Starfishers Volume 2: Starfishers (26 page)

But he eventually reached his destination and instantly knew that he had guessed right. Dead men guarded the closed blower room door from within. Their weapons, if they had been armed, were gone. Moyshe glanced at the thing in his hand. Would it work?

The blower room was vast. It served only
Danion
’s core, but still was a wild jungle of massed machinery and ducting. A lot of air needed moving and scrubbing . . . 

She was in there somewhere, trying to kill them.

Half an hour departed with antelope fleetness. He wandered among the brobdingnagian machines and found nothing.
Danion
kept shivering but the battle had become so old that it no longer caught his attention. An overpowering fatalism had set in now, a feeling that he was completely powerless in the greater situation.

But, damn! it was a long skirmish.

Weariness preoccupied him. He had been through twenty hard, emotionally draining hours.

He finally located the huge ring of consoles from which
Danion
’s core oxygen levels and humidities were controlled.

He crawled, he climbed, he attained himself a perch on a high catwalk from which most of the controls were visible. He saw only empty seats where a dozen technicians should have been stationed. Corpses lolled lifelessly in two more. A body lay like a broken doll on the aluminum grate decking.

She had been here. What was she doing now?

The question answered itself. She appeared as if spontaneously generated, moving among the boards, selecting cutoffs.

BenRabi aimed his makeshift weapons.

“Marya . . . Maria . . . ” Her names ripped themselves from him against his will. She had been closer to him, in some hidden part of him, than he had realized.

Her head jerked up, turning, startled. Her eyes were narrow and searching. That mocking smile exploded across her face. “Moyshe. What are you doing here?” She hunted him with jerkily moving eyes, her hand hovering near a holstered, captured weapon. She was afraid. And she wanted to shoot.

“You’re trying to kill us,” he croaked.

What a stupid thing to say. Of course she was. Why was he waiting?
Pull the trigger, pull the trigger
, he screamed at himself.

He had done it a million times in imagination. All those images of the gun . . . 
Go! Go!

He couldn’t. It was real this time. It was not some insane, inexplicable daydream oozing from the nether pits of his mind. Had the gun thing ever had anything to do with real weapons?

She stepped over a dead Seiner. “Moyshe, how can you say that? Not you. You’d be repatriated.”

Repatriated to Hell, maybe. Her lie was a kilometer tall. After The Broken Wings and von Drachau’s raid? She was going to have his guts on her breakfast toast if he did not do something.

She crossed his aim repeatedly, but he just could not end it. It had seemed so easy when he had been angry. It was easy for Mouse . . . wasn’t it? Sweat beaded on his forehead as he tried to force his trigger.

His aim fell.

The movement gave him away. Her smile gave way to clashing-sabers laughter. Her weapon leapt into her hand. Her hand rose.

He reacted. Her shot reddened metal where he had crouched. But he was moving, across an open space. His finger was frozen no more, though he fired wild, scoring a section of console. He dove into the shelter of a huge machine. Disinterested, it went on grumbling to itself. Like a lot of people, it would do nothing till it was hurt, and then it would just sit there and scream.

Her shouts mocked him. He did not catch her words, but they did not matter. She was taunting him, trying to get him to give himself away again. Beams licked here and there, probing his cover, making metal run like tongues of candlewax.

He was scared. He had swum too deep this time. He had taken the dive he had feared since his assignment to Beckhart.

In an instant of insane gallows humor he told himself that death would certainly end his psychological woes.

But both he and the woman were too confident of his inability, his uncertainty, his lack of commitment. Something within him cracked. Something hatched from an egg of darkness lying in his deeps. He suddenly knew that there was something he could believe in, something worth fighting for. It had been trying to break through from the beginning.

He grinned, then laughed at the ludicrous irony of life. His Grail. He had found it here on the marches of Hell, as he was about to die. This ship, these Seiner people . . . 

In marveling stupidity, he stepped into the open. The woman was so startled she hesitated. He did not. He shot first. His hand was steady, his aim flawless. Just as they had taught him.

The madness of the moment faded. He felt as empty as he had on the day he had entered the Blake City spaceport. Had he found anything after all? Or had his gun-need just thrown up a light-show of justification?

He was standing over her when Kindervoort’s people arrived. He did not know how long he had been there. The battle had died away while he waited. And he had reversed all the switches she had thrown, though he did not remember doing so. Operations was getting its desperately needed oxygen.

He was crying when they found him. He had wondered about that for a long time. Mouse sometimes shed tears afterward, as if the new corpse were that of a favorite brother. He supposed Mouse spent his stored emotion then, while it was safe, while no one could grab a handle on his soul.

Someone pried the torch from his bent rod fingers.

“Moyshe?” Amy asked. “Are you all right?”

He seized her, held her. She was a warm fire in a cold, dark, and lonely cavern. She let him cling for a second, then pulled away, retaining a grip on his arm. She seemed a little distant, a little frightened. And who wouldn’t be, after what he had done? “Come on. You’ve got to talk to Jarl.”

He nodded. Yes. Kindervoort would want to know all about it. Old Doctor Deathshead would poke and prod and try to pry open the lid of his soul. Even on a battle day Kindervoort would want to keep an eye on the blood of his ship. That was all people were to
Danion
. The harvestship was the real living thing here. The folks inside were just specialized cells.

He let Amy lead him away, but looked back at Marya as he went. They were taking pictures and nattering into recorders. Medics were piling bodies onto stretchers. Techs were weeping over the damaged console and impatiently trying to cajole readouts on atmospheric quality . . . But he had eyes only for Marya.

Marya. She was dead now. He could ease up and let her be more than just “the Sangaree woman.”

He did not know why or how, but he must have loved her in some odd, psychotic way. Or maybe he was in love with the death she had symbolized. But, now that she was lying there, sprawled inelegantly, brokenly, he felt a little freer. And a little sadder.

Kindervoort’s office was hectic. People came and went hastily, crowding its outer reaches. The chaos was probably typical of every office aboard, Moyshe thought. There would be plenty of work for everyone.

Kindervoort pushed through the crowd. “Moyshe. Amy. Come on in the office.” He broke trail. Settling behind his desk, he said, “Thank God for this lull. I was in-suit for eleven hours. The damned things drive me crazy. Give me claustrophobia. You all right now, Moyshe? You look a little pale.”

BenRabi sat with his elbows on his knees, staring into infinity. He shrugged.

“For a long time you had me worried, Moyshe,” Kindervoort said. “You seemed so solitary, so introspective, so ineffectual. Not exactly up to advance billing. I don’t know what I expected Beckhart’s top man to be, but you weren’t it. Not till today. Then you acted when you had to. Intuitively, quickly, correctly, efficiently. The way I was told to expect. And in character. All on your own. Except maybe you told Mouse?”

Kindervoort had steepled his fingers in front of his mouth. He seemed to be thinking out loud. “Now tell me what happened. An unedited version.”

Moyshe started talking. It helped. He began at the beginning and told the whole story, presuming Jarl had enough details to catch any major deletions. He tried to be objective.

Kindervoort nodded, occasionally doodled, once made a call for corroboration. He asked Moyshe to go over several things twice. It was a brief and gentle holiday compared to a Bureau debriefing. He had Amy call to make sure Mouse was getting medical attention.

BenRabi left out nothing but the hiding of the weapons.

When he concluded, Kindervoort asked, “Did today change anything for you? You ready to cross over now?”

Moyshe considered it. Hard. He wanted to be part of what he had found here. But he could not. Not on Kindervoort’s terms. “No, Jarl. I can’t.”

Amy was disappointed. He expected her to be. The signs were unmistakable. She had plans. Bells and white satin, a regular Archaicist extravaganza.

“Why’d you go after Gonzalez, then? We would’ve gotten her eventually. Maybe too late to have saved Ops, though,” he conceded.

BenRabi could not bring himself to answer truthfully. Landsmen did not avenge friends. They had no friends to avenge. And he did not want them to know that a prime rule of the Bureau was that you let no blow against one of its people slide. “That’s why. It meant my neck too.” Briefly, he sketched what had happened on The Broken Wings.

“I wish you’d done it for us . . . If you change your mind . . . I really want you on my team, Moyshe.”

“Not on your terms.”

Kindervoort looked perplexed. He started to say something, but was interrupted by a comm buzzer. He pressed a button, said, “Kindervoort, Security.” He stared at Moyshe, frowning.

“LeClare, Contact,” a tiny voice said. “You got a landsman named . . . let’s see . . . benRabi, Moyshe benRabi, down there?”

“Right. He’s here with me now.”

“Good. Been trying to track him down all over. He the one with the headaches?”

“The same.”

“Has he been Warner tested, do you know?”

“No. He’s landside.”

“But he’s a marginal?”

“I’d guess a strong full. Looks to me like repeated and intense spontaneous contact reaction.”

Moyshe began to feel like a sample on a microscope slide.

“Good. I’m sending a man to pick him up. Priority Alpha. The Old Man’s okay. The paperwork will come down later. Off.”

“Off,” Kindervoort said, puzzled. He leaned back, studied Moyshe speculatively, finally said, “Well. Things change. Desperate times, I guess. I just hope they know what they’re doing. Moyshe, when you’re finished in Contact I want you to get plenty of rest. Amy, see that he does. Then report back here.”

Moyshe looked from one to the other. Both seemed shaken, disturbed.

What the hell was going on? That comm exchange made no sense at all, but it had gotten these two as antsy as a cat in heat. What was a Warner test? Why were his migraines so important? He studied Amy. His thoughts drifted back to the attack he had suffered after being switched on. She had become as nervous then.

He had tried a dozen times to discover why she thought his migraines important. She would not tell him.

They were important to
him
, heaven knew. They had become one of the central features of his life. He had had scores since coming aboard. So many that he had become conditioned to recognize the slightest warning symptom. He gulped his medication instantly.

For a while, though, he had not been bothered much. Till
Danion
had come here. He had been eating the pills like candy the past few days, at regular intervals, not waiting for symptoms to begin. What did it mean?

“Well,” Jarl said, “I’ve got a ton of work. Have to sort things out, count the bodies, inform the next of kin. Amy, turn him over to Contact, then get some sleep. This break probably won’t last.”

She took benRabi’s hand, guided him to the door. Why was she so quiet? Because of Marya?

As he was about to close the door behind him, Kindervoort called, “Moyshe? Thanks.”

Seventeen: 3049 AD
Operation Dragon, Mindteching

The man who came for Moyshe, when he arrived meteorically on a fast orange scooter, wore a jumper of a style Moyshe had never before seen. It was black, trimmed with silver, instead of being the off-white of the technical groups. It was an Operations group uniform.

The man looked and smelled as if he had not changed for a week.

“Trying to find a man name of . . . ” He checked a card. “BenRabi. Moyshe benRabi. What land of name is that?”

“A literary allusion,” Amy replied. “This’s him here.”

“Right. Teddy Larkin, Contact Support. Who’re you?” He was brusque. And tired. He appeared to be on the verge of collapse. Moyshe felt sympathetic. He was on his last legs himself.

“Amaranthina Amaryllis Isolte Galadriel de Coleridge y Gutierez. Security,” she snapped.

“Oh. All right, let’s go, benRabi.” He headed for his scooter.

Moyshe did not move. He was fighting his temper. Larkin’s rudeness might be excused, intellectually, because he was tired, but emotionally Moyshe could not let it slide. He had the feeling that Larkin was this way all the time.

Larkin reached his vehicle, noticed that Moyshe was not tagging along dutifully. “Come on, grub. Get your ass . . . ”

BenRabi was there. And Teddy was yon, seated on hard steel deck plating wondering what had hit him.

There was no forgiving his remark. “Grub” was the Seiner’s ultimate epithet for landsmen. BenRabi moved in. He was ready to bounce Larkin all over the passageway.

Amy’s touch stopped him. “Go gentle, you ape,” she snarled at Larkin. “Or yours will be the second big mouth he’s shut today.”

Larkin took it as a wisecrack, started toward Moyshe.

BenRabi bounced him off the bulkhead and floor a couple of times.

“I meant what I said,” Amy told Larkin. Her badge was showing now, literally. “How was your air supply this afternoon?”

“Eh?” Larkin’s eyes widened. His face grew pale.

“Yeah. You see what I mean,” Amy told him.