Battleground (53 page)

•   •   •

Kakrekt had not wasted time finding out if the not-Soldiers were still in the breeding warren. It had already been searched on the Holy Man's order. Her ears flickered with amusement when she heard that he himself had charged into the warren, raged through it, strode over the couples oblivious to him as they obeyed the god's imperative and got on with breeding.

And
he
had lost time, because he had had to return to the common entrance to resume his vehicle and the assistance of Warrior Woke.

There was only one point where the not-Soldiers could have left the warren without being turned back toward the city. Kwoort probably knew it, thanks t
o his endless perusal of maps.

She had wasted no more than the space of a breath wondering how the not-Soldiers had found that point. She had not imagined it was possible when she left them there. But if they had been in communication with their spacecraft, perhaps by “speaking to the mind,” other not-Soldiers might have guided them somehow. Not-Soldiers could do seemingly impossible things. And certainly the guests had gotten out.

She had set off again as fast as before, certain now that she could catch up. She knew the same maps the Holy Man did, but they showed only the uppermost level of the city's extent in forgotten times. He might know lower levels existed under the plateau, but he could not know how to move about in them.

Kakrekt, though, had explored them over many summers. No life stirred in those strange depths, though facilitators must lie dormant in the floors and walls of abandoned breeding warrens. Kakrekt had seen ancient crèches there, refectories and vast hollow kitchens, living quarters, dried-up crops and processing facilities, transport centers filled with machines drained of fuel, echoing administration halls, silent machine shops, emptied storage facilities, armories bare of weapons, hollow assembly halls. Deepest of all were empty chambers where faded pigments showed faces of Kakrekt knew not what, like the one in the overgrown structure far from the center of Wektt. Other things, too, that she did not recognize and could not explain. The not-Soldiers could help her find out what they were. And always the corridors and roads, silently waiting for Soldiers, connected by ramps in an unending web.

Kakrekt knew shortcuts.

•   •   •

“Do. Not. Go. There,” said Talley Hong.

But the side passage Gabriel had found led upward, and a breeze flowed from it, fresh and cold.

“I don't think you'll have to dig,” Gabriel said, and turned into it. Hanna trotted after him. He couldn't remember the last time he had felt fresh outdoor air, and he took great breaths of the cold draft.

“That tunnel's not on the schematic. It doesn't exist.”

“We're inside it, so it must. The walls are different. Have you accounted for solid rock?”

“The geology says there can't be—”

There was a silence. The incline was shallow, but it was long, and they trudged up it with heads down, breathing hard. There
might be light up ahead—surely dawn had come to Wektt by now—but the communicator's light obscured it.

“All right,” Hong said finally. “Rock. A sinkhole or something not far ahead. Might be an exit. There's a shuttle on the way—”
Yes!
thought Gabriel—“we'll redirect. Look, there's a lot of levels below you, and somebody's moving on the next one down. Coming your way. Captain says get a move on. It's closing fast, and so is whoever's right behind you on the level where you're at.”

Hanna said, finally sounding like herself, “Too late. They'll think we kept straight, like we've done all along.”

Gabriel, however, turned for a moment to shine the light behind them. The dust on the floor was thicker here, and damp, too; there might be mud ahead. Maybe Hanna hadn't noticed the clear trail they had left. He thought a droning noise touched the edge of his hearing. The tunnels echoed and it was hard to decide where sound came from, but this could only be coming from behind them.
Closing fast.

Slowly, he turned the light back ahead of them. Hanna had seen the footprints now, and heard the drone, but she did not say anything about them, and Gabriel did not either. There was no need.

•   •   •

Through the last few meters the mud turned to ice. The incline rose more sharply and they skidded with every step, the light skewing wildly from Gabriel's wrist, dimming as they drew near daylight. At the very end there were rocks and boulders, a haphazard camouflage still effective against eyes outside, but time had loosened and tumbled them and there were gaps. The following drone had become a roar. Hanna and Gabriel squeezed through separate cracks into a deep hollow. There was frozen mud underfoot, the color of drying blood in dim morning light.

Hanna thought she could not take another step, but Gabriel grabbed her and pulled, squinting
in natural light that blinded them, though the lowering sky was gray. The wall of the hollow rose more steeply yet and they half-climbed, half-crawled up it, grasping at handholds with fingernails, and they made it to the lip of the hollow and over it, a meter farther, two meters, four, before Hanna collapsed on stony flat ground, too numb to feel the cold of snow scattered over more ice. She heard Gabriel say, “Where's the goddam shuttle?” and could not answer, but he had said it to the communicator.

“ETA five minutes,” said Metra's voice, and Gabriel said, “
Why?
Why isn't it here?”

Hanna would have cursed too, if she had had enough breath. She had counted on that shuttle, like Gabriel; she had thought it would be there if they made it this far. Below them, at the end of the tunnel, machine-roar swelled and died with a cough. Gabriel spun to face it, and where in God's name had he gotten the strength to move so fast, Hanna thought, and saw that his eyes were wild. She had never seen him angry until now; threat piled on threat had stripped him to instinct, to pure self-preservation. He looked like someone she had never seen before. He looked murderous.

In the silence there was a scrabbling in the barricade, out of sight from their vantage. Gabriel bent and picked up a rock with his wounded right hand. It must hurt, but he curled his fingers around it in a practiced, complicated grip. She wanted desperately to think
No!
to him and tried but there was nothing, and when she tried to shout it she did not have the breath; and why would she want him to hold back anyway if this was Kwoort? That last glimpse of Kwoort's mind had shown that he meant to kill them. Gabriel drew back his arm, and she did not know what to hope for: that his wasted muscles could not throw a rock with fatal force, or that a final burst of energy would cave in Kwoort's skull.

But Kwoort's head appeared and Gabriel did not move. Kwoort's shoulders now, and now his hands: one held a spindly weapon. Kwoort came all the way out of the hollow and raised the weapon, and Gabriel hurled the rock.

To Hanna's complete astonishment it connected cleanly with Kwoort's wrist. He yelled and dropped the weapon at his feet.

Hanna tried to get up and could not. Her mind would not obey her and now her muscles would not either. She made it to all fours and saw Gabriel launch himself at Kwoort, for a second he seemed horizontal, feet off the ground, and Hanna thought
He is flying
and Gabriel's head rammed hard into Kwoort's chest.

They disappeared, tumbling back into the hollow. Kwoort's boot had jerked against the weapon and it vanished with them.

Hanna crawled toward the edge of the dip in the land. Time stopped. It would take forever to get there but she had forever. There was time to feel each separate ice crystal in the mud under her hands, each frozen shred of some dried-up creeper that would not part from its roots. The wind had stopped and she heard a faint sound from the hollow, a desperate sucking noise, and more sounds from the rough barricade, and finally a voice. It was not Gabriel's. She crept to the top of the incline and looked over.

Kakrekt was there, crouched by Kwoort. The sucking noise came from his breathing tubes, and he heaved on the ground in his struggle for air; Gabriel's hard head had knocked all the breath out of his chest. But what had it done to Gabriel's skull and neck, his spine?—he lay near Kwoort, unmoving. A Warrior Hanna had not seen before hung back among the barricading rocks. Kakrekt said something to Kwoort and turned to Gabriel, took hold of one shoulder and shook him, but Gabriel did not respond. There was another voice, too, coming from the communicator, but Hanna could not tell what it was saying, and Kakrekt suddenly pulled it from Gabriel's wrist and stood. Kakrekt looked at the communicator closely.

Hanna had once seen a mortally wounded animal, savaged by a predator, struggle to move toward some illusory refuge. She moved as mindlessly as that animal, toward Gabriel, rolling over the lip of the steep decline, clutching for handholds by reflex but mostly sliding to the bottom. Somehow she was on her feet, stumbling to him and sinking to the ground again, a hand floating to his chest. She felt the slight expansion of a breath. Her hands moved of their own accord, stroking his chest and his forehead, tangling in his hair, trying to think his name to him and finally calling aloud, “Gabriel, come back, come back!”

His head turned a little and his lips moved. The breath that came out might have been her name. Then he moved a hand.

She helped him sit up, a slow process. Her mind began to work again—within limits; she tried to remember what she knew about concussion and failed, tried to think of what she might do to get them out of this and failed at that too. The weapon that had gone over the edge with Kwoort lay between him and Kakrekt on the mud, but she could not get to it without being noticed.

The hollow was full of eerie silence. Wind had started up above their heads, a distant whisper. Not even the communicator made a sound. Then Gabriel muttered, “Better.”

“Are you hurt?”

“Head hurts . . .”

Slowly Hanna became aware of movement around them. Kwoort had gotten his breath back and he struggled to his feet, calling for Warrior Woke. The Warrior came up to him; she held the satchel Kwoort had carried everywhere. Kakrekt had backed away a little from the four of them. There was a weapon in her hand, but she was not aiming it.

“Shuttle,” Gabriel said. It was still hard for him to speak.

Hanna looked up into the low clouds, but no shape darkened them. “It's not here,” she said.

“Tell them. Get back.”

“Holy One,” she said. “Kakrekt Commander. You should move away from this area. An aircraft will be here momentarily to remove us.”

Kwoort snarled, “If I had known that I would have brought an army. I would have brought missiles.”

Hanna opened her mouth to start the
We mean you no harm
speech. Closed it. She was tired of saying it and it wouldn't do any good.

Kwoort started toward them, stumbling. Kakrekt moved forward swiftly and tripped him, and he fell again. There was a constriction in Hanna's throat and she recognized it as pity. It was the last thing she had ever expected to feel for Kwoort.

Kakrekt was plainly in charge. Hanna said softly, “What are you going to do now?”

Kakrekt's mouth moved. It might have been the beginning of a smile, but it was gone at once. She turned, lifting the weapon, and it hissed.
What?
Hanna thought, because nothing happened for a second, and then Woke went down all at once and without a sound. There was no blood, no charring, nothing.

Colloidal disruptor,
Hanna thought, but the thought was automatic. No more complex thought occurred. She was not capable of complex thought.

Gabriel said to Kakrekt, his voice faint but calm, “Why did you do that? What did this Warrior do to you?”

“She did nothing. She was only present. Now there will be no living witness to carry the facts back to Wektt.”

“Witness to what? Do you mean to kill us too?”

“Not you,” Kakrekt said. Her eyes—all four open wide—turned to Kwoort. “I could not do this openly. But if there is no witness, I do not have to wait any longer. When I am asked why the Holy Man did not come back, I can say anything.”

Kwoort got up. His eyes were all open too, as if he meant to remember this episode well—as if he thought he would live to remember it. The smile Kakrekt had not produced pushed out from his face, and his ears lifted and waved. Laughter.

“You see incongruity, old Soldier?” said Kakrekt.

“Old Warrior, how much do you forget?”

“I forget nothing,” said Kakrekt.

“Never? You do not say ‘Why did you attack that point?' and hear ‘It was your order'? You do not make notes to yourself of this and that because you find, more and more often, that if you do not write things down, you might forget?”

“Nothing of the kind has happened,” said Kakrekt.

“I do not believe you,” Kwoort said. “I think you lie. I am sure that you do. But perhaps you have not yet come to the next passage—you have not begun to forget that you forget. Do you think you are different? Do you think you will not one day desire the final madness—one day when you know you have forgotten nearly everything and worse, the day when you want only to forget what you still know—do you think you will not want to cease to survive? Wanting to know the past will only hasten that day because you will see—”

He took a step toward Kakrekt and she shifted the weapon. He began to talk again, his voice getting louder and louder. “You will see that it is no use, nothing is any use! Soldiers will breed and breed and if we do not encourage death they will find the Great Weapon again in the end and all will die! It nearly happened in my lifetime, I saw the summer when it happened, I saw the end of it—I am sure you did too, I am sure you lived then! Do you not know it will be your duty, it has been my duty, to send Soldiers to their deaths in multitudes to prevent it happening again!” He screamed now: “We all come to this point! All the Holy Men! We forget, we see we must force others to forget, we must tell them God demands that they forget, because breeding allows no change, it is how we are made, and it is too bitter to live with this knowledge—that we leave nothing lasting after us, only the same death over and over! I have not forgotten quickly enough! Kill me! I order you, my last order! Kill me!”