They Also Serve: A Jump Universe Novel Part 17

And came awake. Jerry stood over him, shaking him. "Wake up, Ray. Corpsman, the paddles. His heart is going."

"Yes, sir."

"Don't you dare," Ray gasped. "They did enough."

"I just wanted to wake you, Sleeping Beauty."

"You did." Ray coughed, s.h.i.+vered, and worked the muscles of his back and stomach, shaking off the shock, pain, anger. Better, Ray lay back down. "Doc, you got a briefcase or something like it?"

"Yeah."

"Bring it here."

Jeff stepped into the Public Room, rifle slung over his shoulder, and came to a dead halt. Across from him, the old priest sat beside Annie and her dad. Father and daughter seemed somehow smaller. They slumped in their chairs, staring blindly ahead. "Annie," Jeff whispered softly. She just stared at the wall.

A few tables away, the marine Dumont was nursing a dead beer. "They've had a rough day," he said. "The war's come home. I see you got a rifle. You heading out to the war?"

Jeff hastened to kneel beside Annie. "Annie, what's wrong?"

"Men almost killed her and her da," the priest explained. "People coming out from the cities. Drunk..." the priest trailed off. "Du saved them. Saved the town, probably. He deserves our thanks."

Du winced at that and took another short sip from his beer. "I did what I'm good at."

Jeff swallowed hard. "The Colonel told us they'd picked stuff like that up on the sky eyes."

"We picked it up on the ground. Not quite as clean as from three thousand meters. Not nearly as pretty." The marine growled and offered Jeff a seat at his table. Jeff didn't want to leave Annie. He wanted to hold her, to make the pain go away.

Her mother's glare told him how that would be taken. "City slick," she snorted, putting two new beers down at Dumont's table.

Jeff joined the marine, resting his rifle on the table in front of him. The marine took it expertly. In a moment he had verified the safety was on, the chamber empty. "At least they taught you enough not to shoot yourself. How come the firepower?"

"We're taking a blimp north to do some sampling. Colonel thinks he's turned off what's making people crazy, but he wants to know if it's stronger up North. Things are bad there. They're burning people. I wanted a gun. Thought I'd keep it with me. If the crazies come here, I wanted to do something better than scream."

Dumont frowned into his frothing beer. "Yeah, it's better to do something more than scream." He glanced up, looked hard at Jeff with eyes cold as flint. "Don't forget. You'll be leaving them screaming."

A corpsman arrived, white lab coat showing a bird and two chevrons of authority. He silently went to Annie and her dad, checked their eyes, took their pulses, did other things Jeff did not know how to interpret. The medic turned to the priest. "They're in shock. Not unusual in cases like this. I can give them a shot that will help them sleep. That's the best thing for this."

"This happens often enough out there that you know how to help them." The priest waved at the ceiling, then at Annie.

"Too d.a.m.n much of it, Priest," Dumont spat.

"All the time?" Jeff gulped.

"Some places have it a lot. Some places are as quiet as here was. Depends on the luck of where you're born." Dumont took a long pull on his beer.

"Nikki! Where's Nikki?" Annie suddenly demanded as the corpsman gave her the shot. Annie looked around wildly, eyes impossibly wide. Jeff doubted she saw him.

"There, there, daughter" Her mom quickly settled down beside Annie, took her head in her arms. "Nikki's all right. I just sent her out on an errand. She'll be right back."

"Not likely," Dumont said, now back to sipping his beer.

"Why not?" Jeff said.

"The kid ran out of here as soon as I told her mom what happened. Don't know where she went or when she'll be back."

Jeff thought of going after Annie's little sister, then rethought it. If the word was out that city people had done this, were doing things like this, the dark streets and alleys of Hazel Dell were no place for Vicky Sterling's little brother. Jeff turned back to Dumont. "You may be busy in a day or two."

Dumont's brows went up but not a word came out.

"Colonel wants to raid my sister's archives. Let her know that she can't keep tightening the screws on people without them s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g her back. Be a chance to send a message to someone who started all this." Jeff inclined his head toward Annie, her dad, the east with Richland and Refuge.

The marine put down his beer. "That might be worthwhile. What do you think, Priest?"

"Be gentle, my son," the priest began. Dumont's hand came up in the beginning of an obscene gesture. "On yourself, boy. On yourself," the priest finished.

Dumont's gesture died in midmotion. He ended up wiping his eyes. "Don't know how to do that, padre. Got no idea at all."

Nikki fell, not for the first time, got up, and ran on. She'd run forever, her screaming lungs insisted. She wanted to run some more, forevermore. Run until she couldn't remember the sight of her da, the look on her sister's face, standing there in the doorway. Just standing in the Public Room they knew like they knew each other-and not able to take a step, find a chair until Ma and Nikki led them to one.

Then the starman had told his story and Nikki had run. Run from those she loved. Run from what she could not understand. Run, looking for a way to make it right. There had to be something Nikki could do to help. Somehow she'd ended up at Daga's. They'd been friends since forever. If anything would help, talking to Daga would.

Daga wasn't home. Hadn't been home all day, her ma said. Nikki had ran away from that door, afraid Daga's ma might take her back to Ma. Nikki couldn't face Ma, or Da, or Annie. Running was better.

Without knowing it, she found herself at Jean Jock's house. Breathless, she rapped on the door. It was a long time being answered, and it was Jean Jock's ma who did.

"Is Daga here?" Nikki asked, breathless.

"No, you poor dear. She went out just after Sean came back from the Public Room with the story of what happened to your poor da and sis. She went with all of them, including the three quiet ones from the city. There was talk they would not be back."

"Was Daga leading them?"

"Yes. She said she had something to show them."

"Holy Mother of G.o.d," Nikki breathed. "Holy Mother of G.o.d."

"May she and her Son help us all," the woman said, turning it all into a prayer.

"I don't think either of them can," Nikki whispered in apostasy. She turned away. Now she had to go home. Now she had to tell Ma what she'd done the day she skipped work. What would Ma and Da say? Would Da say anything? Ever again?

Victoria Sterling stared at the report. She was used to her people being incompetent. But this stupid? Even they must have worked at s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up this badly. She slammed her hand down on the buzzer and started counting. That imbecile of a security chief had better be here before she got to ten.

He must have been expecting her ring. He was standing in front of her desk in five counts.

"What do you mean, a mountain vanished? Mountains don't vanish."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Well." She waited to see how something this preposterous had gotten into a report on her desk.

"We did not report that one had. Only that several sources were reporting that one had," he clarified.

"Who?"

"Brother Jonah has told his inner circle of seeing just such a, ah, miracle, and considered it important enough to swear them to secrecy."

"He's probably just been nipping at the sacramental mushrooms. You can't trust what those mystics and dervish say."

"We are in total agreement, ma'am, but Brother Jonah has never been one of that ilk. We always found him one of the more rational among the religious fanatics."

"None is acting very rational right now," Victoria snorted.

"Something we are seeing a lot of."

Victoria fixed her man with a long look. Was he being sarcastic? He looked away first, cleared his throat. "Among those we have under observation, ma'am," he clarified.

That sounded better, more properly servile. "I a.s.sume you have some other source or you would not be wasting my time with such an outlandish rumor."

"In the report you will note that this was twice mentioned by members of the s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p's ground team. We have inserted three agents in villages near the camp. They have overheard conversations between crew members about a vanished mountaintop. When drunk, one of them raved on most frighteningly about his fear of having to face someone with *artillery,' I believe was the word used, like that. There apparently has been a recent war between the rest of humanity with much loss of life."

"Yes, I saw that." Victoria dismissed that with the wave of a hand. That was there. This was here.

"Why didn't Jeffrey mention that to me when we talked?"

"Maybe he wasn't aware of it. Possibly the s.h.i.+p people do not share that information readily."

"Ha, little Jeffrey is nothing if not thorough. He was doing a survey but there. If that mountain went missing, he would have spotted it. Where is that boy, anyway?"

"Our last confirmed reports had him boarding the shuttle at the Refuge blimpfield."

Victoria spotted the use of "confirmed." She'd learned that her intelligence chief could hide a mountain under that word. "And your last unconfirmed report?"

"A team of star people arrived by shuttle late yesterday to a.s.sist Refuge in its crowd control problem." Victoria enjoyed a snort at that. She knew how to handle things like that, s.h.i.+p them off to the farms. No problem. "One of the three mules a.s.signed to that group made a high-speed run to Sterlingview, where they met with the geologist, Harry Hoskins, and spirited away his family. One of our informants potentially identified your brother in that group. However, it was very dark."

"There was a mule not ten miles from here, and you let it get away!" Victoria was out of her seat. "I told you I wanted one of those in my lab! I wanted that mule!" she shouted.

"Yes, ma'am. Our informant had thirty people with him and was confident that they could apprehend the entire party. However, they had one of those marines with a rifle."

"One marine, with one rifle, and my people just ran away."

"There may have been more. It was a very dark night. Electricity was off, and our informant could not call for backup."

"And he expects to get paid!" Victoria shrieked. "Next you're going to tell me he deserves to get paid."

"No, ma'am."

"You bet he's not going to get paid. And don't you think you can slip this one by me. I'll go over your department's expenses for the next six months, line by line. I better not see this-this-coward and traitor being paid."

"Yes, ma'am. Certainly, ma'am."

"Now, go find out how somebody made a mountain disappear. If the star people are scared of it, who did it?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Idiot." He had escaped out the door and was saved from having to answer that remark.

Ray lay on his back, a gray briefcase under his arm. This case carried an emergency cardiac kit, not explosives. Still, it should be all the reminder he needed in his sleep. If he slept. His heart pounded, his blood raced. Sleep was not going to come easy. He willed himself to relax.

And was marching across the polished marble floor of the Unity presidential briefing hall, toward President Urm and four of his honchos. Ray wore the uniform he'd worn to that fateful meeting; his polished boots clicked with each step on the cold marble. Despite the chill, Ray felt sweat trickle from his armpits. Under his left arm, he carried the briefcase of explosives he'd risked his life to transport to this moment.

With a blink, Ray rejected the scene. Yes to the hall, yes to his uniform. No to the Teachers as powerful Unity thugs. They became five squabbling Wardhaven politicians. Ray considered that, then rejected it again. If his mind was translating the Teacher to him, quite possibly it was also projecting images to the Teacher. Ray would control those images.

Five university professors stood before Ray in dowdy regalia. Ray remembered them, an economics professor who couldn't balance his own checkbook, a philosopher who couldn't prove his own existence, a counselor who'd lost his wife to a convicted ma.s.s murderer. Ray smiled, not a bad representation of what he'd seen so far of the Teacher.

"You're back," one on the right growled. "Want more?"

"No. I've come with a message for you."

"What kind of message?" the center asked.

Ray brought the briefcase out from beneath his arm. A table appeared in front of him. He put the briefcase down, entered its combination, the one that set the charges, and turned it toward the five. "I am Colonel Raymond Longknife. I command Captain Mattim Abeeb, formerly commander of the Humanity cruiser Sheffield. In the recent war, he was ordered to kill a planet, and the billion people living on it. To prevent that, I killed the president of the political group known then as Unity and ended that war."

"Ancient history," one on the right wing grumbled.

"If you cause any further damage to the humans living on this planet, or by your actions or inactions cause them to do further damage to each other, I will order Captain Abeeb to use the resources at his disposal to move the asteroids in this solar system out of their orbits and onto a collision course with this planet. He can and will see that this planet is. .h.i.t so hard and so often that it is shaken to its very core. The next s.h.i.+p arriving around this star will find only an asteroid belt where this planet is. Do I make myself clear?"

"Yes," the center said, chastened. Ones on the right and the left started to speak. Several looked on the verge of apoplexy. The center waved them to silence. "I think we have a much better understanding of your people now."

"Good. Leave us alone."

And Ray rolled over and went to sleep. His dreams were of Rita, a tiny baby in her arms. He kept wanting to ask her if it was a boy or a girl, but it was so much fun just looking at the child, he never got around to saying a word.

Ray enjoyed breakfast the next morning, right up to when Mary glanced behind him. "Dumont, where have you been?" Ray turned to find Dumont, Jeff, and a teary-eyed young teenage girl.

"I think you ought to hear Nikki," Jeff said.

"I made the mountain disappear," the girl blurted out. "Or we did," she corrected herself. All conversation around the room died, like a fuse had been pulled.

Ray looked the trembling girl over. She couldn't be more than thirteen. Now he remembered her, the brewmaster's other daughter. Jeff hung around the older one, or vice versa. "You look exhausted," Ray said. "Find her a chair."

Kat was off hers in a flash, got it under the young woman a split second before the local collapsed, then pulled over another chair for herself. Ray motioned Dumont and Jeff to sit; he didn't want anyone towering over this poor kid as she told her story. There had to be a lot more behind the few words she'd gotten out.

With a nod to Kat, Ray gave her the go to be the friend, the big sister, in the interrogation. Much better approach than a rubber hose. Kat leaned forward, rubbed Nikki's hand gently. "How did you make the mountain disappear?"

"We didn't mean to," Nikki said slowly, Then the dam broke. "Daga found it. Daga's always finding things. Small stuff. This was big. A box, three feet long, maybe a foot and a half square. Cold. Boy, it was hard carrying it, but it got warmer as the morning went on. I thought I was getting warmer with the sun up, but I think it was, too. We didn't know what the box was for. We didn't know," she pleaded with Kat.

"I believe you. What did you do with it?"

"We lugged it out to this hill west of town. We couldn't get it open, not even Daga, until I found the right place to push. Then Daga found the other place, and it opened. All it looked like was a piece of window gla.s.s. You could see through it." Nikki scrunched up her face. "At least on one side. But it was all black on the other side; you couldn't see anything that way. And when you looked through it, things got really close. Emma wanted to look at Hazel Dell, but Daga wanted to look at the mountains. We were looking at one when it happened."