Under the Eye of God (26 page)

Kask looked troubled. He hadn't considered that thought. He looked at the sobbing puppy in his hands, then back to Slash again. “How do you make him stop?”

“Give him to me. He needs comforting.”

“I will comfort him. How do you do this thing?”

“I don't think you could—” Slash shook her head.

Kask insisted. “I will try. What do I do.”

“Pet him.”

“Pet him—?”

“And tell him you won't let anyone hurt him. Tell him you won't let Lady Zillabitch get her filthy claws on him again.”

“I can't tell him that.”

“Then you can't comfort him.”

“But he needs comforting. You said so.”

“I'll do it.” Slash moved to take Ibaka from Kask's big hands.

Kask hesitated. “You won't try to escape with him? If you do, I'll kill you.”

Slash just sighed. “Give him to me, you stupid reptile.” She took Ibaka into her arms and held him close. “I love you, Ibaka,” she said. “Come sit with me and we'll get warm together.”

Kask growled in disgust, a terrible low sound of repugnance. “This comforting business—it looks like weakness. They act like women. I don't think I want to learn how to do it.”

“You don't have to worry,” Harry reassured him. “I very much doubt that anyone will ever ask you.”

On the other side of the glow of the thermal-pack, Lee huddled in himself and watched the transaction taking place between Slash and the Dragon. He smiled ruefully and pointed with a nod. “The Alliance of Life looks like that,” he said. “But they'd only deny it if I tried to convince them.” He sighed sadly and added, “I wish my brothers could have seen it, though. Many of them didn't believe it either.”

Harry lowered himself painfully back to the ground next to Lee. Under the punishing red gloom of the day, he looked like an ancient gargoyle. “My bones ache,” he complained. “I haven't had to run like this since the Amazon freebooter caught me with her daughter—” He shut up as Slash came and sat down on the other side of Lee with Ibaka in her arms. She sat close to the warmth and cooed softly at the pup.

Harry looked at Lee suddenly and perceptively. “Your brothers?” he asked.

Lee hung his head low and stared down at the ground between his feet. “You don't know much about clone-families, do you?”

Harry shook his head. “No, I don't.”

“At our peak, the Lee family numbered more than two thousand identical members. All ages. We had estates on twenty worlds. We had houses and gardens and schools. We had political power too—enough to seriously threaten the authority of the Vampires in some places.” He glanced across at the Dragon. “Kask thinks he knows honor. He knows nothing. He and his brothers all hatched from different eggs. My family—every single one of us, we shared the same genetic heritage. Imagine it—each and every one of us, the same! If we dishonored our family, we dishonored ourselves. We couldn't do that. He thinks Dragons have integrity—we learned integrity as a family identity.” Lee looked frustrated. “I can't explain it in this language. We don't have all the words I need.”

“You miss them, don't you?” Harry said perceptively. He noticed that both Slash and Ibaka listened with curiosity.

“Of course, I do. I miss them like I miss myself. I have nothing without my family. I have no identity. Regency Dragons have killed most of the Lees throughout the Cluster.” He grinned ruefully. “They don't like us. We don't like them. They won't stop until they have hunted the last of us down and eaten his liver. I don't know where any of my brothers have gone to ground anymore. We did that on purpose. That way they can't torture it out of us. I don't know if any of my brothers still live. Who knows? You might have the honor here of spending time with the last living Lee.” He looked across the glow of the thermal-pack at Sawyer's unhappy expression. “You don't like hearing this, do you?”

“No, I don't,” Sawyer replied. “It makes me uncomfortable.” And then he turned to Finn again and resumed mopping his brother's feverish forehead with a damp cloth.

“You all have brothers,” Harry said, a tangential thought. “Sawyer and Finn. Lee—you may still have many brothers out there, even if you don't know it. Kask still has brothers, even though he can't go to them. Ibaka has brothers and sisters. He only wants to rejoin them.” He sighed. “I never had a brother—”

“I had no brothers,” Slash said. “I had sisters.” To their looks, she explained. “They bred us for nurturing. Our parent-group had a contract, so they produced gender-females to order. We had a happy time for a while—” She fell silent again, hugging Ibaka closer to her.

Lee looked at Slash, and at Harry Mertz, with compassion in his eyes. “In the Alliance of Life, you would share brotherhood with all of us.”

Harry didn't respond to that. He'd seen too much in his long life to have much enthusiasm for the concept. Instead he stood up, adjusting his robe and muttering that he had to see a man about a dog. He grinned at Slash and Ibaka as he stepped past them, but as he crossed in front of Sawyer, he looked regretfully down at Finn. “They'll come after us, you know. Can he travel? Otherwise—”

“He'll travel,” said Sawyer, as if his determination alone would make all the necessary difference. “He has to make it.
He has to.”

When the spell finally passed, Finn fell into a deep red sleep. And finally, Sawyer allowed himself to breathe easier too. He lay down next to his brother and moved up next to him, more for comfort than for warmth. Back to back, they lay there, while the ruddy sky above burned and burned. Eventually, Sawyer slept too.

He came awake with a start—Finn sat up beside him, shaking; not with illness, but with fear. “Did you hear it?”

“Hear what?”

“A flyer. Not close, but—I heard it clearly.”

“I didn't hear anything.” Sawyer looked across to the others. “Did you?”

Harry and Lee had awakened. The rest still slept. Lee shook his head. Harry rubbed his eyes and yawned and made morning noises.

Finn stood up impatiently. “Let's take a look around.” He looked and acted more refreshed than any of them. He bustled with nervous energy. That made Sawyer worry even more. “Come on, Soy,” he urged. “We need to scout ahead. Something smells wrong.”

Sawyer looked at his brother sideways. “I don't smell anything.”

“Think about it, Soy. Where does this channel lead? Who built it? And why? What kind of installation does it serve?”

“Ghosts.”

“Or maybe tunnel worms—?”

“Okay, so I made a mistake. So sue me.”

“They'll have sent out flyers looking for us. Maybe they've set a trap farther down the canal. I think we need to scout ahead.” Finn remained insistent. “Come on.”

“All right,” Sawyer agreed. He looked to Lee and Harry. They nodded their reluctant agreement.
Let him look
.

Taking only their weapons, two ration packs, and a waterbag, they headed south along the dry canal bed toward a distant rise. They didn't talk for a long while. Finn didn't have anything to say and Sawyer didn't want to ask.

As they approached the low hill, they began to feel a deep thrumming vibration, like the kind made by a flyer idling on the ground. They looked at each other in wordless agreement. Sawyer pointed and the two of them headed toward the top of the hill. Just below the crest, they dropped down to the ground and sidled the rest of the distance on their bellies. They looked over the top of the hill suspiciously.

The installation beneath them looked like a small village; it glowed with lights of all colors. Several large buildings lay in a large circle around a central plaza. Nearby, a flyer idled on a landing pad. Beyond stood several dome-shaped barns.

“Do you think we can capture the flyer?” Sawyer asked.

Finn grunted. “Let's wait and see who it belongs to.”

“Finn,” Sawyer said slowly. “Don't play stupid. You know who built this place. You know what purpose it serves.”

Finn didn't reply.

“We have to tell the others.”

“We have a problem,” Finn agreed.

“We have a lot of problems,” Sawyer corrected.

They studied the buildings a while longer. At last, three figures came out of one of the structures and crossed to the flyer. A moment later, the flyer lifted off and headed first to the west and then north toward MesaPort. Sawyer and Finn slid quickly back down the hill to keep out of sight.

They trudged most of the way back in silence. Finally, Sawyer asked glumly, “Do you think we can turn any of this to our advantage?”

“I don't think anything,” said Finn. “Not even about survival anymore.”

“Don't talk like that. You can't give up. I won't let you—”

Finn looked at him. “The decision belongs to me, brother.”

“No, it doesn't. Because whatever you decide affects me too.”

“Think about it, Soy. If I choose to die, can you stop me?”

“You think about this, Finn. If you choose to die, I'll follow you into Hell and drag you back by your hair.”

“If you go to Hell, you'll go alone. I intend to go to the good place, get drunk, and tumble as many redheaded angels as I can find. Of either sex. I won't play favorites.”

“Don't joke about it, Finn. We have a
commitment
.”

“I know about our commitment. And if I didn't joke about it, then I'd have to cry. So just leave me alone. As long as I remain upright, I'll do . . . whatever I have to.”

Sawyer accepted that as a victory and fell silent. The two of them continued on back to the camp, each one lost in troubled thoughts.

Kask snored like an earthquake. Each intake of breath rumbled and shook the Dragon's entire body. Each exhalation whistled like the blast from a steam engine. The decibel level would have shattered glass. Eventually, his nasal symphony reached such a peak of enthusiasm, he even woke himself up in startlement. He came instantly awake, leaping to his feet and looking around for the source of the attack, growling and hissing his defiance. “What?” he shouted. “Who?”

And then he realized, and fell abruptly silent. Sleep did that to him sometimes—scared him into a fighting stance. He sank back down on his mighty haunches, his armored muscles folding and compressing under him.

Ibaka sat across from him, staring with large round eyes.

Kask frowned in puzzlement.

Ibaka hopped a little closer, as if waiting for Kask to pick him up again.

Kask made no move to grab the dog-child. “Why didn't you run away?” he asked. “You could have.”

“We talked about it,” Ibaka admitted.

“If you had escaped from me again,” Kask explained slowly, “it would not have carried the same shame if I had let you go. It would just have shown your cleverness against a big slow Dragon.”

Ibaka shook his head. “If I stay with you, you'll take me back to the Lady. And she'll take me back to my brothers and sisters. I want to go back to my brothers. Just like you.” He climbed into Kask's hands. “I won't run away from you anymore.”

“Where did the girl-boy go?” the Dragon asked.

“I don't know,” the puppy answered. “I told her what I wanted, and she left. She got angry. She yelled at me. She said I should run away with her, but I don't want to run any more. I just want to go home. So she went away and left me here. I don't like this place. Please take me back.”

“Hrpf,” said Kask. Sometimes he thought he understood, but most of the time he didn't. Obviously, all these other animals had different ways of thinking than he did. That realization left him confused and troubled. He wanted to live in a simple and orderly world, but the way people acted kept making that impossible. He shook his head in dismay and rose back to his feet just as Sawyer and Finn Markham came trudging sullenly back into camp.

“What did you find?” asked Lee. He could see it on their faces.

“Trouble,” said Sawyer.

“Two klicks away. A Vampire village of some kind. I think we can go around it. We can avoid detection if we strike out east.”

Kask rumbled gravely, “Then we will part here. I can turn in the dog-child at that settlement. They won't shoot at me there.”

“Um, Kask—” Finn tried to approach the Dragon with reason. “I don't think you should do that. I don't think it'll make either you or Ibaka very happy.” But the Dragon had already begun lumbering toward the canal. Sawyer and Finn both rushed to follow him. “Kask! Listen to me. You don't know what they do there—”

The Dragon ignored them. He stumped across the broken ground like a rock-crushing tank. The humans had to run just to keep up with him. “Kask! Wait! Wait a minute—listen to me!”

“The dog-child wants to go back. I want to go back. We have nothing to discuss.”

Sawyer and Finn both came around to the front of the Dragon and tried to physically restrain him; they could have easier held back an avalanche. He brushed them aside and kept on heading toward the distant hill.

“Kask, wait! Before you go down there, stop and look! Look and see what happens in that place!”

“I don't have to listen to you anymore,” the Dragon rumbled. But in his arms, the dog-child began to whimper. “Kask, what did they see? What did they see, Kask?”

Abruptly, the Dragon stopped. He whirled around, lashing his tail so furiously that he almost knocked over Sawyer and Finn. The others came running up out of breath. “What do you all want from me? Leave me alone! Go away.”

“We want you—” Lee managed to get the words out only with great difficulty. “We want you to do the right thing.”

“I know the right thing!”

“We want you to have certainty!”