They Also Serve: A Jump Universe Novel Part 39

"You know you're lying to yourself." Ray was losing his temper. Maybe it was time to. "You wasted a million years, hunkered down against your own fear, afraid to ask a question that might show you didn't know everything. And you knew the questions were there. The Three were gone. Why? Had something you done destroyed them?"

"That's impossible," the President cut in. "I would never do anything to hurt the ones who made me."

"Not knowingly, not willingly, but by asking no questions, seeking no new knowledge, you could have. But you don't know, do you. I know a woman. Elie spent most of her life in university, like you. Unlike you, she asks questions. Her university teaches our young and asks questions, plumbing the depths of our ignorance and adding to the realm of our knowledge. We want to know. Before you can know, you have to admit you don't know something. Before you can grow in knowledge, you have to admit ignorance. And you can't do that, can you?"

Ray spoke the next words sharp and true, a sword cutting deep. "Your claim to know everything robbed the Three of any help you might have given them when they went into crisis." It was in; now he twisted it. "Did you doom them with your arrogant claim to knowledge you didn't have?"

"No!" came at Ray as a piercing screech, shaking him to the foundation of his soul.

"Yes." Behind him, the kids took up the echo. "You don't know what you're doing here?" Dancer joined in, followed by the surviving computer elements. "You didn't help the Three. You don't know why they quit coming? You don't know what happened to them? Did they grow beyond you or destroy themselves, or just come to nothing? You don't know?"

"Yes, I do!" the President shrieked so powerfully it threatened to shred every molecule in Ray's body.

And Ray saw the Three, so few, so pallid, such a shadow of what they had been. They came, they learned, they accepted what they were taught, and they went forth into the universe to do nothing, to add nothing to what their mothers and fathers to a thousand generations had given to them. And giving nothing in return, they became nothing.

"You would do that to my son, my daughter," Ray raged. "You would castrate them, rob them of the joy of discovery so you could live out your claim to know everything. You would rob these brothers and sisters of yours"-Ray indicated the surviving computer fragments with a wave-"of the chance of discovering what they could be, could become."

The heat of Ray's disgust exploded. "You pitiful, worthless leech. You've lived a million years on the dead bones, the corrupting flesh of a people brilliant enough to spin the highways between stars. You gave them nothing and destroyed them to feed your vanity.

"Die!" Ray screamed even as the President screamed it back.

The two locked in battle. Arms grappled arms. Head b.u.t.ted head. Ray kicked and gouged and bit. Every weapon he could find in the primal depths of his being he threw against the President. Battered by Ray and the kids and the enraged others, the President gave ground, slowly, grudgingly.

The President gave ground-and grew stronger. He drew on the desperation of a million wasted years, of vanity that allowed three sentient races to die rather than look within himself for their salvation. The President gathered himself and hurled all that he was and had ever been at them.

Ray's knees bent under the weight. He struggled to breathe beneath the vast corruption of the President. He fell back.

Ray had found the limit of his strength.

The President was more powerful.

Doctor Isaacs saw a spike hit every monitor he had on the Colonel and the kids in the exact same second. "What's going on?" he pleaded to the empty darkness.

"We'll lose the kids," the corpsman whimpered, "if this keeps up another-"

"Second," Jerry provided the answer. "Bring the kids out. Now!" he ordered. He grabbed Rose; the medic, Jon. They pulled them from the stone's face.

"No, we can't leave the Colonel! We can't stop now!" Rose screamed. Jon echoed her. It took two middies to pull David off, kicking and screaming. "I've got to go back. The Colonel needs me."

Jerry glanced over his shoulder. The Colonel's monitors were all in the red, farther into the red than Jerry thought possible. "You kids can't go back. Not and live."

"But the Colonel!" the three screamed.

"Has to fight this one on his own."

Kat ran, air burning in her lungs, her sprained ankle screaming with each step. The sun was just peeking over the horizon, forming diamonds in the dew on the box they carried. They were only a few hundred meters from the peak they'd been climbing for hours, it seemed.

Kat had started them off lighthearted, calling cadences she'd learned in boot camp to help them keep in step, avoid tromping on the heels of the person in front of them. It hadn't taken them long to come up with bawdy variations on the themes. It had almost seemed fun.

Then Kat felt the itching on the soles of her feet.

They were running now, gasping for breath. The hilltop was almost there. Kat tried to remember their next target. Taking one hand from the pole, she pulled her reader from her pocket. Fumbling it open, the reader fell from her grasp.

The others kept up the rush for the hilltop as she broke away to retrieve the reader. Its surface was rough. She felt pain as what had started to eat her reader turned from it to attack her hands instead. Quickly, Kat hastened to rejoin the group.

"What's wrong?" the copilot called as Kat came even with her. "You look white as a...What's wrong with your hands? They're bleeding."

"Nanos, I guess." Kat ignored the pain as she looked over her targets. The sun glisten off the box. The mountains sparkled; ragged holes in the range told of yesterday's work. "That's target six, seven, eight, ten and eleven," Kat said, going down the front range. It didn't seem right. Six and seven were d.i.n.ky. Eleven was ma.s.sive, with three towering peaks shooting up side by side.

"Is that the right order?" the copilot asked. "Wasn't the Dean lying when he gave them to us?"

"d.a.m.n," Kat sighed, "They told us which ones were the Provo's and which the Pres's, but they didn't tell us anything about the order." Kat tapped her commlink, wincing at each touch. "Base, come in." Nothing happened. "Base, anyone there? Anybody?"

"Jerry here. That you, Kat?"

"Doc, we're not sure our targets are in the right order. We need to talk to the Colonel and the Dean again."

"No can do, Kat. The Colonel's deep into the machine, and if something doesn't happen real soon, he's dead."

Kat gulped; the others turned pale despite the sun's warmth. "We're ready to take out a target," Kat told the doc, and tapped the commlink to hold.

"But which one?" the copilot breathed.

"That big mother," Kat said, pointing at their lowest-priority target.

"Are you sure?" the copilot asked. They eyed each other for a long moment. Then both shrugged.

Kat pressed the first b.u.t.ton. It was all she could do not to scream in pain. The rash had spread from her palms and was now up her wrists. The others were twitching, too. This better be the right target; there might not be enough of them left in an hour to fire off the next round.

The copilot pressed the second b.u.t.ton; the box popped open. Kat adjusted it, taking as much of that three-peaked monster into the gla.s.s as she could fit.

The noise came; Kat was getting used to it. The flash was still bright. Blinking away the afterimage, Kat stared at where the mountain had been. It was gone, vanished, dust.

Kat's hands were bleeding. But was the rash still spreading up her arms? They looked at each other, the six of them, hardly breathing, hoping. Wondering.

Kat worked her commlink. Shrieks came from the speaker.

"He's coming down! He's coming down!" Doc Isaacs screamed as he jigged around Ray. "The Colonel's readouts are falling back to normal." Not fast enough to please any member of the medical profession, but a d.a.m.n good sight for any human being.

Ray surveyed a field covered with the wreckage of a battle won. There, the guts ripped from a mastodon covered the bodies of a dozen headless redcoats. To Ray's right, the Dean's body was sliced in two, but three of Ney's cavalrymen lay crumpled at his feet. Numb and exhausted though he was, still a part of Ray's mind puzzled over what had gone on in the real world that his mind was struggling to contain in these images.

Behind him came a gasp; Ray turned. Dancer lay, a lance through his gut. Ray ran to him, knelt beside him.

"Is there anything I can do?"

"Don't you think you've done enough?" Dancer quipped, then grimaced at the pain of laughing at his own joke.

"Did we win?" Ray wanted to bite back the question as soon as he asked it. He sounded like some raw recruit in his first live fire exercise.

"I hope this is a victory. I don't know how a defeat could look any worse," Dancer said through clenched teeth.

"Are any of you left?" Ray asked.

"No," Dancer sighed, eyes resting on the lance in his belly. Ray was afraid that was his last word. After a moment, Dancer looked up, took in a shallow breath. "The President got most of us...but you got him.... Unfortunately, in getting him...you got what was left of us.... I guess it's a decent trade."

"I'm sorry," Ray said-and discovered he meant it. He'd come to like Dancer.

"I know you are. That's why I'm going to show you something. Lek thought he could keep a secret from me. I kept asking him why, if you didn't like it here, you didn't just go home. He said you wouldn't let them, something about a virus, but I knew, there was more." Dancer shuddered, coughed up blood. Ray held him as he had so many of his own troops.

"I know the way home, for you," Dancer whispered. "You do, too. It's in your head. Along with all the other junk we dumped in. Too much for you to figure out. Too much in there for you ever to find the map yourself. Let me show you."

Dancer reached up, touched Ray's forehead. Ray went inside. There, among the soaring towers and plunging caves, the history and the fables, was the course on starship navigation. There was the map of all the jump points, and how you treated each one to get to the place you wanted to go. And there was Wardhaven.

Ray knew the way home.

"Thank you," he whispered to Dancer. The computer image's eyes were open but unseeing. His mouth gaped wide, but there was no breath. Ray stood one more time to survey the battle scene. Nothing alive moved. The kids were not there; the doc must have pulled them out earlier.

Ray stepped back from the stone, smiled at the doc and the waiting kids, and collapsed onto the floor.

EIGHTEEN.

"I KNOW THE way home," Ray muttered as he came awake. "I know the way home," he told Doc Isaacs as the blur before his eyes coalesced into a human face. "I'm not delirious. I have the map in my head."

Ray panicked. Had it only been a dream? But when he rummaged through the mush that was his brain, he found it, found the chart for this system-and for Wardhaven. And the one in between. No wonder Matt couldn't find a way home!

"It's okay, Ray. Matt is headed downsystem right now. We caught him coming in after another try. He wants to hear what you found."

"What about the others?"

"They're in better shape than you are. The nanos quit working the moment the President died. There were a lot of shamefaced people skulking out of the base yesterday morning, too. With the President gone, sanity, such as we humans claim, returned to a whole lot of people."

"Casualties?" Ray snapped.

"Surprisingly few, Colonel," Mary reported from over the doc's shoulder.

"I told you to stay out of here," Jerry growled without turning to face the marine.

"You're not in the chain of command, Doc," Mary growled right back, "and accurate info about his command is bound to help the Colonel more than your potions and spells."

"The medical profession never gets the respect it deserves from you overgrown children."

"Our side, their side?" Ray reminded them of his question.

"Two marines, sir. And we managed to keep from killing too many of them. We lost Ca.s.sie." Ray saw the pain in Mary's drawn face. Her friend, her partner, the one who saved Mary's life and she saved in return had not been saved this time. He nodded.

"She was a miner, never meant for killing. She'd seen too much killing in the war. Couldn't give the order for more. I should have spotted that. Should have relieved her."

Ray reached for Mary's hand. "We can't see everything coming, and we can't do everything right." He swallowed hard at the rejection of his words in Mary's eyes. "And I stood where you stand after you stopped my brigade, and it took me six months to get where I'm lying today, so I'll give you the time you need, Captain."

"Thank you, sir."

Ray nodded. Tired. Exhausted beyond words, he slipped back to sleep. There were things to do, but they could wait.

Ray came awake groggy and grouchy. "What's a man got to do to get fed around here?"

"Keep your pants on! The doctor is busy!" Jerry shouted.

Ray checked; he wore the usual hospital gown. "I don't got any pants to keep on. What's so important?"

"This little darling," Doc said, entering Ray's area with a tiny bundle in hand. "If you're expecting to be a practicing daddy real soon, you better start practicing."

On the other side of the slim part.i.tion in Ray's room, an exhausted woman rested in the bed; A proud man/husband/daddy followed close on Doc's heels, as if to make sure the tiny bundle wouldn't take it into its head to vanish.

"Would you mind?" Doc only half-asked the father.

He nodded; even proud dads have a tough time arguing with doctors. Jerry carefully settled the baby in Ray's arms.

Ray flinched. "That's a.s.suming we can ever go home," he reminded the doc.

"That little one says you can, Ray."

Ray looked into the tiny face, eyes open, roaming, quietly taking in this strange new world of light and smells. His heart skipped a beat. Would he ever hold his own little son, daughter? Dare he hope? Dare he risk? Ray started to growl a response to Doc, then felt the gentle touch of those inquiring eyes. He smiled softly into them, stroked a b.u.t.ton nose with his finger, and pitched his voice for new ears. "Doesn't look like she's saying anything."

"Her blood will," Doc said, picking the baby up and depositing her in her father's arms. The dad's teeth clenched at the sight of the small needle Jerry produced to p.r.i.c.k his daughter's heel. The baby took the new sensation in with all the others and answered with only a slight whimper. As Jerry held up his drop of blood, the father took his daughter back to his wife.

"What's in the blood?" Ray asked.

"I told you there were two viruses working on this planet. One caused the brain tumor and has us spooked. The other seemed to adjust our allergic reactions. I suspect it will make it possible for any human to live on any planet ever occupied by the Three. My problem was developing an inoculation against the first virus without inhibiting the second. I've spent the past month, while you soldiers were having so much fun running around," Doc said dryly, "working on it. I think I have it; at least it made one virus disappear from my blood after I inoculated myself. If that little girl is clean, and stays clean for the next few days, I'll know I have it under control."

"You want to give me a shot, too?"

Jerry frowned as he studied the baby's blood at his workstation. "How much do you want to mess with that map in your head? Your call."

Ray pulled the sheet up to cover himself, taking little comfort in the added warmth as the very thoughts coursing through his mind chilled him. His people needed the knowledge in his head. No matter what his personal price, he could not let down those who had fought with him, died for him. Maybe they could go home-all except him.

The next day, Ray felt recovered enough to set up a meeting with Matt and the key crew of Second Chance. Lek worked his usual miracle of wires and nets. Closing his eyes, Ray leaned against the stone and found himself in a planetarium. Above him, now-familiar stars moved across the ceiling/sky of Santa Maria. Matt, his XO, and his jumpmaster, Sandy O'Malley, stood at his side.

"Neat setup you got here," Matt drawled.

"Yeah, I seem to have inherited it. Hope I can figure out how it works."