Another reprieve.
And then, “What else, Hillson? You don’t look that grim because New America lost a battle.”
“No, sir. Ten more deserters.”
Ten. Well, that might actually be a good thing, although he couldn’t say that to Hillson. Not yet. Unless…
“Give me the names.”
Hillson did. Jason hid his relief; none of them were Awakened. He said, “They’ve gone off to start their own little army? I assume they took supplies and weapons?”
“Yes, sir. They stole what they wanted.”
And you wonder why I let them. But Jason’s reasons would have to wait a short while yet. Hillson was going to be troubled enough when that conversation happened.
“Sir—”
“Anything else, Sergeant?”
“No, sir.”
Hillson, deeply unhappy, left. Unhappy but completely loyal. He passed Major Duncan entering the command post. She said, “Sir—Doctor Farouk wants to see you.”
“Farouk?”
“Yes, sir. I was at Lab Dome and he stopped me, practically sputtering. It took me five minutes to get him to speak in normal English instead of formulas or equations or whatever the hell they were. I brought him here to see you, but what I got from him, I thought I’d tell you first. I could be wrong, but…”
“Major? What is it?” He had never seen her look like that.
“Sorry, sir. Dr. Farouk says—at least I think he says it, he indicated that it needs more work—but he thinks he understands the physics of the starship. Of the engine, I mean. He thinks that in another few years or so, we might know enough to build ones that can be bigger or smaller or different. He’s very excited, sir.”
Another few years. Jason—and Duncan as well—knew they did not have another few years. Their eyes met.
“Good news,” Jason finally said.
“Yes, sir,” she answered.
Neither of them meant it.
And then, before Jason had even seen Dr. Farouk, Zack McKay appeared, asking to tell Jason something about Dr. Steffens.
And about sparrows.
Jane sat on a child’s chair beside Belok^, who sat on the floor. Monterey Base had nothing like the thick, richly embroidered cushions of home, nor World’s low tables of polished karthwood. The items Jane had brought with her lay on the floor at her feet.
La^vor crouched beside Belok^. Jane knew that La^vor was afraid of what might happen to Belok^. La^vor had lost one brother; she needed some of her lahk to hold on to, here in this strange place that had never, not once, felt like home. The patterns and colors that La^vor made in Jane’s mind were unfocused and gray.
And Belok^? Jane needed to find his patterns. She held up the first of her items, a flattish, more or less rectangular stone. In World, which he’d understood even when he couldn’t speak much of it, she said, “Belok^-kal, what could you do with this?”
The giant child looked puzzled.
“What things could you do with this stone?”
He took it in his big hands and turned it slowly over and over. Jane waited. La^vor put the tips of her thumbs together, a World gesture of anxiety.
Finally Belok^ said, “Build. Build a thing.”
“What kind of thing?”
More waiting. The pattern in her mind was a cloud, colorless and formless but filled with light. She watched it take form as Belok^ answered, his words slow and thick, like tree sap emerging after a long winter.
“Build… house. Build… cookstove… build path build table build steps.”
La^vor gasped. The formless pattern in Jane’s mind took on tints and lumps. She said, “Can you do anything else with the stone besides build?”
Again the puzzled face, creaking into understanding. Belok^ looked at the stone. Next his gaze roamed around the other items Jane had brought: a cup, a blanket, a hammer, a length of wire, a small 3-D printer. Belok^ stared at the tablet on which La^vor had been teaching him to write his name. He picked up the tablet pen, put it down again. His childish brow crinkled into sand waves. A full minute passed.
Belok^ reached into his pocket. He pulled out a soft white stone; Jane had seen Settler children play with these in some complicated game. Belok^ scratched the white stone over Jane’s rock. Three symbols, crude but recognizable: his name in World.
La^vor burst into tears.
Immediately Belok^ dropped the white stone and put his arms around his tiny sister, folding her to him, murmuring comfort. And in her mind, Jane saw Belok^’s shapes: whole and brightly colored, kind and loving and frighteningly innocent.
She almost cried, too. Belok^’s pattern in her mind was a simpler, cruder version of Colin’s.
She went to him, straight from Belok^ and La^vor, almost running along the corridors to his room. He wasn’t there. She found him conferring with gray-haired Sarah Waters, from the Settlement. “Colin!”
“What is it?”
“I need to talk to you!”
Sarah, startled, faded tactfully away. Jane didn’t talk. She seized his chair and tried to push it. Colin made it roll by itself, following her along the narrow, clogged corridors as swiftly as possible. Jane kept her head down so no one could see her face. She ignoring Colin’s repeated, “Jane? What is it? Jane?” At his room, she closed the door, climbed onto the bed, and lay down. She pulled up her wrap.
His face changed; his pattern shifted. He whispered, “Are you sure?”
“Yes!”
“I haven’t said anything, Jane, because I didn’t want you to feel that in a place strange to you, you were in any way pressured to… I wanted to give you…”
“I know. Don’t talk now. Later, but not now.”
Colin ducked his head, and she couldn’t see his face. Then, carefully, he heaved himself from chair to bed. Jane, in an agony of desire that was sweet as Terran honey, sweet as World mef fruit, sweet as home, reached for him.
For a while, then, the patterns were all shining, and she didn’t have to picture what must inevitably come.
CHAPTER 23
Two more v-comas, one a soldier and one a civilian, had awakened. Jason had reports brought to him hourly, from many people. He walked the corridors. He visited the infirmary wards, the labs, the armory, the mess. He put on an esuit and talked directly to the outside patrol. Elizabeth Duncan took over the command post. Jason talked, but mostly he listened. Command had always involved invisible tentacles resting lightly all over the base, sensing every movement in every corner, trying to anticipate the next shift. Too often he had failed. But now the tentacles vibrated constantly, hot with detail, so that sometimes it seemed to Jason that he stood in every bit of Monterey Base at once. That he could see the freckles on the Settler children kicking a ball in the Commons, smell the deer roasting in the kitchen, hear the squawk of sparrows in the bird lab underground.
The one thing he could not do was sleep. He wouldn’t take any more of Lindy’s sleep-inducing drug; he needed to be sharp. Night after night he lay awake, alone in the dark, going over the plan again and again, trying to find an alternative. Failing.
Failing, too, to still the ache for Lindy. But it wouldn’t be fair to her, wouldn’t be fair, wouldn’t be fair…
Nothing was fair.
Then back to walking both domes of the base, tentacles vibrating, people watching him from eyes that were fearful or hostile or speculative or sympathetic. Listening. Learning.
His grandmother had been shut up for days with Dr. Farouk. They were “working out equations” that they would not, or could not, explain in terms that Jason could understand.