“What’s that?”
“Yelling at an imar won’t scare it away.” She coughed, wiped her mouth. “ ’Course I can’t yell very loud.”
Bull moved closer. “You must not yell, Miss Serena. Almost any sort of loud sound will only draw its attention.”
“What about the turbofan in the flitter?” Jubal suggested. “Would that scare it off?”
“It would find that most unpleasant.” Bull confirmed.
“Did you hear that?” Joe asked. “Can you fire up a fan?”
“Sorry, but all the engines are dead.” Joe couldn’t believe how calm she sounded. “They crapped out on me in midair and I dropped like a rock.” She shook her head. “I’ve flown these things lots of times and never had one act like this one did.”
Frank pulled his headset off and pushed back from the workstation. “I’m going after her. You stay here.”
“How?” Jubal asked.
Testa ignored him, shoving past Bull and on outside.
Joe flinched as the comm brought them a new sound. It was the imar scratching on the flitter’s fuselage. On the screen Serena hunched lower, her jaw set.
Joe tore his gaze away and faced Bull. “There has to be something we can do to scare that imar.”
“If one of us were in the area he could influence its small mind and frighten it away. But none of us are anywhere near that part of the Coverture.”
“Could you do it from here?”
Bull shook his head. “No, it is too far away. My mind cannot push that strong a thought into its small brain from this distance.”
“Damn.” Joe scrubbed his forehead, trying to pull some sort of useful thought out of his own small brain. Nothing came. If only there were more people working on the problem then maybe—
His eyes went wide and he stared at Bull. “OK, how about this? You can link minds, right? That’s what you do when you commune. Can you—can several of you all try to drive it away at the same time? Would that do it?”
Bull regarded him steadily, precious seconds ticking away before he answered. “A most intriguing idea, Mister Joe. I do not know if it would work or not.”
“Will you try?” It was all he could do to keep from screaming the question.
“Joe!” Serena rasped, “It’s going to—” There was a distant thump and groan as the imar assaulted the damaged airframe.
Again there was that maddening deliberation before Bull answered, but when he did Joe wanted to kiss his big ugly mug.
“We are attempting this,” Bull said slowly. “It is a new and fascinating idea. Miss Serena has trespassed against us, but we do not wish her to be further harmed. To frighten the imar we must cause a simple pulse of primal fear. To have many send such a pulse as one is difficult.” He cocked his head to one side as if listening, and in the silence they heard the sound of the imar’s talons tearing at the perspyl canopy, seeking a crack it could get hold of. “Others join in. We seek—”
The shriek of tormented metal, plastic and ceramic filled the room. “The dumb bastard is finally figuring it out,” Serena whispered. How could she sound so calm?
“Joe,” Jubal called in a low tight voice.
Joe held up his hand for silence, asking Jubal to wait. He didn’t want anything to break Bull’s concentration.
“Ah,” Bull said softly. “Clever. An aid to synchronization.” His foot began to thump rhythmically in a beat not unlike the drumming of Joe’s childhood. Joe fought down a crazed urge to chant along. The operations shack shivered with each beat of Bull’s massive foot.
Seconds later a bloodcurdling scream came over the comm, a shrill sound of absolute terror. Joe turned back to the commboard. The screen was black, blank. “Serena,” he bellowed, “Are you there? Answer me!” There came a sound so unexpected that for a moment he couldn’t figure out what it was. She was—
“You’re… laughing?” he whispered with baffled disbelief.
The picture returned to his display, showing her hand receding after uncovering the pictup. She’d covered it so they wouldn’t have to watch her get eaten. What kind of woman would do something like that?
“It ran,” she gasped breathlessly, tears rolling from her eyes. “It jerked straight up like someone had booted it in the ass, let out a scream, and ran away so fast it nearly fell over!”
Joe sagged back in the chair. “Thank god.” He smiled at Bull. “Thank you. Thank everyone.”
“Joe,” Jubal called again. “We’ve still got a problem.”
Joe turned toward him. “Now what?”
“Frank took off in the shuttle. He’s running it on manual, and he’s using it to go after Serena.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
Jubal cut a meaningful glance in Bull’s direction. Before he could say it out loud Bull said it for him.
“Mister Joe, your quiet sky-flying machine must not go over the Coverture, nor can it be allowed to land there. To do so would be in direct violation of our treaty.”
The ensuing silence was finally broken by Serena.
“I heard that. What’s he talking about?”
Joe answered her, his gaze still fixed on the big alien’s face. “You’ve crashed in an area called the Coverture. The terms of our treaty make it off-limits to us and our machines.”
“This is news to me. Not very good news, either.”
He looked Bull in the eyes. “Please. This is an emergency.”
“The emergency exists only because our treaty was broken in the first place. Breaking it again can only compound the damage.”
“Frank’s almost halfway there,” Jubal reported tonelessly. “I think I can override his control from here if 1 have to.”
Bull spoke calmly, passionlessly. “He must not be allowed to land. If you are truly our advocate then you must stop him.”
Joe turned back to look at Serena and took no comfort in what he saw. She wiped her mouth and sighed. “Joe, tell me the truth. Did I break their treaty by flying out here?”
“Yes,” he said softly.
A slow nod. “Then you must not break it again.”
“Frank’s almost there,” he argued. “He can have you back here in short order. Hakim is a damn good medic.”
She locked eyes with him. “You heard what I said, Joe. I never would have done this if I’d known. I apologize for my crime against them, and I will abide by their decision.”
“Frank’s four klicks out and closing,” Jubal put in. “ETA in two minutes.”
Joe swallowed hard. “You could die before we figure out some other way to get to you. If we even can.”
Her gaze was unflinching. “How many of your people died because of broken treaties, Joe? Remember what you are, and the lessons of your history. You either stand for honor and trust, or you stand for nothing. Remember that vest your grandfather gave you. It’s a symbol of honor and courage, of protection of the sacred.”
“One minute, thirty seconds,” Jubal intoned.
She shook her head, her gaze still pinning him mutely in place. “Don’t cut corners, Joe. Don’t take the easy way out, nothing good can come of it. A treaty is a sacred trust. I will not be a party to seeing it broken.”
Joe closed his eyes, and perhaps because of her suggestion or just to find some kind of comfort, his fingers caressed the soft old leather of the vest Grandpa Sam had given him. But the old man had been wrong. He was not a warrior, nor was he wise. Not a real Indian, but a bleached-out bureaucrat hundreds of light-years from his people and their ways.
His grandfather had said he would be a man between worlds, and in this he had spoken a terrible prophecy. Now Joe was trapped in the place where worlds collided. It would be so easy to say screw the treaty, to tell himself that an artificial construct was less important and less valuable than this strange and courageous woman’s life. As easy as all the other arguments, rationalizations, and excuses used to bend and break the promises made to other Peoples in humanity’s entire shame-filled history of seeing such pacts struck, broken and restruck—