RAY DISMOUNTED THE shuttle, the familiar smells of farms and cooling lander accompanying him. Just being away from Refuge seemed to have a calming effect on his troubled gut. Mary waited in the first mule. As Jeff helped Harry settle his family in the second, Mary nodded at Dumont. “What’s he doing here?”
“Doesn’t want to be my murdering dog anymore,” Ray answered softly. “Got a job for him here?”
“Always need troops in the motor pool. We’re lugging food in from farther away.”
From the open hatch of the shuttle, Dumont listened. “Can I leave my rifle behind?”
“Du,” Mary shot back, “I don’t think folks would mind if you left your clothes behind. They just want our coppers.”
Ray turned on his heel. “You can if you want, Dumont, but think on it carefully. You saw what was going on last night. If you find yourself in a situation, you can always choose not to use the rifle you’ve got. You can’t use the one you don’t have.”
“I’ll think about it, Colonel.”
“Do that, Du.”
An hour later, fed and up to date on the base’s status, Ray settled into his place in the conference room. The chairs and table were the usual cheap, imitation wood, on loan from the wardroom of Second Chance, standard issue to any military unit in human space. The room’s walls had come out a beige identical on military installations since, Ray suspected, Alexander the Great’s campaign tent.
To his right, Mary waited, expectant. Beside her, Kat yawned. Was she finally getting too old for all-nighters? Doc Isaacs sat next, intently going over his reader; that settled who went first this morning. At the foot of the table, Lek sat next to the padre, whose hands were folded, eyes closed, asleep, or lost in meditation. Jeff and the new recruit, Harry, sat close on Ray’s left. They’d been talking when they came in. Now they eyed their surroundings, waiting.
Ray cleared his throat. “I’m told you should never look a gift horse in the mouth. This planet was here when the crew of Santa Maria was desperate.” Nods from the left side of the table. “Still, this gift extracts a price. The extent of that price has yet to be determined. Doc, you want to brief the new folks on what you’ve found?”
Doc quickly explained the tumors in the Santa Marians and their rapid appearance in the landing party. His new listeners showed dismay as the briefing went on.
“What’s it mean?” Jeff asked.
Doc shrugged. “Damned-if-I-know. We’ve got the tumors. They appear to be benign. I’ve found what looks like fragments of two different unknown viruses in our blood.”
“Two!” Ray asked. “Does it take both to grow a tumor?”
“Maybe, maybe not.” Doc looked around the table. “Any of you folks remember sneezing, scratchy throats, watery eyes, itchy skin the day you came down?” Every member of the landing party nodded before half the question was asked.
“Any of you having any more allergic reactions?”
Blank stares.
“Now, me”—Doc leaned back in his chair—“I’m allergic to damn near everything in the Milky Way. Nearly flunked my draft physical for allergies.”
“No,” came in awestruck sarcasm from the marines and Kat.
“Yes, boys and girls, it is possible to flunk a draft physical. You’re looking at someone whose allergies almost pulled it off.” Doc Isaacs paused. “And who showed no allergic reaction to any samples in, the test kits this morning? I may actually get myself a cute kitten.”
“This means…” Ray left the question hanging.
“Every white cell I got has changed beyond recognition. Couldn’t have an allergic reaction to save my life. Which, taken at face value, scares the hell out of me. We are supposed to be allergic to some stuff. Doesn’t matter. My lymph nodes and the white cells they’re pumping out will accept anything.”
“That can’t happen overnight!” Kat insisted.
“Right. Can’t. Did. You do the math,” Doc shot back.
“One of the viruses?”
“Maybe. All I got so far are fragments in our blood. I’m testing the atmosphere for complete samples.”
Ray mulled that over. Guesses. Just guesses. Like his dreams. He turned to Jeff and Harry. “You’ve heard what we’ve found. Something very strange happens to people who live on this planet, even just visit. What can you tell me?”
As Jeff opened his mouth, the older man placed a restraining hand on his elbow. “What can you tell me about this solar system?” Harry asked.
Kat pounced like a kitten on a ball of twine. “Star is only two and a half billion years old. The planet is estimated at less than two billion years old.”
“Early in its formation for such an abundance of life forms, don’t you think?” Harry drawled.
“And three different evolutionary tracks,” Doc added.
“On most life-appropriate planets, Earth included,” Kat said slowly, “tiny ocean life forms took most of the first two billion years just to get their acts together before venturing onto the land. So what makes this one so different?”
“Maybe because it was someone’s garden,” Harry offered. Ray started at his choice of imagery. Had he met the Gardener?
“Whose?” Mary shot back.
“I believe that is what we are trying to figure out,” Harry said with a wry smile. “It is possible, from my core samples, to surmise that three million years ago this planet was very nascent; nothing but one-cell critters. That changed real quick about two and a half million years ago. It appears the planet entered into some kind of warm, pleasant golden age a bit over two million years ago. That ended close to a million years ago, to be replaced by a strange seesaw as raging weather patterns alternated with periods of equilibrium. The past five hundred thousand years have seen the seesawing getting worse.”
“That’s in the core samples?” Ray had been looking for confirmation. He hadn’t expected to have it handed to him on a platter.
“Some say it is, myself included. Others disagree, insisting there is nothing there.” Harry turned his palms over in a dismissing gesture. “Since we have drawn them from only a small part of this continent, a very small area of this planet, I cannot refute the doubters with any authority.”
Ray sat forward in his chair. “Tell me about some of those bad-weather patterns. Major storm surges? Tidal waves?”
“I’ve drilled up evidence of six inches of sand twenty, thirty miles onto the Piedmont plain around Refuge and New Haven. Happened four or five times.”
“How strong were the mineral readings at the breakpoint between the end of the golden age and the beginning of the troubled years?” Ray went on.
“Don’t know. Unless I drilled through a major ore seam or an old river, metal on this planet is very hard to come by. Not enough tectonic action in its short history. Why?”
“Mary, you got any gear for very small samples?”
“Down to parts per billion. What do you have in mind?”
Did he dare say? “I bet if you find an area buried suddenly a million years ago, you’ll find a very rich mineral layer.”
“Want to say why?” Mary asked.
“Not yet. Any places like that near here, or do we have to go back to the coast?” Ray asked Harry.
The old man pulled a well-used map from his hip pocket, unfolded it and studied it, right hand massaging his chin. “The James River valley goes quite a ways inland. Much of it was flooded three, four times,” he said slowly. “Where the river hasn’t carried away the overburden, I could probably find that first layer.” He looked up, eyes bright and a smile forming. “I’d love to work with a few of your miners. Jeff told me what they did to a single hill. When can we start?”
“As soon as the boss wants us to,” Mary drawled. “By the way, Colonel, while we’re stacking up anomalies, I got one to throw on the pile.” Ray waited while Mary gnawed her lower lip.
“I lost nearly ten percent of my nanos yesterday. Normal attrition is less than one percent. I recovered ninety-seven percent of the nanos. But six percent of the ones I got back carried nothing and are unusable.” Ray raised an eyebrow. “The nanos were modified at their atomic level. Grapplers broken off, electric motors wrecked.”
“That’s impossible,” Kat insisted.
“Yep, impossible, but that’s what happened to my little metal wranglers. It’s like they’ve been in a fight. Only, neither the metal nor the mountain’s supposed to fight back.”
Unless the metal were fighting for its life, Ray thought, slumping in his chair. “Mary, work with Harry today. Get me a good spectrum from a million years back.”
“What are you looking for?” Mary asked.
“I have no idea. Lek, I want you to get the sky eyes back up. One over New Haven, another for Refuge, one circulating around the Covenanters.”
“You don’t trust the news media?” Kat asked.
“Let’s say I don’t trust them to know what they’re looking at, or what’s important. I want my own raw data feed.”
“I’ll patch it into the stuff we’re getting from Lek’s taps,” Kat said. “We’ll get you one consolidated intelligence report for tomorrow morning, Colonel.”
“Good.” Ray turned back to Lek. “While you’re working on other stuff, spend some time meditating on what a surveillance system or computer network might look like after we’ve had a million years to polish the technology. Any ideas?”
“No.”
“Me neither. But for the moment, assume something very high-tech grew over the million quiet years, and some of it is still humming.” Ray’s subordinates looked at each other, then at him. “We need an estimate of the situation to work from. I’m offering one, You have an alternate, I’m listening.”
“A million-year-old technology that’s been rusting for a long while. You know something we don’t?” Doc asked.
“Maybe. I’m not sure. Kat, fit the data to the curve. Tell me where my guess doesn’t fit.”
The young middie shook her head slowly. “There’s not enough data to conclude anything, sir.”
“Okay, I’ve stuck my neck out. Now you get out there and prove me wrong. By the way, Harry, before you go, would you let Doc take a picture of the inside of your skull?”
“Kind of a new-employee physical?” the old man grinned.
“Doc, I also want to spend some time on the table,” Ray said, getting to his feet. “You’ve got your assignments, everybody. Have at them. Oh, Lek, Mary, and I found an interesting pillar in a cave yesterday. Once you’ve got the sky eyes up, take a look at it; see if you can find anything electromagnetic about it.”
Ray walked over to the hospital with Doc and Harry. If he weren’t so dead on his feet, he might have been able to skip the cane entirely. Then again, maybe he was just being optimistic. Doc scanned Harry quickly, ending it with a whistle and a question. “You have many headaches?”
“When I was a kid. Not recently. Why?”
Doc motioned Harry and Ray over to look at his scan. “I’m finding most Santa Marians have some kind of growth in this section of the brain. Yours is one of the largest I’ve seen. The Colonel here sports a bigger one.” Ray nodded and Jerry pulled up his scan, as well as the kids’.
Harry frowned. “What do you make of it?”
“Right now,” Jerry said, “nothing. I can’t even figure out an approach.”
On that, Harry left and Ray took his place on the table, got comfortable, took a deep breath, and told Jerry, “Today we do a brain activity scan. I’ll think something, and you tell me what part of my brain lights up. I had a baseline done a while back.”
Doc fiddled with his station for a while. “Here’s that part of your file. Let’s start with the multiplication tables.”
“Seven times one is seven,” Ray began. He’d droned through the eights before Jerry called enough.
“I’m supposed to show you some dirty pictures. All I’ve got is a couple of boring inkblots.”
“I’m a married man, Doc. Going to be a daddy soon. I ought to be able to provide a few thoughts gratis.” Rita in her, folks’ garden, at the lake, on the ship.
“Nothing’s changed there, Colonel. Try a tactical problem.”
Ray went over the assault on the pass, trying for the umpteenth time to figure out how he could have gotten around Mary and her bag of surprises.
“Yeah, that’s a match, in spades,” Jerry said. “You’re dialed in. What did you want to show me?”
Ray thought of the Three. The soaring towers and purple gardens. The doctor whistled, started tapping his board like mad. Ray remembered the caverns of the woolly leg-legs, The art on the walls of the long tunnels. “Any change there, Doc?”
“None. I mean, yes. No. Keep doing whatever it is you’re doing.” Ray switched to the aeries of the spinners, dancing on the winds where gravity’s kiss was but a light caress.
“That one is a bit sensuous,” Doc observed.
“The thought of flying free always was a turn-on,” Ray explained softly.
“Want to tell me what’s going on here?”
“Got enough?”
“Yeah. Corpsman!” Doc shouted. “Wrestle me up the kids.” A lab-coated assistant nodded silently and left. “Okay, Colonel, what were you doing that made that little thing you shouldn’t have get all red and yellow from use?”
Ray swung himself off the table and ambled over to watch his own scans. The first half minute was familiar territory. Then the dark mass that scared Ray just to look at warmed up, showing itself off boldly in reds, pinks, and yellows. Other parts of Ray’s brain glowed in response to some stimuli from it. “I’m remembering things I never did.”
“Recalling dreams?”
Ray shook his head. “Too real. My dreams have a fuzziness around the edge. Nothing hazy here. I can read the writing on the walls, writing I’ve never seen before. I even understand the poetry. Understand all of its allusions and can call up more memories to back them up.” Ray tapped his head. “These memories are as real as anything I’ve lived.”
Jerry leaned back, knuckling his eyes with both fists as if to clear them of sleep, exhaustion, unacceptance, all of the above. “We’ve been trying to make data biostorage units. Every time we think they might be cost-effective, silicon comes up with a new growth spurt. And reading the data is slow.”
“I don’t know about that. All I know is I’ve just failed to disprove the hypothesis I presented this morning. I’ve got to face some things I didn’t want to even touch. Things I’ve been dismissing as dreams aren’t dreams at all. Certain experiences I and the kids had were very real. This planet is crazy. Maybe even crazier than I thought. Now I’ve got to start figuring out what to do about it. Certainly before tonight.”
“Tonight?”
“Yeah. ’cause if I can’t handle this crazy place by tonight, it’s not going to let me sleep again. And Doc, I am tired.”
A shake of the head was all the medication Jerry gave.
Ray dropped in on Kat before leaving the hospital/research center. She was elbow-deep in correlating Lek’s media and news dumps. “My college news was more interesting than this. Recipes! They actually put recipes on the front page of one. Doesn’t anything interesting ever happen around here?”
“Depends on what you consider interesting. Include a search on albinism.” Ray rubbed his temples for a moment. “Pain management ought to cover headaches. Hallucinations, any other mental health issues.”
“I saw something flash by about whirling dervishes or some kind of mystics among the Covenanters.”
“Right. Mysticism. Witch-hunts. Those kinds of things.”
Ray left as the kids were herded into Med Bay One for tests. The morning had left them happily grubby. A sky eyes took off as Ray strode for Barber’s office. Mary and the chief were head down over his station. They glanced up as Ray entered.
“Got a blimp due in by noon,” Barber said. “Another by supper. They’re loaded with ceramic feed and carbon bricks. You know anything about that?”
“I told San Paulo our help didn’t come free. Steal a blimp while one’s up here.”
“Any particular reason?” Mary asked.
“I may be bouncing a core sampling team all over the place.”
The chief leaned back in his chair. “Colonel, I’m as good as any old soldier at working in the dark. And I can process bullshit into mushrooms like anybody else. But that don’t mean I like it. Ready to talk?”
“Don’t know. How good are you at listening?”
“As in can I swallow six impossible things before breakfast?” the chief asked. Ray nodded. “Try me. I think I follow the cards you’ve put face up on the table. Can’t help but think you’ve got a few up your sleeve you ain’t talking about.”
Ray told them of the test Doc had just completed. “He’s checking the kids now. Asking them to remember about the Three. The scenes they saw in the cave.”
“Nice,” the chief said. “Instead of buying all those case files in college, just load it into your head.”
“What made you think of school?” Ray asked.
“Don’t know. Been dreaming about working on my masters.”
“In my dreams,” Ray said, “I meet what’s causing all this. Calls itself the Teacher. This whole planet was its school.”
Mary pursed her lips. “If you could make jump points on the gross scale and modify cells at the micro, why not use an entire planet to teach your young? Or your old, for that matter? Heard the old adage you can’t teach an old dog new tricks? Imagine what you could do with a planet for a classroom.”
The chief snorted ruefully. “I’ve served under some old mossbacks. Turkeys who hadn’t learned a thing since they hatched. Could spout all the new management words: “empowerment,” “results-oriented,” “shared visions.” Had the words but couldn’t do a damn thing with them. Couldn’t change at the gut level. Me, I figured I’d outlive the bastards.”
Mary nodded. “Met a few like those in the mines.”
“But what if everyone lives for hundreds, thousands of years?” Ray mused.
“Society either stagnates, or folks learn to change deep down, all through their lives. I know a few who did,” the chief agreed. “Took a damn painful boot in the ass to get their attention, to make them really want to do things different.”
“A planet might do that,” Mary agreed.
“Be fun watching it in action,” the chief grinned.
Ray shook his head. “Got a problem there. This thing thinks it knows all there is to know.”
“Oh, shit,” Barber breathed. “I’ve known a few like that. A real pain. What makes you think that?”
“Maybe just a dream. Maybe the Teacher has figured out a way into my brain.” Ray tapped his forehead. “You know, that thing in here Doc and I are working to understand. I think it puts me on the Teacher’s net.”
“Which is why you ventured your guess this morning,” the chief said. Ray nodded. “Okay, boss. What do you want from me?”
“Help Mary keep the base up. I’m not sure that when we tapped that hill, we didn’t piss the Teacher off big time.”
Barber shook his head. “Unsmart of a student.”
“Got any good ideas why people have taken to rioting in the streets?” Mary asked.
“I damn near was ready to riot last night in Refuge. All kinds of nasty feelings running around in my gut. No reason for them.” Mary pursed her lips. Ray shrugged and went on. “Let me know what you’re making with the feed metals you’ve got.” Ray stood. “Start looking around the base for anything you’re willing to melt down and recycle to a higher priority. Life’s only going to get more interesting.”
His commlink interrupted him. “Colonel, Kat here. You want to see what we’ve got over here.”
“On my way.”
Ray walked briskly back to the hospital. The kids were bouncing off the walls in Med Bay One, so their tests must be done. Doc was head down over his board.
“Any surprises?” Ray called.
“Just like yours,” Jerry answered without looking up. “There’s got to be a pattern here somewhere. Hell, we still don’t have the human brain mapped, and now I’ve got more territory to confuse me.”
Kat and three other middies were keeping eight stations working full-time, hopping between chairs and chattering at light speed. “Another just lit off,” “I’ve got lots of movement but no action,” “But why isn’t any of this being reported?”
“What’s happening?” Ray asked, settling into a seat that apparently was out of the musical-chair competition.
“Oh, Colonel, good. We’re seeing movement of refugees out of the larger cities and into the towns and villages. Some are going smoothly. Others aren’t.”
“Show me.”
“First sky eye headed for New Haven,” Kat said. Aerial views flashed across a large screen. “We observed heavy congestion at the rail stations after a train pulled out.” Kat stopped at one scene. A train was just leaving; several dozen people in what looked like family groups scattered on foot from the station. “We didn’t hang around to follow any particular group, at least not at first. We wanted to check more trains, more stations. Lots of people traveling out. Empty trains going back.”
“Trains take up a lot of steel.” Ray knew he was changing the topic, but iron was supposedly just as hard to find as copper. What were these folks doing with trains?
“Rails are hardened ceramic. Trains are electric, using a third-rail system holding seawater to carry the electricity.”
“So,” Ray summed up what he was hearing, “the urban response to being laid off is to hike out to the hinterlands. That’s where the food is. Maybe they have relatives who will put them up. Sounds like a good approach.”
“Yes, sir. That’s down south,” Kat said, and changed the view. Smoke streamed up from burning houses. “This is off the second sky eye. It was headed for Richland, but we’ve kept it circling between us and them.” She zoomed the picture. Now he could see figures in the streets. Some wielded clubs. Others fought hand to hand. Another house began to burn.
“Talk to me, Kat.”
Annie Mulroney did not want to go with Da to get his still. Da dreamed of producing poteen as well as beer. With the copper he’d made off the starfolks, he’d finally ordered one, was getting it at discount, since he was paying with copper. To top it off, Da talked the motor pool chief into letting him ride along on one of the mules headed for County Clair.
So. Fine for Da. Annie saw no reason she should go with him. “Be good for you to get out for a while,” Ma said.
“You mean away from Jeff,” Annie shot back.
“You spend too much time with him,” Da told her.
“I haven’t seen him for two days!” Annie answered.
“Good,” Ma said. “Now go with Da. Listen to the still’s instructions. You’ll have to wash it.” From the way Da talked, Annie doubted she’d be allowed within ten feet of it.
A mule with two trailers stopped in front of the Public Room. Annie recognized the marine driving, Dumont, one of the hard ones. She dutifully settled in the back. In the holster on the door beside the driver, the butt of a rifle poked out. “Do you always carry guns?” Da asked.
“Today we do,” the marine answered curtly.
Annie settled in for an uninteresting ride but couldn’t help exclaiming as the land went by so fast. Trees beside the road were almost a blur. “How fast are we going?”
“Only fifty-five kilometers an hour.”
“That’s faster than a train or a blimp,” Da pointed out.
“You folks go at life kind of slow,” the marine observed.
Annie had ridden this road on a wagon; it rattled from one pothole to the next. The mule seemed to fly over the same holes, bouncing her hardly at all. Annie wondered how it could, but didn’t bother the marine. He seemed intent on something.
Dumont dropped Da and Annie off first at the machinist’s shop and got directions to the granary. That was why the chief was offering folks rides with his drivers. The mules got back a lot faster when they had someone to act as a guide, or knew who to ask for directions. In the dusty shop, Annie listened as the mechanic took the still apart and put it in a wood crate.
“Think you can put it back together?” the man asked when it was boxed.
“Do I look like a daft city slick?” Da answered; both laughed. The two carried the box out and put it gently down on the walk beside the shop.
“Your starman will be coming back for you now, won’t he?” the mechanic said.
“No doubt, no doubt. Me and me daughter will just be enjoying a bit of your sun.” The man went back into his shop as a train whistle echoed in the air. Annie swept up her skirt and sat on the box to wait.
“Be careful now, girl,” was Da’s only response. He looked at a new stove in the man’s window. The flyer plastered beside it promised it would burn peat faster and produce more heat and less ash. People were all the time making things better.
Five men turned the corner, not two blocks down in the direction of the train whistle. Annie glanced at them, then away. They were hard city types, strutting themselves. She’d been taught to pay them no mind, and she did. Jeff was so different from the likes of those. Annie stood and slid around to put Da between her and the leering men. She tried to keep her eyes down, like Ma said, to fix them on the new stove, but her glance kept flitting to the men. Their stares were hard on her. As if, as if…she didn’t know what made men look like that. Then she saw that three of them carried clubs.
“Da, can we go?”
“The mule’s not back, child.” But Da’s eyes were also drawn to the men. “I’ll talk to Damon,” Da said. He took two steps sideways to the door, not facing the coming men, not turning his back on them either. “Damon, can you watch me box?”
“Sure,” came from inside.
“We can do better,” came from behind Annie. A hand grabbed her shoulder, whirled her around. A man was in her face. Tall, blond—and drunk. “I can take care of you myself,” came at her in a nauseating wash of breath and throaty demand.
Annie pushed, tried to shove him away. “I don’t need your help. Da!”
Da reached for her assailant, but a club came down on his shoulder. “You don’t want to interrupt, now do you, you dirt-eating farmer. The girl’s a might muddy for your tastes, Han, but she’s in your hand.” The man at the end of the club laughed.
All five of them were here now. Two with clubs threatened Da. Two more watching Damon, who’d come from his shop but got no farther than the door. And the fifth. A knife had appeared in his hand; it weaved in the air just below Annie’s breasts. “A bit overdressed for this warm day, huh, fellows?”
His knife slit up her bodice. As he clipped the top, both sides fell open, exposing her breasts. His other hand was pulling up her skirt, pawing her thighs. Annie tried to push his hand down, hold her top up. “Da,” she whimpered.
“Annie,” came from Da explosively as a club took him full in the stomach.
“You know, I don’t think her old man is enjoying this nearly enough.” A second club took Da in the head; he collapsed to the ground. “Smile, old man,” one said and kicked Da.
“Please stop,” Annie begged, knowing the words had no meaning to these men, hoping somewhere there might be something soft and gentle still living in them.
“And why should I stop?” the man with the knife at her throat laughed. Flicking his knife, he drove her hand away from her breasts, letting them fall bare again. His other hand knocked her arm away; he grabbed the upper flesh of her thigh.
“Because the woman asked you to,” came soft and deadly from the street. On silent electric motors, the mule had glided up behind the men. Dumont now rested one hand on the steering wheel and waited, with an air of infinite patience, for an answer.
“That’s a stupid reason,” the knife said, stepping away from Annie but keeping the blade at her throat. He extended his other hand toward the marine in a gesture Da said was obscene.
One of the other men, who’d been watching Damon, took advantage of the distraction to bring his club up fast and hard into the mechanic’s gut. Damon went down, hands to his belly, struggling for air. The men laughed—and turned to the marine.
“Go away, starkid. You got no business here.”
“You’re probably right. But I brought that young woman here, and her pa, and I told them I’d take them back. As I see it, they ought to be in the same shape.”
“Well, we don’t see it that way,” one of them said, slowly inching toward Dumont.
“Even a dumbfuck marine can tell that,” Dumont nodded.
“Leave us alone and you won’t get hurt.”
“No can do.”
“Then we’ll just have to include you in our fun. And there’s five of us and just one of you.”
“Gunny at boot camp said one trained marine ought to be able to handle six street shits with no training. Proved it, too. Gunny was a nice old bastard. Only put two of us in the hospital.”
“I’m sick of this talk. Get him.”
A small pistol appeared in the hand Dumont did not have on the steering wheel. As he swept it over the rushing men, it made sharp popping sounds. After each pop, a large exit hole would appear in the back of one of the city slick’s heads. As in a slow-motion dream, they went down.
The blood and brains from one of them splattered Annie. She gagged on a scream.
“Sorry about that,” Dumont said, running to Annie’s side. “Gunny also said an automatic beats a club every day.”
“They’re dead,” Annie whispered, trying to control the fear that shook her, trying to convince herself she was safe.
“Very dead. Let’s get you and your old man out of here.” He helped her up, half-carried her to the mule, and set her gently down in the back. “Mr. Mulroney, can you make it?”
“I think so.” Hauling himself up by the window frame, Da stood unsteadily, then offered Damon a hand up. With effort, Da made it to the mule.
Dumont quickly stepped around the mule and slid into the driver’s seat. “Now we get the hell out of Dodge, fast,” Dumont whispered as he reached to put the mule in gear.
A woman screamed. Down the street, a young woman, child held to her breast, dress half ripped off her, stumbled and fell, landing hard to protect the infant in her arms. A roar of male laughter followed her. Behind her, a building started to burn.
“No, damn it,” Dumont whimpered. His hand came away from the mule’s controls. He swiped at the perspiration on his brow. “Where are you, priest, when I need you? I don’t want to do this anymore.” Another scream reached them; a harsh laugh followed.
“God damn them all!” Dumont shouted as he reached for the rifle holstered on the mule’s door.
Standing beside the vehicle, he took his automatic from its holster and handed it to Da. “It’s easy to use. Sight down the barrel. You squeeze back gentle on the trigger and a red dot appears where the needle’s going. Pull back the rest of the way, and you saw what happens.” Da nodded dumbly. “You’ll tell the little priest. I didn’t have any good choices. You’ll tell him.”
“I will,” Annie whispered.
The marine pulled glasses from his pocket, put them on. Even in the glare of day, Annie could see the play of lights on them, the picture of what the gun saw riding over what Dumont saw. “See you in a few minutes.”
Ray studied the images coming back from the sky eye. The air-conditioned comfort of the hospital struggled against the grainy dirt of the pictures. Kat rambled on, trying to explain what shouldn’t have to be said. “It looks like mobs started moving out on foot from Richland early this morning. Apparently the refugees are beating up the town and village folks and taking their homes. In the past hour we’ve started seeing groups of two or three trains rolling into a station and emptying out a mob of people, who take over the town. The trains turn around and head back for more. It almost seems organized.”
“Any reports of this in the media?”
“Richland’s paper doesn’t seem to be up today. Usual TV programming is off the air. All we’re getting are reruns of get-rich-quick dramas, the life of the rich and debauched, or what passes for education there. No news.”
“Refuge?”
“Several channels are just flat off the air. Reruns on the rest. TV news was canceled due to a lack of interest. The explanation was a bit more long-winded, but it boiled down to just that. Newspaper is publishing bland stuff. Most of it looks canned from weeks ago.”
“Do we have the blimp take?”
“Three blimps are up. A few mobs are still moving around Refuge, but Cassie’s vectoring local teams over to break them up. A lot of foot traffic around the suburbs, but no one is aiming the blimps that direction, so I’d have to bring the sky eye over to see what is happening there, and I think you’d rather keep it between us and them.” She nodded at the screen. Another two houses were burning. The camera flicked to another village farther up the rail line. A house burst into flames.
“Anything crazy from the Covenanters?”
“You tell me. Televangelists always sound crazy.”
“They’re burning her! My God, they’re burning that woman.” One of the two middies who had kept bouncing from chair to chair stopped in midhop, face draining white. “That preacher declared her a witch, and he’s burning her!”
Kat brought that picture up on the central screen. A woman, hands tied above her head, screamed horribly as flames began to engulf her dress. The camera backed off. A man was being burned as well. “Oh, let it be a graphic image,” Kat breathed, fingers flying as she ran a subroutine to see if it was a created graphics, not real. “It’s real,” she choked.
“Too damn real for me. Cut it off,” Ray snapped.
Kat did. “Sir, this is crazy. I can show you the feed from five years back. Last year, for heaven’s sake. That same guy was talking about ice-cream socials and God loving everyone and how there was no hell and everybody was going to heaven. What’s gotten into him? How could he change so much so fast?”
Ray blinked several times, trying to rid himself of the afterimage of that last shot. “I wish to hell I knew,” he whispered. “They’re burning witches up north. They’re rioting in the center. They’re still acting pretty rational in the South.” Kat nodded. “There’s a big continent to the north of us—say, a thousand kilometers away.” Again Kat nodded, brows coming down in puzzlement. She didn’t see the pattern.
Ray did.
“I’m tired,” Ray sighed. “Maybe I’ll take a nap. Can you keep collecting data?”
“Yes, sir. But what are we going to do about it?”
“There’s still time to decide that.”
Kat glanced at the various screens and the mayhem on them. “Time’s running out for an awful lot of people, sir.”
Ray headed down the hall. Med Bay One was deafeningly quiet, the kids gone, and Doctor Isaacs intent on his boards.
“Doc, you got a place I can lie down? Get some rest while you monitor me?”
Jerry came to his feet. “What do you have in mind?”
Ray settled on the table. “I’d like you to check my brain activity while I’m sleeping. You might find it informative.”
“Only if you let me put you on heart and blood chemistry monitors while you’re at it.”
“Hook me up to your heart’s content. Probably beats me drinking a lot of water and hoping my bladder gets me up before the dream gets bad.” Ray lay down while Jerry prodded and poked. Done, Doc stood by Ray.
“Want to tell me what’s going to happen?”
“Things have been happening in my sleep. I dismissed them as just dreams. Now I think they’re more. Whatever is running this planet may be trying to talk to me. I’m going looking for it. I don’t much care for how it’s running this show, and I think it’s time I told it.”
“You carrying a suitcase bomb?” Doc asked, alluding to Ray’s reputation.
“Would if I knew how to get one into my dreams. Guess I’ll just have to settle for words.”
“Take care. I’ll keep watch.” Jerry closed the curtains, hardly darkening Ray’s surroundings. He took several deep breaths and tried to relax into the table’s thin cushion. Many a night he would have considered this rank luxury. Closing his eyes, Ray began to methodically relax each part of his body, starting with his legs. He didn’t get far.
“What are you doing?” came in a high-pitched, petulant voice from behind Ray. The room was lined by dusty, unkept shelves. Old books in worn leather bindings stood upright or lay sideways. Several were open, stacked on top of each other. Other knickknacks decorated the shelves—one, a skull with four eye openings. As Ray struggled to comprehend what his mind was simulating, he remembered this scene, a fantasy holovid, complete with dragons. He turned, knowing what he’d see. Yep, a magician sat on a three-legged stool beside a table covered with paraphernalia, including a crystal ball On it played scenes from the sky eye. Interesting blending of technologies, Ray mused.
“What are you doing? And why won’t any of you talk to me?” the mage repeated. The face was familiar; he’d seen it on the million counselors. The robes this time were royal purple, with five pointed stars lining the cuffs and bottom hem. Ray’s subconscious was giving him plenty of hints; he struggled to absorb them in his dreaming state.
“I am here, and I am ready to talk to you,” Ray answered.
“So you are. So you are,” the figure answered, scratching his ear absentmindedly. “And what do you have to say?”
“I’m not quite sure what you mean by that question.”
“Look at you. Just look at you.” The mage pointed at his crystal ball. Visions flittered across it of major buildings burning in Refuge, houses burning in towns. “Bad enough that you tore up my eyes, ears, and fingers to cover the land with worthless stuff. Now you destroy that, too. What can be learned from such actions? I ask you. I ask you!”
“Matters have gotten very confusing. I’m not sure just what is happening,” Ray said, fumbling for the central purpose of this conversation and not sure there was one.
“That shows what happens. It really does. You do not listen to me. None of you. You ignore me. Totally ignore.”
“Not really. You’re not hearing a half, a quarter of what I’m saying to you.”
“I’m listening to everything I can hear,” Ray assured him. “Can you ask for more than that?”
“Not really, no, not really. But why can’t you hear all of me? The Gardener was here. Giving you ears was not beyond his limited skills. Where is the Gardener? I ask you. Where is he?”
Given two questions, Ray chose the easier. “I don’t believe the Gardener was able to give ears to all of us. We are not of the Three. We need different ears.”
“You are not of the Three, that is sure. That is very sure,” the mage said, squinting at Ray. “Don’t look at all like any of the Three None. Who are you? Yes, who are you?”
“I am a human being. Ray Longknife at your service,” he said, “Ambassador from the Society of Humanity, and Minister of Science and Technology for the sovereign planet of Wardhaven.”
“Lots of names for such a small fellow who can’t even hear me clearly. Can’t hardly hear at all.”
“Yes,” Ray agreed. “But I can hear better than most. Better than those”—he swept a hand toward the crystal ball. “Are you trying to talk to them as well?”
“Talk to them. I’m shouting. Shouting at them. Can’t you hear me shouting?” The purple-clad figure shifted in his chair, scowled at the crystal ball. “Shouting.”
And is the shouting what’s causing them to go berserk? Good question, but not one he wanted this fellow to tackle. “They can’t hear you. They have only the beginning of the ear they need for you. Why do you shout at those who cannot hear?”
“Because they should. They should,” he snorted. “The Gardener said he was working on their hearing. He said that years ago. Surely he could solve a simple problem as an ear. Three hundred orbits of the sun is enough time to resolve any difficulty,” the mage ended, half-muttering to himself.
“We are different from the Three. Maybe more complex. The Gardener did not resolve the problem. You have only to look at what you see to know that.”
“And where is the Gardener?” The mage looked up, fixing Ray with an unblinking eye. “He should be here to tell us what he tried. How he did it. What we should do differently. I ask you again: Where is the Gardener? What have you done with him?”
That was the first time the question had gotten personal. Ray considered ignoring it again, but he was getting tired of this thing’s unwillingness to face up to reality. Humanity is different. We are not ready to be plugged into whatever idea it has for educating us. The sooner the Teacher realized the world was more complex than it expected, the sooner humanity and it could get down to serious business.
“The Gardener is no longer here.” Ray answered slowly. “There may have been an accident. Our communications were rudimentary. In the process of searching for resources to use, we may have removed minerals critical for the Gardener. Had we but known it, we would not have done it. However, in our ignorance and because of the Gardener’s own lack of success in communicating with us, we may have contributed to the conditions that ended the continued existence of the Gardener.” Ray was glad for his practice as a politician, tap-dancing around ugly truths.
The mage leaned back on its stool, looking long and hard at Ray. “The Gardener is…dead?”
“Yes.”
“You killed it.”
Ray didn’t want to put it quite that bluntly. As he struggled for an alternate answer, the mage answered himself.
“That’s impossible. These primitives couldn’t hurt the likes of us.” This came from a second mage, identical to the first, only standing on his right.
“Well, the Gardener is gone,” said a third mage, this one on the first’s left.
“Many things could have happened here. We have only begun our own examination.” The mage was proliferating at a blinding speed, thousands appearing, stretching out at the right and left of the first, all talking, all arguing. “They may be primitive, but killing is a primitive reaction.” “How could something so small destroy the Gardener?” “The Gardener was old. It had long been out of touch with us. Anything could have happened.” “We are old and not what we once were. Could they terminate us?” “That is not possible.” “Neither could the Gardener vanish.” “You go too far.” “You do not go far enough.”
Ray stepped back from the growing crowd of arguing mages. He spotted one that was missing an arm. Somehow the Teacher had changed modes from singular to plural. From the sound of the arguments, it or they didn’t have a whole lot of experience at consensus-building.
“Now you have done it.”
Ray found the bewigged lackey at his elbow. “Done what?”
“Got them fighting among themselves. They can keep this up until dark and sunrise again.” The servant cast him a dour, sidelong glance. “You should not have done it.”
“Why?”
“They will carry on like this and forget to take care of themselves. And when they do remember, my job will be all the harder. You should not have done that.”
“I see your point, but maybe now, while they’re busy, I can get some sleep myself.”
With the attendant still glowering at Ray, he vanished quietly away.
Ray came awake slowly, his usual discomfort only pressing, not demanding. “Doc,” he called. When he got no answer, he raised the volume. “Doc, I need to take a leak, and if you don’t unplug me from all your test gear, I’m gonna do it right here.”
“Just a second, Ray, I’m coming.” In a moment, the curtains were jerked aside and Ray found himself facing a very excited Jerry and Kat.
“What’s got into you two?”
“You’ve got to come look at our monitors,” Kat demanded.
“You have a good rest?” Doc asked.
Ray stretched. “Yeah. Best in a week or so. No headache, either. Got any opinions why?”
“Some. You dropped off to sleep like normal, then your readings took off on a wild ride. Lasted six minutes, thirty-four seconds,” Doc said, glancing, at his board. “Then you dropped down into the sleep of the innocent.”
“Nice,” Ray yawned.
“And Kat here came galloping in, telling me I had to wake you up to see what she was seeing.”
“I’m glad you didn’t,” Ray said, sliding off the table and looking around for the nearest rest room.
“Off to your left,” Doc said, reading his mind.
“Our sky eyes are showing a total change,” Kat enthused. “People have quit fighting, no more fires. Colonel, everything changed just like that.”
“I’ll be with you in a moment,” Ray said, slipping into the rest room and closing the door behind him. Kat, still excitedly following him, almost had her nose flattened in the process. Relieved of annoying bladder pressure, Ray rejoined them. “So my little talk with the Teacher had immediate results.”
“Looks like it,” Jerry said. “What’d you tell it?”
“I’m not sure it was what I said. I think it might be where I left it.”
“Which was?” Kat insisted.
“Arguing with itself. Or selves. I’m not sure whether it’s one critter or a thousand. I’m not sure it knows the answer to that.” This got him two quizzical stares.
“Sorry, folks, but let’s keep one thing clear: My mind, conscious, subconscious, whatever, is having a hell of a time relating to this thing. It’s filling in a lot of holes in the data, and I’m never sure what is really it and what is me painting in something from my memory that may or may not be like something the Teacher is trying to send. Communications is not taking place here on a one-for-one basis. Follow me?”
Both Jerry and Kat nodded slowly. “Being drafted into the navy, I had to learn a whole new language, or so it seemed. We middies could hardly understand Dumont or Mary’s marines, either flavor, at first At least we’re all human. Imagine something that’s never even seen a human before. Trying to get a word across must be damn near impossible.”
“I only wished I’d gotten better at it before we killed the Gardener.”
“Sir?” Jerry and Kat froze in place.
“It seems there was a reason why the hill Mary tapped had such a high concentration and wide variety of minerals. It was something like the central core for a thing I’ve been calling the Gardener.” That earned Ray blank stares. “I named it that because the mental image I always got when communicating with it was of an old fellow who used to handle the flowers and shrubs around the Academy.” The nods he got from both of them showed at least some understanding.
“Well, the Gardener last appeared to me and the kids the afternoon Mary tapped the metal out of Jeff’s hill. He looked kind of sick, and got sicker as we talked. I haven’t seen him since, and the Teacher keeps asking me where the Gardener is.”
“Oh, lord,” Doc groaned.
“Could we kill a part of a world machine?” Kat asked.
Ray stabbed a finger at Doc’s board. “That, my friends, is the question I left the Teacher squabbling over among its selves. That’s why he’s too busy at the moment to drive people into a killing craze. Doc, find out if they’ve got a morgue in Refuge with all the victims of the rioting. If you can tell the difference between the rioters and their victims, I’d love to see a comparison between the size of this damn thing in their heads. Something was driving me damn near crazy enough last night in Refuge to want to riot. I think it was this tumor.”
Jerry nodded. “I’ll see what Cassie can tell me.”
“The shuttle’s yours if you need to make a quick trip to Refuge.”
“I’m on it.” The doc dropped into his workstation and started stabbing keys.
“Now, young woman, I’d like to see just how fast the Teacher’s distraction turned off the murderings.”
“Yes, sir.”
Ray was in the conference room as evening gently settled into full dark and his exhausted battle staff, as he was starting to think of them, filed in. The padre had begged off; he had a premarriage counseling session already scheduled.
“How’d the day’s core sampling go?” Ray asked for starters.
“Pretty much as you expected,” Harry answered. “There’s a lot more metal in the soil just below the first layer of storm debris. We drilled at six different locations. All the same. A pattern in the data piqued my interest. Seems less metal was laid down after the first storm inundation. Even less after the second. Matched in all six locations. So I went hunting for someplace where there were no major storms to tear up the ground, just minor sandstorms adding to the alluvial topsoil.”
“Don’t keep us waiting,” Ray urged him. What did happen when there was no major disaster?
“Small amounts of residual metal at almost every level, growing larger the farther down we go. Apparently recovery was poorer each time. Top layer gave us the largest sample. However, it was nowhere near as high a concentration as we got in places undisturbed from the first break.”
Ray rubbed his chin, then brought everyone up to date on what had been laid on him hour by hour through the day.
“The tumor is a commlink and memory, but memories of things you never did,” Mary summed it up. “The Teacher is somehow causing the antisocial behavior, but that is biased toward the north.” She stared at the ceiling, as if studying something. “There’s a large landmass to the north, so it’s probably coming from there. Have we missed anything?”
“It’s electronic,” Lek said. “Based on the content of the metal core samples, it has to be. What did your dream mean by we’d wrecked its eyes, ears, fingers?”
“Any of you been having weird dreams?” Doc asked.
That got nods from around the table. “Even you,” Ray said to Jeff and Harry.
“Been getting weirder over the past six, nine months,” Harry said. “Same nightmares I had as a kid. Hated them then. Now I see what was going on.”
“In my dreams, I’m dealing with something that my subconscious has dubbed the Teacher.” Ray normally had no patience with long, rambling morning expositions about people’s nightly entertainment. Now he launched into an exhaustive outline of his, both with the Gardener and the Teacher.
“Oh, no,” Mary groaned as he told of his last meeting with the Gardener. “I had no idea.”
“Neither did I,” Ray pointed out. “We were moving fast and it was talking slow.” Ray went on to finish with the connection between his leaving the Teacher—or Teachers—lost in debate, and the level of violence taking a nosedive.
“Is it attacking us?” Kat asked.
“I don’t think so. In my dreams I don’t feel any hostile intent. In Refuge, when I was about ready to run riot myself, there was no direction, just a general itch. No, right now it’s puzzled by us and our behavior. Something that I might point out is mutual.”
“So what?” Mary cut in. “It’s raising havoc, no matter its intentions. How do we defend ourselves? Do we counterattack?”
“For the moment,” Kat said slowly, “let’s assume this is the thing that built the jump points. It sure as hell can do crazy things to our biology. Do we really want to piss it off? I mean, worse than we’ve done already? I didn’t much like fighting Unity, and I was pretty sure we could beat them. Anyone think we can lick whatever-it-is?”
“Can’t argue with you,” Mary answered. “But do we have a choice. Looks to me like we’re already at war. From a rifle sight picture, those bastards coming over the hill from Richland don’t look all that different from Unity thugs.”
“But those poor folks got even less control over their lives than Unity gave their troopers.” Doc shook his head. “Killing people who don’t even know why they’re out to kill you…”
Ray had spent twenty years fighting whatever enemy the government of Wardhaven pointed him at. Then Unity started calling the shots and he started having second thoughts. Ungood for a soldier. Worse results for President Urm of Unity. Damn. This was getting more complicated by the second.
“Does anybody around this table think we have any chance of enforcing our will upon the Teacher?” Ray asked as he looked from one person to the next. He ended with Mary.
“Colonel, I don’t know how we can win, but I’ll be damned if I’ll give up without a fight.”
“So, how do we deescalate this without a fight?” he asked.
“Think you could tell it we just want to live in peace?” Kat asked Ray.
“I’ll try that next time I close my eyes. Don’t think I’m going to get much rest without saying a few words to our friend first. Mary, check on the kids, see if they’re having problems.”
“Yes, sir. So, what do we do?” Mary demanded back.
Ray took in a deep breath, then let it out slowly. He had no idea. He glanced around the table. Harry raised a finger tentatively. “Go for it,” Ray said.
“Seems to me that we have two problems: the fire, and the boiling kettle. The Teacher is the fire, heating up the kettle, but the poor folks boiling around in the kettle are as much victims as perpetrators, no matter who holds the club. Your Kat and I ended up facing some of those folks last night. They’d been my neighbors most of their life. If something wasn’t inciting them, they wouldn’t have been out to burn my house.”
“Agreed.” Mary said. “So?”
“If you can’t put out the fire, maybe we could dump ice in the pot, keep it from boiling.”
“Great concept,” Mary muttered. “Doing it. Now, that’s the problem. What do we use for ice?”
“Just a thought,” Harry started. “Miss V caused a lot of this by demanding copper. Panic spread a lot faster than any problems in the market. What if we…I mean you spacers…went into business against Sterling Enterprises? What if you offered the copper and other metals this economy needs?”
“That’s gonna cool things down?” Mary shook her head. “You might as well declare war on the Teacher. Besides, my nanos won’t survive many rounds with hills that fight back.”
“The Teacher is moving down from North Continent. So we start with our southside. There was no violence there. If we’re mining their hills, it’ll be easier to deliver to them.”
Mary leaned back. “They’re less panicked. They’d be easiest to unpanic. I like that.”
“And their economy has been less dislocated,” Harry added.
“They’ll also be less embarrassed to look each other in the eye once they sober up,” Lek tossed in.
Ray pushed himself back from the table, let the idea roll over in his mind for several long seconds. “Things have been happening a lot faster than we can process them,” he said slowly. “Before we go too far down this track, I’d like to verify a few assumptions. Can we find some recent evidence on our continent’s northside of a new electronic net? Can we verify there’s something new operating there? Once we’ve got a picture, we can risk mining down South, where the network isn’t. Let’s take a day or two, use the blimp we hijacked.”
“Two blimps, sir,” Mary grinned. “I had a hunch if you needed one this morning, you’d want two by tonight.”
“Thank you and your crystal ball,” Ray snorted. “Next point: Harry, where’re the best minerals down South?”
“I was with brother Mark when he went eating around down there,” Harry said. “Some good prospects, as you’re measuring them now. Those data are locked up in the Sterling family archives.”
“Is that anywhere near the copy of the Santa Maria archives I’ve heard Vicky brag so much about?” Ray smiled.
“One and the same,” Jeff grinned.
“And, of course, you know exactly where they are, Jeff.”
“Been there many times.”
“Mary, prepare a team for a possible covert op in Richland.”
“Snatch and grab, sir?”
“Think checking out a library book.”
“Vicky won’t like that,” Jeff and Harry said.
“Vicky’s been playing hardball with these people, but she’s got no idea what it’s like in the big leagues. I’ve played for Wardhaven and Unity. Time she learns what happens when you pull things people don’t like—on people who can do something about them.”
“She’s been pulling things people didn’t like since she was a kid. All she’s learned is that she can get away with them,” Jeff pointed out.
“The times, they are a-changing. Right, Mary?”
“Yes, sir, Colonel, sir, three bags full.” Mary saluted comically, then got deadly serious. “How soon?”
“Tomorrow night at the earliest, next night more likely. Depends on what Jeff and Harry find up north.”
“I’ll have marines ride shotgun when they go north.”
“Do so, Mary. Jeff, Harry, can you leave at first light?”
“Looking forward to the trip,” Harry said.
Jeff didn’t look so enthusiastic. “Kat’s shared the feed from the Covenanters. Sir, they’re burning people up there. Can I borrow a rifle?”
“Mary, see the guy gets trained.”