Oh, hell, who needed anything alien? If he had syphilis or herpes or something, that would be bad enough, though she didn’t think her symptoms fit either of those.
What if Walter had AIDS? Did AIDS exist in the Galactic Empire? In the space movies on the late show they never talked about things like that.
And what were the symptoms of the early stages of AIDS? Despite all the scare stories on TV she didn’t have any idea. Feeling tired and sick and nauseous didn’t seem very distinctive. And didn’t AIDS usually take years to appear?
That brought a terrible thought-could she have gotten AIDS from her ex-husband and have had it all along, for the past year and a half? Despite all their arguments and accusations, she had no idea whether Stan had ever really been unfaithful, whether he might have picked up the virus somewhere.
This was all silly, though, she told herself; it wasn’t AIDS. It was more likely to be mononucleosis, or that “yuppie flu,” or something. She could have caught anything on Zeta Leo III. Or on Base One.
And that was all the more reason to get home to Earth. Somehow, she doubted that modern medicine was easily come by here in Faerie.
Valadrakul was crouched a few yards down the slope from her. “How’s it going?” she called.
“Don’t bother him,” Prossie said, from where she sat just behind and to Amy’s left. “He’s working magic, or whatever you want to call it.”
Amy glanced at her, startled.
“He needs to concentrate,” the telepath explained.
“Are you reading his mind?”
Prossie grimaced. “No,” she said. “I can’t, here. Telepathy doesn’t work any better here than it does on Earth.”
“But I thought…weren’t you relaying instructions from Base One?”
Prossie nodded. “That’s right,” she said, “but only as a receiver; it’s my cousin Carrie who does the sending.”
“Oh, that’s right, you said that.” Amy waved a hand at herself and said, “I forgot.”
Prossie shrugged.
“So, is Carrie sending anything right now? Does she have any news about Lieutenant Dibbs?”
Startled, Prossie stared at Amy. “How could she have any news about him?”
“Well, if they sent a rescue party, or something.”
Prossie shook her head. “They’re not sending any rescue party,” she said. “If there were any chance they’d do that I’d probably have stayed there myself.”
Amy frowned. “Then what’s going to happen to those men?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” Prossie said. “I hope that eventually they’ll have the sense to leave. Or maybe we can send Taillefer to help them, after he’s sent you Earthpeople home.”
“That sounds good,” Amy agreed.
“What I’m afraid of, though,” Prossie said, “is that Shadow’s going to send more monsters, and more, and more, until Dibbs and his men are all dead. That’s what Raven’s expecting, you know; that’s why he fled, but didn’t argue more about everybody coming.”
“I don’t understand,” Amy said uneasily.
Prossie picked up a pebble and tossed it down the slope. “It’s simple enough,” she said. “Shadow knows something’s happened back there at the clearing where we crashed, right? It sensed the space-warp, and it sent those creatures to investigate, and we killed them all. So it’ll be expecting a report, and it isn’t going to get one; what’ll it do then?”
Amy stared at her.
“It’s pretty obvious, isn’t it?” the telepath said. “It’ll send another force, a larger one. And if that doesn’t work, it’ll send a third, and a fourth. It’ll send trackers, too, in case whatever it’s after has left.”
“Then they’ll be coming after us,” Amy whispered, suddenly terrified.
Prossie shook her head. “No, they won’t,” she said. “Or at least Raven doesn’t think so. He thinks that they’ll find the ship and Lieutenant Dibbs and the rest there, and they’ll kill them all, and it’ll never occur to Shadow that there were more, that the rest of us got away.”
“Is that…” Amy began. Then the implication sank in. “But that’s…that’s horrible…”
Prossie grimaced. “Raven set them up,” she said. “A decoy, so we could get away.”
Amy glanced at Raven, standing further down the slope, showing no sign at all of a troubled conscience.
“He did ask for volunteers,” Prossie said unhappily. “He gave them a chance.”
“Do you know for sure that that was what he was doing?” Amy asked. “Did you read his mind?”
Prossie shook her head. “I told you,” she answered, “I can’t read minds here.”
“You’re just guessing?”
“You can call it that if you like.”
That was exactly what Amy liked; she didn’t want to think of Raven as being as callous and calculating as Prossie claimed. She swallowed, then changed the subject. “So what is your cousin Carrie saying? What’s happening back on Base One?”
“Not much,” Prossie said, a trifle uneasily.
“Oh,” Amy said.
Her stomach cramped.
“I wish Valadrakul would hurry up,” she said. “And I wish…oh, the hell with it. I wish I were safe at home and this was all over, that’s what I wish!”
“Me, too,” Prossie.
* * * *
Prossie watched as Amy lay back on the grass and closed her eyes. The Earthwoman had a hand on her belly, and winced occasionally at some internal discomfort.
There were advantages to being cut off, Prossie thought; she couldn’t feel Amy’s discomfort, whatever it was, at all.
And of course, being in this other universe made it possible to keep her contacts with Carrie to a minimum, as well; Carrie had not yet been forced to realize that Prossie was deliberately disobeying orders, that Prossie had lied, had given false reports.
And she didn’t know that Prossie had willingly let Raven set Dibbs and the others up to be sacrificed, in order to preserve the group he led, the group Prossie was in.
Of course, the brass back at Base One had sent the entire expedition out as a sacrifice to save face for themselves, but Carrie would expect better of a fellow telepath, wouldn’t she?
Prossie knew that Carrie suspected something was very wrong, beyond what had been reported; Prossie suspected that Carrie knew Prossie had gone rogue.
That’s what it was, of course; that’s what she had done. And that was one more reason, aside from her increased chances for survival, that she was very glad that she had gone with Raven’s group. If she had stayed with Dibbs people would have asked her questions, demanded she relay orders, and her treachery would have been revealed. With this group, no one bothered her-even the four soldiers seemed to have forgotten that she was a telepath, that she could talk to Base One at any time. She could keep her secrets.
She could never go back to Base One, though. She could probably never again risk reentering the Galactic Empire anywhere.
She would never again be able to live in her own reality, and that meant that she would never again have her full telepathic ability. She would always be able to touch the minds of her family, back in the Empire, but no one else.
That was a frightening and lonely thought, in a way, but it wasn’t all bad. She would never again have to feel the fear and hatred of others, would never be forced to share in someone else’s pain or sick terror. She had been mulling it over for hours now, as they traveled, and she was beginning to reconcile herself to the idea.
She didn’t think much of Faerie as a place to live, though; she thought Earth would be much more enjoyable. When the others got their space-warp, their magical portal, open, she would go through it with them.
Prossie?
Carrie. Prossie looked up; no one was watching her.