"So you’re going off alone. Never mind the Rexies."
"I can shoot Rexies."
"If you see them coming. And if they only attack one at a time. Suppose the clouds muster a dozen simultaneously?"
"I’ll take my chances."
"What if the clouds possess you?" I asked. "How do you know they can’t grab you as easily as they grabbed Tut?"
"They never grabbed Team Esteem," she said. "In all the years Unity teams were on Muta, there were no possession attempts. That’s the sort of thing they’d have told us about — if one of their members went mad and attacked others. But their records had nothing like that. Tut’s mental imbalance must make him vulnerable to the clouds. Sane people are immune."
"That’s just an assumption."
Festina sighed. "Past a point, everything is an assumption. I have to make the best guess I can. Right now, that guess says I’m better off alone."
"If I follow, how would you stop me?"
She drew herself up. "Youn Suu, this is a direct order from an admiral of the Outward Fleet. Stay in this building. Do not leave for the next twenty-four hours. That’s an order." A moment later, she relaxed and smiled ruefully. "As if Explorers pay attention to orders. But I’m asking you, please, stay here. If you don’t, the next time I see you I’ll be forced to assume you’re being controlled by the Balrog. I’ll stun you till your eyebrows melt, and if that doesn’t work, I’ll break your knees. Literally. I will punch and kick you till I’ve fractured enough bones to keep you from getting in my way. I’ll do it on sight, without compunction. And I happen to know from Kaisho Namida, the Balrog does a lousy job of mending skeletal components. The spores will keep you alive no matter how much I beat you, but soft moss doesn’t make a good substitute for hard bone. If I cripple you, you’ll stay crippled for life."
She meant it. I could see no bluff in her life force. She’d hate to do it, and she’d feel sickeningly guilty afterward, but she wouldn’t hesitate to put me in a wheelchair for the rest of my days — just like Kaisho Namida. Festina would damage my legs so thoroughly, the Balrog would have to replace my bones with spores… at which point, I’d become paraplegic. Moss from the hips down.
Suddenly, I wondered how Kaisho got the same way. Had there come a time when Festina decided Kaisho couldn’t be trusted?
Festina gave my shoulder a gingerly pat. "Sorry it has to be this way. Under other circumstances, I’d love to have an Explorer like you watching my back. But I’m leaving now, and I don’t want to see you again till this is over."
She turned and walked down the ramp. Around a corner and out of sight. With my sixth sense I watched as she left through the front doors… whereupon she ran to the side of the building, drew her stun-pistol, and waited. I’d never have seen her there with normal vision — she’d have shot me the moment I came out. But given my mental awareness, Festina had no chance of catching me in such a simple ambush.
I stayed where I was and waited. Ten minutes later, Festina decided I wasn’t going to follow… so she set a brisk pace heading south. I waited a few more minutes, still watching by remote perception in case she set another ambush. Then I went down the ramp and took the same route south along the Grindstone.
According to navy regs, members of the Outward Fleet can legally disobey orders if there’s no other way to save a sentient being’s life. Sticklers for military discipline growl at the thought, but the League of Peoples cares more about lives than the chain of command.
So did I. Or at least that’s what I told myself. I tried to believe I was acting out of concern for Festina’s welfare and not because the Balrog was imperceptibly steering my thoughts in the direction it wanted me to go.
A sixth sense can come in handy. It let me keep an eye on Festina while I hung back out of sight. It also let me watch the rest of our party, still inside the chemical-laden apartment building. I could see as Tut walked into my assigned rooms (without knocking, of course), whereupon he discovered I was no longer there. He rushed to Festina’s apartment and found she was gone too. Without hesitation, he ran after us — he guessed that we’d left to activate Stage Two, and he knew where we’d be heading.
Tut didn’t try to be quiet: muttering indignantly as he raced in pursuit of Festina and me. Li and Ubatu heard him as he sprinted past their doors. Ubatu, ever the athletic Amazon, gave chase and caught Tut soon after he reached the street. She made short work of wrestling him to the ground — she must have trained in jujitsu or some other grappling art — and with the help of a vicious punishment hold, she forced Tut to tell her what was happening. By then Li had joined them, puffing from the chase but still with plenty of lung power to howl in outrage at being left behind. The diplomats informed Tut he would escort them downriver… and Ubatu crushed Tut’s body into the pavement until he said yes.
Sorry, Tut, I thought as I eyed the mess of scrapes on his flesh and his golden mask. If not for me, Ubatu wouldn’t have been so ruthless… but as long as my body contained a "loa" of prime interest to Ifa-Vodun, Ubatu would do almost anything not to lose touch. She’d already defied navy law to follow me to Muta. How much further would she go?
So Ubatu forced Tut to set out immediately, with an irritable Li tagging along. They didn’t return to their apartments for food, foul-weather gear, or even a compass. They had no Bumbler, no comm, no stun-pistol. Tut surely realized they’d be in trouble once the storm arrived, but maybe he was hoping to escape during the downpour. Till then, he had no chance of outrunning or outfighting the pitiless Ubatu.
Besides, after the way she’d roughed him up, he might have relished the thought of leading her and Li into the countryside, then giving them the slip during a monsoon. Tut wasn’t vindictive by nature, but he had his limits.
So there we were: a parade, with Festina in front, me in the middle, and Tut, Li, and Ubatu bringing up the rear. As Festina might have said, "just fucking wonderful."
My perception kept track of the entire group, though we started more than two kilometers apart. Once Festina left the developed area of the city, she was forced to slow down — following game trails rather than paved roads. I too went slower when I reached the brush, though I had the advantage of automatically knowing which routes were best (shortest, fastest, least obstructed by undergrowth). If I’d wanted, I could have beaten Festina to our destination by taking shortcuts she didn’t know existed… but my goal was not to get there first, it was to protect the others along the way. I simply kept pace with Festina and watched the world for danger.
Tut and the diplomats closed some of the gap between us while they were still in the city and Festina and I had to fight our way through ferns. Once they ran out of road, however, they fell to the same speed as the rest of us. I thought they might slow even further; but Tut had been trained to find routes through thick forest, and Ubatu could clear paths quickly by muscling foliage aside. With such a combination of brain and brawn, they kept making reasonable progress.
Meanwhile, the sky darkened with dusk and clouds: clouds more purple and bruised than any I’d seen before. Just a quirk of Muta’s atmosphere — on alien planets, skies that look like home in sunshine can assume unearthly tints come twilight — but I couldn’t help wonder which clouds were simple water vapor and which were Stage One pretas, riding the storm like dragons.