The pickings were slim and he was tired, but eventually he came back with some small game, greens, and a few more pieces of fruit. They ate hungrily, wordlessly. Moki had lost a lot of blood. He would also lose his arm. There was little that Ukatonen and Eerin could do to help him. Their reserves had been drawn down to almost nothing. Still, there was a flicker of response. Moki would live through the night. Tomorrow, rested by sleep and restored by food, they could do more.
Ukatonen got up early the next morning and killed a sloth. He and Eerin gorged themselves on the meat. Strengthened by the feast, they were able to work on Moki. It was clear that there was nothing they could do for his arm. Ukatonen took it off, with the help of a machete that Eerin had found in the truck and brought with her. He stopped the bleeding of Moki’s stump, and helped it heal over. It would be at least a week before Moki would be strong enough to travel. With patience and careful work, the bami’s arm would grow back in less than a year.
Having done what he could for Moki, Ukatonen set off to bring Tomas back. The ants had found Tomas before he did. His body was covered with their bites. Ukatonen healed the bites and woke his captive up enough to make him walk. It was almost as much work as carrying him. He struggled against the fog of sedation that was the only way Ukatonen could control him. It was growing dark by the time they got to camp. He hauled his captive up to the nest, put him back to sleep, then collapsed in exhaustion.
The next day, Ukatonen woke Tomas just enough to feed and clean him. As soon as he was conscious, Tomas began to struggle against the link, battering Ukatonen with his anger and hatred. Ukatonen wasn’t strong enough to control the man’s emotions. Finally, he rendered him unconscious and pulled out of the link. He sat there, looking down at his captive, his skin roiling with rusty red frustration.
“What’s wrong, en?” Eerin asked.
“He’s too angry. I can’t work with him, but”—he shook his head—“I can’t calm him down because of my injury. I have to understand why he’s angry, and try to address that.”
“Sefu Tomas controlled hundreds of people directly, and millions more indirectly, through violence and fear,” Eerin told him. “Now he’s alone among enemies in the middle of the jungle. He’s angry because he’s lost everything. I don’t think you can fix that, en.”
“But we have something in common.”
“What do you mean, en?”
“Coming to Earth, I too have lost everything. But,” he said, looking thoughtfully at the unconscious Tomas, “I did it voluntarily. It has been taken from him by force.”
He ate and rested, thinking the situation over. Linking with Tomas was like trying to tame a trapped predator.
He sat up. Yes, that was it. He needed to treat Tomas like a wild animal he was trying to tame. It would be much harder because of his injury, but if he proceeded slowly, it just might work.
He linked with Tomas, slowly letting him come to a dreamlike awareness. At first Tomas paced the cage of his mind, searching for a way out, but eventually he became bored and unwary. Then Ukatonen fed calmness into the link. It took hours of painstaking work, instead of the few minutes it would have taken before his injury, but eventually he managed to get Tomas to relax. Gently, slowly, Ukatonen coaxed him into a deep trance. When he was too relaxed to lie, Ukatonen began interrogating him.
Juna half-listened to Ukatonen’s interrogation of Tomas. Moki slept deeply, curled against her for warmth. She was hot, sticky, and bored. The insect repellent Ukatonen had synthesized for them was wearing off, and the bugs were starting to bother her. The slim black shape of Tomas’s comm unit caught her eye. She flipped it open and turned it on. Once again, the familiar opening screen requesting the password came up.
“Hey, Ukatonen, ask Tomas what the password is for his computer.”
Ukatonen did so.
“It’s Rimel Moman Jarvi,” Tomas droned obligingly. He repeated the words twice more.
Juna’s lips pursed in disapproval; two of the words in the password phrase were the names of notorious Birth-Right terrorists. But after he had spoken the password, there was a chime and the screen changed to reveal the file finder program. Juna typed in her last name, and did a search on it. There were about two dozen files mentioning her name. But at the end of the list was another file: Mariam Saari Fortunati. Juna swore softly in Amharic. She read through the file, and her eyes grew wider.
“What is it, Eerin?” Ukatonen asked.
“They were considering kidnapping Mariam,” Juna told him. “And they were going to use Bruce to do it.”
“That’s very bad,” the enkar said.
Juna continued to scan the file. “Apparently, Bruce contacted the BirthRight movement about taking Mariam. He gave them all kinds of information about us.”
“Why, en? Why would he do it?” Juna demanded.
“I don’t know, Eerin. Why don’t you keep looking, and see if you can find anything else?”
Juna continued searching through the files, while Ukatonen returned to his slow, painstaking questioning of Tomas. She was reading through the files on herself when she came across General Burnham’s name. She searched for more information, and found it. Apparently Burnham’s office had supplied their kidnappers with vital intelligence about their schedule and security arrangements. They had overridden several attempts by the Survey to increase their security escort. Although none of the information implicated Burnham directly, it was damning enough to end the general’s career.
Juna’s eyes were sandy with fatigue by the time she reset the password, and shut down the computer. There was enough information on this comp to shut down most of the BirthRight network. There were names, addresses, and organizational charts for the networks on Earth and Mars. She closed the cover with a smile. It had been a most productive afternoon.
Ukatonen sat back and considered what he knew after two days of interrogation. Sefu Tomas grew up in the movement’s most radical fringe. His parents took him to BirthRight rallies when he was still a baby. He played under the dining room table with his younger brothers while his father and other leaders of the movement discussed contraceptive reversal techniques, and plotted bombings of Pop Con offices.
He was thirteen when his family were exiled to Mars for population violations. As the eldest, he was allowed to stay behind in the care of relatives. He lived with an uncle for two months, before running away. He was taken in by the leader of the BirthRight movement, and trained as an elite smuggler and spy. By the age of fourteen he was smuggling anticontraceptives and fertility drugs around the world. His youth was the perfect cover. He killed his first man before he turned sixteen.
At seventeen Tomas married the leader’s youngest daughter, and became a father before he turned eighteen. By twenty, he commanded several terrorist cells. When he turned thirty, Tomas was designated the leader’s official heir. He took over the leadership of the radical wing of the BirthRight movement four years later.
But those were just facts. Ukatonen still didn’t understand what moved Tomas. How could he kill so easily, and without apparent thought? What was the source of that anger that Tomas kept bottled up inside himself? Could Ukatonen extinguish that anger, and bring Tomas into harmony with the rest of his world?
Eerin shook her head when Ukatonen asked her this.
“En, we’ve been trying to find a way to do that for centuries. Every person is different. We carry scars in different places on our hearts. For me, it was the death of my mother. For Tomas? Who knows? His father perhaps. Or the arrest of his parents. Or it could be none of those.”
“How do I find out?” Ukatonen said.