Horizon Storms (20 page)

“So, Basil, do you want me?”

“The answer is obvious, if you look in the right place.”

Laughing, she jumped onto the bed, pushing him backward and climbing on top of him. She yanked the sheets aside so they would not get in the way. With a musing expression, Basil fondled her breasts, then clasped her waist, maneuvering her hips. She needed no help to guide him inside her.

Despite Sarein’s unrelenting ambition and sexual enthusiasm, Basil had never expected their affair to go on as long as it already had. Of late she seemed wary of him in spite of her neediness, almost . . . intimidated.

He wondered how much she suspected about the scheme he had set up to assassinate her sister Estarra and the King. If she ever learned exactly what he had attempted, Basil would have to do a great deal of damage control.

Sarein seemed to be trying to distract him, to pull his attention to her as she thrust quickly against him, her chin upturned and her eyes closed in concentration. Her breathing came quick, sharp, urgent.

What doesn’t she want me to think about?

He couldn’t let her have such a total influence on him, when he needed to deal with other matters. He broke the rhythm by asking, “Sarein, have you had any success yet with the green priests? I’ve seen you speaking with Nahton.”

She stopped rocking, disconcerted that he would bring up business at such an intimate moment, then settled him deeper inside her, as if to make certain he would stay there. “Yes, Basil. Four separate times. And there’s simply nothing I can do. Their minds are made up, including my uncle Yarrod.”

Though Basil had expected as much, he still felt disappointed. He wondered if Sarein had lost her edge . . . or if she’d ever possessed the competence he had attributed to her. Had he been fooled by the young woman’s ambition and her beauty? He would be deeply annoyed with himself if that was truly the case. No, that wasn’t something a Hansa Chairman allowed. “And how many of the nineteen volunteer priests have left us?”

Sarein began gently pushing, sliding, and grinding again, as if to divert his attention from her bad news. She acted as if she had conversations like this every day. “Seven so far. Five are already back on Theroc, and two are currently en route.”

Basil lay back on the pillow, closed his eyes, and let out a disturbed sigh. Sarein leaned over him, close to his face. She brushed his cheeks with her fingertips and wiggled against his hips, as if hoping for a shudder of pleasure to distract him.

“I really tried, Basil. Through Nahton, I communicated with each one personally. The priests know, intellectually, that seven men can make little difference back in the worldforest, whereas they could perform a significant service for the EDF. But their hearts are torn apart, and the trees call to them.”

112

“Typical.” Basil remained flat on his back, refusing to move despite Sarein’s enticements. He doubted anyone else could have done more to sway the green priests. Still, it was another failure, another disappointment. “Am I the only man in the Spiral Arm who understands the magnitude of the problem here? I work every day and every night to find a solution to this crisis. I rely on the green priests who volunteered—volun-teered!—to provide vital communications aboard our widely dispersed ships. Dozens of conscripted recon pilots are simply flying away from their posts, going AWOL. The Roamers have suddenly stopped delivering ekti.

Step-by-step, everyone is letting me down.”

Sarein kissed him with such passion that she startled him back to the present. “I’ll never let you down, Basil.”

“That remains to be seen.” Concentrating fully on her body, he grasped Sarein and pulled her to him with surprising force. She gasped, and he almost let himself fall completely into the pleasurable distraction, but he kept just a little part of himself separate . . . and safe.

As Chairman, he was dedicated to getting the job done, any job, to perfection. It was a long time before they were both spent.

325YARROD

When he finally arrived home, the scarred worldforest was worse than Yarrod had imagined. Even though he’d experienced the events directly through telink, he still felt like weeping as soon as he set foot on the scorched ground.

The surviving green priests had selected a ring of damaged trees—five massive stumps, each one twisted like an amputated limb—as their memorial for fallen trees and people. Though severely wounded, the five burned and blasted trunks remained alive, standing like a wooden version

of Earth’s Stonehenge. With uneven steps, Yarrod hurried from the shuttle to the templelike tree ring.

Forced to view all the damage through the eyes of the forest, the surviving priests were stunned or crippled by the constant agony that screamed through telink. The clamor of the worldforest made it difficult for them to see and understand small details inside the tree mind. But each time a priest helped to rescue and shore up a living tree, saving it, they all rejoiced. In many surprising instances, worldtrees had sacrificed themselves to shield small treelings. Each green shoot was a gesture of defiance against all that Theroc had suffered.

Alexa and Idriss came to greet Yarrod. His sister and her husband had always been mellow leaders, with calm personalities, never overreacting, ruling in times of quiet prosperity. They had never been prepared for anything like this. Now both of them looked gaunt and drained, as if they’d been broken into pieces and poorly reassembled.

“Oh, Alexa . . . oh, my forest.” Yarrod could think of nothing else to say. He embraced her, experiencing the still-echoing screams of the burned and frozen trees. He endured it like a flagellant punishing himself. “What can I do? I need to know what I can do.”

“The same as all of us.” Idriss wiped sooty dust from his cheek. “You work until you drop, do every task you see that needs doing, and when you must rest, you gather your energy to start it all again the next day.”

Yarrod tore off his provisional EDF uniform so that he stood in only his green priest’s loincloth. With his emerald skin exposed to the air of Theroc, he walked to the nearest of the five scorched trees and pressed his chest against the bark. He wrapped his arms around the tree and just held it, feeling the contact with the worldforest on every centimeter of his skin.

The flood of sensations was more than he could bear, but Yarrod clutched desperately, drinking it all in. His mind expanded to see through the eyes of millions of surviving worldtrees.

Over the ten millennia since the last conflict, after the hydrogues assumed they’d exterminated the verdani, the scraps of the forest mind had settled here and gradually spread to cover all the landmass of Theroc. For almost two centuries now, green priests had carried treelings to other planets, once again spreading the ancient forest entity. And now the hydrogues had returned, intent on finishing the task of extinguishing their rival. Com-

114

ing from space, they had attacked everywhere, intending to annihilate every last shred of the worldforest.

On uninhabited continents, some blazes continued to eat away at the forest. Yarrod felt the urgency, the crisis, the pull of the overwhelming and desperate work that still needed to be completed. But Theroc’s population, never large, was even more diminished since the attack. They did not have the manpower or equipment to defend or revive a whole planet. They had to concentrate their efforts near the scattered population centers.

Though bemoaning the loss of each green priest volunteer who wanted to go home, the EDF had not seen fit to send enough troops, ships, and workers to help Theroc in its time of greatest need. The military vessels had come for the first, brief wave of relief efforts, assisting in broad-strokes fire-fighting and tending to the injured, keeping an eye out for another hydrogue invasion. But the soldiers had left long before the task was finished, drawn away by other emergencies.

Now the people of Theroc would have to do the rest themselves.

Yarrod backed away from the tree and turned to his sister and Idriss.

He was covered with soot, his tattooed face streaked with tears. “You are the Mother and Father of Theroc again. I am so sorry for the loss of your son.”

“Our sons,” Idriss said. “The hydrogues killed both Reynald and Beneto.”

Yarrod hung his head. “Yes, Beneto was linked with the worldforest when his grove on Corvus Landing was destroyed. I felt everything he said.

He poured his mind and soul into the trees . . . but nothing could save his body.” Yarrod drew a deep breath and looked around. “Let me help here.

I need to speak with my comrades.”

Alexa said, “We’ve done our best to clear areas, distribute new treelings, gather and plant seeds. The forest tells us that a high percentage have already germinated.”

Yarrod refused to let himself be overwhelmed by the seemingly impossible task. “Every one of those seedlings is precious, and the soil of Theroc is well fertilized with blood and ashes.”

Through telink and the reports of other green priests, he knew how the forest had tried to defend itself during the initial icewave attack by unleashing a furiously accelerated growth and rejuvenation. The worldtrees had attempted to restore the foliage as fast as it was destroyed, and they

had succeeded for a brief while, but such a thing required huge amounts of energy, and the forest’s reserves had rapidly been drained. That defense was triggered only during a time of extreme stress, and the damaged worldforest was now depleted, barely able to keep itself alive.

The green priests and the people of Theroc would have to restore the forest in the slow, natural way.

Yarrod sensed that many of the dazed and despairing green priests were on the edge of surrender. A few collapsed and wept, but after taking a moment to recover, they dragged themselves back to their feet and returned to their all-consuming job. He joined them, throwing himself into the work. He could afford to give nothing less than his utmost. None of them could, if the worldforest was ever to thrive again.

335JESS TAMBLYN

As he approached Rendezvous, piloting his wondrous water-and-pearl vessel, the Roamer cluster looked different to Jess. Perhaps it was the wentals inside his eyes: When he peered through the filmy walls of his ship, the asteroids flickered as if through a veil of tears. For Jess, the excitement and anticipation were palpable.

He had no idea if Cesca would be there or if by some miracle she wasn’t already married to Reynald of Theroc. In a very real sense, he was no longer part of the Roamers, no longer entirely human. He wasn’t sure how either of them could cope with the changes.

But Roamers had a penchant for solving impossible problems.

All of the clans would be astonished to see him and his strange vessel.

They might think him an invading alien, a potential threat, and they’d probably scatter. Jess wanted to find some way to reassure them, but he had no way to communicate directly. For all its wonders, the water-and-

116

pearl spaceship did not have a standard comm system with which to contact the Roamers.

The exotic vessel tumbled gracefully toward the asteroid belt. Outlying rocks drifted in a kind of smokescreen to foil the prying sensors of Big Goose ships. The central habitation rocks of Rendezvous were bound together with massive construction braces; smaller asteroids were simply tethered into place or even allowed to drift under their mutual gravity. As Jess closed toward the central hub, he spotted numerous Roamer craft: short-range shuttles, ekti escorts, and long-distance cargo vessels delivering supplies and materials like bees flitting around a hive. Home at last.

Jess approached the main docking ring slowly as more questions rose in his mind. How would he get inside? He looked down at his energy-impregnated body, saw his skin glow. With the wentals permeating his tissues, he possessed many advantages and abilities no human had ever experienced before. The blood flowing through his veins was supercharged, his skin covered with a crackling field. In keeping him alive, the wentals had made him more than human. He wondered if he could even survive open vacuum.

Yes. We will protect you.

They could not, however, help him to answer the flood of questions the Roamers would have. That would be his own challenge. Cesca would help, once he was finally reunited with her.

While the clan ships scrambled in a panic and the inhabitants of Rendezvous hurried to defensive stations or made preparations to evacuate, Jess hovered the large, strange ship outside a circular entry crater. He had to hope the clan ships didn’t shoot at him, though his wental vessel could probably withstand any such attack. Roamers generally kept a low profile, hiding instead of picking a fight. They would wait and see what he intended to do. He hoped.

From the asteroid cluster, lights glinted like bright eyes from portholes in the rough walls. Even now alarms must be ringing. Roamers rushed through the tunnels, preparing to evacuate or fight.

Jess’s ship just hung there, motionless. He made no threatening moves, giving the Roamers time to accept his presence. Other spacecraft backed off, waiting to see what would happen next.

Finally, curious, one small ship approached closer than the others

dared, swooping past. Jess looked through the wavering water wall to see a young Roamer piloting the vessel. The pilot had Asian features and a face full of more curiosity than fear. Nikko Chan Tylar. Jess remembered the young man from clan gatherings . . . back when he himself had been normal.

Standing where he could be seen behind the curved, clear wall, Jess moved languidly through the liquid atmosphere. He pressed close to the watery hull and raised a hand in a nonthreatening greeting, sure that Nikko could see his human form through the bubble wall. Jess slowly waved—harmless, friendly. Nikko’s shocked expression showed genuine recognition before he spun away.