“You don’t want to hurt him,” Calhoun called.
And still all the people of the town were hiding, quavering in their hidey-holes, afraid or uninvolved or just plain disinterested. With a piteous wail that might have been pulled from a dying beast, Rheela cried out, “Let him go! For Kolk’r’s sake, let him go!”
“Shut up!” shouted Temo. “That bastard killed my brothers, and he’s gonna die! And you, Tapinza,” he continued as Tapinza opened his mouth to speak, “one word out of you, and I’ll shoot you where you stand!”
Tapinza had never seemed quite so small to Rheela as he did at that moment. Small and pathetic and powerless.
But Rheela was not powerless. She was fueled by righteous indignation and the white-hot heat of a mother’s love, and spurred by this, she started toward Temo. “Let him go!” she cried out. “You have no right to manhandle him! To hurt him! To terrorize him! If your fight’s with Calhoun, then have it be man to man, but leave the child out of this!”
“Rheela, get back!” shouted Calhoun. “Temo … all right! Here!” He stood, raising himself from behind the statue, putting his hands over his head.
But Temo wasn’t looking at him. Instead, his eyes narrowed in recognition as Rheela approached. “Ahhh … the weather witch. And our Majister’s beloved.”
I wish I was, she thought, but all she could say, driven by the fury of the moment, was, “Let my son go!”
“Temo! Up here! Rheela, back away! Tapinza, do something!” Calhoun was shouting orders, but the people in the street were beyond hearing, beyond caring.
“I want my son!” howled Rheela.
“You can have him in hell,” replied Temo, and he swung the plaser around and fired once.
Rheela never even saw the blast. All she knew was that, suddenly, there was a massive pressure on her breast, like a gargantuan hammer blow, that lifted her clean off her feet and sent her sailing through the air. She landed hard, several feet away, flat on her back, suddenly unable to get any air into her chest. She smelled burning flesh right under her nose, but didn’t yet associate it as being her own. Moke was howling, wailing at the top of his lungs. She had completely lost control of her body. It was as if she could not get her head to connect with anything below her neck. Now there were voices shouting from all around her, but she couldn’t sort one from the other. Somehow—she had no idea how—she managed to flop her body over like a great, dead sack of flesh, and she found herself looking up into Moke’s eyes. His voice was unrecognizable, racked with pain and terror. He was still being held by Temo, who was shouting something to Calhoun, and Calhoun was shouting back, and Tapinza was shouting, and the noise blurred into one great roaring rush. It was only at that point that she came to the realization that she had been shot, and following that realization, she further understood that she was going to die, rather soon. She was so disconnected from the moment that the prospect didn’t actually bother her.
“Maaaaaaa!” Moke cried out from very far away. She looked to him, looked to her son, this great and mysterious creature who had been part of her life for such a relatively brief time … and yet it had seemed as if her life had not truly started until he had entered it.
She saw deep, deeply into his eyes, and noticed something there that she had never noticed before. Something fearful and terrifying; and as Moke’s terror turned to blind fury, that which was in his eyes grew in fury as well. It was as dark and as powerful as any storm she had ever summoned, and it was in the control of a child, which meant it was not in any control at all.
And suddenly, just like that, she had a flash of insight about herself that was as pure and clear as she’d ever had in her life. She suddenly understood everything, and, in understanding, was both ashamed and terrified.
Don’t, she tried to whisper, don’t … hurt them …
But it was too late. The storm had come. The darkness was complete.
LEFLER’S STORY
I MADE A TOKEN effort to struggle against Nik, but he was simplytoo strong. All conversation between the three of us—not that there had been much of a conversation up until that point—had ceased.
We moved through the grand lobby, and there was water everywhere, pouring in through the door, coming in from an overhead balcony. It was about knee-high at that point, getting harder to slog through, and suddenly a new wave hit us. It surged through the door and knocked us flat, jarring me loose of Nik’s hold on me. I went under, thrashing about, remembering that it was possible for someone to drown in even an inch of water, and this was a hell of a lot more than an inch.
Someone grabbed me by the back of the neck. I was sure that it was Nik, and I tried to shake free of him. I can only imagine how I must have looked, trying to scramble away under water like some sort of crazed frog. Whatever small bit of air I’d managed to take into my lungs was jarred loose in the struggle and, reflexively, I breathed in water. I started to struggle again, but this time in blind panic instead of a desire to get away. Then I was yanked to my feet, coughing water violently out of my mouth and expelling it through my nose.
“You’re slowing us down!” Nik shouted in my face.
“You’re welcome to let me go if I’m that much of an inconvenience to you!” I snapped back at him.
“Nik! Stop playing around!” shouted Olivan.
We hauled ourselves out through the main doors, and in the distance I saw something horrific. It was, honest to God, a tidal wave, and there seemed to be another one right behind that one. I had no idea where all the water was coming from, but it sure seemed as if it was from everywhere.
Nik looked, to put it mildly, disconcerted. “The way to the field is completely flooded!” he shouted. “We’ll never be able to get to our ship in time!”
“I’ll bring it to us!” Olivan called back. All around us, we could see people splashing around helplessly, not knowing what to do or where to go. “It’ll need five minutes to go through its take-off cycle!”
“We may not have five minutes!”
“Higher ground! We need higher ground!”
“This way!”
Nik shoved me ahead of him. I was soaked to the skin, but he still had no trouble hauling me around as if I was weightless. Considering that days before he had acted as if how much I weighed was a big deal in hauling me up from a dangerous situation, it made me wonder just what else he was capable of.
Nevertheless, even as he pushed me along, he called, “Let’s leave the girl! We don’t need her anymore!”
“We bring her!”
“But—”
“I said, bring her!”
It was so strange. Nik’s reaction wasn’t just as if he was having a disagreement with his father. He actually seemed to be trying to … to resist him somehow. If that’s what he was attempting, however, it didn’t work. Instead he just nodded, as if it was his idea to continue to keep me in play as a pawn.
We half-ran, half-swam through the water, and got to an area that was elevated, a mountainous area that led up to camp sites and excavations. We splashed up and out of the water, and I drew a brief sigh of relief, even though I knew this was only a temporary respite. The dirt beneath our feet was already thick with water, coagulating into mud. We shoved our way up the path anyway.
“How could you have done it?” I managed to say to Nik, who had stopped clamping down on my vocal cords. My voice came out raspy and unpleasant. “Why did you … how could you have—?”
“Killed people?” He shrugged. “It’s not especially difficult. You don’t think of them as people. Just obstacles, or things that you don’t want around.”
“My God … I don’t know you at all … you’re not …”
“The man you thought I was?” He laughed bitterly. “No man ever is. The only question is whether the woman figures it out or not. We’re none of us what we appear to be.”
“Si Cwan is,” I said fiercely as I stumbled and slid in the mud. He caught me and pushed me up, ever up. “He’s exactly what he a
ppears to be. He’s noble and true and he’s going to hunt you down, no matter what it takes …”
He swung me around and stared into my eyes like he was trying to discover something there. He looked like he was about to say something …
Suddenly there was a loud, horrific squealing sound, like nothing I’d ever heard. Nik froze where he was, as did I. We looked ahead of us.
There was some sort of crazed, dripping-wet creature ahead of us. It was bristling with fur and teeth, snarling and swaying its massive head back and forth, as if daring us to go past. Even Olivan had frozen where he was, looking properly respectful.
“It’s a targ. A Klingon targ,” Olivan said slowly.
“Would you mind telling me what the hell a Klingon targ is doing on Risa?” Nik asked, trying to sound calm. It wasn’t easy to do. We didn’t have weapons and the creature was itself a weapon.
“When our little computer program kicked in, one of the things it did was release the force barriers that kept the animals in the zoo. The targ must be an escapee.”
“Great, Father. So … now what?”
His father surveyed the situation for a moment. I saw that he was manipulating what appeared to be a chronometer he was wearing on his wrist. But then I realized that it was actually the remote device he was using to summon his ship. If I hadn’t been busy imagining how nice it would be to throttle him, I would have been admiring his ability to do more than one thing at a time.
“Throw him the girl,” he said.
“What?” said Nik loudly, beating me to the punch by half a heartbeat.
“Targs are very vicious, but not particularly bright,” he said, as calmly as if he was discussing the weather. “They’re easily distracted. If you push the girl right on top of it, it will be busy savaging her, and in the meantime, we can be on our way.”
“No!” He sounded horrified. I couldn’t figure him out at all. On the one hand he spoke like a stone-cold killer, but on the other hand there seemed to be things that he was simply unable or unwilling to do.
“Do it!” Olivan shouted, and there was nothing of any willingness to compromise in his voice.
And without hesitation, like a puppet on a string, Nik shoved me right at the targ.
My feet went out from under me, the mud providing no traction at all, and I went down hard. I was practically under the targ’s hooves, and the only thing that stopped the beast from trampling me right then and there was the fact that it was surprised. It darted backward, as if suspicious that my presence in front of it was a trick. Its roaring was drowning out what Olivan was saying, but it was probably something like, “Come on, let’s go!”
I tried to roll away from it, but Olivan had been right. Once its attention was on me, it wasn’t going to be pulled away from me. It let out a roar, its foul breath rolling over me, and I choked. It still had vestiges of whatever the hell it had eaten earlier on its breath. I gagged on it, and then the creature charged me. I had no chance. I threw up my arms to ward it off, as if that was going to help one iota, and then, over the creature’s bellowing, I heard Olivan in the distance. I had no idea what he was shouting, and then, suddenly, the targ let out a grunt of surprise.
I was no less surprised than the targ when I saw that Nik had landed on top of the beast. “Go! Go!” he was shouting at me. I stumbled back, confused, trying to figure out what was happening, and then Olivan grabbed me so tightly that I immediately lost all circulation to my forearm.
“Nik! Get away from it! Get away!” Olivan was shouting.
Nik seemed to be fighting for position, even as the targ was doing everything it could to shake him off. It threw itself to one side and then the other, and all the time Nik held on, his face a mask of concentration. He had one arm firmly under the creature’s chin, which was how he was managing to hold on at all, and was endeavoring to get leverage with the other arm, as if trying to find just the right spot.
“Nik!” Olivan cried out once more. There was another huge wave of water coming. Within a minute, even the area where we were standing would no longer be safe.
And then Nik seemed to get the angle he wanted. His teeth set, he twisted as hard as he could. There was a crack so loud that it sounded like lightning had struck nearby, and that crack was accompanied by an agonized squeal.
The targ shook violently, and Nik released his hold on it. He rolled out of its path, but it wasn’t as if the creature was going to take another run at him. Instead the targ staggered around, its head at an odd angle, clearly not yet aware that it was dead. Then the message finally managed to get to its brain, and the targ stumbled once, twice, and then fell over. It twitched several more times, its cries dying in its throat, and then it lay still.
Olivan looked angrily at his son. “That,” he said heatedly, “was not what I told you to do.”
“You didn’t tell me not to do it.”
“Don’t play games with me, boy! You know what I—” He shook his head. “This is idiocy. Let’s go. Bring the girl; there may be another targ.”
“Please, Father … enough. Let’s let her g—”
But he gave Nik a look that seemed designed to cut him in half. At this point, I had no idea what was going on, or what sort of hold Olivan had on him. But clearly Nik was in no position to fight it, whatever it was. He grabbed my wrist and pulled me behind him, and under his breath he muttered, “Please don’t fight me. I don’t want to have to hurt you.”
It was pure craziness, but somehow I really did believe that this … this murderer didn’t want to do me harm.
We went higher and higher. From our vantage point, I could see people desperately splashing around in the rising water. Some were belatedly trying to follow in the same path that we’d been taking, but they were having trouble getting to it. And I could also see another wave building up, this one even larger than the one before. I couldn’t help but feel that this was going to be the big one, and it would just wipe out everything, including us.
And then I saw it, angling in quickly from the direction of the central landing field. It was a four-man shuttle, moving right toward us, and Olivan was guiding it with confidence. Without even bothering to glance in my direction, Olivan said, “Rip her shirt off and use it to bind her hands. Get ready to bring her on the ship.”
“Father!”
“Knock her unconscious, if you prefer. I don’t need her resistance …”
“But—!”
The ship was getting closer, almost within landing distance. Olivan was clearly becoming angrier and angrier that Nik was giving him problems. “Don’t you understand, you young fool? You don’t get to say ‘but’! You don’t get to defy me! I’m your cre—your father, and you will do as I order you!”
But Nik had caught the sudden switch in his father’s voice, the blip in his wording. “Dad,” he said cautiously, as if he was defusing an explosive. “Dad … what’s going on?”
The shuttle angled around toward us, settling into a landing position five feet away. Had the situation been less dire, I would have admired his technique.
“We don’t have time for this,” Olivan said curtly.
“Let’s make the time, Father.”
The doors to the shuttle dilated open. “Render the woman … unconscious … and get in the shuttle,” Olivan said. His voice was like iron. His full concentration was on Nik. “Do … as I say.”
Nik was visibly trembling. I’d never seen anything like it. It was as if Olivan’s voice was tearing him apart. “I …”
“No ‘I.’ No ‘you.’ Just me. And you will do as I say. Now.” Then, more loudly, he repeated, “Now! Now! N—”
And because he was so completely focused on Nik, what happened next caught him completely off guard. There was a sudden rush of air, something hurtling through it. Even with all the distractions, Olivan—as he had before—sensed imminent danger. This time, however, he was a half-second too late.
There was a thudding sound, like a knife being slammed into a melon. O
livan stood there, looking surprised, staring down at his chest and seeing the blade and hilt still quivering. He touched it, as if doing so would be the only way that he could verify that he was, in essence, dead.
Nik was so much in shock that he released me, forgetting about me completely as he took several steps toward his father and then stopped, his attention being caught by the individual standing in the doorway of the craft.
It was Si Cwan. Kalinda was behind him, smiling in grim satisfaction. Cwan was still in a pose like a javelin thrower, at full extension. Slowly, he lowered his arm and nodded approvingly, his expression matching that of his sister.
“You checked … the registry … of my personal vessel,” Olivan said in wonderment. “How very … clever of you.” He sank to his knees, and there was blood trickling from his mouth.
Stepping out of the vessel, Si Cwan extended a hand to me. “Robin. Quickly. Into the vessel. I,” and he looked forcefully at Nik, “will attend to this one.”
“I’m not going anywhere, Si Cwan! Not without my mother and Scotty!”
The wave was roaring up from the sea, thundering with such choppy force that we practically had to scream to make ourselves heard.
Nik made a move toward me, but Si Cwan stopped him in his tracks with a contemptuous, “Are you so little of a man that you need to hide behind a woman?”
His face darkening, Nik said, “I didn’t have to hide behind anyone to kill Jereme, Thallonian.”
“No. You didn’t. Now … let’s see you try to kill me.”
“He had no choice.”
It was Olivan who had spoken. He was looking at us with such utter contempt, that—had I not been so sick with worry about my mom and Mr. Scott—I would have gone over and kicked his teeth in on general principles alone.
Nik looked at him in confusion. “What … what do you mean … no choice … ?”
Olivan coughed up more blood, and he was looking with hatred at Si Cwan. “You won’t kill him, Cwan. I know you. You’re too pure, too noble of spirit, just as the girl said. You’re going to let him live … on general principles … because even you wouldn’t condemn someone to death who had no choice in their actions …”