Orb (30 page)

“How long can he last by himself?” Kelly asked.

“He’d live off our rations.” Thompson said. “Assuming no malfunction of life support and power—perhaps a year or more.”

“That’s well short of any chance of a return expedition,” Kelly said. “He knows that.”

“We’ve been over this before,” Diana said. “Without a doubt, he’s insane.”

“Not from his perspective, the egocentric universe he’s created for himself.”

“I ain’t buying it,” Diana said. “Even from his perspective, he’s dead in a year. No, he’s certifiable.”

“Anyone care to speculate on what he’ll do next?” Kelly asked.

“Although he has control of
Desio
, his options are limited,” Thompson responded. He can’t go anywhere. He is protected by the laser, but that protection is confined to a discreet area around the ship and the adjacent shoreline. If he strays too far, he runs the risk of us ambushing him. In my judgment, he’ll continue to use the laser offensively, and in a manner to induce our cooperation, especially in the next two days, after which time the only thing he will have to bargain with are six little blue capsules. Exactly
how
he’ll use the laser is a good deal less certain.”

“I’m afraid we’re about to find out!” Kelly shouted, pointing toward
Desio
, specifically toward Melhaus, who, with malevolent purpose, had come bounding out.

A purple streak of light instantly appeared overhead, rapidly followed by another, and another. Simultaneously there were three ear-splitting peals: Caarraack! Caarraack! Caarraack! like the sound made by air cleaving apart and clapping together from a lighting strike. Behind us, high up on the spires, explosions: The laser superheating and instantly releasing the moisture trapped within solid rock; the rock fracturing and spalling, violently flinging outward and downward a cascade of deadly splintered shards.

“Move!” Thompson was shouting. “Move!” He was first to grasp the danger, intervening behind us, spreading his arms wide, corralling us and forcing us further away. “Damn it, move!” he repeated, shoving us ahead of himself until we began running, those of us stumbling being dragged along by others in our retreat; where we had just been, a torrent of jagged rocks, several large enough to split open a skull, thundering down, crashing and clattering and radiating heat.

Reaching safety, I stopped to discover Angie, shaking in fear, being held tight in my arms. I couldn’t exactly recall how she got there. Last I remembered, Kelly was holding her.

“I had to release her as I fell,” Kelly said, “or she surely would have been crushed beneath me.”

“Everyone OK?” Thompson asked, looking to each of us.

“You’re not,” Kelly said. “You’re bleeding.”

Thompson’s hand went to his temple. “A glancing blow,” he said, examining the trace of red on his fingers.

While Kelly verified that the wound, and her own scraped palms, required only superficial cleansing (water would do) an injurious high octave voice came marauding across the fractured plateau of Red Square to once again insult and to provoke us.

“Thompson! Do you hear me, Thompson?! Is that what you meant by the law of unforeseen consequences?!”

“Glad to see you’re acquiring a sense of humor, Doctor,” Diana yelled back.

“Best leave off with that for now,” Thompson advised. “As for my counter? He’ll have it in due time.”

While dismissive of his wound and patiently appreciative of our gratitude for incurring it on our behalf (he had stayed a stride behind while ushering us out of harm’s way) Thompson was not nearly as obliging concerning the wounds perpetrated on his spires. Three of the magnificent formations, including the two tallest, had been inflicted with permanent, disfiguring scars. The peak of one spire was completely missing, and gaping holes were torn in the others. The damage was sobering and saddening, a striking symbol of humanity’s predilection to destroy.

After returning to the relative safety of our enclave, the opportunity arose for Kelly and I to spend a few minutes alone. Taking advantage, I suddenly grabbed her arm, drew her close and urgently kissed her.

“What’s this for?” she asked.

“Hard to say. I guess I needed a reminder.”

“Of?”

“Of something in this universe that’s undeniably good. Of how you feel. How you taste. How much I need you. I’m being selfish.”

“Silly man. Don’t you understand by now that I can be selfish, too?”

She was about to kiss me when there was a gentle tug of the leash.

“Our little ambassador to the Orb,” Kelly said.

We crouched down to put Angie between us.

“An unmistakably
silver
lining on today’s black cloud,” I said. “No longer is there a chance Angie will be at the mercy of Doctor Melhaus.”

“Listening to Thompson,” Kelly said, “I doubt there ever was.”

“I WANTED TO spare him. I wanted to give him, to give
us
, every possible chance.” So said Thompson, his back against one of the large stones ringing the enclave, contemplating and flexing the fingers of his weathered hands.

If there was, in Thompson’s declaration, a deeper meaning beneath the obvious need to save the lives of those in his charge it was that the taking of a life meant shouldering a burden that would haunt us for a lifetime. That he would bear much of this burden, but not all, for there was no denying we were acting as a group.

And so, at his instruction, we once again agonized over every conceivable alternative scenario only to return to the place we started: That to avoid acting predicated on the mistaken belief Melhaus would somehow choose to relent increased the risk he would preempt us, placing us in even greater peril. In the end, when Thompson concluded we could no longer wait, he did so with great reluctance; and when we collectively agreed, although doing so from a place of desperation and innocence, we discovered an unexpected feeling of complicity.

Only after hearing what Thompson said next did we understand why.

“It would be wrong to shield from you something weighing heavily on my mind,” he said. “Although I am accomplished with the bow, the shot will be extremely difficult, a fifty-fifty proposition at best. But there is something that troubles me nearly as much as the consequences of failing. Succeeding. The taking of a life made even more grievous in that it represents the first taken beyond the bounds of Earth. A symbolic confirmation of our violent nature for the entire world to see. An extension of ourselves into the universe that disturbs us from the tenuous dream that we could somehow start anew, that we conceivably could do better elsewhere. Inevitable, you may say, this failure of ours, and you would be right, for the only way to prove you wrong is for each person to renounce violence.”

“Larry has not,” Diana said, “so how can we?”

“Larry? Larry?!” Thompson declared in despair. “Recall the physics. Are we not the observer affecting the observed?” Standing, fixing his eyes on empty space, he withdrew from us. Diana approached. When she gently reached out and touched his hand, he came back. Seeing her, seeing our concerned stares, he said, “Not to worry … I am fully awake.” And with that, he went off to retrieve the bow from the place it was hidden.

Paul’s gaze followed Thompson until he disappeared among the blocks. “Do we need any better proof of why he is our leader?”

“None,” I said. “I’d go so far as to call him my superior.”

“To his face?” Diana asked.

“Don’t push it.”

“You understand him better than any of us,” Kelly said. “Do you think he’s wavering?”

“Not a chance in hell,” I responded.

A few days ago I had learned the hard way to pay closer attention to Angie’s body language. Watching her now, I noticed a change in her posture: Her body upright and tense; her ears perked and twitching; her tail was erect and vibrating; her facial expression and head movement indicating confusion. Conflicting signals. She was trying to decide whether to be alert or excited. When Thompson returned, I mentioned this. In response, he asked us to leave the seclusion of the enclave and look out toward the horizon.

Compared to only an hour ago, there were twice as many Orb groups visible. One group had drifted significantly closer to shore, about two hundred meters out. Angie pointed her snout in the air and started emitting a low whine.

“What do you think is going on?” I asked. “Trouble?”

“Not sure,” Thompson remarked, squatting down to pet Angie. “Neither is Angie apparently.”

“I don’t like this,” Paul said.

“Neither do I,” Thompson said, his face having turned grave upon discovering that he and Paul were in agreement.

“You both believe Larry is up to something?” Kelly asked. When neither answered immediately she turned to Thompson. “C’mon, if that’s so, what?”

“He’s devised a way, maybe ultrasound, to lure the Orb closer.”

“To do…?”

“The unthinkable.”

“What?” Kelly asked. “Wait. You don’t think he’d use the laser on the Orb?!”

The distraught faces of Thompson and Paul stared back at her.

“Are you kidding me?!” Diana screamed. “What does he hope to … no, don’t tell me. He wants to measure an Orb’s reaction.”

Still no confirmation from either Thompson or Paul.

Diana’s eyes widened in disbelief. She took a step toward
Desio
. “It’s worse than that, isn’t it? Isn’t it?! He wants to split one open like it’s an egg. Like it’s, it’s some kind of giant fucking piñata!”

The perverse humor of her own remark startled her, and she began laughing, but the laughter was born out of frustration, of rage made impotent, which, for Diana, could only end in an expression of sorrow. “All the Orb are doing is floating out there peacefully,” she said, “while we act like idiots and scar its planet.”

Thompson became all business now.

“I will need to establish a position just out of the established laser range, but as close to the ship as possible without being observed. Do you see that boulder over there?” Thompson pointed out a rectangular block wide enough, no more, to shield two people in a crouching position.

“Appears we can make it partway there following that crevice,” I said, pointing.

Thompson gave me a hard stare. “We?” he responded. “Not happening.”

“I told you. You wouldn’t be alone.”

“And how,
exactly
, do you hope to assist me?”

Except for the part about
exactly
, I had a ready reply. “Thompson’s Law of Unintended Consequences. Can you predict how events will unfold?”

“Lame.”

“Yeah.”

“That cinches it then,” he said, examining his bow and then deliberately catching me off guard. “You’re coming with me. If the situation arises, there may be one small task you can do.”

The process of stringing a bow requires substantial upper-body strength; Thompson had plenty. He took one tip of the bow, that with the bow string already secured, and wedged it between the ground and his instep. His left hand, holding the loose end of the string, was placed a third of the way down from the bow’s other tip. His right hand firmly gripped the center, or handle, of the bow. In one fluid motion his right hand drew the handle in toward his body while his left hand forcefully pushed outward. The process concaved the bow into a “U” shape, allowing the loose end of the string to be tautly fastened. Thompson made it look easy. Kelly caught him flinching.

“Shoulder bothering you?” she asked.

“Shouldn’t matter.”

Like hell, I thought. I knew a little bit more about the bow than my crewmates, this from research I did after Thompson told me his story. Drawing the bow string back, and then holding the tension rock-steady while simultaneously aiming an arrow is extremely difficult. If Thompson’s shoulder was aching….

Kelly, too, appeared skeptical. “A couple more treatments, you would have been healed.” She gestured toward
Desio
. “You know where they are, right?”

“Let me guess.”

“You’ll get them for me, won’t you?” There was an affective duality to her voice, at the same time cajoling and encouraging.

“Only a fool would refuse you, Kelly,” Thompson replied. Then, as he moved to grab his quiver: “Right, Kyle?”

We hurried to leave. There was far less risk of being spotted before reaching the cover of the boulder if Melhaus stayed inside
Desio
. The logical question, and Diana asked it, was what to do if the bastard (her word) decided to come out. Were there any circumstances where she, Paul, or Kelly, or all three, should create a diversion, drawing attention to them—and away from Thompson and me?

“Normally that would be a good idea,” Thompson replied, “but Melhaus is clever enough to suspect the underlying motivation.”

“Well then, better get your asses in gear,” Diana said, trying to cut the tension.

“And try to keep them out of trouble,” Paul added.

Kelly was quiet. She had picked up Angie. There was a striking commonality in their expressions. “You both look worried,” I said. Then, with the slightest of grins, I said the opposite of what most people would say: “Is it any wonder?”

Kelly touched my cheek. “Be safe, my lover,” she said, and Thompson pulled me away.

Thompson and I sprinted across a flat expanse between our present position and the start of the narrow, shallow crevice that would take us most of the way to the boulder that was to be our final destination. With him taking the lead, and both of us crouching, we followed the crevice’s meandering course to its terminus—approximately one hundred meters short of our goal. The last leg of the journey to the boulder, wide-open terrain, would leave us completely exposed. We were preparing to sprint the intervening distance when Melhaus emerged from the ship.

“Bloody bad timing,” Thompson whispered to me.

Peering over the edge of the crevice, we had an unhindered view of Melhaus,
Desio,
and the worktable adjacent thereto. Not far beyond—the Orb. One group was very close to shore. Melhaus’s contemplative posture, one hand cupping his chin, the other under his elbow, together with the shoreward direction he was facing, clearly indicted the close-in group was the primary focus of attention. He placed his AID on the table, but kept the laser controller tightly in hand. In the distance, somewhere behind me, I heard Angie barking what sounded like a warning.