Heritage of Flight (23 page)

"Lohr's just a boy. He's not going to execute anyone,” Pauli snapped. Her nerves were jangling from this hateful mental warfare; and her breasts ached, a sure sign that Serge must be crying to be fed. “Lohr! You hand over that blaster!"

She was walking toward it, reaching for it, she almost had it...

"Stobor!” Shouts rang simultaneously outside the dome and in her earplug.

Pauli threw herself at the equipment.

"Not a life-giver!” she heard Thorn shout, and a hard shoulder hit her somewhere around the hips, sending her sprawling. Even as ozone stank in the dome, she punched up the field generator. At least she could stop any more stobor from getting through.

"Someone get ben Yehuda. His cub ... down by the river ... surrounded by them—"

Pauli started to crawl on knees and elbows toward the door. Even her teeth ached. Lohr was trembling violently, eyes on the blaster he had fired. It was only by the merest luck he hadn't wiped out Pauli, the equipment, or Halgerd, who levered himself up and balanced unsteadily, favoring his left leg, the one that had taken the burn that might have hit Pauli.

"Give me that thing!” Halgerd snarled. As light shrieked out again to score the dome's tough wall, his hand whipped out and slashed down across Lohr's wrist. He caught up the weapon, then stumbled forward, half running, half limping out of the dome at a speed amazing in anyone, let alone a man with a burned leg. Using Lohr as a prop, Pauli dragged herself to her feet.

"He break that wrist for you?"

"No, ma'am.” After scaring the hell out of all of them, damned near frying her, and coming close to ruining irreplaceable equipment, now here he was, back to acting like one of the littlests again.

"Luckier than you deserve. He must not have been trying. Come on!"

Pauli started toward the perimeters, but walked straight into Pryor's outstretched arms. Lohr darted past them both toward the river.

"And where do you think you're going?” she asked.

"Fields. Halgerd's got the blaster now, but Lohr marked him first. I have to get there."

She noticed that Pryor's face sported a fine bruise; and she was still a little unsteady on her feet. “Want to try to stop me, Alicia, or do you want me to help you get there too?"

"You've got yourself a deal, Pauli. Let's move it!"

Ari had found himself a rock to climb on, and he was trying to beat off the stobor from there. He had a stunner, true enough; but its beam flickered, a sign its charge was all but dead. Stobor swarmed out of the river, which ruled out that means of escape for him.

The wrong kid had a weapon! Rafe thought, enraged. Here Lohr was, playing mad blasterman, while Ari, who could use a blaster to fight off stobor, and was as stable as they came, was making do with a stunner, if it held out, and a stick, if it didn't. Rafe headed toward the river too, alert for stobor himself. Around him, lances of fire flared out as people killed stobor. The air was foul with burning ground cover and charred eat ... no, there were no eaters, anymore.

Rafe stopped beside three people who had their arms around David ben Yehuda.

"Let me through!” Dave screamed. His face ran with sweat and tears.

The beam from Ari's stunner faltered, then died altogether, leaving him in the dark. “All he's got now is a shovel!” Dave cried hoarsely. Rafe hefted his blaster. It wasn't weighted for throwing. He'd need to get in closer.

"Stay back, Dave,” Rafe warned. “I'm going to try to throw the boy a blaster. That'll let him defend himself while we shoot through to him. He's a tough kid; we'll get him out."

Then they jerked their heads around as an accented voice shouted, “Move to the left, boy. I'm coming!"

Halgerd ran as if he outraced ten devils, one of which had already burned a chunk from his left leg, past the front line of stobor fighters, and toward the rock which the first wave of stobor were now beginning to surmount.

"Hold your fire!” screamed Rafe as Halgerd headed directly for the stobor. One good shock should warn him, he thought, though with that bad leg...

One shock was all it took. Halgerd grunted with surprise and pain, drew his legs under him, and leapt, a wide, shallow leap that brought him onto Ari's rock, where he flung one arm about the boy to steady himself, and began firing steadily, systematically at the creatures.

Pauli ran up beside Rafe, panting for breath. She braced herself against his shoulder and fired. Her aim was true.

Rafe pointed. Pauli swallowed. “Lohr marked him."

"He needs our help,” Rafe said.

"He's got it."

Ahead of them, Halgerd wavered visibly, recovered, and kept on firing. “I think he's weakening,” Pauli said. “How long can he hold out, after all he's been through? If he falls now, though, we stand to lose them both—"

"Here,” Halgerd roared. “
Catch!"

Snatching the stocky Ari in one arm, Thorn Halgerd flung him over the line of blaster fire. The boy landed on top of Rafe, and they both went down. Then Halgerd fell, his arms and legs thrashing wildly half-in, half-out of the water that churned with stobor. Then he lay still.

There had to be at least six stobor there, Rafe thought with a groan.

Lohr scooped up his blaster and started burning a path to the river. He was firing methodically and he pressed forward as quickly as he could.

He made it to the shore, had pulled Halgerd from the murky water, then flung himself down, head on the man's chest. “No!” the boy said. “No more deaders. Not if I can help it!"

He thumped the man's chest, listened again, and swore. He tilted Halgerd's head back to clear the air passage, meticulously adjusted his hands over the man's sternum, and began to press down rhythmically. His lips moved as he counted.

"Do you believe that?” Rafe asked as Alicia Pryor staggered to Lohr's side. Rafe followed her, gulping back his tears. Only as the adults took over resuscitation did the boy let himself collapse.

"I think we've turned two lives around tonight,” Pauli said happily. She mopped at her eyes, and Rafe started to put an arm about her, but she coughed and swore that the smoke was choking her.

"Ari's fine. And he ... Thorn's going to make it,” Pryor announced. “Don't ask me how they augmented his circulatory system, but it's working."

"He's trying to talk,” three people spoke at once.

Though Pryor began to hush him, Thorn Halgerd struggled onto one elbow, his eyes searching out Lohr. He licked his lips, then tried to speak again.

"Why?"

Pauli shoved Lohr forward to face the man. “Answer him, dammit!"

"I ... Ari's my friend,” he said, eyes downcast, one foot scuffing in the dirt. “Besides, when we first got here, well, my little sister limps ‘cause there were these things, these eaters. They're all dead now, and they call it, call it genocide because the eaters grew up to be smart. To fly. It was wrong to kill them, but they did it to give us kids a chance to grow up straight. You ... I know you did a wrong thing too, but you gave Ari a chance. Ari would have died!” Then his face contorted, and he twisted away, burrowing against David ben Yehuda's side.

"Don’ ... don't understan'..."

"You will,” Alicia Pryor told him. “I promise that you will.” Thorn's eyes filled with tears and the question he was too weak to ask.

"Why? Let's just say that I knew your father a long time ago.” She smiled, and this time Halgerd smiled back. Then a spray hypo blanked the pain of his burnt leg, and sent him into sleep.

"'To sleep, perchance to dream?'” Pauli heard the medical officer muse. “God, I hope not."

When Thorn Halgerd's leg healed, he announced that he planned to climb to the lost Cynthians’ caves and live there by himself.

"If the caves housed your civilians, they'll do fine for me,” he'd told Pauli, Rafe, and Alicia, who had gathered to see him off. “In fact, they'll do better for me than for your people. I don't see the ghosts in them that you do.” Thorn's nostrils flared as if he relished the air. The weather was cold for spring, and the sky shone the color of amber in which tiny plumes were scattered. His eyes scanned the horizon appreciatively, then went dark. “I have enough ghosts of my own."

"I wish you'd reconsider,” Rafe said.

"You'd trust me? All of you? Even the civilians?"

"Lohr does. And we're all alone here,” said Pauli.

"You more so than most. If the scramble we watched is any indication, your Republic has all it can do fighting itself without checking out every one of the No Man's Worlds for settlements like ours."

How was her own side doing? It was pointless to ask. Now her “own side” was the humans on Cynthia. All of them.

"Look,” said ben Yehuda. “Call this a test to destruction. You don't destroy easy. In fact, I'd say you passed a test that your ... father didn't. You're definitely an improvement on the original."

Pryor stepped forward. “I have to agree with that. And you know,” she said very softly. “We could probably turn around that sterility of yours."

Thorn froze. “Is that why you saved me ... for the Halgerd genes?” At the look of sorrow on her face, his own face twisted, that eerie resemblance flickering between them again. Pryor shook her head.

Pauli opened her mouth to try, one last time, to persuade him to remain in the settlement.

"Let it be,” he said, his voice gentle, almost wistful. “I have to get away. Look, let me try to explain. You say that everyone's alone. Well, I never was before. All my life, there have been voices inside my head. Others just like me. Then they were gone, and I was just one piece of a lost whole. That's not what you call alone. That's something else.

"I almost died of it. You saw. Sometimes I wish I still could. Now, though, you tell me I'm unique, my own self, but it all still feels like having a brother killed inside my head. So I have to find out who ‘myself’ is; and I want to do it without a thousand voices clamoring at me.

"Besides, if I'm ever to live among you, I need to see those caves, to learn what price you paid to go on living. After all, I already know what price I—and my father—paid."

"And when you've learned what you have to?” Pryor asked.

He smiled at her. “Why then, I'll come back down, if you'll all still accept me. To take up the future you offered to an old friend's son.” There was no irony in those words, Pauli thought. Already, Thorn was drawing comfort from the generous illusion of a past that Pryor had helped him create. Pauli remembered the poem she had quoted to herself the night Thorn reached Cynthia.
"Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something upon which to rejoice."
Thorn would construct it quickly and well.

"You know,” Pryor compelled herself into a shaky laugh, “you take after your father? You're just as stubborn."

Thorn shouldered the pack containing the food, the heatcube, the comm, and the few other things he had consented to accept from them, and started toward the foothills.

"Wait!” From around the curve of the nearest dome raced Lohr, a long bundle of struts and gleaming fabric bumping against his shoulder. His wings.

He came to a sliding stop and offered them to Halgerd. “They're a loan, see? You're a pilot; you'll know how to use them. So when you want to, you can come back down easier."

Thorn stared at the wings resting lightly on his hands. Gently he closed fingers around them. “I'll bring them back,” he promised.

He turned. Without looking back, he walked toward the foothills, favoring his burnt leg, but only a little. Silently they watched until all they could see was the sun glinting off his fair hair, and the metal of the wings he bore.

PART III

Bread of Affliction

Lo, this is the bread of affliction ...

—Passover Ritual

15

As the wind sent the snow dancing in the counterpoint of light and shadow cast by two moons, Pauli paced, waiting for Alicia Pryor to emerge from the dome that served the settlers as a medical center.

Scared, by God, of a feast. I must be losing my grip,
she berated herself. She stamped her feet and the glittering snow crunched underfoot ...
like scales ... Rafe and I climbed up to the eaves where the moths laired, and their scales lay scattered everywhere until we stole enough to kill them.

For an instant, the crisp snow and the white cloud of Pauli's breath reeked with the pheromones of moths, aroused for their mating dances in the thermals of the mountain passes.

Stop calling them moths
, she corrected herself.
They were Cynthians. Moth
, Beneatha Angelou informed anyone who would listen, was a racist term. If you called the Cynthian natives moths, you created an excuse to think of them as less than human: bugs to be swatted out of the way as Pauli had ordered. But her order had wiped out intelligent creatures—
humans
in all but physical shape—and must not be softened by terms more suitable to pest control.