Firehand Part 18

Once he saw that his wife was mounted and prepared to follow him, Ross turned Lady Gay toward the trees and gave her the command for speed, as if flight could free him of that which was driving him, sunder his weakness from him.

The man did not draw rein or slacken pace until he came to that high place where he and Eveleen had stood together so many months before. He dismounted there and waited for her on the crest.

The world below and around him was wonderful with the gentle sunlight and soft, pale greens of a still young spring, but no trace of its joy touched him.

He heard the weapons expert's buck approach and halt near Lady Gay but did not turn to watch her.

He felt rather than saw her come up beside him.

Eveleen waited quietly for some seconds to give him an opportunity to collect himself, but he seemed unable to begin.

"Ross," she said softly in the end, "please let me try to help. I can't bear to see you torturing yourself like this."

He did not respond at first but finally shrugged. "As I told you before, I thought I had a proper spine. It appears I don't."

"Ross..."

He turned to her. "When we were here the last time, I asked you to stay with me."

"Yes. Now you don't want to remain?"

His eyes closed. "Heart, mind, and soul!" He pressed the fingers of his hands against the lids until the pressure became painful. "It's Sapphirehold that I want, Eveleen, and I can't have that. What I said to Allran was right. I am a mercenary, and soon there'll be nothing more for me to do here, no place for me."

Suddenly, the too-bright eyes fixed on her. "You knew it'd be like this, or Gordon did?"

Her head lowered. "If it was Sapphirehold itself and not Dominion in general that was drawing you, yes. We were hoping for the last, Ross. Both of us wanted you to be spared learning that part of a mercenary's existence, at least for a while."

Her eyes raised again and met his. "You can still make it in that work. You're good, and with any kind of luck at all, you'd win a Commandant's rank in a very few years."

His mouth twisted. "I find something basically unappealing about battering my fellow creatures for fun and profit." He scowled. "I seem to require a genuine purpose for what I do."

Murdock shrugged. "I couldn't stay anyway. I blew it, or we blew it, here, where folks were sympathetic to us. It'd happen again, and maybe Terra'd get wiped out as a result. We'd most likely disappear ourselves at that point, and everything we'd managed to accomplish thus far would probably be undone as well."

Ross sighed deeply. "No, Eveleeni EA Riordan," he said wearily, purposely stressing the Dominionite version of her name. "It's back to Terra and no rank or reputation for both of us. I think I've known that for a long time and just haven't had the guts to face it."

The Time Agent's eyes were dark, somber. He had surrendered the land and the place in it that he loved, and soon he would probably lose the rest as well.

There was no point in postponing that break if it must come. "Does our relations.h.i.+p still stand?" he demanded bluntly.

"What the h.e.l.l do you think I am, Ross Murdock?" the woman flared, fury blazing from voice, face, and body in equal measure.

"I don't think you're a fool," he snapped coolly. "We could've made it big here, really carved out something for ourselves. That won't be true back home. Plain Ross Murdock's no prize, and I just want it clear that you've got an out. I won't try to chain you..."

"I fell in love with 'plain Ross Murdock' long before Firehand raised his head... Or maybe you're the one who's thinking he hasn't made so marvelous a match. I won't bring you any great glory or fatten your bank account on Terra, either."

"No!"

His anger was sufficient reb.u.t.tal to that fear, and Eveleen's eyes slitted as her lips curved into a hunter's smile. "I'm so far from wanting out of our partners.h.i.+p, my Dear, that I've got every intention of redoing the ceremony according to Terran specifications as soon as I can arrange to have it performed."

"You what?"

The woman's face remained impa.s.sive for several seconds, then she took pity on him and laughed softly. "No standing at the altar rail dressed like an undertaker," she promised, "but the church service is important, and so's the presence of my father and brother... Ross?"

Murdock knew he would agree. This really did mean a great deal to her. h.e.l.l, he would have given in had she asked for the whole show. "Whatever you want, Lieutenant. I don't mind the idea of showing off that I've won a most beautiful woman."

Murdock kissed her softly, then turned toward their mounts. "We'd best be getting back. There's a lot to be done yet before we have to call for a pickup."

The three months that followed pa.s.sed in a blur of activity, but at last, Ross Murdock stood once more on the narrow crest. The heart in him felt dead and heavy enough to drag him down to the planet's core. Soon now, the chopper would come, and he would lose this beauty, lose everything it represented, for all the rest of his life.

Gordon was beside him. He said nothing, but his hand rested on his friend's shoulder, its pressure firm and warm.

"I'm glad I spoke up for Karara," the younger man said suddenly.

"She was lucky." Ashe's eyes rested on him. "I am, too, I guess. I'm deeply sorry this didn't work out for you, Ross, but I value our friends.h.i.+p. I didn't want to lose it."

The other forced the shadow of a smile. "Breaking in a new partner has to be a pain."

"A royal pain... I'd have missed Eveleen, too. She'll be one major a.s.set to our team in the future."

Gordon caught his sharp look. "I doubt she'll be sent back to the cla.s.sroom. She's too good."

Murdock glanced downslope to the place where his wife was waiting. She had not been sure enough of her control following their parting with Luroc I Loran and their springdeer to stay with her comrades.

His eyes closed. That severing had been as painful as the wound that had so nearly finished him...

The Ton of Sapphirehold alone had been told of the off-worlders' imminent departure and had insisted on accompanying them most of the way to the rise, as far as they dared permit him to come. When he had turned back, he had taken the mounts who had served them so well, promising that all three would be left to run free with the breeding herd, never again to be brought by humankind into danger and certainly never to be set to heavy labor. They, too, had served Sapphirehold with uncommon valor, and the domain was prepared to honor them for it even if it was to be prevented from honoring those they had so often borne.

Ross's head lifted sharply. There was a sound, distant yet but clear, in Dominion's still air.

Grief twisted in him, so sharp that he feared for a moment that he would not be able to master it. He turned to the archeologist in desperation. "It'll be just a quick jump once we reach the gate, won't it, only a shot to our own time and then aboard s.h.i.+p and home? We won't have to stay there?"

"Don't you want to know if we succeeded?" Ashe asked in surprise.

"We'll be told that. -This is the Dominion I want to remember, not a tamed, citified, modern planet with Luroc, Allran, and all the others so long dust that not even a memory of them remains, as if they had never lived at all."

Gordon looked closely, carefully, at him. "Yes," he said quietly. "I agree with you. I'll see that it's arranged."

31.

THE TIME AGENTS stepped through the gate into the age in which they had been born.

They found themselves inside a building of some sort. Ross resolutely turned toward the door but then stopped, as if frozen or held by some powerful compulsion. "We-I have to go there," he said abruptly, "to Sapphirehold or what used to be Sapphirehold."

Gordon looked sharply at him. "You said..."

"I know, but if I don't make myself see it, I'll be running, and I'll spend the rest of my life running." He hesitated. "Do you think they'll let us?"

"You heard the pilot. We managed to save the whole d.a.m.n planet. I doubt the bra.s.s here'll be too slow in granting us a simple request like that... Through the door with you, Firehand! We'll find out in a few minutes."

The archeologist sighed as Eveleen's fingers caught his arm, staying him. She looked as if she could cheerfully murder him.

"Gordon," she hissed.

"He's right, Eveleen. He'll do it anyway. He has to do it, and if we try to block him, he won't see us as being there for him if he needs us."

"We'd both better start praying, then, hard, Gordon O Ashean. I don't want to see Ross ripped open."

"Nor do I, Lieutenant."

Murdock shut his eyes. Their copter was completely closed, and he had no way of seeing the countryside over which they were flying.

The combination s.p.a.ce and surplanetary port from which they had lifted appeared to be part of an urban area, but he understood that this modern Dominion still retained a great deal of cultivated and undamaged land as well. Which one or what combination characterized the once-embattled island, he had not been able to nerve himself to ask.

Eveleen's hand squeezed into his, and Ashe moved a little closer on Ross's other side so that their shoulders met in a silent declaration of support. For a moment, the fog of his dread lightened. They were doing their best for him, doing all that could be done. Fate and time had taken the rest of it out of their hands.

What if it was gone, he wondered in despair, the very land as well as the ancient, long-superceded political division? He swallowed hard. The fact that Dominion of Virgin lived was their victory. Intellectually, he accepted that, but it was not all of Dominion that had taken his heart, just one small, exquisite part of her. One small part as it had been distant millennia ago...

His muscles tensed. There was a change in the motion of the chopper. They were beginning to descend.

Eveleen followed Ross through the narrow door s.p.a.ce. The machine had brought them where they had requested to come but had set down at the base of the rise rather than at its summit to avoid the never-ending sweep of the wind rus.h.i.+ng over it. That much, at least, remained constant with the conditions they remembered from the past.

They started to climb, Murdock first, his companions a few steps behind him. The grade itself, the vegetation around them, did not seem terribly alien, and the weapons expert gathered herself in one fierce prayer, one all-consuming hope, that the world soon to meet their eyes would prove as little jarring. It would not be the same. That, no one could expect, but, Lord of Time, let it be whole.

Let it be alive. This man of hers must always push himself, punish himself, to the end. Gordon was right. He had to do this, but if he found desolation or degradation only, she feared it would break something within him, a core part of his fine spirit and much, the best, of his heart.

They mounted the crest. Ross Murdock looked upon the scene he had watched with such infinite anguish both scant hours and a near eternity ago.

A sharp breath that was more than half sob rose to close his throat. Time had changed a little of what lay below, humanity a great deal more, but this realm still stood erect, unbroken, and in its essence unravaged.

He blinked misting eyes, trying to clear them and at the same time conceal his need to do so.

It might only have been that his vision was blurred, yet for an instant, perhaps a second or two, another landscape veiled the one of the present age. Ross's hand, the left, went out to it without conscious command from his mind. The scarred fingers curved, as if he would draw what he saw there to him.

"This land," he said in a voice that was no more than a whisper. "It is mine!"

His head raised. He had spoken the truth, affirmed the truth. What now lay in his body's and in his soul's eyes was his and would be his forever.

32.

ROSS EXAMINED THE shelves covering the walls with satisfaction. Eveleen and he had taken the two-bedroom suite, and this room was going to house the books they both would be moving into it, plus those he knew would be added as time went on. Some of the odd bits of knowledge he had picked up in the course of his seemingly random program of reading had proven useful on Dominion, and he doubted either he or the weapons expert would slow down on their unofficial research into topics of interest to them in the future.

As if in response to some mental call, the door opened, and Eveleen Riordan came in. She was still wearing her cream-white suit and looked stunningly beautiful despite her long, busy day.

"I thought I'd find you here," she said. "We'll start filling those shelves tomorrow. There's a lot to be done in these two weeks Kilgarries kindly gave us off."

"Kindly? We're ent.i.tled to a furlough."

"Well, we're not really ent.i.tled to quarters this s.p.a.cious, so we can thank the Major for that at least."

"With so pretty a bride, how could he refuse us a decent wedding present?" he countered.

Murdock laughed softly, to himself. Half the men on the Project were kicking themselves right now. Eveleen's abilities and aloofness had effectively blinded the lot of them to much of the rest of what she was, even as he himself had been blinded. Now that he had made his move, his comrades could all see this aspect of her, and he enjoyed their envious looks every bit as much as he had imagined he would.

"Speaking of wedding presents," the woman said, "here's my offering."

Ross took the long, narrow package she was holding from her. It was neatly and appropriately wrapped. He shook it and then started to slide the ribbon off. "Did you have to use so much tape?" he grumbled.

"It makes for tidier corners," she responded. "Hurry up, will you? I brought this all the way from Sapphirehold for you. I had it made specially."

Delaying no longer, he got the package open and the lid off the box inside. It held what looked like a leather belt, very thin and supple and extraordinarily wide but lacking any kind of buckle. He stared at it, puzzled for a moment, then his breath caught as he realized its purpose.

The woman nodded eagerly. "It'll cover your jeweled one so you can wear it and no one'll be the wiser. You couldn't go on keeping it under your clothes like some old-time monk's hair belt."

She looked up at him anxiously. "Do you like it, Ross? A watch would've been more traditional..."

Laughing, he took her in his arms. "I like it very much, Lieutenant EA Riordan. I just wish I'd shown equal imagination." She was wearing the pearls he had given her.

"I'm a very traditionally minded person," she responded, "about some things, anyway."

A buzz from the front door caused them to draw apart. "It's open!" Murdock called out.

A few moments later, Gordon Ashe joined them. He glanced admiringly at the shelves. "They won't be empty long," he commented.

"Not if we can help it," his partner agreed. The lightness had gone out of him. "What's the news, Gordon?"

They knew, of course, that Dominion of Virgin and her people did live. The almost deliriously enthusiastic reception of their colleagues had told them that, but Ashe had not delayed long in getting their party off-world once they had returned from the crest. There were so many things, subtle and gross, that might have altered with the change they had made in the planet's history. What if something, something terrible, had gone wrong as a result? Their people might not even have known to tell them then...

The other's broad smile put an end to that worry. "The only changes appear to be for the better, for the Dominionites at any rate. They're a feistier bunch now, with a lot more good old Terran spirit even if they're no more warlike than they were. They're also a d.a.m.n harder crew to deal with in a trade situation. There'll have to be a great deal more give on our part before we get what we want out of them."

"I can't say I'm sorry to hear that," Eveleen remarked. "Our kind gets on better with those who can successfully stand up to us than with the totally meek and mild."

Ashe's eyes twinkled. "There's more, of personal interest to us."

Ross was willing to walk into that snare. "Such as?"

"We're fondly remembered, my Friends, the whole lot of us."