A SOLDIER CAME FOR HANNA, but she was not there. The Soldier looked for her—it was almost funny, Gabriel thought, because where could she hide? The room was a gray box. The bathroom—literally, “water-cube”—was just a setback behind a partition that gave the humans welcome privacy, but was only there to keep water from spattering into the rest of the box, keeping down the mold that had to be scrubbed away. Soldiers presumably were supposed to do this for themselves, and no cleaning crew had showed up in this billet (Soldiers did not use servos), so Gabriel had appointed himself mold-scrubber-in-chief. As his energy waned, however, the mold had begun to win.
The Soldier went away, scratching his head in an eerily human way. Gabriel lay down and sank back into torpor. After a while, a minute, an hour, the door slammed open again, jarring him out of it. Three more Soldiers charged in, and then, amazingly, Kwoort himself.
“Where has she gone?”
Gabriel didn’t bother to sit up. The weakness that had been growing on him—and on Hanna—seemed to have taken a quantum leap. Every move demanded thought, a determination of how much energy it required.
“I don’t know. Nobody tells me anything. Somebody came and got her. If you don’t have her, maybe Kakrekt does.”
“What would Kakrekt want with her?”
“What she always wants, I guess. Whatever it is. What do you want?”
“I am to speak with your Commander. And your Holy Man. I—”
“What Holy Man?” Gabriel said, but Kwoort went on without hearing him, “They want to see her. To see if she is well.”
Gabriel said nothing. Kwoort ordered his entourage into the corridor and gave more orders Gabriel did not hear, though he heard Kakrekt’s name. Then Kwoort came back and stood inside the door, at first very still, and waited. Presently he began to fidget. He’s getting just like the first one, just like Kwler, Gabriel thought vaguely, but then he dozed again.
• • •
Jameson had used, in some desperation, a stimulant. Kwoort had been adamant about the only interval he could spare from his devotions, and then he would only do it to confer with a not-Soldier of equal rank. Jameson, in further desperation, had allowed himself to be temporarily and falsely designated Holy. The interval happened to fall at three o’clock in Jameson’s morning. At least Mickey had finally gone to sleep around midnight, though thunder still rolled through the sky. I am too damn old for this, he thought, inhaling the vapor his contact guaranteed was black market Fleet issue.
He summoned official transport, less conspicuous in the night sky than his personal aircar (which shouted of privilege). Before he reached Admin he learned that Kwoort had arbitrarily canceled the conference, but he did not turn back. The telepaths had told Metra almost simultaneously that Hanna had been forced to leave Wektt—and wouldn’t tell them why. At least she was in control of the pod; but Gabriel was still deep underground.
• • •
The telepaths all knew about the aborted conference, and they were all awake, and they all knew where Hanna was, and called for her attention.
But she could not hold two conversations at once, and the one she had to have aloud, with Communications, was delicate.
“A task as a favor for Kakrekt Commander,” she explained, ears pricked for Wox with his knife.
“What kind of task? Where are you going?”
The voice was familiar, but the man’s face and name escaped her. She did not answer at once; she concentrated on climbing up, straight up, past the snow, through the clouds, up and up until she could see the sun just beyond the terminator, and the pod filled with golden light that made her gasp and made her eyes water. Sunlight at last! She drank it in, every cell in her body rejoicing.
The voice began, “Team leader Bassanio—”
“Yes. Sorry. Uh, the task is a matter of historical research. An observer is with me. I’ll report when I can.”
“Very well.” The scantest hesitation; Wox would not find it significant. “Your team will await word from you.” Telepathically, was the implication.
“As soon as possible. Over.”
Definitely not alone, and not so trapped, either, but—she began to feel the weariness born of hunger again—she would still keep to herself Kakrekt’s reason for sending her to That Place. A plan of murder would not suit her D’neerans. She didn’t want to deal with their combined righteousness, not yet, not when she thought murder might not be a bad idea at all.
• • •
Soldiers had a nice line in invective, Gabriel was interested to find. There were a lot of references to what the translator prissily called “excrement,” and many accusations of laziness (“lapse in industry”) and dereliction of duty. He listened for references to sex, that staple of human mudslinging, but the closest Kwoort and Kakrekt got was mutual accusation of failure to breed. After a while he deactivated the translator and listened to a cacophony of top-volume clicks and whistles, punctuated by spoken (shouted) words. Hanna should be here, he thought. The scene would add something to her theory that emotional life developed with Soldiers’ aging. These two were certainly old enough to emote!
• • •
The telepaths wanted a conversation, but Hanna didn’t. She told them about Wox, the watchdog, but nothing else. You didn’t have to be Adept to slide an all-purpose veil over your thoughts, though it helped, and that was what Hanna did, hiding behind shutters. She could not escape the awareness that everyone knew—the true-humans, too—that she hadn’t told them everything. She would have to do something about that soon—eventually—
But she was busy. The pod was capable of getting back to someplace it had already been without help from her or from Navigation, so she told it where to go and began a search of every storage compartment in its interior. Maybe she had overlooked a meal tab or two.
The search was short and unproductive. At the end she found herself face to face with an intruder, a frightening face on the wall, bruised and strained. Who . . . ?
She blinked at her reflection in the medical cabinet door, which did not blend with the matte tan of everything else but was shiny and purposely made to stand out. It was unlikely to hold anything edible, but she opened it anyway. No food. She started to close it and her eyes fell on a neat row of tiny vials. Stimulants could substitute for food. For a while.
Wox was not watching. He was looking out with mild curiosity, and some trepidation, at something he had never seen before: the brilliant white masses of cloud below.
Hanna pried the vials from their nest and slipped them into a pocket.
I can’t use them, I can’t risk it, but maybe Gabriel . . .
• • •
They talked about foodstuffs for Gabriel that could be delivered by unmanned transport, and about starting continuous transmission to Wektt requesting permission to come get him or, failing that, a demand that the supplies get to him.
“Last resort, we’ll go dig him out,” Metra said.
“Do you know where he is in that maze?” Jameson asked.
“Only approximately.”
“You’re risking casualties, then.”
“I hope not. I’m thinking we’d move the Admiral Wu into the system and borrow some combat servos. Use minimum personnel.”
Evanomen looked strained and said nothing. He probably wished he had stayed Deputy Director for Trade.
Bella, part of this meeting over Metra’s protest, said, “What about H’ana?”
“We can’t intervene while she’s in transit with an armed Soldier,” Jameson said. “And she’s not likely to overpower him. Not if she’s been starved for a month.”
Metra looked up from a readout. “She’s definitely headed for That Place. Just confirmed by contact with the pod’s navigation systems. Why does Kakrekt want her doing historical research?”
“She doesn’t,” Bella said. “It’s a cover for something else. I don’t know what.”
“Can’t you tell? Why not?”
“She’s shielding. H’ana can shield better than anybody I know. You people throw around the word ‘Adept’ and you don’t know what you’re talking about. There’s only a few hundred on all D’neera, and there’s only about ten of her caliber. She might be better than any of them. Listen, the food. I could just take the other pod, with supplies, and go to That Place myself.”
Metra sorted that out. “I don’t think we want them to know we’re tracking Bassanio,” she said.
“Are you going to let her starve? I could expect it of you,” she told Metra, “but you?” This was for Jameson. “That guy with her, he hurt her. Hit her. I picked that up trying to read her, she saw her reflection and her face is swelling up.”
He was silent under Bella’s green gaze. The passion in her face reminded him of the unguarded moments that had once come easily to Hanna, though not so easily now. She had become miserly with emotion, Mickey excepted; she had done her best to leave behind the young woman he had first known and loved. He had tried to find out why and she had refused to tell him, leaving him to guess. Best guess: the devastation of Michael Kristofik’s death had been so terrible that she was afraid emotion, if allowed its freedom, would destroy her.
She had put out her hand to him years ago, with her heart in it. Unforgivably, he had undervalued the gift. Now he thought he might go on paying for that for the rest of his life.
He abandoned talk of strategy and said so gently that all of them stared at him, “We won’t let her die.”
• • •
You’d think she could think to me . . .
Gabriel thought of turning over, just for variety, but the effort required too much commitment. He remained on his back.
If Kwoort and Kakrekt had not chosen to have their explosion in this room, all spice and fury, he would have had no idea that Hanna was not still in the complex.
He was cold. Somebody must have turned down the heat. If Hanna were here he could huddle against her, though lately even slight pressure seemed to start up inexplicable bruises.
He thought of Cory, the starved little boy who had been found abandoned in a demolished domicile in some place of war. Cory was not starved by the time Oversight brought him to Alta, but there were images in his records. Gabriel wondered if he would look like that at the end, skin barely, obscenely, veiling naked bone.
No! somebody said.
“Bella?” he said out loud.
Hold on a little longer. We’ll get supplies to you. Or get you out.
In the thought he saw servos marching as implacably as Soldiers, fire and dust in the teeming caverns. Soldiers dying.
“Not because of me!”
Not your decision.
“Just supplies, only that. Please. But Hanna. Kakrekt sent her away.”
I know. Don’t worry. Starr Jameson said she won’t die.
“You believe him?”
I’ve seen them together. He’ll get her back.
The Parting Observance popped into his head. “Even after . . . ?”
Even. Be patient. Food is coming.
He didn’t feel hungry, but he said, “Send chocolate.”
He drifted off into prayer, into Psalms. I will satisfy you with the finest of wheat. I will feed you with honey from the rock . . .