suit,” he said.

Felix nodded back. He took the cigarette out of his mouth and regarded it lovingly. Then he tossed it away.

“Kent put me on the ship and sent me off, still in his armor the whole time. When they tried to find out what was going on, he blocked them.” Felix stared, remembering. His voice was very quiet when next he spoke. “I saw what happened from the port. They cut him in half.” He shrugged, almost violently. “But I was long gone by then. To here.” “And all this time. . .?” I wondered aloud.

He smiled. “All this time. Have I got water? I notice I’ve got everything else.”

Holly nodded. “Fully operational.”

I looked at him. “Why?”

He blushed, looked at Felix. “I suppose you think that’s sick.”

Felix grinned, then laughed, then giggled wildly, almost falling over. “Holly? How the hell would I know?”

Then he lay down in the suit. And it closed over him. Then they both stood up.

It was terrifying.

“Is. . .is it all right?” Holly stuttered.

The black helmet nodded. The amplified voice was harsh and deep. It echoed loudly. “It hurts. I’m out of shape.”

He walked loudly and heavily over to the seal and paused with a huge black finger poised over the panel. “Just key it open?”

Holly nodded.

I tried to pull myself up, slipped back down. “Felix. . .?”

“What?” boomed back, not unpleasantly.

“Uh. . . nothing. Later.”

“Later,” he echoed. I couldn’t read it.

He sighed loudly, electronically. “I wish you could smoke in here.” Then he pushed the key and the door opened and he was gone. We heard the blasts begin almost at once. The door, set to close behind him, cut out everything afterward.

“Come on,” shrilled Holly, stumbling across the floor to the Control room. “I want to see.”

I followed. So did I.

It took us a long time to clamber inside and get the panel working. Our own monitors were long evaporated by battle. And Borglyn had cut us off before. So we missed a lot of it.

But Holly managed to jump into Borglyn’s signal anyway. We tried several angles, but none of them got what we wanted.

Finally, we managed to get our old perspective, from the monitor over Borglyn’s shoulder. We could see what he could see. It was great.

Felix was incredible.

He was everywhere at once. Borglyn couldn’t keep track of him cleanly from his monitors. There were just scattered images. Bodies flying through the air. . . blazebombs or grenades exploding with no one around. . . blazers cutting off abruptly, shattered and bent. . . Felix steaming right at the monitor as he reached the edge of the river and leaped across it, all twentysomething meters of it. . .

Then the main camp scurrying about and the mortars going off and somebody yelling in a high-pitched strident tone of growing terror that there were no targets, where the hell was he and. . . .

“Omigod! There, there, there’.”

Felix was great!

Borglyn, on the other hand, was terrified.

“Lift! Lift, goddammit!” he yelled to one and all and the Coyote began to rise.

One of his henchmen, in the Control room with him, said something about running scared and the sumbitch not being able to hurt a starship anyway.

Borglyn hit him, a loud backhanded smack across the face. “You said he’d never get across the river! Lift!”

But the ship was already rising, a few meters up already and then I heard Holly hiss beside me, “No!” as we both saw the black suit still coming, loping incredibly fast across the ground. And I knew what he meant. I knew what he feared.

And Borglyn knew what to do.

“All tacticals,” he yelled to unseen crew around him.

“Discharge them all at once. Now!”

On the screens the wall of fire blocked the sight of everything as it swept down across the camp, boiling the mortars and the commandos and the land and everything else.

Then the view was eclipsed by interference as the Coyote vaulted suddenly upward into Sanction’s sky.

I just sat there.

But Holly evidently could not. He began to furiously work the keys, trying blindly, desperately, to restore our view. He almost got it a couple of times, though not well and not clearly. And our fix on the monitor we wanted was clearly lost. We got random snowy pictures from all over the ship, corridors and bulkheads. No sound. No pattern. And no hope. The ship was pulling out of our range.

But that was the least of it anyway. I reached a hand over and lay it gently on Holly’s. I couldn’t stand to see him torture himself, or me, by trying for. . . .

He went stiff when the screen went sharp and clear.

I looked where he looked.

The image was from the outer portside monitor. It showed the length of the outer hull illuminated against the backdrop of daytime Sanction. And silhouetted against that, right in the center of it. . . .

The black suit had one plassteel hand gripped vise tight on a warp bleeder conduit. The other was clenched into a black fist that hurtled toward the monitor’s single eye.

And then all was dark.

EPILOGUE

We have never found the Coyote, of course.

Sure, it took us a long time before another ship came and we could even begin the search. And space is big and the ship was out of fuel anyway, so it doesn’t make much difference. But still we looked.

So do the people from Golden. Yes, they showed. About a month later. Reluctantly, we told them the story from the beginning when we found the suit until the end when we lost it. And we said we understood how reluctant they must be to want to spend much time searching for the remains of the dead and fuelless hulk. That we would be staying and if anyone ever reported anything we would be sure to let them know.

They looked at us like we were crazy.

“The Archon was not seen to die, is that not correct?” the representative asked Holly.

Holly said that, yes, that’s true, but. . . There was no fuel. Not to mention the terrible damage the ship undoubtedly underwent. “I mean,” Holly blustered on, red-faced, “There was a battle we didn’t even see.”

The Rep eyed him coolly. “But the Archon was not seen to die?” he asked again.

Holly looked at me and shrugged. “Well, no,” he replied.

The rep nodded, “So. We shall continue the search.”

And they have. They stop by here now and again.

A couple of other things:

We’re not a part of Fleet any longer. In no way. They’re mad about it. Fuck ‘em.

We traced the rumor about “Lewis’s” rich kid past to surprise Lewis himself.

We have a growing colony. A government. Holly and I are on what they call the Council of Elders. But they don’t call us much.

Lya is pregnant with her second. Her first is a girl with her looks and Holly’s brain.

Karen is not pregnant and won’t be. Yes, we’re still together. But we are not, repeat: not, happy. But I guess we’ll keep at it anyhow.

I never saw Eyes again.

The Antwar continues.

What about me? Besides the fact that I’m getting fat and thoughtful? Not much else. Both traits are, understandably, fulfilling.

What I eat is everything. What I think about. . .

The past, of course. My life and what it’s meant and what it will mean from now on. And Felix. I think about Felix a lot.

And about the Masao and what he said, about there being no protection from what you are and all. And I think I may have something to add:

There is no protection from what you want.

Hell, they keep searching, which is dumb enough. But when I think about the certain look in that Rep’s eye, in all their eyes when they drop by to question again and again. And when I think about all of it from Golden, to Banshee, to Sanction. . .

When I think about it, I wonder.

Dammit, I cannot help but wonder:

Are you there, Felix?

Are you there?