For Love of Mother-Not (27 page)

He seemed indifferent to the identity of the new arrivals. His concerns were more prosaic. “Have you any food?”

“What happened here?” the woman asked him as soon as he had limped to within earshot.

“Have you any food? God knows there’s plenty of water. That’s all this miserable place has to offer is plenty of water. All you want even when you don’t want it. I’ve been living on nuts and berries and what I’ve been able to salvage from the camp kitchen. Had to fight the scavengers for everything. Miserable, stinking hole.”

“What happened here?” the woman repeated calmly. The man appeared to be in his late twenties. Too young, she knew, for him to be a member of the Meliorare’s inner circle. Just an unlucky employee.

“Caster,” he mumbled. “Name’s Caster. Excuse me a minute.” He slid down his crude, handmade crutch until he was sprawled on the damp earth. “Broke my ankle, I think. It hasn’t healed too well. I need to have it set right.” He winced, then looked up at them.

“Damned if I know. What happened here, I mean. One minute I was replacing communications modules, and the next all hell opened up. You should’ve seen ’em. Goddamn big as the tower, every one of ’em. Seemed like it, anyhow. Worst thing was those dish-sized bloody eyes with tiny little black specks lookin’ down at you like a machine. Not decent, them eyes. I don’t know what brought ’em down on us like they came, but it sure as hell wasn’t a kind providence.”

“Are you the only survivor?” the man asked.

“I haven’t seen anyone else, if that’s what you mean.” His voice turned pleading. “Hey, have you got any food?”

“We can feed you,” the woman said with a smile. “Listen, who were you working for here?”

“Bunch of scientists. Uppity bunch. Never talked to us ordinary folk.” He forced a weak laugh. “Paid well, though. Keep your mouth shut and do your job and see the countryside. Just never expected the countryside to come visiting me. I’ve had it with this outfit. Ready to go home. They can
keep their damn severance fee.” A new thought occurred to him, and he squinted up at the couple standing over him.

“Hey, you mean you don’t know who they were? Who are you people, anyway?”

They exchanged a glance; then the woman shrugged. “No harm in it. Maybe it’ll help his memory.”

She pulled a small plastic card from an inside pocket and showed it to the injured man. It was bright red. On it was printed a name, then her world of origin: Terra. The eyes of the man on the ground widened slightly at that. The series of letters which followed added confusion to his astonishment.

FLT-I-PC-MO. The first section he understood. It told him that this visitor was an autonomous agent, rank Inspector, of the Commonwealth law enforcement arm, the Peaceforcers.

“What does ‘MO’ stand for?” he asked.

“Moral Operations section,” she told him, repocketing the ident. “These scientists you worked for—even though you had little or no personal contact with them, you must have seen them from time to time?”

“Sure. They kept pretty well to themselves, but I sometimes saw ’em strolling around.”

“They were all quite elderly, weren’t they?”

He frowned. “You know, I didn’t think much about it, but yeah, I guess they were. Does that mean something?”

“It needn’t trouble you,” the man said soothingly. “You’ve said you haven’t seen anyone else around since this horde of beasts overwhelmed you. That doesn’t necessarily mean you’re the only survivor. I assume some form of transportation was maintained for local use here. You didn’t see anyone get away in a mudder or skimmer?”

The man on the ground thought a moment, and his face brightened. “Yeah, yeah I did. There was this old lady and a younger one—good-looking, the younger one. There was a kid with ’em. I didn’t recognize ’em, but there were always people coming and going here.”

“How old was the kid?” the woman asked him.

“Damned if I know. I was running like blazes in one direction, and their skimmer was headed in the other, so I didn’t
stop to ask questions. Kid had red hair, though. I remember that. Redheads seem scarce on this ball of dirt.”

“A charmed life,” the older man murmured to his companion. There was admiration as well as frustration in his voice. “The boy leads a charmed life.”

“As you well know, there may be a lot more than charm involved,” the woman said tersely. “The old woman he refers to is obviously the adopting parent, but who was the other?” She frowned, now worried.

“It doesn’t matter,” her companion said. He spoke to the injured man. “Look, how well do you remember the attitudes of this trio? I know you didn’t have much time. This younger woman, the attractive one. Did she give the appearance of being in control of the other two? Did it seem as if she was holding the boy and old lady under guard?”

“I told you, I didn’t get much of a look,” Caster replied. “I didn’t see any weapons showing, if that’s what you’re talking about.”

“Interesting,” the woman murmured. “They may have enlisted an ally. Another complication to contend with.” She sighed. “Damn this case, anyway. If it didn’t carry such a high priority with HQ I’d ask to be taken off.”

“You know how far we’d get with a request like that,” her companion snorted. “We’ll get ’em. We’ve come so damn close so many times already. The odds have to catch up with us.”

“Maybe. Remember your packages inside packages,” she taunted him gently. “Still, it might be easy now.” She waved at the ruined camp. “It doesn’t look like many, if any, of the Meliorares got away.”

“Melio—Meliorares?” The injured man gaped at them. “Hey, I know that name. Weren’t they the—?” His eyes widened with realization. “Now wait a second, people, I didn’t—”

“Take it easy,” the man in the camouflage suit urged him. “Your surprise confirms your innocence. Besides, you’re too young. They’ve taken in smarter folk than you down over the years.”

“We shouldn’t have that much trouble relocating the boy.”
She was feeling confident now. “We should be able to pick them up at our leisure.”

“I wish I were as sanguine,” her associate murmured, chewing on his lower lip. “There’s been nothing leisurely about this business from the start.”

“I didn’t know,” the injured man was babbling. “I didn’t know they were Meliorares. None of us did, none of us. I just answered an ad for a technician. No one ever said a word to any of us about—!”

“Take it easy, I told you,” the older man snapped, disgusted at the other’s reaction. People panic so easily, he thought. “We’ll see that your leg is set properly, and there’s food in the mudder. One thing, though: you’ll have to undergo a truth scan. There’s no harm in that, you know. And afterwards, it’s likely you’ll be released without being charged.”

The man struggled to his feet, using his crutch as a prop. He had calmed down somewhat at the other’s reassuring words. “They never said a word about anything like that.”

“They never do,” the woman commented. “That’s how they’ve been able to escape custody for so many years. The gullible never ask questions.”

“Meliorares. Hell,” the man mumbled. “If I’d known—”

“If you’d known, then you’d never have taken their money and gone to work for them, right?”

“Of course not. I’ve got my principles.”

“Sure you do.” He waved a hand, forestalling the other man’s imminent protest. “Excuse me, friend. I’ve developed a rather jaundiced view of humanity during the eight years I’ve spent in MO. Not your fault. Come on,” he said to the woman named Rose, “there’s nothing more for us here.”

“Me, too? You’re sure?” The younger man limped after them.

“Yeah, you, too,” the Peaceforcer said. “You’re sure you don’t mind giving a deposition under scan? It’s purely a voluntary procedure.”

“Be glad to,” the other said, eager to please. “Damn lousy Meliorares, taking in innocent workers like that. Hope you mindwipe every last one of ’em.”

“There’s food in back,” the woman said evenly as they climbed into the mudder.

“It’s strange,” her companion remarked as they seated themselves, “how the local wildlife overran this place just in time to allow our quarry to flee. The histories of these children are full of such timely coincidences.”

“I know,” Rose said as the mudder’s engine rose to a steady hum and the little vehicle slid forward into the forest. “Take this flying snake we’ve been told about. It’s from where?”

“Alaspin, if the reports are accurate.”

“That’s right, Alaspin. If I remember my galographics correctly, that world’s a fair number of parsecs from here. One hell of a coincidence.”

“But not impossible.”

“It seems like nothing’s impossible where these children are concerned. The sooner we take this one into custody and turn him over to the psychosurgeons, the better I’ll like it. Give me a good clean deviant murder any time. This mutant-hunting gives me the shivers.”

“He’s not a mutant, Rose,” her companion reminded her. “That’s as inaccurate as me calling him a monster.” He glanced toward the rear of the mudder. Their passenger was gobbling food from their stores and ignoring their conversation. “We don’t even know that he possesses any special abilities. The last two we tracked down were insipidly normal.”

“The Meliorares must have thought differently,” Rose challenged. “They’ve gone to a lot of trouble to try and catch this one and look what’s happened to them.”

They were well into the forest now, heading south. The ruined camp was out of sight, swallowed up by trees and rolling terrain behind them.

“Some big native animals did them in,” her companion said. “A maddened herd that had nothing whatsoever to do with the boy or any imagined abilities of his. So far, his trail shows only that he’s the usual Meliorare disturbed youth. You worry too much, Rose.”

“Yeah. I know. It’s the nature of the business, Feodor.” But their concerns haunted them as night began to overtake the racing mudder.

The woman manning the communications console was very old, almost as old and shaky as the small starship itself, but her hands played the instrumentation with a confidence born of long experience, and her hearing was sharp enough for her to be certain she had not missed any portion of the broadcast. She looked up from her station into the face of the tall, solemn man standing next to her and shook her head slowly.

“I’m sorry, Dr. Cruachan, sir. They’re not responding to any of our call signals. I can’t even raise their tight-beam frequency anymore.”

The tall man nodded slowly, reluctantly. “You know what this means?”

“Yes,” she admitted, sadness tinging her voice. “Nyassa-lee, Haithness, Brora—all gone now. All those years.” Her voice sank to a whisper.

“We can’t be sure,” Cruachan murmured. “Not one hundred percent. It’s only that,” he hesitated, “they ought to have responded by now, at least via the emergency unit.”

“That stampede was terrible luck, sir.”

“If it was bad luck,” he said softly. “History shows that where the subject children are concerned, the unknown sometimes gives luck a push—or a violent shove.”

“I know that, sir,” the communicator said. She was tired, Cruachan knew; but then they were all tired. Time was running out for them and for the Meliorare Society as well as for its noble, much-misunderstood goals. There had been thoughts, years ago, of training new acolytes in the techniques and aims of genetic manipulation pioneered by the Society, but the onus under which they were forced to operate made the cooperation of foolish younger researchers impossible to obtain, thanks to the unrelenting barrage of slanderous propaganda propagated by the Church and the Commonwealth government.

Curse them all for the ignorant primitives they were! The Society was not dead yet!

Haithness, Nyassa-lee, Brora—the names were a dirge in his mind. If they were truly gone now, and it seemed that must be so, that left very few to carry on the Work. The conflict within him was strong. Should he press on or flee to set up operations elsewhere? So many old friends, colleagues, great scientific minds, lost; was this one subject worth it? They still had no proof that he was. Only graphs and figures to which the computers held. But the computers didn’t care. Nobody cared.

There was nothing to indicate that the subject had been in any way responsible for the unfortunate stampede that had destroyed the camp together with their hopes. Of course, it was quite possible that the subject had perished along with the others, Cruachan mused. If not, if he decided to pursue this one to a conclusion, then there could be no more external manipulation attempted. They would have to confront the subject directly, as they had years ago tried to do with the girl.

It was a long, roundabout course to their next “safe” station. Cruachan was not at all confident of working through another several years of hiding and seeking out another promising subject. If the long arm of the Peaceforcers had not caught up with him by then, time and old age were liable to do the job for the government. They had come a long way together, he and his associates. A great effort; many lives had been expended to keep the project alive. He and his few remaining colleagues had to follow this case to its conclusion.

“Thank you, Amareth,” he told the woman waiting patiently at the console. “Keep the receiver open just in case.”

“Of course, Dr. Cruachan, sir.”

Turning, he headed slowly toward Conference. Halfway there, his step picked up, his stride became more brisk. This won’t do, he told himself. As president of the Society, it was incumbent upon him to set an example for the others, now more than ever. By the time he reached the meeting room
and strode inside, his initial despair at the reports from below had been replaced by icy determination.

Half a dozen elderly men and women sat waiting for him. So few, he thought, so few left. The last of the Society, the last supporters of a great idea. Their upturned faces all silently asked the same question.

“Still no word,” he said firmly. “We must therefore assume that doctors Brora, Haithness, and Nyassa-lee have been lost.” There were no outward expressions of grief, no wails or cries. They waited expectantly for him to continue, and their quiet vote of confidence redoubled his resolve.