without much concern.
"What... is... it?" he struggled to ask. Samson felt a disturbance all over his body. He swayed and leaned over, hands closer to the ground to anticipate falling down. In a few seconds he stabilized somewhat.
"A piece of something scary," not-Milly finally responded. "Try going back toward the Navy. Over to your left. See what happens."
Samson took a few steps and fell down, his body refusing to follow his directions.
"It won't let me! How can I get rid of it?"
"Cut off your fingers."
"I can't cut off my fingers!" Even as fear made him try to pull in deep breaths, something else slowed his breathing, giving him a false but insistent calmness.
"I didn't think so," not-Milly remarked.
"What can I do?"
"Yell for help. Maybe the Navy will hear you."
"Help! HELP! HELP!"
Samson called several more times, then lost his voice.
"Cat got your tongue?" not-Milly asked. "You're not where they think you are. With their longer legs and air-conditioned uniforms, they'll be heading directly toward the elevator building. You're off their course because you had to go around some big stuff. The Navy officers are trim and tough. They can find you if they really want to."
Samson tried to decide which direction to go but his mind seemed unfocused. He walked again in the direction not-Milly had said to try and his legs failed him again. Something made him stand back up, and when he walked in a different direction he received a feeling of pleasure. He was now following the strange path. He couldn't walk very well and he stumbled often in the rough terrain of broken concrete. Every so often as he tried to move in a slightly different direction he suffered a numbing of his legs and a near paralysis that threatened to hurt him with another fall.
Samson staggered toward a tunnel in a pile of concrete near the base of the pedestal building. He didn't want to go into the tunnel but that was what the red stone wanted him to do. He curled his fingers into a fist and the stone transferred itself to the palm of his hand. He barely felt the pinprick to his palm. He slapped the stone against the tunnel wall to try to shatter it. He collapsed from shock. When he regained his senses he saw the stone was undamaged. Samson entered the tunnel. Would the Navy officers be able to find him? His mind seemed dulled and he couldn't think much about the future and about consequences.
= = =
"Is something wrong, Admiral?" Horss inquired, wondering at her silence and stillness. "I know the boy is a total mystery, but what connection could he have with us and the Freedom?"
"I do suspect," she answered slowly, "that something further is wrong. Yes. something is wrong with me. If you have not already thought of it, Jon, I would warn you that your life is in danger, not just your career."
"Are you threatening me?" Horss felt the push and pull of his augments trying to prepare to control his body as he anticipated danger.
"It was never my intention to harm you." the admiral said earnestly.
"Who else is here to cause me harm?" Horss asked. He tried to analyze the image of the admiral as provided by the yacht's tight-beam data link. He could only hope it was not a false image. Fidelity Demba seemed distracted, perhaps worried.
"It might be me," she said. "I don't want to harm you. I don't see how I can."
"What has happened, Admiral? Has something changed?"
"What can I say that you would believe?"
"Damned little," he responded in Twenglish.
"I was manipulated!" she declared. "I don't know why or how or when!"
Horss was startled by the outburst of the woman's emotion, so unlike an admiral. "Who manipulated you?" he asked daringly.
"I don't know! Someone took my dead body from the war and made me who I am! Made me what I am! I was the tool that worked for years to mount a new exploratory mission. I was the fool who helped guide the construction of the Freedom!" She turned to him and almost reached out to him in some gesture of concern for him. "Your personal security may have been compromised, Jon. Mine apparently was, perhaps long ago. That's why I brought you far away from Headquarters."
"My personal security?" Horss was unable to analyze one too many ideas and its implications. He had to just shut up and think hard. Realization then struck him and he felt naïve and stupid for not suspecting the cause for his isolation aboard Demba's yacht. He was in quarantine! No, he was not stupid. He could not be faulted for not believing he could be an unwitting actor in such a sinister action. He could never believe himself invaded by a coercive agent, reduced to the role of an expendable pawn in a show of power by an offended Commander of the Navy. A worm! She thought he could have a worm!
"I've never talked at such length with an admiral," Horss spoke calmly and alertly, aided by his augments. "I suppose we are now expecting some word in our conversation that will trigger a worm. And then I will try to kill you. As a matter of curiosity, how did you expect to defend yourself?"
"I didn't. That's why I have a medical cocoon aboard the yacht and Baby watching to wink me into it."
Horss stopped to think some more. He could hardly decide where to start. "Damn," he swore mildly in Twenglish. "This is interesting! Did you consider the further consequences, regardless of how this visit to Earth transpires? Even if all goes well and we both survive, what keeps Etrhnk from removing both of us from the Freedom?"
"I did consider that," Demba replied. "All I could do was take one step at a time. There is some evidence that the mission has strong backing, but I suspect Khalanov and I are expendable. I'm not sure who would want to take our places. I can never know how Etrhnk will react. His predecessors were more predictable. I have been manipulated, so now I'm less concerned with a task that someone else has set for me. It would be interesting to see what becomes of the Freedom but it was apparently never my ship and never my mission. I got it built for those who wanted it, and my services are not needed any longer. And now I've put myself in a situation that guarantees I'll not sail on her."
Horss did not relax but he did feel a temporary satisfaction with this information, as strange as the information was. "And into this mess a real child magically appears! Did you learn anything about Samson when you questioned him under anesthesia?"
"I had too little time and not enough expertise when I questioned him," Demba willingly replied. "Samson doesn't remember his family. He doesn't remember anything beyond about a year ago. He has wandered through this part of Africa, aiming to visit the space elevator. It was sometimes a tourist attraction. He thought someone might find him here. In that year of wandering, often out in the open plain, no one saw him. No one reported him missing. I've already searched for news stories. It should have been prominent in the media. Nothing! I believe he came from... nowhere, and he was put here for me to find. It's as if he is another pawn in this game! Another body whose damaged mind could be exploited."
"Who could have anticipated you would come here?" Horss asked. "You didn't file an itinerary with Africa on it, I'm sure."
"I have no answers, just paranoia."
Horss considered that Navy Commander Etrhnk would have the power to place a real child on Earth for Admiral Demba to stumble upon, although it implied an immoral facility far greater than Horss imagined existed. How would he know where Demba would land? What possible role would he have a child play? Had Demba even suspected the child could be an assassin, with a bomb planted inside his body? Had she immediately winked him into her medical cocoon without scanning him? She had said the yacht could not see him as it landed! The child had not exploded, yet she then sent him away - as an excuse to be alone with Horss for awhile. Etrhnk could not have anticipated the Request for Voluntary Reassignment. Nor did Horss believe Etrhnk could have reacted swiftly enough to do much more than breach Horss's personal security for a crude attempt to make him kill or injure Demba. If Etrhnk needed revenge to maintain his status, Horss imagined it would be a subtle and elegant yet unmistakable object lesson for all of his enemies
. The mechanism must still be only in the planning stages.
"I can't imagine what threat Samson could pose," Horss said. "If he was mechanical, if he could be some kind of assassin, I'm sure you were motivated to inspect him very thoroughly."
"I can't even imagine," Demba said, "solving the mystery of his appearing to me at this precise moment in time. Yes, I did worry that Samson could be a lethal threat to me, and I did very little to test that idea! It just seemed too absurd, even as paranoid as I was. And there is also this person named Milly who Samson believes is real, not just an artificial intelligence program in his computer."
"Do you think Milly is real?" Horss asked.
"No, but I hate to think the child is mentally ill."
"He would be in good company."
Demba gave him a look of arched eyebrows that Horss could easily see in his shiplink image of her. "I don't know what is good about us, Jon. Are you interested in helping me track Samson?"
"Certainly, Admiral. Are we allies for the moment? Can we divide our attention away from the threat we may pose to each other?"
"We had better. Samson has disappeared."
= = =
"This is a bad dream," Samson complained, finding a moment of mental clarity. "I feel like I'm floating. I can't control anything!"
His feet were down there somewhere, shuffling along in the tunnel. He held his spear without really feeling it in his hand. He should have been