Charles Ingrid - marked man 02 The Last Recall (23 page)

She would know the voice, if she had not already recognized the body or eyes. It pooled around her like toxic, stagnant water. She felt sick to her stomach. Droplets of perspiration ran down the back of her neck. The knot in her side ached fiercely.

The dean held onto his mechanical box and polishing rag. He looked about. "You could scream here," he said, "and I don't think anyone would hear you. But while you were asleep, I fed you deiffenbachia juice. It quiets the nerves and mutes one very effectively. You may feel a little nausea, but that will pass."

She was familiar with the plant. She tried to think about it, felt her thoughts swirl away in confusion and vertigo.

"The potion on your dart may also cause some numbness in the limbs. I used something quite different and more lethal on the boys."

Alma closed her eyes tightly a moment.

"Ah, no," the man said. "Do not shut your beauty away from me."

The abrupt change in his tone frightened her. As she opened her eyes, he had gone to one knee, creeping close to her. Close enough to touch. He still cradled the box in his large hands.

"This," he said lovingly, "is our future. Blade was looking for this today, to destroy me. But I already had the imprinter. If he'd known that, he would never have taken the risk to go underground. But I found it first. It's of no use now . . . but it will be. Everything I was, everything I am, is locked in here. Do you understand?"

Alma shook her head. Her body answered with a quavering, frail movement, like an aftershock ripple.

He held it up patiently. She could see its face, windowed with colors and gauges. There were fine wires wrapped tightly about its core. "This holds the memory of the first dean, and the second, and the third and the fourth. And it will hold mine, when I'm ready to pass them on. It's like a loop you see, the snake that swallows itself, perpetual, I'm always me, with all the new knowledge and experiences I've gathered."

He spoke intensely, but she still understood little of what he was telling her—and worse, what she had to do with it. He tapped it. "And when the time comes, our son will have it all. Flesh of my flesh and blood of my blood."

It was like a blow to her throat. She could not swallow or breathe. She heard her pulse drumming loudly in her ears. She felt herself cringe backward, the movement barely perceptible, but he saw it as well.

"You would do well to fear me. I'm pure. What is the best I can hope of our issue together? You're from the counties. I can thank God the plague has run its course-but you could be contaminated, still. I saw you bathing. Your perfection was apparent, but it could only be skin deep. Will you throw gills or a third eye? Not scales, I think—the desert bastards carry those genes. The Mars expedition adaptive. If I'm very lucky, perhaps the boy will simply be double-jointed." The dean laughed, a little too loudly. He put aside his imprinter box and fumbled at the laces of his jeans.

Alma got out a sound, a tiny moan. She tried to roll away, but the bower beneath her was as deep as a feather mattress and only cushioned her struggles. Pine needles worked their way through the blanket and stung her through her shirt.

The dean worked to get himself hard. He smiled down at her. "You'll be the mother of a new nation," he said. "And when we have a daughter, she will also become my wife. We'll do the best we can to bring back the pure blood. It's our duty."

He stopped stroking himself. He brought out his knife and slit her trousers away, so quickly that she could scarcely flinch. He cut her leg, a thin red line welling up. He leaned over and licked the scratch, from her calf lo her thigh.

Alma tried to buck away from him. He laughed and ripped off her undershorts. She tried to club him with her bound hands. With a movement that wrenched her shoulders, he pulled her hands up over her head and hooked the thong over a pine bough end.

"I'm pure," he said. "Someday you'll thank me for this."

Her body would not answer her outrage and anger. She could not kick and though she was nearly numb from the waist down, she felt
him
as he shoved his way in. He was immense. Her mouth opened in a dumb cry of pain. He rammed himself deep into her.

"I'm pure,
bitch,
pure,
whore,
pure,
scum. ..."

She tried to shut her ears to the litany of filth he poured over her as he tore into her body. The pine boughs crushed beneath their weight. He shoved his hands under her buttocks to hold her closer as he hammered her flesh. She turned her face away, panting for breath, as he began to bite at her neck. With his teeth, he tore first her shirt and then her undershirt away. Alma felt the hot wetness of tears spill over her face as he savaged her nipples. "Pure . . . pure . . . pure. . . ."

Suddenly, he was spent. He fell limp atop her. She couldn't breathe. She felt his seed brimming out and over her thighs. Her flesh felt torn and ripped everywhere he'd touched her. Feeling returned in burning agony. She could move and heaved away from under him.

Her stomach revolted and she vomited all over him, spewing bitterly. He cursed and jerked aside. The movement of his heavy form jerked her hands free from where he had hooked them.

Alma lunged for the box. He grabbed for her, but the slickness of his come covered her thighs and she slid out of his grasp. The imprinter was heavy when she picked it up. High impact plastic. It was the only thing she had. She smashed it down in the dean's face as he jumped at her.

He went down with a grunt.

The sky had gone black. Firelight illuminated his crumpled form. She looked down. Blood as well as bodily fluids stained her legs. She held her violated flesh a moment and pulled her hands away, wet with blood. Her blood, then. She did not care if she had killed the man or not. She dropped the imprinter in the dirt next to him. Its case was undented. She staggered to the tethered horse and yanked the packs stacked next to its peg. She pulled on a spare set of buckskins—immense on her and she cuffed them four times over and tied a crude knot in the waistband. Her own boots lay next to the packs.

She took the horse, the packs, the water, everything. She looked at the belt of sky she could see between the treetops. Thomas had taken great pains to point the night stars out to them. She found a direction and reined the horse back toward the ruins of the College Vaults. The beast broke into a running trot, then slowed as she could not ride upright in the saddle, but hunched over the can-tie, her nose hitting the horse's neck as it bobbed up and down with its stride. The reins went slack in her hands, but the horse picked out a steadier path.

She did not know she had gotten her voice back until she heard the jagged noise of a woman in great pain crying, and realized it was herself.

Chapter 17

The dean woke in blinding pain. A kick in the shoulder, more acute than the agony of his ruined face, brought him struggling to his knees. Ketchum leaned over him and handed him a waterskin. The tracker's face was dispassionate.

The dean saw in a glance the girl and all his equipment were gone. His knee rested on the hard case of the imprinter. She'd left behind all that mattered, he thought, and took a deep swallow from the waterskin. He ripped a sleeve of his shirt off and dampened it for a compress.

One cheekbone was crushed and his nose incredibly painful to touch as he put his face to the wet cloth. Tears rushed soundlessly to his eyes.

Ketchum said, "Blade do this?"

"No," the dean answered. "One of his riders."

"I thought not. The Protector generally kills his enemies." Ketchum looked over the camp. "Do you want to go after him?''

The dean could hardly think. He wanted the girl back, but not at all costs. Not at the costs of his painstakingly built leadership. Let Ketchum think he'd been ambushed by a male rider. He'd found the girl once—he'd find her again. She was only a small portion of his ambitions. He touched his face gingerly. He looked up at the nester. "What are you doing here? I sent you back to camp."

"And so I went, Chieftain." Ketchum inclined his head respectfully, a respect which he did not otherwise radiate. "But your equipment began a new magic and so I thought to bring it to you. I consulted the Shastra and was given this vision."

"What?" The dean mopped his face carefully. The nester had not mentioned the mythic creature in months. He thought he'd beat it out of him. The fact that a nonexistent beast had probably saved him increased his melancholy. His journey was always to be one step forward and two steps backward, it seemed. He wrung the cloth out and redampened it. His nose felt the size of a melon. "What the hell are you talking about?"

The nester held out the recall beacon. It was wrapped in a reed box of the finest makings and it had rested so in the dean's tent as though at an altar. "This."

The beacon's sequencing lights had a new addition. The dean dropped his compress, forgotten, and reached for the beacon. It was tapping out a code he did not know, but the panel that now lit up sent a light through him like a searing fire.

It was an incoming code, requesting destination.

"My God," he said. His voice was low and choked in his throat. "They're coming back." His hands shook. A readout translated the code and he watched as words played across a tiny screen. They wanted verbal confirmation. He couldn't give it to them, but he could send a landing code back. They were close, only a few months, weeks away. He looked north and east. The dry lake beds at Edwards had brought in many a shuttle.

The longships were coming home.

And he would be there to meet them, with a nester nation at his back. The world would be his.

Chapter 18

Thomas emerged from the tunnel feeling as though he'd been birthed into another world. The light panels glowed an eerie red, a half-light he could see by although not well. The corridor floor was canted and halfway down to his left, he could see where the wall had collapsed upon itself completely. He moved aside so the boys could come in behind him.

He'd relented and left all but two, Ngo and a young boy they called Bugsy, to guard the shoring and the guide ropes. Those two out, plus Jenkies, Bill, and Alma left him fifteen to shepherd through the wreckage. When Drakkar emerged, it was with great caution, his crest half-aroused. He looked to Blade.

"Emergency lighting," he said.

Thomas knew only that the Mojavans had some defunct military installations in their region. He wondered what kind of salvaging Denethan had done. "What do you know about this?"

Drakkar gave him a shrewd look. "About as much as you do," he answered shortly.

Blade turned away, thinking that the only thing more devious than a Mojavan for an ally was a Mojavan for an enemy.

Stefan said, "We should split up. I know these lower levels."

Blade didn't like the idea of splitting up. It gave him too many directions to watch at one time. But he stifled his gut reaction. Stefan had obvious talents in the Vaults the rest of them did not share. "Only if you take Drakkar with you."

The Russian-born youth's face drew taut. "Don't you trust me?"

Blade pivoted slightly, his headband light coming to rest on Drakkar's face as it followed his movement. "Yes," he answered. "It's him I don't trust."

Drakkar gave a mocking half-bow.

"It's not a matter of trust," Thomas continued. "The two of you are better skilled at keeping your party alive. That slide was rigged. There'll be more traps in here. I want no more casualties. Understood?"

Stefan and Drakkar considered one another in the twilight. "Understood," Stefan said reluctantly.

Drakkar pulled his gloves on tightly. "Naturally," he answered.

Thomas took his torch out of his head band, toggled it off, and replaced it in an inner pocket. The dean's old offices would be on this level—that's why the escape tunnel led here. He cast about in the soft lighting, unable to get his bearings. Finally, to hide his momentary confusion, he counted off the boys again, taking the larger group of the mappers.

He explained to them what to look for—trip wires, snares, mines, and whatever other traps he knew the dean had the technology at hand to set for them. But the Vaults were still alive, with their remnants of a technology he could only guess at—and if they had defenses that could still be triggered, he knew the dean would use them. Jeong sketched something quickly and handed the pad to him.

Thomas frowned at it. "What's this?"

"Beam outlets. We can't see them. I saw them used on one of the CD programs you brought back. On the program, they crisscrossed like this, forming a barrier or gate. Break this barrier and alarms go off. They project from here to here—see?'' And the boy showed him.

Thomas looked at the drawing. "All right. You can bet our traps won't set off alarms, though. Break a net of these and you're likely to be fried in your footsteps. Everybody take a good look at the sketch. Good going, Jeong."

Drakkar barely looked at the sketch. "I already know what I'm looking for," he said, in response to Thomas' questioning expression. "Jeong's right. Those things are invisible, quiet, and deadly."

The boys silently took a second look, their faces bled of previous doubt.

"All right. Find anything, give a whistle." Thomas let out a shrill, piercing whistle.