“What’re those?” I pointed at the packets.
“Those are what we’ll be feeding into the air conditioning system.” He didn’t look up.
I laughed. “It looks like candy!”
“I don’t recommend them. The chemical is a form of a sodium compound that was once widely used as an anesthetic-and a ‘truth serum.’”
I froze. My hand fell back to my side.
“They probably don’t taste very good.” He smiled, enjoying his own wit.
I laughed a little too loud. “
How’s it work
, anyway? How long will this keep everybody asleep?
It’s
not gonna last forever-don’t it leak out? What happens then?”
“The gas is harmless. We can keep them unconscious for as long as we need to, until everything is under control. This system is self-
contained,
the gas can’t ‘leak out.’ It purifies and recirculates the same air.”
“Won’t it clear out the gas, then?”
“Ordinarily it would. But most of these systems have a regulator built into them-“
“So you can use them to gas people?”
He looked up at me just for a second, with his irritation starting to show. “I hardly think that was the purpose intended by the manufacturer.” He looked down at what he was doing again. “It’s used for air hydration control, mass immunization, disinfectants-similar functions.”
“Oh.” I let my hand drift out in a slip’s move that was so automatic it was almost instinctive. “Well, ain’t it gonna gas us, then?” My fingers closed over cool metal.
“I can bypass-“
I jerked his stungun loose-(Now, Jule, now!)-
trying
to leap clear-
But my legs didn’t do what I expected. I stumbled, and in the same split second Rubiy’s arm lashed out and knocked me into the panel; I heard Jule cry out as her own stungun tore itself loose from her hands. I had one glimpse of the total rage on Rubiy’s face before the pain of my wrenched back blurred it out, before the same rage smashed into our minds. I felt my body shudder with the blow, felt my heart constrict and miss a beat as my mind barely blocked his attack. The stungun had fallen out of my hands. Rubiy’s hands reached out-
I felt psi energy overload the circuits of my mind suddenly, sweeping all the barriers of my control aside,
forcing
me to join-not Rubiy, not Jule, not even human. . . .
Hydran.
The combined strength of their mind poured into me, building inside me like the static charge of a lightning bolt. Rubiy fell away from me, his face changing, mirroring my own as I was transformed; no fury left on it, but only confusion and disbelief. I saw his
power,
saw it, shining around him like an aura-but it couldn’t reach me now. I saw Jule too, her face slack with shock, her own psi aura haloing her. The whole room shimmered with lifeless light and whispered with silent noise. I didn’t feel pain now. I didn’t even feel human; my consciousness was like foam on a cresting surge of energy. Static crackled between my fingers, my hair lifted on an invisible breeze. . . .
I watched Rubiy lurch across the room to where Jule clung to the wall, too dazed by what was happening to get out of his way. He caught her in his arms, holding her between us like a shield-not knowing there was nothing I could have done to stop him.
And then suddenly something sucked me down into my own mind, made me forget them both; and all I could think about was where I stood now-in the Federation Mines, in this hell of misery and torture and slow death. All I could see was spending the rest of my life as a slave; all I could feel was the pain in my back, the betrayal, the suffering, the humiliation. . . . And suddenly I knew that I had the power in me now to make it end forever.
(Yes.) I spoke the word where only they would hear me. (Yes. I will. . . .) I felt them answer me; and knew that what they showed me then would stay with me forever, too.
And then the lightning struck-through me, around me, below me . . . everywhere. I think I remember seeing Rubiy and Jule disappear together, before my vision turned inside out. I think I remember screaming.
The thunder followed, deep in the levels of the compound below me.
Liquid fire trickled into my mouth, dripped down my throat, filled my nose with fumes that made me gag. Reaction caught me with a heavy hand and dragged me into the real world like a newborn. I was blinking and blinking, starting to wonder if I’d gone blind when suddenly my mind opened to the light. “What . . . what . . . where am I?”
Joraleman stood looking down at me like he thought my next question was going to be “Who am I?” and he wasn’t sure what the answer was.
“In my office.”
I was lying on my stomach on a couch, staring at a holo of some other world projected on the wall behind him. At first I didn’t know it from the real thing. My eyesight strobed again, turning the view into a negative, and back. I put a hand up to my eyes. My head felt like it was really to split in half.
“Here.” He pressed a cup into my hands, winced as a spark of static leaped between us. “On my home-world we call this Holy Water. They claim it can put life back in the dead.”
I fumbled it up to my mouth and took another swallow. It was a lot like drinking molten lead. “If”-I gasped-“if it
don’t
kill you first.” I drank some more, a sip at a time. “How’d I get here? What . . . happened?”
He sat down on the corner of his desk and took a drink from the cloth-covered decanter, grimacing. My eyes still weren’t working right-he wore a halo of pale rainbows. “I found you wandering in the hall like a burnout a few hours ago. A lot of other people were doing the same thing, at the time. . . .” He shook his head. “You were really telling the truth.” I began to see how dazed he looked-like someone who’d seen the end of the world. “Needless to say, it was a shock, if not exactly a complete surprise, around here. But how the hell did it happen-I thought you said the plan was just for a takeover. . . .” He rubbed his head, rumpling his yellow hair.
I didn’t answer him, because I couldn’t. I shut my eyes, trying to focus on the aching chaos inside. The last thing I remembered: I remembered being chained to a cot . . . Jule . . . Rubiy . . . the chain dropping away. The control room; Rubiy by the computer board, turning on us just as we were about to . . . And then something alien filling my head; my whole body like a jar full of lightning. . . . I opened my eyes again. “It didn’t happen. The takeover Rubiy planned, it didn’t happen. We stopped him before he could use the gas. . . .” And then Rubiy had disappeared, and Jule with him. And I hadn’t been transformed by wildfire so much as I’d been a kind of transformer for it: knowing that if I thought the word, it would be set free. . . .
“But you didn’t stop them-they’ve destroyed everything!” He took another drink from the cloth-covered bottle.
“What’re you talking about?”
“The underground vaults have collapsed. Some are full of molten rock. Everything’s in ruins. Why would they do that? And what kind of weapon-
“ His
voice broke off.
I took a gulp of my own drink. “Did . . . how many people were . . . killed?”
“Nobody!
That’s the damnedest part of it-nobody was seriously hurt.” He wiped his mouth; rainbows splintered and danced.
I sighed as the tension flowed out of me. Joraleman was staring at me. I said, “It wasn’t part of the plan. . . . It was the Hydrans.”
“The Spooks?”
He straightened. “Why?”
“Why do you think?” I sat up finally, swearing at what it did to my back. Joraleman watched me, not saying anything, until I got my face under control. “Why do you think?” I said it again, meeting his eyes. “They knew what Rubiy was planning, because I told them. They told me they had to think about it . . . and they did. They decided to stop him; and they got what they wanted all along, too. God, did they get it. . . .”
He shook his head. “Why now?
Why not a long time ago, if they were going to do it at all?”
Because they’d been waiting for a focus, a key . . . just like Rubiy had. And they’d finally found one.
(What happened to you?) But he didn’t say it out loud.
Because suddenly he knew the answer.
He looked down. “A higher justice,” he mumbled, and took another drink.
I thought about what would happen to me if he ever told anybody the truth. And then I thought about how he hadn’t even. . . . “You’re protecting me. Why’d you bring me here, instead of turning me in?”
He looked up again and his mouth twisted.
“Because you were right.
And because when I found you, you weren’t in any shape to answer a lot of angry questions.”
“How long was I like that?”
He glanced at something on his desk. “Close to five hours now.”
Jule.
Jule disappearing, along with
Rubiy. . . .
I pulled myself to my feet. “We got to talk to somebody. The psions in the town, somebody’s got to stop them. Rubiy’s back
there,
and he knows-“
“It’s already been taken care of.” He held up a hand.
“It has?” I swayed.
He nodded; the haze of distortion shimmered around him. “We got a radio call from somebody named Siebeling-“
“Siebeling!”
I sat down again. “Is he all right?”
“As far as I know.
All I know is we got his call right after the disaster, and he claims he turned the psions’ own show back on them somehow. We sent out a security force. They ought to be back any time, if-
“ Something
buzzed on his desk. He turned away, “Joraleman,” he said, speaking into the intercom.
I closed my eyes and stopped listening, concentrating on what I’d just heard. Siebeling was all right. Then somehow he must have gotten the best of Rubiy, and Jule must be with him. I wanted to find them, but my mind was too full of noise: too full of the suffocating fog of shock trapped here inside the dome, hundreds of human beings numb with it, filling all the levels of the compound; too full of the jangling static of my own pain. I quit trying and made myself relax.
Joraleman left his desk and went to the door, saying something I didn’t really hear. He left me there alone, and after a while I dozed off.
I don’t know how long I slept. I woke up again just as the door opened; knowing whose face I was about to see. . . . I got up from the couch.
“Cat!”
Siebeling said. An aura shone around him, twice as bright as Joraleman’s. His happiness and his relief were blinding. I rubbed my eyes, realizing then that the light I saw around him wasn’t really light at all.
And then Siebeling was hugging me like a long-lost friend. I yelped and pushed free as the burns on my back came alive. Siebeling’s hands dropped; surprise and sudden guilt flashed around him.
“Hey-
“ trying
to keep my voice even, fumbling for a grin, “hey, Doc. You look like you’re really glad to see me for once.” I laughed.
But his guilt only doubled, flashing crimson. And I’d be lying if I didn’t admit I enjoyed it. He said, “Jule told me everything. . . . Will you let me look at it?”
I unsealed the jacket and shrugged it off my shoulders, gritting my teeth. I heard him suck in his breath.
“Second and third degree burns, and they left them like that-?”
“That’s the point.” I pulled the jacket on again before I could think about how much it would hurt.
He looked away at Joraleman, his face hardening. “This is barbaric. How can you-“
“It ain’t his fault,” I said. “He would’ve stopped it, if he could.”
Siebeling nodded, grim-faced. “Then will you help me see that he gets decent medical treatment?”
Joraleman was looking at patterns in the rug. “That might be . . . difficult, under the circumstances.” He glanced up, with his face red.
Siebeling opened his
mouth,
shut it again without saying anything.
“Where’s Jule? Didn’t she come with you?” I changed the subject to the only thing I wanted to hear.
“No.” Siebeling looked back at me. “Isn’t she here?” His mind took a sick lurch. “Where’s Rubiy? What happened?”
“He ain’t here. He got away. I thought you’d . . . ?” But he hadn’t.
“My God, where the hell are they?” Panic leaped into his voice. “What’s he done to her?”
“I think maybe I’ve got an idea,” Joraleman said slowly. “I heard outside that we’ve lost control of the planetary shield. It doesn’t answer commands from the equipment here-and while it doesn’t, there’s no way in or out of Cinder. We’re trapped, like flies in a bottle. Somebody broke into the computer and tampered with the programming.”
“Rubiy.”
I nodded. “He did somethin’ in the systems room. But how’s that tell us where he is now?”
“He could be at the transmitting station. He could be controlling it directly from there, if he’s that good. He could still be holding this world hostage, single-handed.” He reached for the intercom on his desk again. “Maybe it’s about time we had another talk with somebody on top. . . .
Joraleman here.”
He’d called Kielhosa-the voice that answered him was one I was never going to forget.