Battleground (46 page)

T
HE SUNLIGHT DIDN'T LAST LONG;
Hanna dropped the pod to a lower altitude, back to night though still above the clouds, and the pod flew toward a morning it would not reach. All three moons were visib
le, neatly lined up, the nearest round and full, the others crescents of partial eclipse. Hanna wondered how often this conjunction occurred; she thought of tides and Metra's stupid boat proposal.
We wouldn't have lasted long near land. And how would she have explained
that
to the Commission?

Then remembered Metra had never meant the expedition to happen. It had only been meant to force Hanna to mutiny.

Hunger was affecting her memory, her thought processes.
I must remember that I am forgetting . . .

She thought to herself that she sounded like Kwoort.

H'ana . . .
whispered Bella in her mind.

She acknowledged the contact wordlessly.

Please tell us. Please tell me what's going on.

She did not have to hide everything. Not homesickness, though she no longer knew if she longed for D'neera or for Earth. Not the exhaustion of hunger, not the pain where Wox had hit her, or the loosened teeth, or the swelling headache.

This blow, it's the first time they've hurt you, is that significant?

I don't think so. I think it was just encouragement, Soldier-style.

Hanna drifted. She felt Bella thinking to herself, a quiet background murmur. Oh, this was like home, where being alone was a choice, and nothing stayed secret forever; she could not cut herself off from this. If she acquiesced in Kakrekt's plan, abetted it, still someday, if she wanted to stay D'neeran, she would have to acknowledge what she had done and face the consequence. There would be no judgment by a court and she would not be punished. The consequence would only be that D'neerans knew the thing she had done. Would that be enough to stop her doing it?

•   •   •

Joseph wanted to lay things out logically. “What is H'ana's exact status? Medical condition, mental condition, how is she going to be received, where's the reports on when she was there before, we should look at those—”

Arch said, “There's Gabriel, too—”

“Oh, him.”

“You never liked him.”

“And he's very likable, for a true-human.” Dema added.

“I don't
not
like him.”

“You don't like him,” Arch said firmly. “You're jealous, you don't see why H'ana wants a true-human friend when she's got us. That's so parochial.”

“Will you all shut up,” Bella said.

“I am not parochial. I've been to Earth, I spent months—”

“On
Endeavor,
before we got here. We know. And you're still parochial.”

“You're projecting—”

“Shut up! Playtime's over!”

They subsided and Bella said, “We know Gabriel's status. He's safe for the moment, if we can just get him food. But H'ana could be headed for—” A thought like a glimpse of darkness. “Nakeekt was hostile when the last contact ended. She might kill H'ana before she can deliver Kakrekt's message.”

“I think she threatened to do that if H'ana came back. If memory serves,” Dema said.

“Arch here, though—” Bella shot him a glance, as if she could not believe what she was saying. “Arch has an idea.”

Arch beamed. “H'ana's got one friend there,” he said. “Kwek. We should talk to Kwek. And she knows me, too. She'll listen to me.”

•   •   •

Kwek was not asleep. Sleep had been scant for two nights and she knew why, but even if it wasn't
that
how could she sleep when the rain made that noise outside and the wind moaned like a dying Soldier? She should have stayed in Rowtt, in dry tunnels with
whispers of ventilation and the reassuring clink of machinery.

—all those not-Soldiers' fault, they brought me here—

There
, someone said, practically,
is where you wanted to go.

Not to stay!
thought Kwek, not immediately aware that she was not alone.

The communicator she had worn when the not-Soldiers brought her here appeared in front of her eyes. How had it gotten here from wherever she had put it, did it move about by itself? She made a grab for it.

No, it's a picture in your mind. Think, Kwek! I'm speaking to your mind!

It was Arkt!

I do not want to be here!

The communicator, Kwek.

She remembered where she had last seen it, and scrambled for it.

“It is about time you contacted me! I have been thinking about you day and night! Where is Gergtk? I want to talk to Gergtk!”

“Gergtk has gone to Wektt. Haknt is coming to see Nakeekt, though. You will see her soon.”

Silence. Then Kwek said more quietly, “I, I want to talk to Gergtk.”

“You can talk to me, Kwek. We've talked before. What do you want to say? Has something unpleasant happened to you?”

“I have to work,” Kwek said. The translator could not convey sullenness, but Arch, the thread still stretched between their minds, felt it. “I have to work in the fields and forest, I have to make clean the building where I live, I have to care for the grass on the landing field and elsewhere, I have to prepare food, I have to make—”
Chirp.
Some product, untranslatable. “I have to do this, I have to do that, I thought there would be more time to talk and remember and write things down and learn!”

“It's not what you expected,” Arch prompted.

“No, it is not! I had to do many things in Rowtt, but not all at once! I had only one assignment at one time!”

“That's because you're in a small community—”
Chirp.
“A small complex. Everybody must do everything, in such a small place. Everyone does a little of everything in the places where we live, too.”

“It is like this where not-Soldiers live?” Kwek said dubiously.

“It's like that in many places on the world where we live, those of us who speak to the mind.”

“But it leaves little time to do what I want!”

“But you didn't want to go back to Rowtt,” Arch said. “And there isn't any other place except Wektt.”

“In Rowtt they say Wektt is worse because the Demon is there. What is Gergtk doing there? The Demon will not let him survive!”

Arch said incautiously, “I don't think it's worse, but you could ask the Soldier who is coming with Haknt. He lives in Wektt.”

Kwek gasped, “A Demon Soldier is coming here?”

“No, no, he is not—”

“What is Haknt doing with the Demon? Has she gone over to his side?”

“Not exactly . . . Kwek—” she was making ambiguous noises, and he raised his voice—“You were having some doubts about what's believed about Abundant God, weren't you? Doesn't that mean you have some doubts about the Holy Man and the Demon, too? Aren't some of the people at That Place from Wektt?”

“Yes, but they do not belong there, that's why they came here—Haknt is with a Demon Soldier? There is one on the spacecraft?”

Even the translator managed to invest the words with Kwek's horror.

Bella muttered, “You shouldn't have mentioned Wox. Kwek, Haknt is not on our spacecraft. She is in the small craft you traveled in with her and Gergtk, and she is close to you. They are coming to That Place—”

“She is coming with the Demon?”

Arch thought contacting Kwek might not have been the best idea he had ever had, but he had another one. The Commission would crow over a voluntary specimen, wouldn't it?

He said, “Forget about the Demon. If you don't want to go back to Rowtt, and you don't want to stay at That Place, and you don't want to go to Wektt, we could let you spend some time on our spacecraft. Do you want to do that?”

“Will the Demon be there?” Kwek said suspiciously.

“The Demon will not be here.”

“Nakeekt will not allow me to go.”

“Haknt can talk to Nakeekt about it. If she agrees, will you come?”

“Oh, yes,” Kwek said. “And maybe I will just go away with you when you go. Maybe I will never come back to this world again.”

Yes
!
Arch thought, but not to Kwek.

“You won't have to, if that's what you want. But for now, Kwek, now—”

Now
took a few minutes to establish, because Kwek dithered. But she agreed at last to go for Nakeekt and tell her Kakrekt had sent Hanna to her. It ought to make Nakeekt think, at least, before she pulled out a weapon.

•   •   •

Kwek did not like being outdoors. Record-keepers did not have to go outdoors often, and she had been record-keeper for twenty summers, when she was not breeding, and when she was in a crèche she had not had to go out either. It got hot in the groves where she harvested the things that grew on trees, even more hot in the clearings where she dug and pulled other things up (with more effort than she was used to) from the ground. She wasn't sure she ought to be going to Nakeekt on some Demon-consorting not-Soldier's instructions and besides, Nakeekt was suspicious of the not-Soldiers to start with and had sent them away and besides, Haknt had a Demon Soldier with her and maybe Nakeekt would not like that either and besides, it was raining. Getting wet with rain was even worse than getting wet with her own sweat, which had never poured from her so copiously as it had since the not-Soldiers brought her here. And her billet in Rowtt had stayed cool, but her billet here sometimes remained hot all day and all night.

Kwek went, though; she knew what building to go to, and ran to it through the rain. Inside she started up a ramp. She got to the second level and realized she did not know which billet was Nakeekt's, so she pounded on the first door she came to, pounded and pounded, and eventually started shouting.

Another door opened and a cross face peered out.

“What do you think you are doing? Why are you making noise at the door of a billet where no one sleeps?” said a Soldier she knew as Mwintsk.

Kwek thought Mwintsk was an unpleasant Soldier. Yesterday he had told her she was not digging fast enough, and then when they were eating he had told her not to jump around so much, and when had she said her time for breeding would come? But she said, “I have something to report to Nakeekt.”

“Whatever it is, it can wait!”

“I don't know. Are you an officer?”

“I
was
an officer.”

“And it can wait?”

“Anything can wait! What can't wait?”

“The Demon is here,” Kwek said.

“You have been dreaming. Go back to your billet and go back to sleep.”

A clear order from an officer overrode everything else.

“Very well,” Kwek said, and retreated down the ramp. That was an order, to be sure, but on the other hand this was not Rowtt, and she did not know where to find Nakeekt, and a Demon-Soldier was coming and Nakeekt had told Haknt never to come back and Nakeekt would not like Kwek bothering her about Haknt and—

•   •   •

Wox
poked Hanna's shoulder. She came slowly out of—not sleep. An energy-conserving half-consciousness in which she spent more and more time, brain idling, systems at minimum.

One poke, but the intrusive fingertip would leave a bruise.

“What?” she said.

“The craft spoke.”

The pod was no longer over cloud but under it and in fact was on the ground. It had brought her back to exactly where she had specified: the landing field at That Place. Outside there was nothing but blackness, but a readout said the land was covered with steady rain again (or still, for all she knew). She touched a control point for outside audio, and heard the downpour's monotonous drumbeat. No light showed in any direction and there was no sound of an alarm.

She felt Bella's familiar touch in her mind.

Kwek was supposed to wake Nakeekt, but she . . .

Images. Kwek had run away, overwhelmed, into the rain. She was not even on a path, but she could see well enough in the dark to keep from running into things.

Have you tried . . .

Arch has tried, but she just keeps saying nonono . . . She has a com unit, but she doesn't respond . . .

“I wish you hadn't done that,” she said aloud.

“What?” said Wox.

“Nothing.”

Why?
Bella said
.

Hanna could not think of a reason. Something in her had sounded a warning, saying it was a mistake to add Kwek to the mix of uncertainties. But maybe it was only a short circuit in her own brain.

“I will go to Nakeekt now,” she told Wox. He got up immediately. He would stick to her until Kakrekt's orders were carried out, unrelenting as her shadow.

The hatch seemed to take a long time to open, the ramp to descend. She knew it was not long, that her perception of time was skewed. She thought of the ghost for the first time in a long time.

where are you, ghost? you were good with a knife. could we get Wox's knife do you think

And heard:

i think not. we're too weak

She fingered the vials of stimulant in her pocket.

No!
said Bella.
Don't even think about it! Telepathy's the only advantage you have! And what if the blackout's permanent next time?

Hanna and Wox went down the ramp and out into the rain.

•   •   •

You would think.
You would think an artifact as sophisticated as the pod would give its passengers a way to keep dry outside. It carried plenty of supplies (minus, now, edibles) b
ut it did not carry a single portable, one-person rain deflector. Hanna, from a plainer culture than the Polity's, would have settled for a simple umbrella.