StarCraft II: Devils' Due (22 page)

“Because I thought I could make a difference. The

Confederacy has become more corrupt than ever,

and there was a little while when I was able to do a

little good for people. But not anymore. Not here.

They’ve got too good a grip on things here. Maybe

things would be different somewhere else. I’ve been

thinking about going to a settlement on Mar Sara.”

“Mar Sara?” Jim laughed. “Remind me never to go

on vacation with you. That planet is a hel hole.”

Myles chuckled. “Maybe. But I ain’t going there for

the climate. There’s good people out there, Jim.

People just trying to make a decent living and lead

decent lives. I’ve been offered an opportunity to

become a local magistrate.” He’d been looking off in

the distance, his gaze unfocused, but now it snapped

sharply back to Raynor. “If I go … why don’t you come

with me?”

“What? No, thanks. I got better things to do with my

time.”

“Sure you do.” Myles’s voice dripped sarcasm.

“Just remember, the offer’s there if you should change

your mind.”

“I won’t, but … thanks.”

“Anything for a Raynor. You know that.” He cleared

his throat. “Wel , come on. I’l take you to see your

momma.”

Jim stood for a long moment in front of his

boyhood home. It was exactly how he remembered it.

Most of it was located underground, keeping it safe

from both blowing snow and sand and the annual

temperature fluctuations. The roof was a dome

covered by a semitransparent membrane that

col ected heat during the day to be stored in the

farm’s power cel s. At night, the membrane was

retracted. He used to lie back in a lounge chair and

look up at the stars, wondering what was out there.

Now he knew, and he realized he’d give an awful lot

to be that boy again, working hard during the day,

gazing up at the stars at night and wondering, and

then sleeping the sleep of the exhausted innocent.

He swal owed hard past the unexpected knot in his

throat and had to make a determined effort to get his

feet to move down the ramp.

Habit saw him removing his boots in the entryway

so as not to track dust al over the house. In his

stocking feet, he slowly went through the living room,

with its old furniture and steadily ticking chrono, into

the kitchen, which had been the heart of the home.

His mother was there, as he knew she would be.

Her back was to him as he entered. He took it al in:

the wooden table and chairs, the tiny counters stil

scrupulously clean. She was busy making a meal for

herself. No more large roasts from the local ranchers,

served with potatoes and homemade bread, for a

hardworking farmer husband and a growing young

son. Just simple vegetables for a salad. She was

standing, but there was a cane within easy reach, and

she moved very slowly as she chopped the bright

yel ow farra roots and round, purple sur fruit. A box sat

on the counter with FARM AID SUPPLIES

emblazoned upon it.

Suddenly she went very stil and straightened, and it

was only then that Jim realized just how stooped she

was.

“Jim,” she said, the word a statement, not a

question.

“Hel o, Mom,” Jim said, his voice thick.

Stil with her back to him, Karol Raynor careful y put

down the knife, reached out for her cane with a

trembling hand, and turned to face her only child.

Jim had known his mother was il . Had known she

didn’t have long to live. But that knowledge had not

prepared him for the sight of what a handful of years

and the ravages of sickness had done to a formerly

robust and hearty woman. Once-ebony hair was

almost completely white now, and thin, as if it had

started to fal out in places. Her green eyes were

sunken and dul , and what Jim remembered as a few

wrinkles had deepened to crevices. Her cheeks were

hol ow, and he realized that she had lost a great deal

of weight. But the most immediate, most visible thing

about her was the look of pure joy on her face.

Tears blurred Jim’s vision. He stumbled forward

three steps and caught her up, so fragile, so

breakable, in his arms and hugged her.

Twenty minutes later he was seated in the living

room, having made iced tea for both of them. Both

glasses sat untouched. Karol Raynor leaned back

against the sofa, seeming to need it to support her

fragile weight. She looked as if a good puff of wind

would blow her away. He could see the fine bones in

her hands and arms.

“He was with us for a day and a half before he

succumbed to the injuries,” she was saying of his

father. Jim had heard about it through Myles right after

it had happened. The ancient robo-harvester had

malfunctioned, stal ing out in the middle of a field.

Trace Raynor had been attempting to make repairs

when the machine had unexpectedly roared to life,

crushing him beneath it.

“The doctors wanted to put him on al sorts of

painkil ers, but he wouldn’t let them. ‘Just treat the

injuries,’ he said. ‘Let me stay for as long as I can.’”

Jim winced and reached for the bony hand, holding

it gently in his own. It was like holding fine china.

“So … he was in pain the whole time?”

“It was his choice, Jim,” Karol said gently. “We al

knew he wouldn’t make it. He just … wanted to be

present for the last few hours of his life.”

Tears stung Jim’s eyes, and he blinked them back.

She patted his hand. “There was nothing you could

have done, even if you’d been here.”

Except say good-bye
, Jim thought bitterly, but he

said instead, “The money could have helped.”

She smiled slightly, the gesture lighting up her

haggard face. “Now, how do you reckon that?

Wouldn’t have made the surgeons any more skil ed;

they did the best they could with what they had. Shiloh

doesn’t have a lot of the high-tech medical equipment

that other planets do. Even if we’d taken your money,

Jim, we couldn’t have gotten your father to a proper

facility in time for al that technology to be of use. It

was just his time, Son. Money wouldn’t have done a

thing.”

“Might have bought a new robo-harvester.”

She looked at him with deep compassion. “I love

you, Jim. But you know we couldn’t take money that

was earned through criminal activity.”

“It’s not from that.”

Karol squeezed his hand, and her smile deepened.

“Ah, now you’re a criminal
and
a liar.”

Jim couldn’t help it: he laughed at that. She joined

him. “Stubborn woman. Always too smart for your own

good.”

They chuckled together for a moment, enjoying the

release of tension in the room, and then Karol’s laugh

turned into a violent coughing spel . She turned away

quickly, hacking into a handkerchief, but not fast

enough so Jim didn’t catch the sight of blood on the

white linen.

“Mom,” he said quietly, “Myles said you were dyin’.”

She wiped her mouth and leaned back. The fit had

clearly exhausted her. “Myles is right,” she said

resignedly. “Which is why I am so glad to see you.”

“What is it, Mom?” He reached again for her fragile

hand.

“Some kind of cancer. Doctors don’t rightly know.

It’s something new, and we don’t have the testing

equipment here to do research on it. There are

several of us with the same symptoms, though.”

“So … something caused this?”

She nodded weakly. “Looks like. They think it might

have something to do with the material the old canned

rations came in. We stopped using those once Farm

Aid stepped in, but—”

“Rations?” Jim stared at her, aghast. “During the

Guild Wars?” He had joined up with the sole intention

of getting money to send back home. “Mom, you

didn’t use the money I sent you to buy food?”

She smiled at him again, but there was a trace of

irony in it. “We used the money to pay down the debt,

Jimmy. We didn’t need food. The Confederacy was

providing it.”

“Damn it!” Jim sprang up from the couch, stalking

about the smal room like a caged tiger. He wanted to

break something, but everything he saw had a newly

found value to him, as a relic of his childhood and

youth. As something his late father and his dying

mother had touched, cleaned, cherished. His hands

clenched with anger that had no outlet. “And no one’s

saying anything about this? That the Confederacy’s

decision to cut corners is kil ing people?”

She didn’t answer and he knew why. Ever since

Korhal IV, people were scared. No one would dare

speak out now.

“You know,” his mother said, breaking the

uncomfortable silence, “your father always believed

you’d come back one day. When he was in that

hospital room, broken and dying, he knew he wasn’t

going to live long enough to see that day, but he knew

it would come.”

Jim was standing with his back to her, one hand

gripping the mantelpiece hard. He was glad he had

come, but at the same time the emotions that were

racing through him were ripping him to shreds, and he

just wanted them to stop.

“Myles helped us out, and your father made a

holovid so he could say good-bye properly.”

Jim was surprised. His family couldn’t afford to

make a holovid. Myles had helped again, indeed. His

eyes fel on a smal urn a few centimeters from where

he grasped the mantel, and he felt a fresh wave of

pain as he abruptly realized what it contained. Or,

more accurately, who.

He had to get this over with, had to get out of here,

into the comfortable, familiar world of violence and

near escapes and theft, of drinking and women and

forgetting.

“Wel ,” he said, surprised at how steady his voice

was, “that was right nice of Myles. Can’t say as I’m

surprised, though. Where is this holovid Dad wanted

me to see?”

“Right there, beside his ashes,” his mother said,

confirming what he already knew. He looked over

and, sure enough, there was a smal , personal-sized

holoprojector and a disk. It was an older model, clunky

and unrefined, but it would get the job done.

“I keep it there so I can see him now and then,” his

mother said. “The recording was for you, not me, but

… wel , I’m sure you wouldn’t mind if your old mother

got a little comfort from seeing her husband

sometimes.”

The lump that suddenly fil ed Jim’s throat rendered

speech impossible. He turned his head and gave her

a faint, strained smile. She nodded, reaching for her

iced tea.

“Go on, play it, Jim. I’ve wanted to watch this with

you for a long time now.”

He turned back, inserted the disk, and pressed the

button.

His father appeared. He was in a hospital bed, and

the camera was jumpy: probably the ever-reliable

Myles had filmed it himself. Jim could barely see his

dad through al the things that were hooked up to him.

He seemed almost lost in a jungle of tubes and

hanging bags. He looked terrible, and his voice was

faint.

“Hel o, Son,” he said, managing a smile. “I sure

wish I could be looking better for my only holovid

recording, but these damn doctors say I need al

these things. Won’t for too much longer, at any rate.

And that’s why I’m making this for you, Jim. Because I

know in my heart that, one day, you’re going to come

back to Shiloh. I’m just sorry I won’t be around to tel

you this in person when you do.

“I love you, Jim. You’re my son, and I always wil

love you. I used to think I could also say, ‘I’l always be

proud of you.’ But I can’t honestly say that anymore.”

Jim looked down, hot shame and grief fil ing him,

but continued to listen.

“You’re walking down a dark path, Jim. A path I

never could have foreseen for you, and one I simply

cannot respect. We love you, but we can’t take your

money. That’s blood money, Son, and that’s not how

you were raised.”

There was a rustling. Jim looked up again to see

his father struggling to sit up and lean forward,

peering earnestly into the recorder.

“Do you remember what I used to tel you, Son? A