This Alien Shore (76 page)

She glared at him, and rightfully so. Even when he was in favor, he had never been permitted to use her common name in public. It was the lights—they were making him crazy—and all those vidcams buzzing around his head, hungry for the most dramatic angle, dizzying him until he couldn't think straight. He needed his surroundings to be ordered and regular, measured, precise. Not this chaos of wildly flying vidcams, with a hundred strangers standing behind them.

“Quiet,” she ordered. Her voice was like ice. Heart pounding, he obeyed. The sight of her face, naked in such company, was so bizarre he could scarcely begin to interpret it. But she was
nantana
as well as
simba,
and such kaja never did anything without purpose.

She turned her back to him then, to face the crowd gathered about them. He felt a guard's hand on his shoulder, warning him to be still. How could he be otherwise? They'd run an inhibitor through his wellseeker that slowed all the long muscle response in his body. He'd learned to walk despite the awkwardness, but he sure as hell couldn't run. Or fight. Or do ... anything else they might expect of him.

She began to speak then, her voice without emotion, her body unusually still, bereft of its usual lexicon of gestures. Clearly she meant for no human to have insight into what she was feeling at this moment.

“Citizens of the outworlds.” The vidcams ceased buzzing about his head and turned to her. “Men and women of the press. Representatives of Terra proper, and of all the Terran stations. I thank you for coming to Tiananmen Node, to stand as witnesses to my judgment.

“Today's announcement follows on a two-year investigation of the virus known as Lucifer, and lengthy interrogation of all those responsible. Today the people responsible for that virus will meet justice.”

Was there a hesitation in her voice, a faint break between words in which emotion might be glimpsed? He prayed that it was so, even as his heart went cold with dread. She loved him, didn't she? Loved him still? If so, she could hardly condemn him. Could she?

“Even as we speak here, conspirators in a dozen nodes are being arrested. Their fate will be that which they intended for Earth: to be Isolated from the galactic community, denied all congress with the outworlds, until the end of time.” She paused, letting the enormity of that sentence hit home. “It was what they tried to manipulate us into doing to all Terrans, so I consider it a suitable judgment.”

She glanced at Devlin, then quickly away. He could read nothing in her eyes.

“We of the Guild are not a political entity, using our power to facilitate the dominance of one world over another. And we will not be used as such. The Guild's purpose has always been to contact the descendants of Earth and bring them safely through the ainniq, so that they can share in what we have built here. This we have done, for centuries. Some of the Hausman worlds which our scouts rediscovered had only the most primitive settlements, with Variants that were barely human, who had no knowledge of their heritage. We rescued our lost cousins, we educated them, and we made them part of our society. We forced others to accept them as well, and fought wars when necessary to guarantee that acceptance. That is what the Guild exists for: to find
all
of Earth's lost colonies, so that
all
the children of the human race might be reunited at last.

“We knew where Earth was from the start, of course, for we had the ancient maps. We chose to go find her. We chose to bring the unaltered children of Terra into our society, because it is their birthright. So did the founders of the Guild believe, and so do I believe as well.”

Now she looked again at Gaza, and her gaze was frigid. He felt his heart stop beating for a moment, and a band of steel seemed to contract about his ribs, so that he could hardly breathe.

“
This man,”
she pronounced—and there was no emotion in her voice, absolutely none, as if that whole part of her had suddenly gone dead—“This man, Devlin Gaza, intended to destroy all that we have built. This man intended to use our ancient hatreds to split the human race asunder—again—so that the sons and daughters of Earth would live and grow in ignorance of each other. Such action would be criminal for any man, but for a
Guildsman ...
it is unforgivable. It is an insult to everything we stand for. Everything we believe in. Everything we
are
.”

He started to move, to voice some protest—if he couldn't save himself, at least he could speak for his cause—but the guard at his side snapped, “Silence!” Something in his headset buzzed something in his brainware, which jarred some vital neural connection out of alignment. And he no longer remembered how to speak.

IT'S OVER, DEVLIN. The words that appeared before him were hers, though he couldn't say how he knew that for sure. PROVE YOURSELF A MAN AT THE END, AND GO WITH DIGNITY.

His headset would not let him respond.

“Variants, Terrans, members of the press.” Her tone was utterly formal, the pitch and cadence of an empress addressing her court. “I have called you here today to see how such a crime is punished. I want no rumors of leniency for those who wear the Guild's sigil. What is unacceptable in other humans is ten times more unacceptable in us, and will be punished accordingly.” She nodded toward Gaza, a sign for the guards who flanked him. “Take him.”

He couldn't fight them. He couldn't protest. With his speech centers shut down, he couldn't even cry out her name. When he tried to move, he discovered that they'd increased the inhibitors on his motor control, making every motion an agony of effort. Numbly he managed to force each foot to move, so that he would not fall on his face as the black-clad guards dragged him forward.

The press followed, vidcams buzzing overhead, with other guests behind. God, how he hated them! Hated them all. How could they not understand what he had done for them? They should be crowning him with their glory and gratitude, not forcing him into exile.

They brought him back to the dock. There was a small pod there now, which hadn't been present before. Suddenly he saw where this was heading. Terror gripped his heart, and in panic he tried to pull from the guards. The defiance lasted but a second, and then a command from someone's headset shut down several more muscle sets. By the time they got him to the pod, he could barely walk, and his arms were all but useless.

NO! He screamed it in the silence of his own head. NO!!!!

They put him inside the pod. They strapped him in. They let him see the navigational chart before they shut the door, so that he would understand exactly where the pod was going. Vidcams buzzed about the edge of the door until it finally shut, fighting to get that last shot of his horrified expression.

The last thing he saw was her eyes. Cold, so cold. Had his lover ever had eyes like that?

GO QUICKLY, the words came in his head. And then, after a pause: I DID LOVE YOU, DEV.

The pod began to move. Slowly at first, as the massive braces of the transport pulled it into position. Then there was that momentary sickness which accompanied all launches, as real grav and faux grav and a dozen other forces, inertial and otherwise, warred for dominance in his gut. But it meant nothing to him. His eyes were fixed on the screen before him, a tiny portal through which he might view his fate. He watched as the pod hurtled through space, toward the ainniq nearest the station. Slowly it took form before him, searing in its beauty, closer and larger with every passing moment. There was no more he could do; the controls were all locked until immersion, and his prison headset lacked the programs he would have needed to free them up in time.

He could sense the great predators stirring even as his tiny pod dove into the ainniq. Hunger and hatred in perfect unity, and perhaps intelligence also. Did they have a territorial sense, these sana, did they understand enough of the human worlds to hate the men who had invaded their homeland? Was this rare conquest not only dinner for them, but vengeance as well?

He tried to flee from them. He couldn't steer the pod more than a few degrees but he managed to take control of its acceleration, and he ran for all he was worth. It was a futile act, he knew, but no man could do otherwise. The patterns of predator and prey were hardwired into his human brain, and once one of the monsters caught his mental scent his hindbrain took over, prolonging the hunt as long as it could.

Not long enough, however. Never long enough.

He didn't scream until the end.

A
lya Cairo watched the screen until the pod was gone, swallowed by the ainniq. And then she watched it yet longer, waiting. Silent. The guards by her side dared not stir, not knowing how to read her. The press was restless but respectful. They did not need access to her emotional circuits to know the pain she was going through. Her unpainted face would be splayed across news files within the hour, the ultimate story of human anguish. It was a perfect counterpoint to the death of Gaza, the imprisonment of so many League members, and the data purge which had been going on since Lucifer's origin was known.

Slowly she turned, silently facing her audience. There were no tears in her eyes, or any other sign that others might read. She nodded to someone in the crowd, who brought a small bowl to her, filled with black fluid. She did not look at it, but found it by feel, dipping her fingers into the paint within. One touch to gather up paint, then a stroke to smear it across her face. Gueran mourning custom; the vidcams buzzed with activity, preparing for the articles on Gueran social habits that would appear in newscasts later that day.

When her face was thus marked in a primitive pattern of sorrow, obscuring any natural expression as it might have obscured her kaja, she walked slowly through the crowd. Questions were tossed at her from both sides; she ignored them. Guards flanked her uneasily; she didn't seem to notice their presence. One man stood in her path long enough that a guard had to grab him by the arm and pull him out of her way; she would probably have walked right into him.

Unseeing, unfeeling, the Guildmistress Prima of the Gueran outworlds walked past guards and press, guests and advisors, into the narrow hallway that would take her to her chamber. No one followed her there. No one dared. A few vidcams flitted behind her head for a yard or two, until a signal sent by one of her people scrambled the navigator programs and they dropped to the floor with a sharp thud.

She walked on, alone.

Into her chambers. Standing there alone, silent. Seeing the icons that would enable all the systems she'd shut down an hour before, preparing for the press. RELEASE CONTROL OF TEAR DUCT FLUID PRODUCTION, she instructed her wellseeker. Tears began to seep out of her eyes. RELEASE METABOLIC INHIBITORS. Her heart began to pound heavily, flushing her cheeks with hot blood, and her measured breathing became deeper, and strained, and faster than was normal. RELEASE EMOTIVE INHIBITORS. She shut her eyes in dread as synapses opened and shut, neurotransmitters stirred, dendrites sparkled with fresh activity.

And grief, like a vast tsunami, rolled over her brain, and flooded her body, and disrupted every natural system within her, until the warnings of her wellseeker drowned out her vision in a field of bright red letters, and the real world could not even be sensed through her sorrow.

Alone in her chamber, the Guild's Prima wept.