They Also Serve: A Jump Universe Novel Part 14

"The thought of flying free always was a turn-on," Ray explained softly.

"Want to tell me what's going on here?"

"Got enough?"

"Yeah. Corpsman!" Doc shouted. "Wrestle me up the kids." A lab-coated a.s.sistant nodded silently and left. "Okay, Colonel, what were you doing that made that little thing you shouldn't have get all red and yellow from use?"

Ray swung himself off the table and ambled over to watch his own scans. The first half minute was familiar territory. Then the dark ma.s.s that scared Ray just to look at warmed up, showing itself off boldly in reds, pinks, and yellows. Other parts of Ray's brain glowed in response to some stimuli from it. "I'm remembering things I never did."

"Recalling dreams?"

Ray shook his head. "Too real. My dreams have a fuzziness around the edge. Nothing hazy here. I can read the writing on the walls, writing I've never seen before. I even understand the poetry. Understand all of its allusions and can call up more memories to back them up." Ray tapped his head. "These memories are as real as anything I've lived."

Jerry leaned back, knuckling his eyes with both fists as if to clear them of sleep, exhaustion, unacceptance, all of the above. "We've been trying to make data biostorage units. Every time we think they might be cost-effective, silicon comes up with a new growth spurt. And reading the data is slow."

"I don't know about that. All I know is I've just failed to disprove the hypothesis I presented this morning. I've got to face some things I didn't want to even touch. Things I've been dismissing as dreams aren't dreams at all. Certain experiences I and the kids had were very real. This planet is crazy. Maybe even crazier than I thought. Now I've got to start figuring out what to do about it. Certainly before tonight."

"Tonight?"

"Yeah. 'cause if I can't handle this crazy place by tonight, it's not going to let me sleep again. And Doc, I am tired."

A shake of the head was all the medication Jerry gave.

Ray dropped in on Kat before leaving the hospital/research center. She was elbow-deep in correlating Lek's media and news dumps. "My college news was more interesting than this. Recipes! They actually put recipes on the front page of one. Doesn't anything interesting ever happen around here?"

"Depends on what you consider interesting. Include a search on albinism." Ray rubbed his temples for a moment. "Pain management ought to cover headaches. Hallucinations, any other mental health issues."

"I saw something flash by about whirling dervishes or some kind of mystics among the Covenanters."

"Right. Mysticism. Witch-hunts. Those kinds of things."

Ray left as the kids were herded into Med Bay One for tests. The morning had left them happily grubby. A sky eyes took off as Ray strode for Barber's office. Mary and the chief were head down over his station. They glanced up as Ray entered.

"Got a blimp due in by noon," Barber said. "Another by supper. They're loaded with ceramic feed and carbon bricks. You know anything about that?"

"I told San Paulo our help didn't come free. Steal a blimp while one's up here."

"Any particular reason?" Mary asked.

"I may be bouncing a core sampling team all over the place."

The chief leaned back in his chair. "Colonel, I'm as good as any old soldier at working in the dark. And I can process bulls.h.i.+t into mushrooms like anybody else. But that don't mean I like it. Ready to talk?"

"Don't know. How good are you at listening?"

"As in can I swallow six impossible things before breakfast?" the chief asked. Ray nodded. "Try me. I think I follow the cards you've put face up on the table. Can't help but think you've got a few up your sleeve you ain't talking about."

Ray told them of the test Doc had just completed. "He's checking the kids now. Asking them to remember about the Three. The scenes they saw in the cave."

"Nice," the chief said. "Instead of buying all those case files in college, just load it into your head."

"What made you think of school?" Ray asked.

"Don't know. Been dreaming about working on my masters."

"In my dreams," Ray said, "I meet what's causing all this. Calls itself the Teacher. This whole planet was its school."

Mary pursed her lips. "If you could make jump points on the gross scale and modify cells at the micro, why not use an entire planet to teach your young? Or your old, for that matter? Heard the old adage you can't teach an old dog new tricks? Imagine what you could do with a planet for a cla.s.sroom."

The chief snorted ruefully. "I've served under some old mossbacks. Turkeys who hadn't learned a thing since they hatched. Could spout all the new management words: "empowerment," "results-oriented," "shared visions." Had the words but couldn't do a d.a.m.n thing with them. Couldn't change at the gut level. Me, I figured I'd outlive the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds."

Mary nodded. "Met a few like those in the mines."

"But what if everyone lives for hundreds, thousands of years?" Ray mused.

"Society either stagnates, or folks learn to change deep down, all through their lives. I know a few who did," the chief agreed. "Took a d.a.m.n painful boot in the a.s.s to get their attention, to make them really want to do things different."

"A planet might do that," Mary agreed.

"Be fun watching it in action," the chief grinned.

Ray shook his head. "Got a problem there. This thing thinks it knows all there is to know."

"Oh, s.h.i.+t," Barber breathed. "I've known a few like that. A real pain. What makes you think that?"

"Maybe just a dream. Maybe the Teacher has figured out a way into my brain." Ray tapped his forehead. "You know, that thing in here Doc and I are working to understand. I think it puts me on the Teacher's net."

"Which is why you ventured your guess this morning," the chief said. Ray nodded. "Okay, boss. What do you want from me?"

"Help Mary keep the base up. I'm not sure that when we tapped that hill, we didn't p.i.s.s the Teacher off big time."

Barber shook his head. "Unsmart of a student."

"Got any good ideas why people have taken to rioting in the streets?" Mary asked.

"I d.a.m.n near was ready to riot last night in Refuge. All kinds of nasty feelings running around in my gut. No reason for them." Mary pursed her lips. Ray shrugged and went on. "Let me know what you're making with the feed metals you've got." Ray stood. "Start looking around the base for anything you're willing to melt down and recycle to a higher priority. Life's only going to get more interesting."

His commlink interrupted him. "Colonel, Kat here. You want to see what we've got over here."

"On my way."

Ray walked briskly back to the hospital. The kids were bouncing off the walls in Med Bay One, so their tests must be done. Doc was head down over his board.

"Any surprises?" Ray called.

"Just like yours," Jerry answered without looking up. "There's got to be a pattern here somewhere. h.e.l.l, we still don't have the human brain mapped, and now I've got more territory to confuse me."

Kat and three other middies were keeping eight stations working full-time, hopping between chairs and chattering at light speed. "Another just lit off," "I've got lots of movement but no action," "But why isn't any of this being reported?"

"What's happening?" Ray asked, settling into a seat that apparently was out of the musical-chair compet.i.tion.

"Oh, Colonel, good. We're seeing movement of refugees out of the larger cities and into the towns and villages. Some are going smoothly. Others aren't."

"Show me."

"First sky eye headed for New Haven," Kat said. Aerial views flashed across a large screen. "We observed heavy congestion at the rail stations after a train pulled out." Kat stopped at one scene. A train was just leaving; several dozen people in what looked like family groups scattered on foot from the station. "We didn't hang around to follow any particular group, at least not at first. We wanted to check more trains, more stations. Lots of people traveling out. Empty trains going back."

"Trains take up a lot of steel." Ray knew he was changing the topic, but iron was supposedly just as hard to find as copper. What were these folks doing with trains?

"Rails are hardened ceramic. Trains are electric, using a third-rail system holding seawater to carry the electricity."

"So," Ray summed up what he was hearing, "the urban response to being laid off is to hike out to the hinterlands. That's where the food is. Maybe they have relatives who will put them up. Sounds like a good approach."

"Yes, sir. That's down south," Kat said, and changed the view. Smoke streamed up from burning houses. "This is off the second sky eye. It was headed for Richland, but we've kept it circling between us and them." She zoomed the picture. Now he could see figures in the streets. Some wielded clubs. Others fought hand to hand. Another house began to burn.

"Talk to me, Kat."

Annie Mulroney did not want to go with Da to get his still. Da dreamed of producing poteen as well as beer. With the copper he'd made off the starfolks, he'd finally ordered one, was getting it at discount, since he was paying with copper. To top it off, Da talked the motor pool chief into letting him ride along on one of the mules headed for County Clair.

So. Fine for Da. Annie saw no reason she should go with him. "Be good for you to get out for a while," Ma said.

"You mean away from Jeff," Annie shot back.

"You spend too much time with him," Da told her.

"I haven't seen him for two days!" Annie answered.

"Good," Ma said. "Now go with Da. Listen to the still's instructions. You'll have to wash it." From the way Da talked, Annie doubted she'd be allowed within ten feet of it.

A mule with two trailers stopped in front of the Public Room. Annie recognized the marine driving, Dumont, one of the hard ones. She dutifully settled in the back. In the holster on the door beside the driver, the b.u.t.t of a rifle poked out. "Do you always carry guns?" Da asked.

"Today we do," the marine answered curtly.

Annie settled in for an uninteresting ride but couldn't help exclaiming as the land went by so fast. Trees beside the road were almost a blur. "How fast are we going?"

"Only fifty-five kilometers an hour."

"That's faster than a train or a blimp," Da pointed out.

"You folks go at life kind of slow," the marine observed.

Annie had ridden this road on a wagon; it rattled from one pothole to the next. The mule seemed to fly over the same holes, bouncing her hardly at all. Annie wondered how it could, but didn't bother the marine. He seemed intent on something.

Dumont dropped Da and Annie off first at the machinist's shop and got directions to the granary. That was why the chief was offering folks rides with his drivers. The mules got back a lot faster when they had someone to act as a guide, or knew who to ask for directions. In the dusty shop, Annie listened as the mechanic took the still apart and put it in a wood crate.

"Think you can put it back together?" the man asked when it was boxed.

"Do I look like a daft city slick?" Da answered; both laughed. The two carried the box out and put it gently down on the walk beside the shop.

"Your starman will be coming back for you now, won't he?" the mechanic said.

"No doubt, no doubt. Me and me daughter will just be enjoying a bit of your sun." The man went back into his shop as a train whistle echoed in the air. Annie swept up her skirt and sat on the box to wait.

"Be careful now, girl," was Da's only response. He looked at a new stove in the man's window. The flyer plastered beside it promised it would burn peat faster and produce more heat and less ash. People were all the time making things better.

Five men turned the corner, not two blocks down in the direction of the train whistle. Annie glanced at them, then away. They were hard city types, strutting themselves. She'd been taught to pay them no mind, and she did. Jeff was so different from the likes of those. Annie stood and slid around to put Da between her and the leering men. She tried to keep her eyes down, like Ma said, to fix them on the new stove, but her glance kept flitting to the men. Their stares were hard on her. As if, as if...she didn't know what made men look like that. Then she saw that three of them carried clubs.

"Da, can we go?"

"The mule's not back, child." But Da's eyes were also drawn to the men. "I'll talk to Damon," Da said. He took two steps sideways to the door, not facing the coming men, not turning his back on them either. "Damon, can you watch me box?"

"Sure," came from inside.

"We can do better," came from behind Annie. A hand grabbed her shoulder, whirled her around. A man was in her face. Tall, blond-and drunk. "I can take care of you myself," came at her in a nauseating wash of breath and throaty demand.

Annie pushed, tried to shove him away. "I don't need your help. Da!"

Da reached for her a.s.sailant, but a club came down on his shoulder. "You don't want to interrupt, now do you, you dirt-eating farmer. The girl's a might muddy for your tastes, Han, but she's in your hand." The man at the end of the club laughed.

All five of them were here now. Two with clubs threatened Da. Two more watching Damon, who'd come from his shop but got no farther than the door. And the fifth. A knife had appeared in his hand; it weaved in the air just below Annie's b.r.e.a.s.t.s. "A bit overdressed for this warm day, huh, fellows?"

His knife slit up her bodice. As he clipped the top, both sides fell open, exposing her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. His other hand was pulling up her skirt, pawing her thighs. Annie tried to push his hand down, hold her top up. "Da," she whimpered.

"Annie," came from Da explosively as a club took him full in the stomach.

"You know, I don't think her old man is enjoying this nearly enough." A second club took Da in the head; he collapsed to the ground. "Smile, old man," one said and kicked Da.

"Please stop," Annie begged, knowing the words had no meaning to these men, hoping somewhere there might be something soft and gentle still living in them.

"And why should I stop?" the man with the knife at her throat laughed. Flicking his knife, he drove her hand away from her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, letting them fall bare again. His other hand knocked her arm away; he grabbed the upper flesh of her thigh.

"Because the woman asked you to," came soft and deadly from the street. On silent electric motors, the mule had glided up behind the men. Dumont now rested one hand on the steering wheel and waited, with an air of infinite patience, for an answer.

"That's a stupid reason," the knife said, stepping away from Annie but keeping the blade at her throat. He extended his other hand toward the marine in a gesture Da said was obscene.

One of the other men, who'd been watching Damon, took advantage of the distraction to bring his club up fast and hard into the mechanic's gut. Damon went down, hands to his belly, struggling for air. The men laughed-and turned to the marine.

"Go away, starkid. You got no business here."

"You're probably right. But I brought that young woman here, and her pa, and I told them I'd take them back. As I see it, they ought to be in the same shape."

"Well, we don't see it that way," one of them said, slowly inching toward Dumont.

"Even a dumbf.u.c.k marine can tell that," Dumont nodded.

"Leave us alone and you won't get hurt."

"No can do."