Hakan shook his head.
"So, these things do not exist, do they? Cannot exist, I think Zhena Trelu would say."
Hakan closed his eyes.
Val Con sipped tea, cautiously allowing his body to relax; he ran the Rainbow very quickly and looked up to find Hakan's eyes on him.
"How long has this been here?"
"No more than a day," Val Con said softly. "And it will be gone before the start of another."
Sorrow shaded the mustached face. "You're leaving?"
"We don't belong here any more than this craft does, Hakan. It is an accident that we are here—a happy accident, as it turns out. We found friends and music—and anything that gains us so much is to be thanked."
Silence grew as they both drank their tea. Val Con shifted slightly, drawing the other man's attention back to him. "You should go, Hakan."
"Now? But, I mean, Miri—" He trailed off in confusion.
Val Con considered. "It is not safe to stop the healing once it is started, and Miri might not wake naturally for some hours after the machine releases her. She cannot say good-bye to you, Hakan, though I know she would wish to. I . . ." He shrugged. "Come back to this spot tomorrow," he said slowly, "and take away what is here." More regulations shattered by whim, he thought ruefully, reaching to touch the other's arm. "Be very careful, my friend."
Tears shone in the blue eyes as Hakan stood. "Kem's never going to forgive me for letting you two get away like this. She—we—love you both."
"And we love you." On some impulse he did not fully understand, Val Con extended a hand and touched one stubbled cheek very lightly, as if they were kin. "I see you, Hakan Meltz." He stood back. "Live in joy, you and Kem—and may all of your children love the music."
"Yeah . . ." Hakan followed Val Con to the hatch and stood looking out at the night.
"Can you find your way, Hakan? Should I walk with you back to the car?"
"I'll be all right," he said, pulling up his hood. "Just follow the footsteps out, like we did on the way in." He hesitated. "Good night, Cory."
"Good night, Hakan."
Val Con watched until he could no longer see Hakan's outline against the stars and snow, then he sealed the hatch and went back into the ship. The 'doc's timer showed one and a quarter hours still to go on Miri's treatment. Val Con set the ship's clock to wake him in an hour, then reclined in the pilot's chair and went to sleep.
ADDITIONAL TIME REQUIRED TO COMPLETE REPAIRS: TWENTY-FIVE MINUTES.
Val Con touched the query button, frowning as the reason for the additional time took shape on the screen.
BLOOD FILTERING AND RECALIBRATION OF NUTRIENT LEVELS REQUIRED DUE TO STRONG ADVERSE REACTION TO INGESTION OF PSYCHOSTIMULATIVE DRUG.
"Psychostimulative drug?" he repeated. Then, face clearing, "Ah." The Cloud-and-MemStim mix she had flung into Tyl Von's face; she must have inadvertently swallowed some of it herself. He shook his head, keying in a request for the doc to send the makeup of the drug to auxiliary screen three. How had Miri come to have such a thing? he wondered, and shook his head again. He would have to wait for her explanation.
He bent and picked up her clothes and shoved them into the cleaning unit along with his own, adjusting the setting to "superclean" and "repair." The 'fresher also had a "superclean" setting. Val Con chose it and stepped under the deluge.
The observation port had cleared, allowing a view of a slight, pale body, a swirl of red hair, and a pair of languorous gray eyes. The new scar was a smooth patch of pink above her small breast. Val Con smiled and touched the release.
"Good morning, Miri."
"Hi." Her voice was husky, and she moved her head on the flat pillow in a half-shake. "Think I don't know how to fall?"
He sighed. "I know that kill so well . . ."
"Yeah. Me, too." She grinned, a trifle lopsidedly. "Don't teach your grandma to suck eggs, spacer."
"I would not dare."
She snorted. "Guess not, grandma you got. Feisty old toot, was she?"
"No more than the rest of us," he said softly, touching her face. "Are you hungry, Miri?"
"Could do with a snack." For the first time her eyes left his face and looked at the room beyond his shoulder. "Mind telling me where we are?"
"The agent's ship."
She frowned. "Just us?"
"Just us." He looked away, picking up a lock of copper hair and running it through his fingers, studying the process with intensity. "The agent—died. The Loop lied to him—as it did to me, on Edger's ship, you recall?" He looked back into her eyes.
"Yeah."
He sighed and shook his head. "He had taken stimulants and the—other drugs. The Loop added adrenaline in a massive dose, into a system already overloaded . . ."
"He had a heart attack," Miri said very quietly.
Val Con nodded. "Tyl Von sig'Alda," he murmured. "Clan Rugare."
She frowned. "You knew him?"
"No. He told me his name." He shook himself out of the memory. "What will you have to eat?"
"Whatever it is, I ain't eating it here," she said with an abrupt return of energy. "What kind of shape my clothes in?"
"The valet was adequate to the task," he told her. "A moment."
He returned almost immediately with her clothes, but she had already squirmed upright and sat with her legs dangling over the edge of the pallet. He shook his head and handed her the shirt, gritting his teeth against his need to help, trusting that she would ask his aid if it was required.
She finished up the buttons, sighed, and looked at the skirt. "Dump that thing over my head, willya?" He did, and she fastened it, then grabbed his arms and slid to her feet. "You didn't get hit, did you, boss?"
"No," he said softly. Then he began more urgently, "Miri, you must never—"
She held up a hand. "Don't say it, okay? Heard you screaming like death, coming up that hill. Ready to jump on him and hack him to pieces, was it?" She sighed and leaned against him, her arms going around his waist with unexpected strength. "Couple certifiables."
After a moment, she stood away from him. "Don't suppose there's any coffee."
"This is a Liaden ship," Val Con said, "so it is doubtful. We might check, however." He offered his arm.
She took it without hesitation, and together they went out into the main room.
There was no coffee, but the tea he ordered for her was nearly as good: dark and spicy and rich. She sipped her second cup half reclined in the copilot's chair, watching Val Con clean up the remains of their meal and wishing her brain would stop asking "Now what?"
He's gonna ask you about the Cloud, Robertson, she told herself. Whether that Tyl Von guy was lying to you or not. He's gonna ask. What're you gonna tell him?
Val Con came back to sit in the pilot's seat, carrying another cup of tea. He settled in and sipped, then lifted his eyes to her face.
Gods, she thought. Gods, please . . .
"Miri?" he said softly, and she swallowed a deep breath along with some more tea and met his eyes, level.
"Yo."
"Who is Skel?"
She shook her head in surprise. "Skel ain't nobody, boss. He died on Klamath." She took another breath. "Where'd you hear about Skel?"
"You were talking to him rather constantly at one point," Val Con said gently. "Ordering him to put you down and go on."
Miri closed her eyes and leaned her head against the rest. "Way it was supposed to go," she said tonelessly. "Liz's orders. Everybody for themselves, she said." Her voice took on a harsher cadence, as if words and tone were burned into memory forever. "If your partner falls and don't get up, run. If
I
fall—run. If you get hit and fall and it ain't fatal—get up, damn you, and
run!"
"Miri . . ."
She opened her eyes, mouth tight with old pain. "'Nother unit—had us pinned with a heat-seek. Wasn't many of us by that time—twenty-five, twenty-six. Needed somebody to kill the gun, see? And I told Liz I'd do it." The eyes closed again, and she took a shuddering breath. "Made sense—I was smallest, fastest. Best choice. Liz saw it; said okay. Skel—he waited, after the gun blew. I took a hit on the way back, then the—the land moved—was movin' a lot, by then. Rocks fell—busted both my legs. Skel carried me. Got me to Liz before he got hit himself. Then
she
carried me, like she'd ordered us not to."
She sighed, her eyes opening to stare up at the ceiling. "Liz, Scandal, Mac, Win, me. Five. Klamath killed everybody else. Wasn't for the weatherman, we'd been dead, too."
She touched the chair's control and brought herself upright. "Never got a chance to thank him—Brunner, his name was. Ichliad Brunner. Don't know his Clan. Faked a report or something—never got the right of it—made the station send in shuttles—pulled off maybe five hundred, all told, before everything went to hell. Heard he got in trouble, later . . ."
"Miri . . ." He was standing over her, one hand half extended, pain and sorrow in his face. Her heart twisted in her chest, and she clenched her jaw against the wrenching need for him.
"You better hear the rest of it."
"Later." He touched her jaw, his fingers stroking the tight muscles.
"Now," she said, pulling her head back. His hand dropped to his side, wariness joining the other troubles in his face. Miri sighed. "Ain't much more."
"All right," he said softly, his eyes on hers. "Tell me the rest of it."
"Finished up in the hospital, got my legs back in shape. Wasn't sleeping so good—nightmares. Got to thinking about how everybody I knew was dead and how I
should've
been dead. Got to drinking too much kynak, but that just made the memories clearer, see? Tried a couple other things, trying to shake the memories—all the dead faces. Finally got hold of some Cloud. The memories went away. I could sleep and think and I wasn't so—sad—anymore." She sighed. "But the Cloud would wear off, and the memories would hurt worse than ever, 'cause you just put 'em on hold for a little while, you don't turn 'em off completely."
She broke his gaze and looked into the empty teacup, then looked back into his eyes. "I took a lot of Cloud."
There was silence. Val Con stood, apparently willing to hear even more. Miri sighed and forced herself to finish.
"Liz got me in a rehab program—took a long time, but I kicked it. Most people, with Cloud, they never made it back out." She gave a harsh bark of laughter. "My luck."
"Ah," he said.
"What in
hell
does that mean?" Tears, sudden and appalling, ran down her cheeks and dripped off her chin. She lifted a hand and scrubbed at them as Val Con came over and perched on the edge of the chair, facing her.
"It means," he said softly, "that, if I had been on Klamath, seen a world shake apart and my unit—my friends, my lovers, my family—die, I might wish to forget, also."
She shook her head. "That Tyl Von brought me a pack of Cloud, when I went out to calm down. Said it was from you, for doing my job so good."
"Must I say that he lied?" Val Con asked. He sighed. "The packet that he gave you was a mixture, Miri—half Cloud, half MemStim—a drug that is given agents when they report. It stimulates complete recall."
Her eyes widened. "No wonder he had a heart attack. From forgetting everything to remembering everything? It'd pull his brain apart!" She stopped. "Hell."
Val Con nodded. When several minutes had passed and she said no more, he touched her hand. "Have I now heard everything that I must hear this evening, Miri? For I think you should sleep so you may continue healing."
She stared at him. It's all right, Robertson, she told herself. It's really all right.
Peace, as shocking and unexpected as her tears, flooded in, and she leaned forward to hug him and put her cheek against his. "I think I ought to go to sleep and continue healing, too, now that you mention it. But if you want me to sleep anywhere but here, you're gonna have to carry me."
"That," Val Con said, "can be arranged."
Sunlight glittered off the snow-covered rocks, bringing tears to Kem's eyes as she followed Hakan. If the whole thing were not so wild—but, there. Miri hurt, and Hakan and Cory bringing her out here, and Cory putting her in a doctor machine . . .and cups of tea coming out of a wall and panels of lights in an aircraft that was like no aircraft possible.
Kem shook her head and squinted ahead, looking for the aircraft. Something as big as Hakan had described should certainly be visible in the bright sunshine.
Ahead of her, Hakan stopped, staring at an oblong depression in the snow. She came to his side and slid her hand into his.
"It's gone," he said, and looked at her, desolation in his eyes. "They're gone, Kemmy."
She looked at him helplessly, then looked back at the depression, squinted against the glare, and pointed. "What's that, Hakan?"
It turned out to be a flat wooden box, with a fitted, sliding top. When they slid the top back, a strong, spicy aroma was released, somewhat reminiscent of tea. Inside was a sheet of paper and a pouch.
"Dear Hakan and Kem,"
the note began, in Miri's slanting, rounded letters.
"We're sorry we have to leave before you can see us again. Please believe that I am much better and that I'm not going to die, probably for a long, long time, so pity Cory. In the box is also the money we got from the king for being heroes. There is different money in the place we're going to, so you use this. Please. Hakan, I'm sorry we couldn't finish the last set. You're a good musician and a good friend. Remember to always play for joy. Kem, I owe you so much! I'm sorry we put you and Hakan to such trouble. Thank you both for all your help. Tell Zhena Trelu we won't bother her anymore. We love you. Miri."
There were several blank lines, then in a sharp, backhand script:
"Be well and be joyful, both of you. We'll miss you and think of you often, with love. May the music never stop for either of you. Cory."
That was all. Kem blinked back tears and looked up from the letter to see Hakan pacing around the oblong indentation, peering carefully off in all directions. She went to him. "What is it?"