Dancers in the Afterglow (17 page)

"The moment we looked into each other's eyes there was a bond," she answered his thoughts. "You felt it. I felt it. I can't do much. Not even hug you. But..." She let her voice trail off.

And he
did
want her, want her badly. And he gave her what she wanted.

And couldn't feel a damned thing himself.

The training proceeded smoothly. There were the usual excuses, the impatience, the people who couldn't or wouldn't submit at all or couldn't get the hang of it, but this had been the problem of drill sergeants since armies immemorial, and what he
did
get was a well disciplined team of almost a hundred men and women who could be relied on to do a job. They
were
raw, and more would be killed in the operation than he dared admit to them for all his roughness, but he didn't have the time to train them right

His probes continued to monitor the progress of the Machists. There had been roughly sixteen million people on Ondine when the enemy took it only ten months earlier; children, more easily changed, had been separated and lifted out in the early stages. There were not as many children on Ondine as on more diversified planets, but that got rid of over a million. As far as he could tell, almost another million who were aged or crippled or ill had been ruthlessly exterminated. Any rejuves had also been eliminated, another two million. About two million more had perished on the marches or in the early camps, from the conditions, the inability to adapt, guard cruelties, or suicide. And, about half a million had made it to the bush around the planet, or to the islands which the Machists never reached. Most were unorganized, eking out a hand-to-mouth existence under the most primitive conditions. Of this number, three in five had perished in the ten months from starvation, disease, or other causes.

The remaining nine million plus had been separated into camps, 187,346 to be exact, averaging fifty per. At an average two Machists per camp, that meant almost 375,000 of the enemy were at work on the planet, plus the few thousand at Lamarine spaceport and the supply depots, the flyer pilots, and the like.

The totals worried him, since the Machists had unloaded nowhere near that total during the night of the takeover even when all five spaceports were open, and nowhere near the number of transports needed to carry all those people and the enormous number of supplies (generators, prefabs, food, seed, and the like) had come and gone according to Combine monitors.

They had ten times the number of people on Ondine that they possibly could have.

And they were still nearly overextended!

He considered these problems over and over, and they made no sense at all.

Amara came into the cave. Although sex was a one-way street for him, even if he'd had the male body, he still was emotionally awash in her. He was actually thankful that the male Daniel wasn't around; it was more obviously nonfunctional in certain areas. He couldn't tell her what he really was, where his mind really was, that what she thought of as him wasn't a new biological development for espionage, but a machine.

That, he thought, was only part of it. He was alone, so alone, so cut off from humanity. And now here was someone he cared about, someone treating him like a person, relating to him as a person. It didn't matter, somehow, that the relationship was based on a masquerade on his part, based on a set of falsehoods, doomed to be exposed when reality intruded as it someday must.

He had learned a lot about himself on Ondine. He realized that he had no future, only an endless present. This tiny slice of the humanity and companionship for which he had hungered was enough, as long as it continued.

He looked at Amara. She'd refused clothing; she wanted the rest of them to see her armless body, to know she'd paid a dear price for the way she'd treated them. He doubted that she ever would have the arms grown back; her guilt was overriding, and being a cripple somehow helped her keep going. She allowed her food to be chopped up for her, but refused to be fed by others or to eat other than in public, where they could see their former mistress eating like a dog. Daniel disapproved of her decisions, but came to understand that these actions were essential to her in some way. And she'd become good with balance and with her feet; she could open lockers, pick up things, handle some of them.

She helped with the training and its planning. And the unwary villager who decided she was helpless or defenseless discovered her speed, her balance, and the powerful strength developed in those long legs. She needed that, too, the assurance of self-sufficiency, of purpose. And she needed Daniel, because he understood all those things, knew why she'd been as she had and why she had to be what she now was—and still loved her.

"You've been brooding again," she accused him, as she took one of Rolvag's cigars from its case with her foot, leaned over, stuck it in her mouth, then leaned into a lantern to light it.

"You know I have a transmitter in my head," he responded. "I keep getting reports. Bad ones." He turned, looked into her eyes. "Honey," he said, "there are just too damned many Machists.
And
they are doing a hell of a job. Without such numbers they'd never have had the spectacular successes they've already achieved. Nobody, not Naval Intelligence, not the Combine, not me—nobody thought a people could be transformed so quickly. We thought we'd have a year minimum, maybe two! But they are already done in some camps, and more are being wrapped up every day! That means more and more Machists for Lamarine."

She nodded seriously. "I can't imagine
how
they do it, but I've heard the observer reports." She shook her head in wonder, remembering the gaudy strip of the Lamarine boardwalk, the high-rise apartment houses, the masses of houses. "They were normal people—no, they were more than normal. They were generally happy, or at least content, having a good time. Family people, and tourists. How do the Machists remake people's insides with so little, as easily as big computers and top cosmetic engineers remake the rich people's outsides? And so many!"

"We'll have to find that out when we retake the place," he answered pragmatically. "What's most pressing is that there are over 350,000 normative Machists on this world, and as they convert the people they are being shifted back to Lamarine. And every one is another potential roadblock to our own mission."

"They'll probably lift them out," she guessed. "If that spaceport's still in service when they finish, we'll never catch them. They get away scot-free."

He nodded. "And, if we don't hit quickly, there'll be too many of them in Lamarine to stop it." He sighed. "The weapons canisters are here. Not just
the sample. All. They've been dropped to the fifteen other teams already, and I had ours landed during the storm two nights ago."

Her face was ashen. "You mean we have to go now. But they're not ready! Not yet! A few more weeks, at least!" she protested.

He smiled, understanding now Sten Rolvag's reaction to him the first time. How tempting to be in the position to say "yes" or "no," to let it go "a few more weeks, at least." How many? One? Two? Six? Sixty? How easy —and how tempting-:—to report failure, to tell the Navy that resistance groups couldn't be organized before the enemy became too strong for any hope of success. To go on, perhaps for years—up to two years, the last report said—until the big ships blasted a hole in the line.

Duty, a part of his mind chastised him. And he wondered, what duty? To humanity? Well, humanity had turned him into a machine, had robbed him of his own humanity. He was as alien a thing as those Machists, perhaps more. Nobody'd thought of
him,
except as an exceptionally sophisticated weapon and adult building set, a new toy for bright but idle minds.

He wasn't human. He couldn't love this woman the way a human would; his sexual desire for her came from memory and disconnected nerves, the way she occasionally felt her arms and hands. When he held her as he was doing now, hugged her as he was doing now,
he
wasn't really doing it at all. He felt her through sensors that gave more than enough information to interpret but far less than those in a human body. And when he kissed her, as he was doing now, those sensors relayed only the impression of her lips to a tiny transmitter, then up to a reflector, then to the tiny golden egg in which he was forever imprisoned in a crystalline case. A brain so augmented that parts of him were walking, talking, in fifteen other spots on the planet.

He was a machine; not just this body, but all of
him. A machine with human memories and ghosts of past experiences now denied him, a machine like the self-aware computers that helped govern planets. A machine who desperately wanted to be human, but was not, could never be. And this girl, crippled in body and soul as he was, although to a far lesser degree, was his only link with the human race.

He broke the kiss, and she breathed hard. "Whew!" was all she could manage.

He'd attack, and soon, because, although he could never be one of them, he
did
desperately desire to be human.

And that was reason enough.

"We distribute the weapons in the morning," he told her. "And start over the mountains in the afternoon. We hit Lamarine five days from tomorrow."

She sighed. "I knew that when you kissed me. And I'm going with you."

"Absolutely not!" he roared. "Hell, you'd be no good in battle! You can't use a rifle, can't fire a missile, can't even be support for a launcher!"

She smiled confidently, and responded in a soft tone, "I can carry a pack with the best of them, and march further with less wear. As for weapons, my speed and kicks are better in close fighting than any two of those village creeps who think they're marines. And I can fire a missile with my feet as well as many of these farmers with two arms. And you know it. And that's why I'm going."

She stopped for a moment, looking at him, but he said nothing.

"I know you could stop me," she acknowledged. "A dozen ways. But you won't—you know me too well. You understand me. You know I
have
to go."

And he knew she was right, knew he had no choice either way. He cursed the Machists, for pressing him. He cursed her, for acting the way she did, for knowing him so well despite all, for being herself—she'd go for the very reasons he loved her.

Too quickly, he thought, annoyed. Everything's moving too damned fast! Oh, God! If only I had some time!

Time...

Durchkomponieren

THE WOMAN WALKED SLOWLY IN FRONT OF THE
sleep-place, eyes on the ground. Occasionally she'd find something small out of place, some patch messed up, another uneven or irregular,.or some little bit of this or that dropped during the others' labors. She moved and worked quickly and methodically, knowing that another was behind her, trimming the grass precisely with a sharp blade on a stick.

She heard the others start singing over in the fields, and she and the mower joined in. She smiled contentedly—she always smiled,
they
always smiled, for there was much joy in them. They had rice now, and corn, and wheat, and even a few cows for milk and chickens for eggs, and soybeans for protein.

Occasionally, while she worked, a dark thought from the past would intrude. She remembered it, yes, but with pity. It was the unhappy time, the time of loneliness, the time without joy. The time when there was no sharing. It seemed so very long ago, and strange, as if it had happened to another person entirely. And it was. Who had she been? Who was this other person? She couldn't remember. So many of the labels flowed through her mind, and labels were bad things of the old way. That other person, whoever it was, had been alone, directionless, purposeless, seeking joy and never finding it, seeking love and never finding it.

Seeking
this,
she knew, and lifted her voice even louder in song.

The Child came skipping happily down the path, and the worker looked up, returning the smile. She remembered the Child, remembered
being
the Child, and the Child was her, and a part of her, and in her.

The Child stopped. "We will dance this dark in joy?" It was really more of a statement than a question.

"Yes," both she and the mower responded as one. "We will dance this dark in joy."

The Child's face spread into a wide grin, and she skipped on. She, too, had her function. She could wash down the cows, and arrange the straw, and she could fetch water and other needs for any worker.

They were almost finished now. There! The farm was perfect! She and the mower looked back at the cleaned and trimmed and smoothed diamond with satisfaction.

Almost like clockwork, the farmers were returning, their song growing louder and more joyous as they approached. And now, here they were, and she hugged the mower and the farmers and they all rejoiced in the Touching.

They all sang, "It is to cleanse the one that we go!" as they went to the showers.

Ponder—they no longer called him that, for they understood that he was as one with them, and that it was his function to teach the Way to others—smiled as he packed up and prepared to go. He and the guard were no longer needed here. They had done their jobs, performed their functions well.

Because of the time, there could be little sophistication in the development of Ondine. There was more potential out there than was being used, he knew, but it didn't matter. They were happy, together, one. His orders had been to take his group and transform it into a self-sufficient agrarian society, and this he had done. They had built the sleep-place themselves, from the native wood, and it was beautiful. So with the communal kitchen, made out of wood and hand-fashioned brick, with the metal for the grills and some of the implements, like the knives, the only thing supplied.