Starfishers Triology - Shadowline Part 9

His eyelids rose. He stared into Pollyanna's terrified face. His hands were at her throat. Her bed was a sweat-soaked disaster. She had scratches on her face and marks on her throat that would become bruises. She kept punching weakly.

He yanked the offending hands away. "Oh, Christ!" he murmured. "Oh, Holy Christ!" He slithered back out of the bed, stood over her for a moment. The shaking would not stop. The layer of sweat covering him was chilling him. He seized a robe. It did nothing to warm him.

"Polly, Honey. Polly. I'm sorry. Are you all right? It was the nightmare...It was worse than I ever had it. He caught me this time. I'm sorry. I thought I was fighting him. Are you all right? Can I get you anything?" He could not stop talking.

His heart hammered. The fear would not go away. He almost expected the Faceless Man to step into the apartment.

Pollyanna nodded. "Water," she croaked.

He crossed to her bathroom, found a gla.s.s, tried to fill it. He dropped it twice before getting it to her half full.

She had hitched herself up in bed. She was rubbing her throat with one hand while staring at him timorously. She accepted the gla.s.s. "You need help," she whispered. "No! Stay away."

"That's the dream...I run through these streets yelling for help and they all laugh at me. And he keeps on coming...He caught me this time. Polly, I don't know what it means. I'm scared. Honey, please don't pull away. I'm all right now. I didn't mean to hurt you. I thought I was fighting him."

Pollyanna relaxed, but not much. She edged away whenever he eased nearer, trying to draw comfort from her proximity and warmth.

"Polly, please..."

The apartment door opened.

It was night in the Fortress of Iron. The hall lights had been dimmed. They saw only the silhouette of a man standing with feet widespread and arms crossed. Anger radiated from him.

Lucifer, voice pitched an octave high, squealed, "You s.l.u.t! You unholy s.l.u.t! With my own G.o.dd.a.m.ned brother!"

He flung himself into the room. The light of the bedside lamp caught his face. It was the face of a killer. He seized Pollyanna's arm and jerked her to her feet, hit her once in the gut, doubled her over. He planted another on her chin. He was swinging hard. Benjamin oofed when his brother's fist cracked the second time. He thought Lucifer had broken her jaw.

Lucifer broke his hand. He let out a little mewl of surprise and pain and looked at the fist, puzzled.

Benjamin reached Lucifer, hurled him away from Pollyanna. Lucifer stumbled over a chair and went down. He came up cursing. "You b.a.s.t.a.r.d. You leave my wife alone. I'll kill you." He charged Benjamin. His good hand clutched a knife.

Someone looked in the door, stared momentarily, then ran away.

Baffled and frightened, Benjamin crouched, waited. He blocked the knife stroke, punched Lucifer, tried for a grip on Lucifer's wrist above the blade. Lucifer danced back, crouched himself.

They had been taught in their father's schools. They were proficient killers. An uninvolved observer would have considered it an interesting match.

Lucifer feinted, feinted, stabbed. Benjamin slid aside, chopped down at the blade. It was not where he expected it to be. It drew a fine line of blood from the skin of his thigh as it withdrew.

"I'll take care of that," Lucifer snarled, nodding at his brother's groin. "You won't be bedding anyone's wife. Not even your own, you arrogant, pretty b.a.s.t.a.r.d." He circled. Sweating, Benjamin waited.

He kicked a pillow at his brother's face. Lucifer leaned out of the way, moved in.

A blast of icy water hit him, hurled him across the room. Benjamin turned. The water hit like the pummeling of a hundred fists. It drove him against a wall. "Stop it, G.o.dd.a.m.nit!" he raged.

The water stopped.

Two Legionnaires stood in the doorway, holding a fire hose. Frieda Storm pushed past them, her face aquiver with anger. She looked every bit as daunting as her father, Ca.s.sius. "Benjamin. Get your clothes on. Woman. You too. Lucifer. On your feet. Now!" She kicked him. It was no delicate female toe tap.

She did not ask what had happened. That was obvious.

"What the h.e.l.l is the matter with you?" she demanded of Benjamin. "There a suicidal streak in you? First that c.r.a.p with Richard's cruiser, now this."

"Mother, I..."

"Homer did it. Yes. And who's responsible for Homer? Who let him do it? Heinrich, take Lucifer to Medical. There's something wrong with his hand." She moved toward Pollyanna. The girl was getting dressed so fast she kept getting snaps lined up wrong. Frieda grabbed her chin, turned her head one way, then the other. Pollyanna avoided her eyes. "What happened to your throat?"

"I did it," Benjamin murmured.

"What did you say?"

"I did it, Mother. I had the dream...This time he caught me. I was fighting him."

Frieda's face changed slightly. It was not a softening, just a momentary shadow of fear. "I'll have to talk to Madame Endor. Get a new reading. She was afraid this would happen."

"Mother..."

"Benjamin, don't you have any decency? Don't you have any common sense? This is your brother's wife. This is your brother's home. Shut up! I know she's a d.a.m.ned public utility. I know that anybody who asks gets. You should have brains enough not to ask. You should, for Christ's sake, have brains enough to realize that he'd want to see her tonight. He's leaving the Fortress tomorrow."

"Leaving? I didn't know..."

"My father wants him to do something. If you paid attention to anything but your own precious self..." She turned to Pollyanna, "Get this place cleaned up. I'll send someone to help. And be warned. I'm taking this up with my husband when he gets back. Benjamin." She took his hand. "Come on."

Once in the citadel of her own apartment Frieda clutched him close, and whispered, exasperated, "Ben, darling boy, why do you do these things? I just can't keep getting you out of trouble. Your father is going to throw a bearing when he hears about this."

"Mother..."

"He'll hear about it. It'll be all over the Fortress tomorrow, for G.o.d's sake. Ben, stay away from her. She's like a cat in heat. She doesn't care."

"Mother..."

"Sit down. There. Good. I want you to think now, Ben. Really think. About you. About that woman. About Lucifer. About what all is happening here. The problems your father and grandfather have. And most of all, about Michael Dee. Michael Dee is here, Ben. Did you bother to wonder why? There's a reason. He doesn't do anything without a sneaky reason. And your father and grandfather made the mistake of leaving while he's here."

"Mother..."

"Don't move. Don't talk. Just think. I'll make you a drink."

She did, and while he nursed it she made comm calls. First she spoke with Madame Endor, the occultist she had imported from New Earth. It was a long conversation. She ended it wearing a pale face.

She placed the second call to the armory, waking the chief armorer. She ordered him to provide Benjamin with one of the lightweight weapon-proof "undersuits" Interstellar Technics had been trying to peddle to her husband for wear under ordinary garments.

"I don't care if we haven't bought them, Captain. I'll pay for it myself if the Legion won't. And make the modifications. He'll be down for his fitting in the morning." She ended the call angrily.

She went over and sat opposite her son, stared at him till he looked up and asked, "You called Madame Endor, didn't you?"

She nodded.

"About the dream? What did she say?" Frieda did not respond. "Was it bad?"

"Ben, first thing tomorrow I want you to go to the armory. Captain Fergus will fit you with one of the ITI personal suits."

"Mother..."

"Do it, Benjamin."

"Mother..."

"I mean it, Benjamin."

He sighed.

The fear hit him. It was the first time it had come while he was awake. Involuntarily, he looked back to see how close the Faceless Man had come.

Twenty-Two: 2844-5 AD

The Sangaree facility for bearing hatred like a torch against the night sustained Deeth throughout the grim months of his captivity. Jackson sometimes came close to crus.h.i.+ng him, and a.s.sumed he had, but always, way back behind the meek exterior he adopted as protective coloration, Deeth nurtured his hatred. He thought, planned, and schooled his patience.

A week after his attempted escape Jackson took him to the village. The visit shook him more than had the old man's knowledge of his racial ident.i.ty.

The village itself met his expectations. It consisted of a dozen filthy, primitive huts. The villagers were semi-nomadic hunters and gatherers. There were a hundred of them, ranging from numerous children to a handful of old folks.

The chieftain was about thirty Prefactlas years of age. That was barely adult by civilized standards. Here he was an elder. Life in the forest was brief and brutal.

About thirty Norbon workers and breeder fugitives had reached the village. Their condition astounded Deeth.

The wild animals were using their cousins as slaves, and far more cruelly than had the Norbon. The villagers were still exchanging jests about their gullibility.

Deeth followed Jackson as he went from house to house in search of patients. He saw Norbon animals being mistreated everywhere. There was a girl, no older than he, who had been confined in a storage pit for spurning the chieftain. There was a field hand nailed to a rude cross, moaning and coughing up blood. He had fought back. There was a corpse in the square, rotting away. Insects masked it. The man had been roasted alive.

Deeth's stomach churned all day. How could these beasts use their own kind so cruelly? They had no reason.

Was this why his elders held the human species in such contempt?

Jackson had done him an accidental kindness by frustrating his escape. He could have stumbled into something worse.

Jackson used steaming, fetid poultices to treat a growth on the chieftain's neck. Deeth squatted in the dust outside, beside the pit holding the girl. She hid in shadows and tangled, blood-caked, once-blonde hair. Her shoulders were scabby ruins. A cloud of insects surrounded her. She looked like one of the Nordic pleasure girls, a cheap, ma.s.s-market product.

There was a steady demand for Nordics. The Norbon raised them real-time. The Family had a good strain.

The Norbon claimed several excellent pleasure strains. Coffee Mulatto Number Three regularly placed in the shows.

Deeth shrugged. That was another reality, a billion light-years away and a thousand years ago. It was another Deeth who had learned pride in Family achievement.

"You," he grunted.

She did not respond. He kept squatting there. The sun crept across the sky, sliding his shadow across her. He felt her growing curiosity.

She glanced up, saw the rope around his throat. Fear and hope crossed her battered face.

Deeth did not recognize her. Clearly, she knew him. He smiled rea.s.suringly.

He felt the caress of compa.s.sion, a gnarly, k.n.o.bbly sort that had its roots more in cla.s.sroom training than genuine emotion. He had been taught to cherish and maintain Family property. Abuse and waste were sins. Homeworld was a sometimes harsh, always poor planet. Its values and inst.i.tutions were geared to conservation.

He could order a thousand slaves killed without a touch of conscience if there was a compelling need. He could not waste one, or destroy it out of malice. He could not abide waste or malice in others.

That was fitting in a Head.

He was the senior Norbon on Prefactlas now. The welfare and conservation of Norbon properties were his responsibility.

"Be patient, girl," he whispered. "Endure. We'll create our own good luck."

He felt foolish. His promise was meaningless. He was powerless to hurt or help. What would his father have done? Or Rhafu?

The same. Endure. Take care of their own.

An animal came howling into the village. He pointed behind him. The empty square filled. Animals hustled their valuables, especially the new slaves, into places of hiding. Bows and spears appeared.

Jackson grabbed Deeth's rope and fled. The old man cursed softly and continuously.

A pair of Marine personnel carriers clanked into the village from the far side. A support s.h.i.+p whickered over, hovered above the square. There were shouts and explosions. They faded as the old man kept putting distance behind them.

Were they looking for him? Deeth wondered. Did they know about his escape? He hoped not. Sant spare him, they would hunt till they got him. Humans were single-minded that way.

They reached the cave. Jackson beat him as though he were responsible for the raid.

He endured.

Months groaned by. Each staggered on like a wounded levitathan.

Deeth spent three-quarters of a Prefactlas year as Jackson's slave. They made weekly trips to the village. The animals had stayed put since the raid. They were afraid to migrate. Stronger tribes might prey upon them.

The slave girl Emily was the only Norbon animal not recovered by the Marines. Deeth visited with her whenever he had a chance. He kept repeating his promise of rescue.

He added the obligation to his hatred. Together they sustained him.

Twenty-Three: 3031 AD