Thirty-seven
The skiff leaped into the black sky, its glare
glimmering off the sides of the transparent dome and sending vast shadows
reeling across the jagged landscape. The moment the vessel had dwindled
and vanished, Jeremy wheeled about and scanned the interior of the dome.
Jeep squatted off to one side of the hut, staring at him. The mud dragon
splashing in the pool startled him.
Myla had stranded him in an air bubble on an
uninhabitable world, naked in his own body with an alien and the Covonian
equivalent of a carnivorous frog. But he recognized for the first time
that Myla's plight was a thousand times worse. He had worn avatars for
years, taking all the comfort in the universe knowing that their use
reduced wear and tear on his real body. Avatars were just shells,
biological machines. Myla, though, was an avatar body and soul, human
only in appearance and superficial behavior. The horror of her revelation
of self-discovery was beyond imagining.
Had a flesh and blood Myla Rhodes died in the attack
that killed her parents, or those who had posed as her parents, or had
Myla been an autonomous avatar from the very first and her parents part of
Khalin's conspiracy? He had not known the Rhodes prior to the death of
his own parents. Both couples had been Naturalist activists,
fundamentalists pushing for a branching and the establishment of a pure
Nat colony on a more earthlike world somewhere in the universe, far away
from the meddling eyes of the Alliance. Historically, the Nats had
considered Jzon Dalikor their savior. Clearly, Nome had been planning
something big in bringing the Dalikor technology back to life, and Myla
had been at the center of it. Jeremy couldn't discount the possibility
that her parents had been involved after all, and perhaps even his own.
Within Covonia, Gorlon would have been their only enemy.
He examined his memory of the Hive attack on the
Rhodes family, trying to remember if he had seen human blood on Myla's
body. But the child and her parents had been sprawled together in the
tiny cockpit. There had been blood everywhere, her parent's blood, if not
her own.
That in itself hardly mattered. He had saved Myla's
life either way. Whether human or autonomous avatar, there had been no
original body tucked safely away in the Ark to revert to. The little body
had been badly broken and would not have survived for long even as an
self-contained Mysaelian. Jeremy remembered stuffing the
diminutive corpse in the hibernation chamber and watching to see if the
activation light would register even as his own avatar
died. News of Myla's survival had reached him by the time he had been
issued a new avatar in Bolphan.
He shifted his focus back to more immediate
concerns. He went inside the hut and searched the channels of the quantum
radio. All were silent except for background noise, blocked by the Hive.
He paced the room thinking that if something happened to Myla, he and the
alien and the mud dragon would run out of air, food, and water and die
horrible, lingering deaths.
Fear fed upon itself and ate at him like a cancer.
Fear had tainted his every waking moment since the route of the colony.
Nats took pride in their acceptance of the natural scheme of things and
thought it a virtue to die bravely. Techs seldom engaged their emotions
at all. He remembered Myla's warning about the evils of Techs’ lack of
compassion. He could see now that a preadolescent child had possessed a
wisdom that even the mighty Techs and their interstellar civilization had
forgotten about. To think that Myla, a near immortal, could have behaved
in so human a fashion.
A light flickered on the radio console and startled
him. He had covered half the distance to the radio before deciding that
it couldn't be anything but noise. If someone was transmitting, the radio
would automatically tune a clear channel.
And then he remembered the restricted emergency bands
inaccessible in Bolphan, bands included on this emergency device, but not
automatically tuned. He switched to the forbidden bands and received a
signal in an instant. Initially, it was just a human voice, a male voice
with an accent that identified him as a native of the Alliance core
worlds. The voice was calling for Myla Rhodes.
Jeremy opened the channel. "This is Jeremy Kael," he
said mildly. "Myla is not here at the moment. May I take a message?"
"Ah, excellent. Young Jeremy Kael. We had assumed
your death. This is Lee Wokan of Alliance Colonial Investigations
speaking..."
Jeremy switched off the radio and backed away from
the offending device. He knew the magnitude of the crime Khalin had
committed. He knew its consequence. Lee Wokan and the Alliance spelled
the death of Covonia and its half million inhabitants.
Or would the Alliance act so hastily after witnessing
Myla's annihilation of the Hive armada? He pulled up a stool and flipped
the radio back on.
"I'm here."
"I didn't think it likely that anyone would think to
check these back channels. The Hive certainly never bothered to block
them. It was worth a try. I was hoping to speak with Myla. I
need to better understand what has happened and what plans the child has
for the immediate future. I was hoping we would be able to come to some
mutually beneficial understanding."
"She's gone to try for a mutually beneficial
understanding with the Hive," Jeremy said with ill-concealed bitterness.
"You'll have to wait your turn."
"About what, may I ask?"
"About terms for her surrender and execution," Jeremy
said.
Lee Wokan let a moment of silence pass. "Or perhaps
a understanding with the commander of the Hive forces?”
"General Hague?”
"If they cannot defeat her," Lee suggested, "they may
offer her sanctuary instead."
Jeremy tried to imagine Myla cooperating with either
the Hive or General Hague. "I don't think so."
"It's a possibility one should consider with so much
at stake. She's not human, you know. You do know that, don't you?"
"I know what she is."
"Executor Commander Hague has betrayed humanity.
With Myla at his side, he could rule the human universe."
Jeremy gave a cold laugh at the notion. "Hague sent
me out here with a bomb in my leg. The bastard tried to kill us. He's
using the Hive to protect humanity, including your sorry ass. He wants
Myla dead before the Hive begins attacking the colonies."
Lee tried a new tact. "We can't count on Myla to
make the right decisions. She's far too young and inexperienced. You
know what has to be done for the welfare of humanity."
"You're discounting everything I've told you."
"Nobody but you will have the opportunity
I offer," Lee said,
ignoring his accusation. "Too much is at stake to forgo the opportunity.
The ten cities of Covonia are scheduled to pay the price for Khalin's
crimes. If a Covonian citizen helps terminate an Alliance-wide crisis,
concessions may be considered. You don't owe the child, Jeremy. She's as
much a victim as you are, but she's very dangerous."
On the highest of intellectual levels, he agreed with
Lee Wokan. Myla was an innocent victim, but a danger to them all. On an
emotional level, he simmered in helpless rage. "You had better keep in
mind just how dangerous she is."
"Give me Myla and I'll give you Gorlon Hague," Lee
said. "Hague has been a Hive agent for decades. Think about what that
means. The Hive killed your parents, and the Rhodes. Hague is a Nat
sympathizer, but he has his own agenda and some Nat factions stood in his
way. He wanted the Nat’s ruled by machine intelligence. I don’t think he
believed they could ever survive on their own. Therefore, it is entirely
probable that he orchestrated the death your parents who were opposed to
the use of any machine intelligence at all.
“I know you cared deeply for the Rhodes couple as
well. They took you in as one of their own and gave you a home, although
their agenda may have been part of Khalin Nome’s treachery. Hague must
have been responsible for their deaths as well."
Jeremy recognized the logic of Lee's suspicion.
He had no way to discount it or reject outright anything that Jeremy had
to offer.
"Kill the girl now and with Hive forces decimated,
nothing will stand in the way of the Alliance. We'll have you out of
there and back home in a matter of hours. It would be so simple. Do you
really have a choice in the matter?"
"Myla doesn't deserve to
die."
"Bypass this opportunity to prove yourself loyal to
Covonia and to the Alliance and before the entire universe, you will have
branded yourself a war criminal in league with Khalin Nome and Gorlon
Hague."
"She hasn't done anything! You're not giving her a
chance!"
"A chance to prove how human she is?"
"She's more human than you are, you bastard! She's
willing to sacrifice herself to protect me and Jeep and a mud dragon.
She's not coming back in any case, but if she does, I'd rather die myself
than see her hurt."
"You will," Lee said. "You most certainly will."
And then, as an afterthought: "Who's Jeep?"
Jeremy burst into laughter at the thought of having
to add that complication to Lee Wokan's burden of paranoia. He switched
off the quantum radio and laughed until his tears choked him to silence.
