
-----------------------------------Fever [Sunsinger Chronicles Book 5]by Michelle Levigne-----------------------------------Science Fiction/Young Adult
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Copyright ©2004 by Michelle Levigne
Writers Exchange EPublishing 2004
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All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation to anyone bearing the same name or names. Any resemblance to individuals known or unknown to the author are purely coincidental.
Refuge. Bain hadn't been back to this planet since he was twelve. He was fifteen now.
At the beginning, when Lin hadn't been allowed to tell him they were relatives, Bain had feared the authorities would separate them the next time they landed on Refuge.
Now, he watched the screen as they approached the planet and he grinned. He was a Spacer, born and bred, trained and proven. The only thing that could get him to leave Sunsinger was if someone offered him a ship of his own. Nothing else that Bain could imagine could ever get him to leave Lin or Ganfer or the ship. Sunsinger was home, and Lin and Ganfer were his family. To Spacers, home and family were as sacred as the Order and obeying Fi'in's laws.
Refuge grew bigger on the computer screens, filling them with the blue-white clouds of the upper atmosphere, then changing to blue and brown and green as the ship penetrated that layer and headed down through thickening air for the landing field.
Sunsinger's hold was filled with medical supplies for the scientists stationed on Refuge. Bain only knew the Mashrami had hit more planets with plague bombs in the last five months than they had attacked in the last six years. Lin speculated it was a desperation move; a spoilsport mentality that drove the dying race to destroy worlds they would never own. It was only speculation, because the military wasn't telling anyone anything.
Lin reasoned that either the military didn't know or they didn't want to panic anyone. She understood their reasoning for what they did. That didn't mean she or Bain had to like the silence, though.
Like everyone involved in aiding the military, the crew of Sunsinger had to get by on guesswork. They guessed what was happening in the war based on the cargo in their holds, snippets of conversations overheard in military offices or activity glimpsed on Fleet-occupied planets.
"Refuge spaceport, this is Sunsinger," Lin said. On the viewscreens, the scorched expanse of the landing field had just become visible. "Requesting landing coordinates and decontamination protocol. We have priority level three medical supplies to unload."
"Acknowledged, Sunsinger," a metallic-toned voice responded. Bain couldn't tell if the speaker was male or female. "Sending now."
"Receiving," Lin said a moment later, as numbers scrolled down the screen by her left elbow. She pressed the buttons that cut off voice communication. "Their communication system needs an overhaul. I doubt they'll get it until the whole wretched mechanism breaks down." She sighed and stretched her arms to the ceiling. Her long, black, silver-streaked braid slid over her shoulder and swung across the back of the chair. "Exigencies of the war."
"I thought it would be over by now," Bain said. He winced when his voice cracked.
Lin grinned at his embarrassment. Bain's voice had been cracking, rising to unnatural squeaks or dropping to subterranean levels, for nearly three months now. Lin kept telling him it wouldn't last much longer, that it was part of his body's maturing process. Somehow, Bain doubted something so painful and embarrassing could be explained away that easily.
"It takes a long time for an entire race to die away," Ganfer said, joining the conversation for the first time since coming out of the last Knaught Point five hours ago. The ship-brain had been running diagnostics to make sure Sunsinger hadn't been damaged by the too-close succession of Knaught Point transitions. "Although the planet we surveyed was poisoned by radiation and other life-threatening environmental changes, there is no guarantee that wasn't the only planet where Mashrami lived. Perhaps they have finally found a world friendly to their physical needs. That could be an explanation for the increase in plague bombs."
"Maybe they're trying to wipe us out to protect their new home, instead of trying to take over our worlds?" Lin asked. She frowned; her thinking frown, not the angry or frustrated one.
"It could be."
"I think I prefer the bombs as a desperation move," Bain muttered.
"Me, too." Lin reached over and squeezed his shoulder and gave him a grin. "If it's desperation, then there's hope it'll end before the Human race does."
"Landing," the ship-brain announced. Lights across the board flickered as the computer took over the landing procedure. Landing braces flexed in preparation for touching down.
Refuge was one of the few planets where Lin let the automatic system handle the landing. Everything else on the hub planet might be allowed to fall into disrepair for lack of supplies and replacements, but the landing field was always kept in top condition, second only to the sensor and defense systems. With a perfectly smooth, maintained landing field, Lin and Bain didn't have to monitor sudden changes in the surface and jump in to compensate. The computer running the automatic systems could handle that, but Lin believed in the hands-on, fly-by-instinct method of handling Sunsinger in most other situations. Bain had seen her avoid too many tiny mistakes that computers let pass because they weren't dangerous. He wasn't about to question her beliefs and practices even when he didn't understand them. He hoped someday his own flying instincts would be as sharp.
"Will you look at this?" Lin muttered a few minutes later, as Sunsinger's engines started to shut down. She tapped the screen at the top of the control panel between her and Bain. That particular screen held a list of all the other ships currently grounded on Refuge; their loading and unloading status; and their schedule for launching again.
"That's a lot of Ranger ships," Bain said. He ran his finger down the long list of identification numbers and names.
All Ranger ships had the same three-digit prefix. It made for easier identification and priority handling when there was the uncommon backlog of ships waiting to launch. Bain calculated that three-quarters of the ships were Rangers. They varied from nearly a dozen short-range scouting craft to two long-range search-and-rescue 'flying fortresses' that could evacuate a colony. All their codes indicated no set departure time.
"That's odd," he said, and pointed out the code to Lin. She frowned a little more, deepening that crease between her eyes.
"Odd indeed." She stopped and ran her finger along one line of information. A lopsided grin brightened her face. "That's Gil's ship. Do you think it's just a coincidence they're here at the same time we arrive with medical supplies---"
"Or they arranged for us to be here?" Bain finished for her.
He leaned back in his seat and ran his fingers through his dark curls. It was time for a haircut, with his hair trailing over his collar and covering his ears. Long hair was a nuisance in free-fall, unless it was braided like Lin's. Bain didn't want to let it grow that long.
"We can ask for immediate launch," she said softly. "We need a break."
"Captain Gil wouldn't ask us to do anything unless he thought we were the only ones who could handle the job."
"True." Lin shook her head. Her smile brightened. "Fi'in bless me---I've taught you too well. Someone would think you'd been raised on nothing but heroic stories and altruistic philosophy."
"I wasn't?" He managed to keep his expression neutral for five long seconds. Then it hurt to fight the teasing grin and the laughter and he let it out.
"We're being hailed by Captain Gilmore of Ranger ship Cutlass," Ganfer announced.
That just earned more laughter from Bain. Lin joined in, slapping him lightly on the shoulder.
"Just tell me one thing," Lin said as she and Bain entered Captain Gilmore's quarters on board the Cutlass. "Are the Mashrami desperate, or do they have a new homeworld to defend?"
"I told you we'd regret it if we didn't include them in this," Dr. Anyon said. He sat in a chair in the corner of the dimly lit office, a brown man---hair, eyes and tanned skin---dressed in the olive and black Ranger uniform with medical insignia. He tipped a salute to Lin and Bain, a touch of two fingers to the edge of his eyebrow.
"That'll be all, Corporal," Captain Gilmore said. He nodded to the young woman who waited at the door of his quarters.
"Recruiting them awful young, aren't you?" Lin said when the door slid closed. She slid down into the nearest chair facing Gil's desk.
"The Mashrami have made more orphans than half the wars Vidan endured during the Downfall," Gil said. "They have nowhere to go other than the school farms on their colonies, or military service."
"You're a fine one to talk about recruiting too young," Dr. Anyon added, nodding at Bain.
Bain felt his face heat up, despite the man's grin. He hoped the light was dim enough in the office no one noticed his face getting red. He knew Dr. Anyon was only teasing, and he had approved Lin's application to become Bain's guardian and teacher from the beginning. That still didn't help.
"Spacers don't waste talent." Lin shook her head. "You need us for something, Gil. Just how reluctant were you to ask us this time?"
"We're recruiting all the Spacers we can this time. We have a drug that should cure most of the plagues the Mashrami are throwing at us, not just a vaccine to hopefully prevent it from catching. We need everyone who is willing to take the risk, to ferry the ill to centrally placed hospital ships. You'll have a doctor and two medics assigned to your ship---if you agree---and your hold will be a dormitory again." Captain Gilmore sat back in his chair, as if saying those words had released a load of tension from his body. The movement revealed new strands of silver in his hair. Bain thought he saw new tension lines around his mouth and eyes, dark streaks in the cinnamon-colored skin.
"Full of the sick and dying, instead of the frightened or arrogant." Lin nodded. "Just the sick?"
"We can't spare the time or resources to evacuate planets that aren't in the line of invasion. We just don't have the facilities. You'll leave medicine, and equipment to contain and destroy the plague bombs that remain, and we'll send troops to take care of future problems, but that's all we can do. Getting the infected away from the healthy is half the battle."
Bain realized in that moment, listening to the heavy ache in Gil's voice, the Ranger didn't like the orders he was giving. He didn't want to leave those people on a planet where more plague bombs could appear. Leaving equipment, medicine, instructions and the promise of future help wasn't enough.
We need more people and faster ships and more scientists to help everyone, he decided. Bain thought of his cracking voice and other 'growing pains' and wished he could finish growing up so he could do something to help.
"What's the other half of the battle?" Lin asked.
"Finding a way to keep those plague bombs from hitting the planets at all," Dr. Anyon said. "Right now, our medicine cures the Mashrami plagues. What very few know is that the plagues are starting to mutate. The vaccines we developed two years ago don't have half the effectiveness."
"Anyone who goes in to help, who gets even a minimal exposure, could be completely unprotected," Gil said.
"But that's only if the plague has mutated, right?" Bain said. He waited, feeling a cold spot of fear deep inside, until the captain nodded. "Even half effective is better than no vaccine at all, right?"
"He's too much like you, Lin," Dr. Anyon said.
Bain grinned. He wanted to laugh, but he couldn't. He stayed quiet and he listened as Lin and Captain Gilmore made arrangements. Sunsinger's hold would once again be transformed into a dormitory. There would be twice as many bunk racks with net beds because this time, there would be no exercise wheel or tables and chairs. Dr. Anyon had requested assignment to Sunsinger, and he and his two medics would stay on the bridge. A decontamination airlock would be installed in the access tube between the bridge and the cargo hold, and another just inside the airlock leading from the cargo hold out of the ship. The vaccines, decontamination protocols and airlocks would cut the chance of spreading the infection as much as possible.
Bain suspected he should be afraid, worried by all the caution. Right now, he could only feel that tightening inside his body, the excitement of a new challenge and certain danger facing them.
By late afternoon, Sunsinger's hold had become a dormitory again. Not the dormitory Bain had known when he first stepped aboard the ship. That had felt comforting, almost homey, with places for study and exercise, filled with other children. This dormitory had a cramped, silent feeling. The bunk frames put less space between the net beds. Everything was silver-coated alloy, to prevent retention of bacteria and fight transmission of the new, mutating plagues. The nets weren't made of the slightly stretchy rope Bain had slept in, but hard, unyielding plastic that prevented disease settling into fibers to grow. The entire hold smelled hot with disinfectant and antiseptic.
A tall refrigeration unit filled the space where the food-processing center had sat. It wouldn't hold meal packs, but the massive quantities of medicine Sunsinger would carry. Next to it, where the sanitary had been, the Ranger technicians installed a huge, black and silver box twice the size. It had more dials and flashing lights than Bain's half of the control panel on the bridge. This mechanism would process soiled clothes and bedding, disinfecting it and analyzing the secretions from the sick people.
He was almost relieved when a second, smaller refrigeration unit was brought in and the head technician asked him to help them load it. This unit would hold the liquid food packs for the ill. When the plagues had progressed enough to be visible, the victim had already reached the point of being unable to eat. Still, they needed nutrition and liquids to replenish what the fevers burned off. Until the sick fell unconscious, they could suck nutrition from the bubble packs. It was designed to absorb quickly into their systems and give them the strength and moisture needed to heal before their stomachs decided to reject it. Bain was curious about the contents of the silver, slightly sloshing packets, but not curious enough to taste it when a friendly technician offered to open one for him. He hoped the plague victims would be too sick to notice what they were eating.
Lin and Bain went to the Cutlass to have supper with Captain Gil. Dr. Anyon and his two medics joined them. Both were young, with short, glossy black curls, coffee-and-cream skin and startling, dark blue eyes. Brother and sister, twins, Devon and Dena Hayn.
Dena sat next to Captain Gil when they settled down at the table. Bain choked on his first sip of chocolate when the captain took hold of her hand. They held hands in full view of everyone, their arms resting on the table between them.
"Bain?" Lin handed him a napkin to wipe the dark brown spots off the front of his new, pearly blue vest. He gestured across the table at the captain and medic. "Oh." Her mouth twisted into a crooked, half-grin. "You have some good news for us, Gil?"
"Very good news." Gil chuckled. "Did you know, medics are considered separate from any branch of the military, even if they do hold rank and can take over command functions?"
"Here we go again," Devon muttered. His sister, sitting next to him, gave him a sharp nudge in the side with her elbow.
"Told you to be careful," Dr. Anyon said. He sat on Gil's other side, next to Lin.
"What does that have to do with this?" Lin said, gesturing at their clasped hands.
"It means he can court a fellow officer of lower rank and not run the risk of a firing squad," Dena said with a hint of chiming laughter at the back of her voice.
"They're still holding to that archaic rule?" She shook her head, pretending disgust. "So, he really did court you? Properly? With presents and private dinners and speaking nicely to your blood relatives?"
"Properly," the young medic confirmed. She tugged back the cuff of her uniform jacket to reveal the braided band of blue, silver and green metal threads around her wrist.
"Congratulations." Lin lifted her cup of chocolate in a salute. "I'm proud of you, Gil."
"I'm a little proud of myself too," the captain said, his grin only growing wider. He tugged back his sleeve cuff to reveal a matching band on his wrist.
Bain understood now; those were betrothal bands, in lieu of rings. The military couldn't indulge in jewelry; rings, earrings, necklaces, anything that might attract energy or reflect light in a dangerous situation.
"When this particular mission is over," Gil continued, "we're taking some leave time for the ceremony. You will stand with me, won't you? You're the closest I have to real family."
"Gil." She grinned and wiped her eyes. "I'd be honored."
In moments the conversation shifted to learning about the twins' training and how they had managed to be assigned to the same ship together. Devon made the common error of assuming Lin was Bain's mother, and Dr. Anyon jumped in to explain the distant kinship and how the two had found each other and joined forces on Lenga.
How they all managed to avoid talking about the war and the Mashrami and the plagues, Bain couldn't quite decide. It was nice to spend an evening with old and new friends and not talk at least once about the war. Dena brought out a game she had learned as a child, played with stones on lines marked in the dust. She substituted tiny thermal-dots from her medical supplies, and marked lines with strips of paper on the tablecloth. Bain never could figure out the object of the game beyond getting his stones from one side of the grid to the other without being landed on and taken by the other players. The fact that he couldn't keep track of his pieces made it harder. He didn't care, though. It was fun to laugh and scheme and try to form temporary alliances with the other players.
By the end of the evening, they were comfortable with each other. They could talk. Bain thought that had been the purpose; to get over the strangeness and uncomfortable politeness so Dena and Devon and Dr. Anyon could travel on Sunsinger. They might be living together in close quarters for months, until the plagues were brought under control.
Sunsinger launched early the next morning, before the first tentative rays of sunrise peeked through the mists. Bain opened the hatch from the bridge and unrolled the ladder so Dr. Anyon and the twins could climb straight in, instead of going through the decontamination airlocks at either end of the cargo hold. He was still yawning, combing his hair with his fingers and trying to see with only one eye open as he climbed down the ladder to meet them. Bain was dressed, but his soft ship-shoes weren't buckled and his pants kept slipping down his hips because he forgot his belt.
The three medics carried duffel bags over their shoulders and Devon dragged a wheeled cart holding boxes and crates and four precious, padded bags full of diagnostic equipment that couldn't be left in the converted cargo hold. Bain looked at everything that had to be loaded up that ladder into the bridge, and he silently groaned. Lin was at the port master's office, taking care of some last-minute work, along with posting letters to friends, like Branda and Chryssa.
He consoled himself that because of the darkness of the early morning hour, no one could really see his face.
Lin returned to the ship before they had finished. Captain Gil followed a few minutes later. He clutched the last box under his arm and climbed up the ladder to the bridge.
Dena had been assigned to the cubicle next to Lin. Devon and Dr. Anyon would share a cubicle. When the hold was full of sick, the three medics would take duty shifts of two on-duty and one off at all times, so the crowded sleeping arrangements didn't really matter. The fifth cubicle on the bridge became the equipment storage area and makeshift laboratory. Dr. Anyon would spend what little free time he had in there, studying plague samples inside their isolation cases, trying to stay ahead of the mutations.
Most Rangers would patrol between the planets hit with the plague bombs, trying to backtrack their flight path and predict where the next ones would land. Their job, even more important than the medical personnel trying to cure the ill, was to keep the plague bombs from entering the atmosphere of any planet.
It took far less time than Bain thought, to settle everyone in their cubicles and strap down the equipment and gear and be ready for launch.
Captain Gil made formal farewells with Dr. Anyon and Devon. The two men then headed down into the transformed hold to the stasis chairs that had been installed for the medical team. Dena and Gil crawled back down the ladder and said their good-byes outside. Bain didn't miss the slightly teary look in her eyes. Curiosity fought with good manners and the certain knowledge their good-bye would be full of romantic sentiment. Bain kept himself busy checking the control panel while Lin was down in the hold, checking the connections for the stasis chairs one last time. He didn't hear a thing either one said.
"All set," Dena said, as she climbed back through the hatch onto the bridge. She fussed with her uniform, straightening jacket and shirt and pants.
"You're sure?" Bain paused with his hand on the control to shut the hatch.
"Please. If it doesn't shut soon, he'll probably climb back up and change his mind." She smiled and rubbed at her eyes. A glint of moisture on her hand gave away the tears she had been fighting not to shed.
"Why didn't Captain Gil keep you on the Cutlass?" he asked. "Wouldn't it be safer?"
"Maybe. I wouldn't let him pamper me." Dena shrugged and headed across the bridge for the access tube to the hold. "Is everybody else set to go?"
"Lin's probably waiting for you to come down and strap in, then we can launch." He pressed the switch to close the hatch and watched the door swing shut.
"Good."
"Why would he be pampering you if you stayed on his ship?" Bain hoped he wasn't rude, asking questions like that.
"All the other medics are taking risks. We don't really have any assurance the new vaccines will work, or the plagues won't mutate beyond our abilities to counteract them. He has a lot of confidence in Sunsinger and you and Captain Lin, if he'll let me travel with you."
"Oh." He turned to watch her. She paused in the doorway, wearing a little smile.
"It's not easy, having so much responsibility for people. Wanting to protect people but knowing you can't." Dena shook her head. A few strands of hair came loose from her clips. "We both hope that if we have children, they all take after me and go into the Medic Corps, and not Command Corps."
"But we need people like Captain Gil."
"We need healers more. It's easy to fight; it's harder to put the pieces back together after the battle is over."
Bain nodded that he understood. He turned back to the control panel and studied the flashing lights.
Healers were needed more than warriors. He could understand that. Healers and scientists and explorers and builders. People to sneak in and rescue those who were in trouble, and find out what was wrong. People to fix things instead of people who only knew how to fight. Defenders, rather than warriors.
"Someday, we'll have people like that," Bain whispered. A green light flashed, signaling all three stasis chairs were functioning. He pressed the series of switches that would take the ship's engines from warm idle to active status.
"Healers?" Ganfer asked.
"Yeah, healers. And people who know how to get into dangerous places without anybody knowing they're there. They can explore and know why plants and animals react like they do, and keep colonists from getting into trouble when they land on a new planet. Little groups, not whole squadrons." Bain sighed, knowing he was making a mangled mess of his dream. Someday, he would know exactly what was needed and how to express his dreams so others would work with him. "All the ships would have Spacers for pilots, so they could go anywhere they had to be, fast. They'd be ready for anything."
"That sounds very useful. How will you bring these people together and train them?" the ship-brain asked after a few moments of silence.
"I don't know." He sighed again; louder. "When I'm old enough, I'll know how."
"Don't be in a hurry to grow up too fast," Lin said. She stepped onto the bridge and hurried to her seat at the control panel. "Oh, good, everything's set." She winked at Bain. "I don't know how I ever got along without you as my crew."
"You told me to do it," Ganfer answered.
"Nothing I say is going to be a good enough reply, so I'm not even going to try." She tightened her safety strap and played her hands over the controls. "Let's go."
The first colony world where Sunsinger landed was solid green-blue forest cut by the muddy brown lines of rivers. Only one village, twelve Standard years old, made up the colony. It was so new, the planet still went by its identification numbers, not a name. Sunsinger landed between two overflowing rivers and the medical team went to work.
Bain and Lin weren't allowed to step foot on the planet. It was spring here, and the humidity and heat contributed to the spread of the plague. The decontamination airlock between cargo hold and bridge was kept closed. The medical team wore protective suits and carried heavy canisters of compressed air in harnesses on their backs. Until Dr. Anyon ran his tests, they had no guarantee the regular breather filters and antiseptics would work.
Dr. Anyon vaccinated and examined all the healthy members of the colony and taught their resident healer how to administer more medicine if they needed it. He left medical texts for identifying the plague variations that had appeared on other worlds. The last piece of equipment was an emergency signal code that would break through all the other communications chatter wandering through the galaxy. The Rangers would pick up the signal and know what planet it came from, and that would save time in sending help. Timely diagnosis and treatment could turn out to be the greatest weapon the Rangers and Medic Corps had.
Four hours after Sunsinger landed, it launched again. Twenty-four net bunks were filled with plague victims in various stages of suffering. There were no colony worlds close enough for another stop before they rendezvoused with the Ranger hospital ship Mercy. Lin programmed in the course for the nearest Knaught Point and settled down to wring as much speed from Sunsinger as she could without damaging the engines.
Dr. Anyon came up to the bridge after Sunsinger had cleared orbit, leaving the twins to take care of their patients. He spent nearly ten minutes in the decontamination cycle of the airlock, scrubbing and cleansing his suit and then testing the air to make sure no bacteria or other dangerous microbes were alive. The air reeked bitterly of antiseptics when the airlock door swung open, letting the doctor out onto the bridge.
"Thank you," Dr. Anyon gasped, as Bain hurried to help him remove his helmet.
He hunched his shoulders and released the buckles for the air canister harness. The metal cylinders clanged loudly as they hit the wall, then bounced off and started floating up toward the ceiling. Bain hurried to grab the air tanks and hook them into place in the compression bay. By the time Dr. Anyon headed down into the cargo hold again, the tanks would be full of clean, compressed air.
"Bad down there?" Lin said. She glanced away from the controls once and gave the doctor a once-over look.
"Not too bad. The worst case hasn't reached the delirium stage yet. Fevers, chills, nausea, and a tendency to fall asleep in the middle of conversations." He shrugged his way out of his protective suit and hung it up on one of the hooks next to the airlock.
"What do you think it is?" Bain asked.
"You mean, something new or an old enemy?" He dug through the pockets of the suit until he withdrew a sample tube. "We'll find out in a few minutes." Dr. Anyon paused before pushing off to fly over to the makeshift lab. He grinned and flexed his shoulders. "You don't realize how heavy those air tanks are until they're off your back. Even in free-fall, they feel like fifty kilos."
"Doctor---" Lin began.
"All the symptoms make me think it's one of the first strains we encountered."
"Is that good?" Bain asked. He wrapped an absorbent sheet around the still-wet suit and pushed off from the wall to follow the doctor to the work cubicle.
"The fewer mutated diseases we encounter, the easier our jobs will be and the less suffering our patients will endure. It also means less trouble for the healthy people left behind. If they get vaccinated and take their boosters, they won't get sick."
"Oh. Good." Bain wondered if he should spend more time on his medical studies unit.
Questions were fine, and Dr. Anyon was like Lin in encouraging questions as a way of learning; but if he asked too many questions, Bain knew he would only be getting in the way. He could even slow down the progress of treatment. He didn't want to do that.
He perched on the edge of the bench that used to be a bed and watched as Dr. Anyon slid the sample tube into the diagnostic unit, sealed it, and used the mechanical hands to open the tube and manipulate the samples of blood and skin, hair and excrement.
"No mutation," Dr. Anyon said less than twenty minutes later. He stepped back from the diagnostic unit and grinned at Bain. "We don't need those wretched suits for protection and you just might get drafted to help in the hold if we get desperate."
"That's a hint for you to say more prayers on behalf of the sick," Lin said. She got up from her place at the control panel and flew over to the galley. "Anyone for tea?"
"Please." He grinned and rubbed at his bloodshot eyes. "Bain, could you call down to the hold and tell Dena and Devon they can take off their suits?"
"Sure." Bain floated over to the control panel and punched in the commands to open communications between the bridge and the radios in the protective suits.
Devon took the news with a whoop of relief. Dena sighed and thanked him. Dr. Anyon took cups of tea down to them when he left a few minutes later. There were the ill to attend to, after all, and no respite until they had reached the Mercy and unloaded their patients.
An hour later, Bain took meal packs down to the medics. He was hungry for his own dinner until he smelled the peculiar aroma of sickness, composed of bitter sweat and the acid smell of vomit, the sickly sweetness of infection in open sores and the metallic taint of pain. He felt like a coward afterwards, but Bain hurried to put down the hot meal packs on the counter where the three medics could reach them, and flew back up to the bridge. He felt queasy until the airlock closed and locked the smell of the hold behind its thick doors. Even then, Bain thought he could smell that particular odor seeping through the ventilation system, despite the special filters and disinfectants. When he went to bed that night, he thought he heard the moans and whimpers of the sick through his dreams.
The pattern repeated through four trips. Sunsinger landed on a small, isolated colony that hadn't grown beyond the first village site. The medical team disembarked in protective suits, carrying the vaccine. They examined the sick and brought them on board, then left medicine and instructions and equipment for the healthy being left behind. Isolation protocol went into effect until Dr. Anyon diagnosed the plague variant afflicting the ill. If Bain and Lin had been inoculated for that particular strain, then the medics could go without their protective suits and Bain or Lin could come down into the hold to help.
If they weren't inoculated, or the strain had shown any signs of mutation, no matter how small, the protective suits came on, the airlocks stayed locked, and the medical team lived in the hold except for four-hour sleep shifts. They spent a minimum of fifteen minutes at a time in the decontamination cycle of the airlock.
On the fifth trip, two people died during the launch. Dr. Anyon reported the deaths to Lin over the communication link. He didn't come onto the bridge until eight hours later. By that time, five more people had died. He was silent and pale and confined himself to the makeshift lab. He worked over the diagnostic unit long through the night shift. Bain didn't dare ask the doctor any questions.
The plague hadn't mutated in any form that Dr. Anyon could identify. His theory, reluctantly formed, was that the people had been so weakened by the plague and had gone so long without food or water, they hadn't been able to take the stress of launching and breaking orbit.
Even then, Lin wouldn't let Bain go down into the hold to help. He would have argued with her, but Bain was frightened by Lin's utter quietness, the dark shadows haunting her eyes, and the whiteness of strain around her mouth. He was curious about the dead bodies, even though they frightened him. What would plague-killed people look like? Bain kept quiet after the first time Lin refused to let him go down to the hold. Dr. Anyon had asked for him to bring food down, and the man didn't argue when Lin refused. They compromised by putting hot food packs in the airlock, and Devon came up the access tube to retrieve the food.
That night, Bain woke from a sound sleep to hear Lin crying at her station on the bridge. She leaned over the control panel, head resting in her hands, the tears slowly puddling in the air around her face. Free-fall and crying, Bain realized, didn't work well together.
The next day, Bain didn't ask again about going down into the hold. Lin never cried. This had to be far worse than he imagined, if the death of strangers could make her cry in the night.
It was a relief to unload these patients, dead and alive, and get as far away from the Mercy and this particular sector of space as possible.
"Lin, we have a little problem here," Dr. Anyon said.
"Why am I not surprised?" Lin muttered. She glanced at Bain, sitting in his usual spot at the control panel. The boy shrugged and tried to smile. It was hard. The last two trips had been ordinary, other than Dr. Anyon finding mutations in both strains of the plague, requiring protective suits. No one had died; no equipment problems. Devon had held free-fall acrobatic competitions with Bain in the observation dome, between leaving the hospital ship and reaching the next colony.
When they landed on Bareen, a rocky world of canyons split by rivers and thin stretches of forest, their reception had been totally opposite to that on previous colonies.
Silence.
Lin transmitted the usual message to the colony's center, telling them what ship they were, why they had come, and precautions for meeting the medical team.
When Dr. Anyon opened the airlock and stepped out onto the landing field, no one came from the shadowed doorway of the administration building to meet him.
"Ganfer, scan the surrounding area, distance of two kilometers," Lin ordered.
"Reading fifty Humans," the ship-brain replied a few minutes later. Lin relayed the information to Dr. Anyon and his team.
"Can he tell what condition they're in?" Dr. Anyon asked.
"Body temperature is within normal parameters. Respiration and pulse rate are elevated, but that can be attributed to fear or excitement," Ganfer said after another five minutes of scanning.
"They're not sick," the man mused, his voice raspy and soft over the bridge speakers. "Unless this variant of the plague affects the mind without any other physical signs."
"What are our chances of that?" Devon asked.
"Anything is possible with the Mashrami," his sister said. She stepped away from the shadow of the ship and came into view of the outside security cameras. "I think we should test the air and soil in direct proximity to the landing field, and then decide what to do after that."
The tests came up clean; no plague; no signs of any other problems that could be affecting the colonists. No physical reasons for them to hide from Sunsinger and the medical team.
Lin continued to send messages to the colony's communications center, and tried different frequencies, hoping to connect with an individual home or settlement's radio receiver. She talked herself into a sore throat, explaining what Sunsinger was doing on their world, how important it was for the colonists to bring their ill to the ship for examination, and for everyone to get their inoculations.
That did no good either.
After six hours of exploring the immediate area surrounding the landing field---storage sheds filled with cargo for the next supply ship to take away, a few administration buildings, everything pre-fabricated boards, the clearings raw enough to show the colony was only a generation old---Dr. Anyon and his team had to admit defeat.
"We have to convince them we're friendly, that we're not trying to trick them," the doctor said.
"If you go outside without those suits of yours, that should do a lot toward convincing them," Lin pointed out.
The five were back on the bridge, eating a late lunch. Bain had made it, just so he could contribute to solving the current problem. There was little else for him to do until someone here communicated with them. Until then, Bain was stuck on the bridge, studying. He wondered if Lin would let him go into the observation dome and run some Knaught Point simulations.
"It's safe enough," Dena agreed. "Even if we did run into someone who was sick, we're up to date on the vaccine. We could run back here and scrub down immediately."
"There's something going on here ... I don't want to say dangerous, but what other word can we use?" Dr. Anyon shook his head and toyed with his sandwich, tearing the crust off a bit at a time. "Something more dangerous than just sick and frightened people. Ganfer read fifty healthy bodies within his scanner range. There ought to be at least six hundred colonists here. Why is everyone hiding from us? What kind of threat can a Free Trader ship be? Especially one as small as Sunsinger?"
"We're not that close to the border.... "Lin frowned, staring down into her tea. "What if the Conclave has decided to take advantage of the war with the Mashrami, and they're sneaking into endangered territory to run raids?"
"New colonization equipment, the ores and alloys this colony produces ... slaves for the more backward planets in the Conclave." Dena nodded agreement. "Gil hasn't said anything to me about that. Either he doesn't know, or he didn't think we'd be in any danger."
"Maybe he just didn't want you to worry," Bain offered.
"Gil is a master worrier," Lin said, grinning crookedly. "If he thought we would come anywhere near a pirate raiding team, he wouldn't have asked us to come out here, and he wouldn't have let Dena come with us. It has to be something else. Why don't they trust us?"
"Maybe pirates did hit, but they haven't come back?" He looked at the three medics. Bain thought he finally understood the full extent of the frustration they felt.
Then he remembered another time when Sunsinger had landed to help people and they wouldn't come out. Pirates had been involved there, too.
"Lin, maybe if they saw me they wouldn't be afraid. I'm not as little as I was, but people can still tell I'm a kid," Bain hurried to add, when Lin just looked at him. Her hand tightened around her cup of tea, until her knuckles turned white.
"He'll be perfectly safe," Devon said. "He's up to date with all his inoculations and I'll be within arm's reach the whole time, armed and ready."
"People who hide often have something to hide. What if we've landed in the middle of a pirate's nest, disguised as a new colony?" Lin said so quietly, Bain almost couldn't hear her.
"We have to take that chance. The last report said there were nearly eighty children in this colony." Dr. Anyon stood up and took his empty cup over to the lidded pitcher, and poured himself another cup of tea. He studied the steaming green liquid for a few moments in silence, then turned back to look at the other four, who watched him. "What good are we going to do anyone if we don't take chances?"
"I know." Lin sighed. She put her cup down on the table and sat back, resting her head on the cushion. "It's a good thing I never had children of my own, because I'd be a lousy mother, smothering them with protection."
"No you wouldn't." Bain touched her shoulder, like she sometimes did when impressing a point on him. "We took bigger chances when we tested those shields, remember?"
"But with the Mashrami, at least I could do something. I could trust my piloting and Sunsinger to get us out of danger. Diseases ... they're too small to fight." She forced her lips into a crooked smile. "I know you have to do this, and I know I have to let you, and I know you're growing up awfully fast, Bain. Doesn't mean I have to like any of it." She pointed a finger at Devon. "You'd better take good care of him. He's the best apprentice I've ever had. I don't want him to even be wrinkled when this is over, got me?"
"Got you," Devon said, nodding. He stared at Lin's finger as if it were a gun about to explode in his face.
"Best apprentice?" Bain muttered. He twisted his mouth into a disgusted frown, like Lin did. "I'm the only apprentice she's ever had."
Dr. Anyon laughed first, then Dena and Devon, and finally Lin.
Bain held his breath until the cargo hatch opened, the ramp swung down and fresh air flooded the cargo hold/sickbay. He knew there was no chance of infection remaining in the air to make him sick. Every time Sunsinger brought a load of patients to the hospital ship, Mercy, the hold was steam decontaminated and flooded with disinfectant and deodorizers. That didn't mean the deodorizers didn't have their own particular unpleasant, sickly sweet smell. Bain didn't like it.
His face was turning red and he had a tight, ready-to-burst feeling in his chest as the ramp hit the ground. Bain waited until he felt the cool, dry air touch his face. He tried not to let out his breath in a gust, but he couldn't help it.
"You never get used to it," Devon muttered. He nudged Bain in the small of his back and stepped aside to let the boy go down the ramp first.
Bain gave the medic one quick, searching glance. The young man smiled at him and gave him a thumbs-up gesture. Bain nodded, but he couldn't quite smile.
It never occurred to him until that moment that Devon wasn't that much older than him. Maybe he really was growing up, finally, when trained medics only seemed five or ten years older than him.
He wore Devon's spare jacket, with a special insulating layer that could deflect lower level energy bursts and beam burners, and protect him from electrical jolts if they weren't too severe or long-lasting. The inner pockets had extra capsules of vaccine and a spray injector, plus a small first aid kit and emergency rations. Rangers, Devon had explained as he showed Bain all the features of the seemingly ordinary fatigues jacket, were always prepared.
Black jacket with green stripes for the Medic Corps; new dark green pants; calf-high black boots with the hidden sheaths for short, sharp knives, a present from Lin on his last birthday. Bain thought he at least looked ready for action. He hoped the people hiding and watching the ship thought he was still young enough not to be a threat.
Bain walked down the ramp and crossed the dust-streaked therma-crete of the landing field. He went first to the administration building on the edge of the field, just beyond the heat-scarred blast wall. Devon walked a short distance behind him. No one called to him, no one stepped from hiding.
"Ganfer, is anybody coming closer?" Bain whispered, and touched his collar link to open communications with the ship-brain.
"No one is moving." Ganfer paused. "Sensors show no change in energy readings. They aren't activating weapons." The ship-brain kept the volume so low, no one even three meters away could have heard what he said.
"Thanks." Bain grinned, all nerves, and muscles so tense they ached.
The administration building was one long room inside, with windows in a long strip down the side facing away from the landing field. Bain looked in through the windows and saw desks, computer terminals and chairs, but no signs of people. Lights flashed in a bank of monitors and control panels at one end of the room, and Bain guessed they were the communication center. Those flashing lights probably meant Lin's messages were waiting to be played back.
The door was locked. Bain tugged on the handle a few times, hoping to discover it was just stuck.
"You won't make a very good impression, trying to break into their headquarters," Devon said from his place at the corner of the building. He glanced over his shoulder, back toward the ship, then past Bain down the path leading into the colony proper.
"Why would they lock it?" Bain tugged once more, then gave up and stepped back. "Who would steal anything in a place this small?"
"Visitors."
"Oh." His face got warm. Bain wished he would stop blushing when he made a mistake. Was that part of growing up, learning not to feel so utterly stupid whenever he did or said something wrong, or forgot, or didn't see something that should have been common sense? He hoped so.
Scraggly, thin trees lined the dusty gravel path from the administration building, down a shallow slope, into the center of the colony. In the middle of the square, someone had created a park amid the dryness and stone. Grass grew lush, emerald and cool in the square, with narrow pink gravel paths and bushes and a peaked shelter with tables and chairs and no walls. Tall trees with pink flowers hung over a pond where four scarlet water birds paddled in silence. That was the first sign of life Bain had seen since landing.
Houses lined two sides of the square, larger buildings, either storehouses or school or clinic, lined the third side. The fourth side was open, looking out over the river plateau. The water glistened silver in the afternoon sunshine. Brown-red mud lined the river on both sides, and then shallow streaks of grass and moss broke the severity of stretches of silver-gray and glossy brown-red, flat rock.
Bain looked over his shoulder at Devon, who stayed in the shadows of the nearest home. The Ranger medic nodded and gestured for him to go ahead.
Swallowing hard, Bain put one foot on the nearest pink gravel path. He paused, waiting for something to happen. Nothing did. It was stupid to be this nervous, he told himself, but he couldn't stop the sweaty certainty that something was going to jump out of the shadows and grab him. This was worse than his nightmares when he was back in the dormitory, waking up to unfamiliar shadows and bullies.
He stifled a snort of nervous laughter when he suddenly realized he would have welcomed Toly Gaber jumping out at him right now. Bain could handle Toly now, after all the growing he did and the self-defense training Jax, Sister Marnya's bodyguard had given him.
Ten steps took him to the edge of the pond. Bain squatted for a few seconds and watched the water birds swimming in meaningless figures. That wasn't getting him anywhere, though.
"Movement," Ganfer said.
"Where?" Bain touched his collar link, as if that could bring him in closer contact with the ship.
"Straight in front of you, the center of the buildings. Sensors show eight Humans. They appeared too quickly."
"What do you mean, too quickly?" He swallowed hard, fighting a shriek and squeak in his voice. This was not the right time for his voice to break again.
"My sensors are not set to penetrate rock. The mineral content underneath the colony is unusually dense and metallic, making sensors less reliable. Lin and Dr. Anyon speculate the colonists have underground chambers."
"Oh." Bain grinned at a sudden mental image of tunnels underneath the park, connecting the various buildings on all sides of the square, like burrowing insects, but Human-sized.
"Bain, someone is going to wonder what you're doing out there if you don't get moving," Lin said through his collar link. "Don't go straight toward those people, but try to give them as good a look at you as you can."
"Okay." He set off across the park again, following another path. Bain hoped he looked like he was only wandering around, not heading for a specific place.
What would he think, if he was one of those people in hiding and saw a stranger walking through the square? Bain couldn't figure out the answer, though he knew it was important. The problem, he decided, was that his image of himself wasn't the same image people had when they looked at him. When he first came to live on Sunsinger, strangers usually treated him like a little boy. When they learned he was Lin's apprentice and crew they treated him like he had a brain and could understand them. Bain had grown since then, and strangers didn't make that mistake anymore. He wished he was a little smaller right at that moment, though. The less dangerous he looked, the sooner those people watching him would come out of hiding.
Bain reached the end of the path and stepped out of the park, back onto the dusty stone paving the colony central square. He looked up and down the long stretch of houses, built so close together there was barely room for two people to walk side by side between them. He shrugged, jammed his hands in his pockets, and ambled to the right. Somewhere, in one of those houses he approached, people watched him.
"Who are you, boy?" a man called, his voice creaky and rough.
The sudden shout startled Bain, so he stumbled and his hands came out of his pockets. He looked in all directions, even back over his shoulder at Devon. The medic had walked the long way down the length of buildings. He was nearly twenty meters away. That scared Bain for about three long seconds.
"Over here, son," another man said. The touch of laughter in his voice made Bain's face flare hot for a moment.
Bain turned around and saw four men and two women come out of the house only three doors away from him. They all wore light, dust-colored clothing like Bain had worn when he lived on Lenga. He supposed that made sense, with all the rock and dust and heat to contend with.
As he approached them, Bain saw they were all tanned, with wrinkle lines around their eyes and mouths like people who had to look into hot, bright distances all day long. Their hair was cut short, even the women, and streaked with gray and white. He didn't know if their hair was pale with age, or exposure to the hot sun. Bain couldn't even start to guess their ages.
Besides, Lin had told him never to judge by someone's outward appearance. Dangerous people often tried to look harmless and friendly, to lure careless travelers into traps. Bain couldn't assume these people were old and weak, any more than he could assume the smiles on four faces meant friendliness.
"That's close enough," the first man who had spoken said now. His voice was just as cracked and rough when he used a normal tone of voice as when he shouted. He was the tallest member of the group, and he scowled at Bain, peering at him down a nose like the beak of a bird of prey.
"My name is Chobainian Kern, from the Free Trader ship Sunsinger," Bain said. He let his hands hang at his sides when he wanted to shove them into his pockets for safety.
"We figured that part out," the dark-haired woman said with a smile. "Your captain certainly is persistent."
"If you got our messages, why didn't you come out until now? We're here to help you."
"You expect us to believe that muscle-man is a medic?" another man said. He gestured over Bain's shoulder, in Devon's direction.
"He's a Ranger. He has to be strong, to protect his patients." Bain fought the urge to turn around and see how much closer Devon had come.
"Why are you here, Chobainian Kern?" the third man said. He was the one who had spoken second. He smiled, creating more creases and wrinkles in his weather-beaten face. He had only a few strands of snowy hair across his domed, sweating head and he hunched his shoulders and leaned toward Bain when he spoke.
"My captain figured if you knew there was a boy on the ship, then you'd trust us. Nobody would be here to hurt you if they had children on board." He tried to smile. "Right?"
"Maybe," the woman said. She glanced at the other five adults. "You say you're here with vaccines for us? Why?"
"The Mashrami are sending plague bombs to every planet they can reach, not just the ones they want to attack. We're here to inoculate everybody, and take the sick to hospital ships."
"Why should we believe you?" the first man asked. His voice cracked three times as he spoke.
Suddenly, Bain knew these people were in trouble. He didn't know how he knew it; a gut reaction, as Lin called it. Maybe it was the fear he could suddenly smell in their sweat. Maybe the cracking in their voices. Maybe a suspicion that the wrinkles and strain and wear on their faces wasn't from the heat and dust and constant intense sunlight, but from fear and worry.
"You have a lot of sick people, don't you? They all got sick a little while ago and you can't figure out what it is, can you? I bet nothing you try to do for them works very long, or it doesn't work at all, does it?" Bain took two steps closer to them. He felt a shiver of delighted shock when all six adults backed away from him one step.
"Don't get any closer, boy," the fourth man warned in a shaking voice. "We could be carriers. You don't want to get sick."
"You aren't listening!" Bain flinched when his voice echoed off the buildings of the square and the water birds rose into the air with odd, hooting cries and squawks. "We have medicine. We're here to help you."
"But you don't---"
"We're not stupid." He almost felt like laughing. "Do you think we'd come visiting places that got hit by the Mashrami if we couldn't make sure we wouldn't get sick?"
Silence. Bain glared at the six cowering adults. He jammed his fists into his hips and spread his legs for balance and he waited. In the quiet, he heard the water birds settling back into their pond. He heard soft, scraping footsteps as Devon came up behind him.
"The boy has a point," the medic said softly. "How many of you are down with it?"
"We passed the hundred mark this morning," the second woman said. Her voice broke with a sob and her narrow, freckled face seemed to crumple.
"How many of you are there, total?"
"We're---we were six hundred twenty-two last month, when the Dovry family had their triplets." The balding man shook his head. His mouth pursed like the words tasted bad. "Including the five who died since this morning ... we're down to five hundred forty-three."
Bain swallowed hard against a sudden urge to be sick. Nearly eighty people had already died of the plague.
"Mutated?" he whispered to Devon. The medic gave him a short, sharp shake of his head and squeezed the boy's shoulder.
"Do you want me to look them over, or bring the vaccine in first?" Devon asked.
"Vaccine," the first woman said. "We have to protect the children."
"All right, Bain, here's how we stand." Devon stopped Bain with a hand on his shoulder, just as they stepped past the blast wall and onto the landing field. "Ganfer, is everybody listening?" he said, raising his voice a little, and bent down so he spoke directly into Bain's collar link.
Bain sighed and bit his lip to keep from saying something disrespectful. Ganfer didn't need any help to hear what anybody said. Bain had tested his collar link, and Ganfer could hear what someone whispered behind a locked door fifty meters away, when he wanted to.
"We're listening, Dev," Dr. Anyon said. It sounded strange, hearing his voice through the collar link. Bain was used to hearing only Ganfer most of the time.
"The way I read the situation, Bain and I have probably been exposed, just coming within a few meters of those people. We can hope the virus is weak, if they haven't fallen ill yet. We can also assume that our vaccinations will slow or at least dull the bite of whatever bug attacks us." Devon stood up and gestured toward the waiting ship.
He stayed close to Bain, his hand still resting on the boy's shoulder as they walked and he continued talking.
"I'll go into the sickrooms and give the inoculations. Putting on a protective suit would probably do more harm than good. Do you agree, sir?"
"Unfortunately, yes," Dr. Anyon said. "The psychological impact of seeing you in a suit could do more harm to them than it would do you any good. If you're exposed already."
"I want Bain to stay outdoors. He can run errands for me, bring things from the ship. I'll take samples and send them back for you to study. Until we know what we're facing, we should have no contact with any of you, either."
"You just want to get out of cooking duty tonight," Dena said.
"Hey, you know me too well." Devon tried to laugh. His voice caught in his throat. Bain wondered if the medic was afraid.
"Be careful, twin."
"All the time." Devon winked at Bain. "Do you agree with the strategy, Captain Lin?"
"What's there to disagree with?" Lin sounded exasperated and that reassured Bain. If she was afraid, her voice wouldn't have any emotion at all. "We're moving the cartons of vaccine and medicine to the airlock right now. Bain, do I have to lecture you to be careful?"
"No, ma'am." He shared a grin with Devon. Bain had to fight an urge to salute when Lin used that intense tone of voice.
"Make me proud."
They reached Sunsinger then. After only two minutes waiting, the airlock hissed and slowly swung open. Inside, stacked almost to the ceiling, were the blue, plastic, insulated and cushioned crates of vaccine and the special medicine that had been devised to fight most aspects of the plague. Crammed into the side of the airlock was a wheeled cart, standing on end. Bain grinned when he saw that. He had visions until then of carrying one crate at a time all that long walk across the landing field, down the path, across the colony's square and into the schoolroom where he and Devon had been told to go bring the vaccine. With the cart, they could take eight crates at a time. Bain could even handle it all by himself, so Devon could get to work on inoculating the healthy.
When they retraced their steps, the found the welcoming committee had vanished again. Bain fought a shiver up his back and the sensation that he and Devon had just talked to ghosts. They went into the schoolroom. It was empty of everything but tables and chairs and the computer stations with their oversized screens for class viewing. Devon said nothing but stood in the exact middle of the room and looked all around. Bain waited, trying to figure out what the medic was doing.
Devon finally shrugged and nodded and gestured for Bain to help him unload the crates of vaccine. Bain grabbed the cart and hurried back out. The too?silent room gave him a creepy feeling up the middle of his back.
When he returned, Devon and the crates from the first trip were gone. Bain went to the spot where Devon had stood and looked around the room, trying again to see what the man had seen.
A creaking, groaning noise came up through the floor. Bain held himself very still and waited, even when the floor vibrated under his feet. Then the door at the end of the room opened, showing a little room beyond it. Bain had assumed that door led to the sanitary. Devon stepped out and grinned when he saw the boy staring at him.
"It's an elevator shaft," he said, hooking his thumb over his shoulder at the little room. "They have a whole complex of rooms carved out of the rock, underneath the colony. It's perfect for isolating the sick, and the temperature is easier to control, too."
"Oh." Bain thought for a moment, then decided not to ask any questions that might sound stupid. He pointed at the crates. "Should I unload these, or should we just take the cart down?"
"Hmm." Devon glanced back and forth between the open door and the cart. "The isolation chambers are far enough down ... it ought to be safe." He nodded and stepped forward to take hold of the cart handle. "Good idea. It's a long walk, carrying those crates."
It was a tight squeeze, with the two of them and the loaded cart in the elevator. Bain leaned back against the wall and felt the vibrations of the mechanism through his whole body this time. The elevator car smelled of raw metal and a faint aroma of bitter antiseptics. Bain sniffed a few times and decided the bitter smell came from Devon.
The elevator car door slid open when they reached the bottom of the shaft, and the stinging scent of antiseptics and disinfectants flooded the car in a cloud Bain could almost see. He coughed and rubbed his watering eyes and was glad he was still leaning against the wall.
"Takes a little getting used to," was all Devon said. He knuckled his own eyes, then reached out and took hold of the handle for the cart and backed it out into the hallway.
The walls were the same silvery dull stone Bain had seen bleaching in the hot sunshine outside, smoothed almost to a flat surface by whatever cutting tools the colonists had used. Bain ran his fingers across the face of the wall on his right as he followed Devon down the hallway. Not even dust came off on his fingers. The floor had been paved with some slick black plastic, dulled and scratched by countless wheels and boots scraping across it. There were small, pale yellow lights in the ceiling, five meters apart. They cast enough light to see the doorways, but barely enough to see their feet. Bain didn't know if it was the weak lighting that made his head start to hurt, or the thickness of the antiseptics and disinfectants clogging his lungs. They filled his mouth with a strange combination of burning and numbness.
"Better stay out here," Devon said, when they reached an intersection in the hallway.
The passageway to the right ended in a wide, double door; to the left the hallway continued into darkness; directly ahead it opened out into a long, narrow room. Devon went to the door and banged on it twice. When it swung open, a hissing sound filled the air. Bain winced when he saw a thick, silvery cloud envelope the man. Devon closed his eyes and held his breath until the cloud dissipated.
"I'll be out in a minute with the cart. Can you get back topside without me?" he asked. He didn't wait for Bain to answer, but dragged the cart through the door. A moment later, it closed.
Bain saw nothing of the contents of the room beyond thick shadows and dull, weak lights high up in the ceiling, at least three meters above the lintel of the door. He shivered and leaned back against the wall and wrapped his arms around himself. He wasn't really cold; someone had found a way to heat the stony passageways. Still, Bain felt a warning chill radiating from the inside of his body out.
Please, Fi'in, don't let us get sick, he prayed. Then he thought of what he had heard the colonists say. Please don't let anybody else get sick. Please don't let anybody else die.
The wait until Devon came out seemed to take forever, but Bain had kept silent count and only reached three hundred twenty?six before the doors opened. The hiss of antiseptics filled the air with another cloud. He held his breath until the doors closed. Devon wiped at his eyes and shoved the cart toward Bain. Then he held out three opaque silver tubes to Bain, no longer than his index finger, wrapped in insulating silver thermal?cloth.
"Samples. Make sure Dr. Anyon gets these before you do anything else, understand?"
"Understood." Bain opened up his jacket and slid the sample tubes into the special sealed pocket inside. He fastened his jacket closed and made sure the tubes didn't slide around inside when he moved.
"Captain Lin better be careful," Devon said as he stepped back toward the door. "We might just recruit you for the Rangers when this is over. You're good."
Bain managed a grin, and held it until the doors closed again. He shivered and grabbed the handle of the cart and started down the long, shadowed, too?silent passageway to the elevator.
The next cartload took all but one crate of the vaccine. Bain put the sample tubes in. He had told Lin through the collar link that Devon had given him the samples. As soon as the airlock closed, Ganfer would fill it with disinfectants and antiseptics and make it safe for the people inside Sunsinger to open the airlock and retrieve the samples.
Down under the schoolroom, Bain walked the stone passageway as quickly as he could without rattling the cart unnecessarily. He unloaded the crates, then banged on the double doors and hurried away. He shivered and held his breath when he heard the hissing sound. Maybe he was being silly---the disinfectant couldn't hurt him, after all---but every breath of air underground made his head hurt more and made his lungs feel thicker. Up topside again, he hurried outside and stood a long time, taking deep breaths of the warm, dusty air, breathing out hard enough to make himself cough, to clear his lungs. His clothes still smelled of the bitter, antiseptic, artificial substance, but he couldn't do anything about that.
"Wait a little, Bain," Ganfer said, just as Bain reached the edge of the landing field.
"Wait for what?" His voice cracked. Bain felt his heart skip a beat. Had something gone wrong? He stopped short and stared across the landing field at Sunsinger. The ship had never seemed so far away before.
"It's all right to come up to the ship," Lin said after a moment's pause. "Dr. Anyon is almost done analyzing the samples. If everything remains clear, we'll be joining you in a few minutes, that's all."
"Oh. Good." He shook his head and grinned at his own jumpiness.
When he reached Sunsinger, Bain lifted the last crate onto the cart, then sat down on it to wait. He closed his eyes and rubbed them. They still stung from all the antiseptics and disinfectants that had sprayed at or on him. The wind picked up and blew more dust in spinning little clouds across the landing field. Bain kept his eyes closed when little gusts of grit hit him in the face. He liked the warmth of the wind and imagined it gently brushing away the damp feeling of being underground in the rock tunnels and passages.
"All clear," Lin said through the collar link. "Hungry?"
"Huh?" Bain opened his eyes and sat up straight, and nearly slid off the crate. He turned around as the airlock started to hiss, gushing vented air as it swung open.
"It's almost suppertime," Dena said as she stepped out and down onto the landing field. She held out a sandwich pack, offering it. When Bain nodded, she tossed it to him.
Bain tore the packet open and took three bites before he remembered he hadn't answered Lin's question or thanked Dena for the food.
"Time flies when you're having fun," Lin said, as she stepped out through the airlock. She carried several equipment bags and put them directly onto the cart. "Are you feeling all right?"
"All the spray they're using makes my head hurt," Bain said through his mouthful of sandwich. He swallowed quickly. "It's the same plague as before?"
"Not exactly." She stepped back over to the airlock and reached up, taking more bags and small boxes from Dr. Anyon. She and Dena made two trips each, piling the cart high as well as leaving bags for everyone to carry.
"There's a slight variation, but in only one sample," Dena said, taking up the explanation. "The variation is small enough, it could be a single isolated mutation. If it isn't, chances are good our inoculations will cover whatever it tries to do to us."
"What if it doesn't?" Bain asked.
"The variation isn't drastic enough to hurt any of us," Dr. Anyon said as he stepped down out of the airlock. "The vaccine will blunt it, slow down the attack, no matter what. We'll be fine." He stepped aside as the airlock started to swing closed. "How is it down there?"
"I haven't seen inside where they have all the sick people, but it's big and it's not cold underground. They're really careful, spraying everybody when they go in and out." He brushed at his coat and sniffed and could still smell the bitter stink of the chemicals.
"That makes sense. I suppose." Lin looked across the landing field, toward the administration building. "Why were they hiding from us? We told them from the beginning why we were here, what we offered."
"They were scared."
"I know they said that, but.... "She shook her head. "All that matters is that we're getting the vaccine to the children who need it, and we can take the sick ones to help."
No one said much of anything all the way across the square and into the schoolroom. Bain had already reported on everything during his trips back and forth and no one had any new questions for him. There wasn't room for all of them plus the equipment and cart in the elevator. Dr. Anyon and Dena went down first, taking as much equipment and medicine as they could fit. Lin and Bain waited in silence for it to come back up for them.
They walked the passageway, carrying the last few bags of medical supplies. Far off, echoing strangely, Bain heard the hissing of the spray that accompanied each opening of the door. He glanced at Lin. She grimaced and shook her head.
"Sometimes the cure can cause more trouble than it's worth," she muttered. When Bain gave her a questioning look, she shrugged. "No matter how good something is, if you overdo it, if you overdose, it becomes bad. If you use too much medicine, it either becomes poison, or your body adjusts to it and it doesn't do you any more good."
"You think they're doing that down here?"
"I know something doesn't feel right. Even if they're using isolation to protect the healthy, they'd still be better off leaving everybody else up above in the fresh air."
"Maybe.... "Bain stopped. He wasn't sure exactly what the people of Bareen were trying to do. Maybe Lin was right---something was wrong here. If Lin couldn't figure out the problem, though, what hope did he have?
When they reached the intersection, the balding man who had met Bain and Devon in the square waited for them. He smiled and nodded and introduced himself as Juhan, and led them across the intersection area into the narrow, dark room Bain had seen the first time. Juhan touched the wall, and more of the small, weak lights came on.
The room had a woven matting on the floor, cushioning the scarred black plastic. Padded, wide benches lined the walls, with more benches arranged in groups across the floor. Four curtained alcoves held sanitaries and a food processing station, when Bain investigated.
"You can wait here, Captain Fieran," Juhan said. "You'll be safe here."
"Safe from what?" Lin smiled faintly. Her eyes showed no sparks of humor. Bain knew her well enough to sense the frustration and growing anger she hid so well.
"The sickness."
"But we're vaccinated." She slid her long jacket off and stretched out her arm, as if she could show him the faded marks from her repeated vaccinations. "We're here to help."
"We know, but we can't permit you to take the risks. It's bad enough the doctors are risking themselves." Juhan shook his head. His eyes glistened as if he might start crying.
"You aren't listening---" Lin began.
"Captain, please." He raised his hands, as if begging her to be quiet. "It's dangerous even for you to breathe the air outside. Here, where the air and water are filtered and you won't come into contact with anyone, you'll be safe."
"The air and water?" She sat down abruptly on the nearest bench. "What happened? Do you know when the plagues actually hit?"
"Oh, that's easy to answer." Juhan sat down at the end of the bench, putting nearly a meter between them.
Bain noticed that and wondered why. Was Juhan afraid of Lin, or afraid he would give her an illness if he got too close?
"Nine days ago, we had a firestorm. Somewhere between a hurricane and a triple?strength lightening storm. Our power lines are shielded, but we were still getting short?circuits." Juhan shook his head, as if he still couldn't believe the strength of the storm. "Then, when we thought it was safe to come outside again, we had a meteor shower. Fortunately, none of our buildings were hit. That would have set us back more than losing power for a few hours at a time."
"The plague bombs came down in the meteor shower?" Bain guessed.
"I don't know what you mean by plague bombs. All we know is that it got hot the next day, like it usually does after big storms around here, and the children went swimming like usual, and they found meteors in the river. When they came home, they started getting sick."
"Meteors in the river," Lin echoed. "Where? Did anyone go to examine them?"
"We've been too busy tending the sick and protecting the healthy."
"And ever since then, you've had a Mashrami plague bomb sitting in your river, polluting it. You take all your drinking and washing water from the river, don't you?"
"It goes through a stringent filtration and purification system before we use it."
"I wonder how effective it really is. Anyon showed me how to perform the tests, if anything happened to him." She stood and headed toward the sanitary chambers.
"Captain, what do you think you're doing?" Juhan hurried to intercept her, blocking the way bodily, his arms and legs spread.
It didn't work. Lin simply moved on to the next of the three alcoves. When Juhan tried to slide between her and the next one, she scurried around him and ran to the food processing station. Before he could catch up with her, Lin had turned on a faucet and ran water into a sample tube she took from the pocket of her jacket.
Bain nearly laughed aloud when he realized that Lin had been planning on taking samples even before she heard about the meteor in the river.
"Captain, you really can't---"
"What are you trying to hide?" Lin turned sharply, coming nearly nose?to?nose with the red?faced, panicking man. "Anyone with a sudden, inexplicable illness on their hands would welcome any help that was offered. You people act like you're being invaded, and we have to nearly beg you to take our help. What are you hiding?"
"Hiding?" Juhan stepped back and hid his hands behind his back, as if the answers were written on them.
"What don't you want us to discover in the water? Are you breaking ecological laws? Poisoning the environment for the sake of profit?"
"Never!" Momentary anger replaced his nervousness and visible fear.
"Maybe there was no plague bomb after all, and that's why you didn't want our help? You didn't want us to find out you brought the sickness on yourselves."
"Take the water and test it, Captain Fieran. You'll find out we didn't do anything to it." Juhan pulled himself up to his full height and glared into Lin's eyes. Huffing, he turned on his heel and stalked out of the room.
Silence. Bain held his breath, listening for the fading echoes of the man's footsteps. Before they had completely vanished, though, Lin let out a long breath and then chuckled softly a few seconds.
"Why beg when you can growl?" she said, and winked at Bain.
"You didn't think they were doing anything wrong at all, did you?" Bain said. He clamped both hands over his mouth to keep from laughing.
"He was too scared and worried to think clearly. If you get someone mad, sometimes they start thinking again. It was a matter of pride to him to prove none of this was their fault." Lin filled two more sample tubes with water and handed all three to Bain. "You're better equipped for secure handling, I think. Let's go."
"Shouldn't one of us stay here?" he blurted as he hurried to follow her.
"You want to stay down here all alone? You're a braver man than me, that's for certain." She shuddered and picked up her pace.
Bain decided not to point out that Lin wasn't a man at all. She was in one of those moods, using teasing and gruffness to fight her own fear. He understood completely how she felt.
Half an hour later, they were back underground. Lin pounded on the double doors and braced herself, holding her breath, eyes closed as the disinfectant spray gushed down in a thickening cloud on her and Bain. Before the hissing had quite stopped, she tapped Bain on the shoulder. He opened his eyes, wincing at the slight stinging in them, and hurried to follow her.
Now, the sickroom was fully revealed.
Bain's first impression was that it had been planned for storage, not people. There was no black plastic coating on the stone floor. Shelves lined the walls nearly to the shadowed ceiling.
The shelves had been converted into beds, with a mattress and blankets and netting across the opening to keep the sick from falling to the ground, sometimes four meters down. Cots in rows filled the wide floor, ten wide, and six deep, head to foot. All of them were filled. Bain felt a moment of dizzy panic, and turned to stare at the shelf beds. Only a few were occupied.
Then he saw the tables at the far end of the room, covered with cloth?draped objects. It didn't take much imagination to realize those were bodies under the cloths. Six bodies. Even as he watched, two men came in through one of the four doorways at the end of the room, picked up a body, and carried it out. The men wore breather masks and long gloves tucked over the ends of their coats.
"Pretty pitiful, isn't it?" Dr. Anyon said, stepping out of the shadows to join them. He gestured at the men and the body as they vanished through the door. "Those people have died just since we got here."
"How many more sick have joined the group?" Lin asked in a quiet, emotionless voice.
"I haven't been told yet. I do know there was no one in the shelves when I came in."
"Stop them bathing and drinking or you'll have even more."
"The water is the source?" He stared at Lin for two seconds, then shifted his gaze to Bain, as if the boy could give him a better answer.
"According to Council member Juhan, a meteor fell into the river where the children swim, and everybody started falling ill immediately after discovering it." Lin dug in her pocket and brought out the computer printout from the diagnostic unit. "It's a pretty tough version of the plagues, to survive the purification system. I'm no scientist, but I have this awful feeling the Mashrami designed something specifically to react to water."
"It makes sense," Dr. Anyon said on a sigh. "Can we modify the water purification system to kill it?"
"Took me three tries and almost used up all the samples, but we can."
"Good. If you two can get started---"
"We already unloaded all the equipment Ganfer says we'll need," Lin broke in. "We just need to know where to install it."
"Leave that to me." He smiled at them; a tired expression, but Bain felt better seeing it wipe away the worry that cut new, dark lines around the doctor's eyes and mouth.
Six men wearing protective clothing---breather masks, hoods, gloves and boots that sealed to their pants just above the knees---met Lin and Bain at the ship. They brought carts and took the equipment down to the water purification plant at the edge of the river.
The same equipment that had carved the smooth, straight walls of the tunnels had carved out a reservoir at the side of the river. Water spilled from the river shallows into the deep trench in the rock where a thick hose sucked it up and deposited it into the reservoir. From there, it went through a series of filters and chemical analysis stages, then was treated, filtered again, and pumped into another tunnel that led to the reservoir underneath the colony. From there, the water lines ran to individual homes and facilities.
Bain looked at the diagrams one of the men had spread out on the damp rock at the edge of the reservoir, and wondered why the colonists bothered to live aboveground at all. It seemed to him that at least three?quarters of the colony was underground.
"That's ridiculous," one of the men said, when Bain mentioned his observation. "Why would anyone want to live underground?" He grinned, and then chuckled, as if he thought the boy had made a joke.
"But---"
"All that darkness and quiet underground, it's easy to misjudge distances. Those tunnels and rooms under the square aren't nearly half as big as they seem." The man's voice sounded a little too jolly.
Bain thought about Juhan, when Lin had accused him of hiding something. His eyes had gotten wide and his face had lost a little color, just like this man here. Bain personally thought the shadows underground hid most of the vastness of the rooms, but he kept silent. They were all too busy installing the new equipment into the purification system and setting the dosage of the medicine to waste time arguing.
He mentioned it to Lin, though, when they went back to Sunsinger by themselves to put the tools away.
"I heard some of that, but I didn't know what you two were talking about." She nodded, pursing her lips as she thought. "Very observant, apprentice. We'll make a stealth spy out of you yet."
"Lin.... "Bain felt his face heat up. The idea of being a stealth spy for the Commonwealth did sound fascinating, but he just couldn't see himself doing it.
"Come on. We've earned a quiet dinner before we head back down below." She stood up and nudged the equipment bin closed. "Did you notice something, though? Except for the sick, the few moments we were in the hospital room, we haven't seen any children."
"Oh. Where are they keeping them?"
"That's what I'd like to know." She circled around the control panel and headed for the galley. "Ganfer, can you boost your sensors to get through all that rock?"
"It would be better if I were closer to the area being scanned," the ship?brain responded.
"Is that a yes or no?"
"Distance reduces the intensity of the scanning beam. The best procedure is to move the ship closer to the colony, thereby reducing the distance the beam must travel."
"Can't do that. They already know we doubt what they tell us." She shook her head and paused in pulling meal trays out of the cold box. "If we lift, just enough to move Sunsinger closer to the colony, they'll wonder why. Frightened, angry people with something to hide don't need an excuse to start fighting. I don't care to find out how clever and nasty they can be."
It was full dark by the time Lin and Bain went back underground. The heat radiating from the rocky ground had begun to fade and the air started to chill. Lin wrapped her jacket tighter around herself and glanced around at the dark colony buildings. No one had bothered turning on lights. The only illumination came from the tiny, far?off moon. Lin paused in the doorway of the schoolroom and looked up at the dark, silver?speckled dome of the sky.
"It's just not the same," she murmured.
"What is? The stars?" Bain tilted his head back and looked upwards, too, trying to see what she saw.
"The atmosphere plays tricks with colors and rays of light. It blurs everything. Space is dangerous, but the beauty and the purity even things out." Lin lowered her gaze to the door standing open before them. She shrugged. "At least I think so."
Bain wasn't quite sure what to say, or if he should even say anything. He shoved his hands in the pockets of his borrowed jacket and followed her inside, across the schoolroom and down the elevator.
Even through the double doors of the hospital room, they heard the angry voices. Bain looked at Lin and she looked at him. She squared her shoulders, bracing herself for what they would find inside. Lin banged on the doors and when they swung open she hurried through, not pausing to be hit with the disinfectant gas. Bain wasn't so lucky. He took a breath at the wrong moment hurrying through the cloud.
For ten long, torturous seconds, he leaned against the nearest wall, gagging, feeling like his lungs tried to catch fire. Gasping, eyes watering, Bain struggled to catch his breath and see and hear what was going on. He rubbed at his eyes until he could see well enough not to run into anything, and staggered toward the sounds of raised voices.
His ears worked fine and despite the thudding of his tripled heartbeats, he knew he didn't hear either Lin or Dr. Anyon doing the yelling.
"It's not fair!" a woman roared, and abruptly broke out in choking coughs.
"What's not fair?" Lin asked in a reasonable tone that somehow managed to break through the mutters and interruptions of the other people gathered around the argument.
Bain could finally see straight. He took his place behind Lin and to the right, where he could see everything. Lin had often teased him about his tendency to act like a man?at?arms or bodyguard, and claimed he had taken his self?defense lessons from Jax a little too seriously. She never told him to stop standing there when they faced chancy situations, and Bain suspected she was pleased.
Lin and Dr. Anyon stood side?by?side, facing down more than twenty adults. Some were dressed in dirty, outdoor clothes; others wore robes, their hair lank with fever sweat and their faces pasty from weakness.
"This is the best plan. We take the ill away to much better treatment than we can dispense from my little ship. They get healed and we take away the culture bed for sickness," Lin continued.
"It's still here," Juhan said. He pushed his way to the front of the crowd. "Why did you augment the water treatment plant if the source of the illness is gone?"
"She said the culture bed," Dr. Anyon said. "By this time, those who are susceptible have caught the illness. The problem with the Mashrami plague bombs is that once the virus finds a Human host, it learns to adapt to the Human immunosystem. Those of you who were immune to the first wave of attack, through the water vector, could still be susceptible and catch it from others. We have to take the sick away from here."
"No, you have to take the healthy away," another woman insisted. She wore clothes that looked like she had been digging through rock and sand all day long, streaked with mud and sweat. Her hands looked calloused and cut, her hair filthy with dust and held back with braids and a grimy sweatband.
"We don't have the room or the facilities," Lin said, shaking her head. Bain didn't have to look at her to know she fought frustration and compassion. The careful control in her voice was clue enough.
"You don't care!"
"I care, but I'm not going to let it overrule common sense," she bit back. "I'm captain of one little ship. I can fit all your sick people into the bunks in my cargo hold, and I can take them directly to the hospital ship. If I take your healthy people, how will they take the trip, twice as long, to the next habitable planet? Will there be any room there for them? Enough food? Enough shelter? You have to consider those things before you change our plans for us."
"You're not planning on taking our children to a hospital ship, anyway," the hawk?nosed man who had met Bain and Devon that afternoon spat out. He shook his fist nearly in Lin's face. "You're going to take them away and dump them in the middle of nowhere to die!"
Lin slapped him. The sound rang out in the sudden silence. A few people gasped softly, and several more stepped back, leaving a cleared space around Lin and the enraged, stunned man.
"Don't ever accuse me of leaving a child to die," Lin growled, leaning in so close she almost brushed her nose against his. "Stupid, stubborn old fools like you, I'd gladly leave for the Mashrami---it'd be a punishment for them! But no child, no matter who their relatives are, will ever be left to suffer while I have a say in it." She turned sharply on one heel and stalked out of the room.
Bain stared at the too?quiet crowd. He was almost afraid to turn to look at Dr. Anyon. The man nodded to him and tilted his head in Lin's direction. Bain realized the doctor was telling him to follow Lin. Bain nodded and ran.
This time, he managed to slide between the closing doors and missed the bitter spray entirely. He followed Lin down the dark hallway to the room where she had obtained the water samples. Her arms were held stiffly at her sides and her boots threatened to strike sparks against the hard plastic floor. She stomped into the middle of the room and sat down hard on a bench in a u?shaped grouping, with her arms wrapped tight around herself like she was cold.
Bain crept across the floor and sat down on the end of the bench. Gingerly, he reached out and rested a hand on Lin's shoulder. He was surprised to feel her shaking.
"Lin?"
"They're hiding something, Bain." Her voice was surprisingly soft. A few shudders racked her body and then she was still. "They're hiding something and they're afraid of us finding out. They're so afraid, they argue with us and risk lives."
"Afraid of what?"
"I don't know ... but I think it has to do with their children." Lin rubbed at her eyes. Her hands glistened with tears. "Bain, while they were arguing with Dr. Anyon and then with me, I saw two children die. I stood there, watching people pull sheets over their faces, and others come and carry them away, and those idiots kept arguing, wasting precious time!"
"I think we should ask Ganfer about this colony. Maybe it's different from what it should be, and that's what they're trying to hide."
"Bain---" A choked gasp of laughter escaped Lin. She reached up and rested her hand over his on her shoulder, and squeezed it. "You are brilliant. What would I do without you?"
"Argue with Ganfer more?" he suggested.
"Exactly." Lin rubbed at her eyes once more. She nodded and frowned, concentrating as Bain had seen her do hundreds of times as she decided how to frame her questions. "Ganfer, what do you have on this colony that would make the people prone to hide something?"
"That will take several minutes," the ship?brain responded, speaking through both Lin and Bain's collar links.
"We have plenty of time. At least until those idiots realize what harm they're doing," Lin hurried to add.
"Captain?" Juhan took a few steps into the room. "Who are you talking to?"
"Our ship?brain." Lin stood to face the cringing man. "Is there something you want?"
"Please, won't you reconsider? Isn't it more important to take the healthy to safety, rather than leave them here where it isn't safe? You could kill people through the roughness of the trip."
Bain knew Juhan had a point. Lin had speculated that the water vector had strengthened the virus while aiding its spread. Yet, the water filtration plant was able to make the water safe again for drinking and washing. No more people would fall ill from the water, at least. Still, if people were dying so quickly, how would the rigors of launching Sunsinger and the stresses of going through the Knaught Points between Bareen and Mercy affect them?
Lin and Dr. Anyon were right, Bain knew. The ill had to be taken away, separated from the healthy, before more people caught the virus that had adapted to their Human hosts. More people would die from the delay than would die from the journey.
"This is the way it has to be done," Lin said. She gentled her voice. Bain knew how much effort that took, when she was still so angry over the stubbornness of the people.
"Information accessed," Ganfer reported.
"What information?" Juhan asked, his voice rising and cracking at the peak.
"Bareen was not scheduled to be settled for another thirty?four Standard years," the ship?brain continued. "It was settled, quite literally, by accident. A shipload of colonists crashed here and lost all communication with the Commonwealth. They were counted as lost in a faulty Knaught Point jump or a meteor storm that had ravaged the area of their registered flight path. The thriving colony was not discovered until nearly fifteen Standard years later, when a colonization survey team came to verify the findings of a scouting team. Since the colonists were succeeding without any aid, they were permitted to stay. One note." Ganfer paused. If Bain didn't know better, he would have thought the ship?brain was unsure whether to say what came next. "The colony which was the original destination had registered legal action barring them from landing. The legal action was struck down by Commonwealth Council action. Other colonies where the colonists of Bareen had applied also registered legal notice that they were not welcome."
"Why?" Lin asked after a moment of ringing silence.
"Why what?" Juhan asked. Beads of sweat dotted his forehead. He smiled, and it was a stiff, jerky expression. He rubbed one hand over his face, causing the beads of sweat to trickle off and stain his shirtfront.
"Why didn't they want you?"
"That was in my father's day, Captain Lin. I have no idea." He stretched his smile a little wider. "When we crashed here on Bareen, many of our records were lost or the disks cannibalized to keep our computers working. There's quite a bit my generation never learned. Our parents were too busy fighting to survive and make a safe home for us to tell us about the stupid prejudices and injustices in the rest of the universe."
"Stupid prejudices and injustices? Interesting choice of words." Lin nodded. She chewed on her lip for a moment as she thought, her gaze flicking from Bain to Juhan and back again. "Let's go home, Bain."
"Home?" Juhan squeaked. "You're leaving us?"
"Our home is our ship, Councilman Juhan." Lin sidestepped him as she hurried out of the room, with Bain close behind her. "Nothing could persuade me to stay underground while I'm waiting for your people to come to their senses." She stopped in the entrance of the room and turned to face him. "Consider this: for every hour that you waste trying to break the rules established for your protection, another child will die. Do you want that on your conscience? I don't." Then she turned her back on him and sped down the dark shadowed hallway. Bain nearly had to run to keep up with her.
The elevator took so long coming down for them, Bain thought maybe it was broken and they would have to search for stairs up to the surface. There had to be stairs. He couldn't imagine anyone depending solely on machines for getting into and out of the tunnels.
Crossing the square, Bain flinched at every gust of dusty wind across the ground, every rustling snap of tree branches overhead.
"I'm worried too," Lin murmured. She slowed her pace and slid an arm around his shoulders. Bain welcomed the gesture of protection, as well as the contact.
"Do you think they were criminals?" Bain asked after they had synchronized their steps so their hips didn't keep bumping each other sideways. It would have been funny any other time.
"Forty, fifty Standards ago, there was a lot of fear. I think fear was a big motivator for at least half the colonies established back then." Lin tilted her head back and frowned up at the pale moon and the flickering specks of stars. "That's half the problem with the Commonwealth, I think. We should have concentrated on establishing one colony at a time and waited until it was strong and filled its new world before we let another set down roots. The way things are now, we have a good three hundred colonized worlds with little more than one good?sized city on at least three?quarters of them. That isn't healthy. That's why it's so easy for the Mashrami to attack. We're spread out too thin to be any real help for each other."
"We wouldn't have known the Mashrami were coming, if there weren't so many colonies," Bain pointed out.
"True." She managed a chuckle. "You're too smart for your age, you know that?" Lin sighed. "A lot of colonies were established by people who were afraid of their neighbors because they were different, or more powerful than them, or believed different life philosophies. Instead of trying to learn to live together and work together and appreciate our differences, our ancestors spread out into space. A lot of stupid prejudices were allowed to grow in the wide-open spaces. They would have died natural deaths if people had been forced to live and work together to survive."
"Like the fear of mutations that almost killed Spacers when we first appeared?"
"Exactly." Lin led the way down the shadowed path between the colony's square and the administration building on the edge of the landing field.
Later, Bain didn't know if he heard the attackers rushing on them, or felt them. All he really knew for certain was that suddenly the shadows around them grew arms and legs. Fists that punched and grabbed and feet that kicked.
He ducked and rolled and came up spinning, as Jax had taught him. Bain twisted free of the hands that tried to take hold of his clothes and the heavy bodies that tried to pin him to the ground. He heard Lin shout. Suddenly, his defense changed to attack. He had to get to Lin.
Somebody shouted. Bain could hardly hear the voice, much less make out the words through the angry, terrified thudding of his heart in his ears. He dodged a fist heading straight for his nose and swung hard backwards with his elbow as he turned. Bain felt something crack under the impact, but he felt no pain. His attacker took the damage? He didn't have time to check and see. He fought through the twisting, solid shadows toward the sound of Lin's strangled voice.
"Hold him!" a man roared.
A body knocked Bain down. As he twisted and wriggled and tried to slide out from under the weight, another body fell on his legs. Another landed on Bain's shoulders, smashing his face into the dusty gravel of the path. He felt his lip split with the impact. Dusty blood flooded his mouth as he took a deep breath to shout his pain and outrage.
For half a second, the bodies got off him. Many hands flipped Bain over onto his back. A wet rag slapped down over his mouth. He took a deep breath, and gagged. The rag smelled worse than the disinfectant. It clogged his lungs with a rancid sweet thickness.
His head started to spin. Too late, Bain realized what the wet rag held.
Not again! his mind wailed. For a moment he was back in the warehouse, after being kidnapped by Jax's look-alike.
Bain tried to breathe out, tried to get rid of the sleeping drug before it penetrated into his blood. He twisted, trying to free his mouth of the cloth. In response, two hands clamped down on his face, holding him still under the wet rag.
"Breathe," someone growled in his ear.
Bain held his breath. He would have tried to bite the hands holding the cloth over his face, but he feared swallowing the drug.
A fist punched into his gut, making him gasp. Retching, Bain doubled up. He took a deep, harsh, involuntary breath. More dizziness swept down on him with a solid, painful weight. Darkness hit him hard. Through the spinning, sinking sensation, Bain heard Lin shout his name.
Then nothingness.
Bain woke to the distinctly uncomfortable sensation of water in his nose. And he was lying on his back.
He blinked hard, but the darkness didn't go away. When he turned his head, dizziness wrapped around him and threatened to twist him like an old rag wrung out and hung up to dry. Bain held perfectly still and fought the nausea that twisted up through his stomach, with long, deep, slow breaths, as Lin had taught him. He closed his eyes, even though there was nothing to see but darkness. With his eyes closed, he could pretend there was something out there.
Maybe there was something or someone out there? Maybe they could see him, but he couldn't see them?
Shivering, Bain opened his eyes. Cautiously this time, he turned his head to the right. Rough, damp stone and the edge of a puddle grazed his cheek before he had turned more than forty-five degrees. He swallowed hard and tried turning his head in the other direction.
A soft, dim glow almost on the same level as his head rewarded his effort. He stared at it until his eyes began to ache and tear. The glow didn't change; didn't resolve into something identifiable, or come closer.
A drop of water hit his face, near his chin, and ran down his cheek into his ear. Bain lifted a hand to wipe it away. His arm felt heavy, limp, like it did when he had spent more than two weeks in free-fall and then landed on a planet with higher than average gravity.
Damp soaked up through the rough, bare rock under him, into his clothes. Grit plastered the backs of Bain's hands where they had lain against the rock. Gritty wet coated the strands of his hair, when he reached up to rub the growing ache at the back of his head.
"Hello?" Bain winced at the weak whisper of his voice. He had meant to shout, to see if there was anyone nearby.
The ache in his head doubled in size. Bain decided it was a good thing he hadn't been able to shout. That would have only made things worse.
What was he doing there?
He lay still and watched the soft glow so far away, and tried to get his brain moving enough to answer that question. Bain suspected it was important.
What was the last thing he remembered?
Another drop of water hit his face, splashing on his lips. Bain suspected he would have to move soon.
He licked his lips. The bitter-rancid-sweet taste that cut through the mineral taste of the water sent a flash of memories through his mind. Bain sat up, gasping. The movement made his head want to split open. He pressed his hands against the side of his head and ignored the pain as he remembered.
He was walking with Lin, back to Sunsinger. Someone had hidden in the darkness and attacked them. A lot of someones had held him down and drugged him.
"Lin?" Bain took a few more deep breaths, fighting more nausea from the mere effort of speaking. Where was Lin? Did she feel as bad as he did?
Bain hoped not. When Lin got sick, she got angry at her body's weakness. When Lin got angry, she fought hard and whoever got in her way was in a lot of trouble. Right now, lost in the darkness in a place he didn't know, Bain suspected it wouldn't be smart to make his captors angry.
"Lin, are you here?"
Since he was already up and the dizzy sickness finally started to fade, Bain tried to move again. He leaned forward and rested on his hands and knees and crept away from his resting place. The rock remained rough and damp, with little dips and rises in the surface. He decided he was very smart to stay on his hands and knees, instead of trying to walk. Bain's imagination painted him a picture of big holes or crevices in the ground, hidden in the darkness, and himself falling into them and breaking arms and legs or his head.
Since he had nowhere else to go, Bain aimed himself toward that soft glow of light. He reached out with one hand and balanced on the other, trying to feel for anyone who might be lying nearby, still unconscious.
The process felt like it took forever. Bain counted his heartbeats to give him a more realistic sense of the passage of time. He reached four hundred before he realized the light came through a partially opened doorway. Bain sat still a long time, staring hungrily at the light, begging it to come closer or for the door to open completely and flood his dark room with light.
Then he licked his drying lips and realized that he had to get moving again.
This time when he started moving, Bain was cheered to realize that his head didn't twist and weave on his neck quite so badly as before. The sick dizzy sensation in his stomach wasn't quite as strong. Maybe whatever drug his captors used on him was starting to wear off.
He managed to push himself along at a quicker pace and he only counted to one hundred ninety-four before he bumped against the wall. Bain slid his hand along the wall and nearly yelped when his fingers snagged the frame of the door.
He only felt like throwing up for a moment as he struggled to his feet. Bain closed his eyes and clung to the wall and took deep breaths, fighting the nausea. When it left, he reached out and balanced himself against the side of the door panel. His weight pushed it open, slowly, dragging against the uneven stone floor with a growling, hissing sound.
Though it was loud in Bain's ears, no one heard or came running. Bain waited a long time, breathing rapidly, fighting to get enough air into his lungs to stop the light-headed sensation that tried to lift him off his feet.
When the feeling passed, he opened his eyes and stared into the lighted hallway beyond the room.
At first his eyes teared, unused to so much light. Then as his eyes adjusted, Bain realized the passageway was as badly lit as the tunnels below the schoolroom.
Here, though, the walls were rough, unevenly shaped. The floor didn't have a black plastic coating. There were no corners, just rounded angles where floor met wall or wall met ceiling. The ceiling was even more rounded. Sometimes the hallway was more triangular in shape, with the point at the top.
What was Bain doing here? He still didn't have that answer.
More important: where was he? Where was Lin? How could he get out of here and find Sunsinger?
Bain grinned, and felt his drying lips try to crack from the stretching. He reached for his collar link, to contact Ganfer and have the ship-brain use the signal to trace him. He was probably already doing that; Ganfer hadn't needed to wait for Bain to contact him the last time someone had drugged and kidnapped him. Bain shivered a little, remembering how Sister Marnya had been shot and then healed with inhuman speed.
He shivered more when he realized he touched bare neck. His collar link was gone.
Now Bain was scared.
"Please, Fi'in," he whispered. "What do they want?"
Bain clung to the door until the planet stopped spinning beneath his feet. He took long, deep breaths, fighting the dizziness that kept trying to tie his stomach and head into knots. Whatever was going to happen next, he knew he had to be ready. Jax had taught him the most important thing when he was in danger was to keep his senses clear and to listen to his instincts, even if they disagreed with his head.
Suddenly, Bain heard Lin's voice. Swallowing hard to muffle an urge to shout, he pushed off the support of the door and staggered down the rough hallway. He kept stumbling and banging into the wall as he went, but he didn't care. Fifteen steps took him to another doorway, this one with a curtain across it. He leaned against the wall and tried to peer through the gap in the curtain without touching it.
A man he didn't recognize sat at a table, talking into a very primitive communications pack; little more than a receiver box, power supply, speaker grid and microphone. Other than a table and three chairs, a dozen or so gray plastic storage boxes, the communications pack and the man, the room was unfurnished and plain, little more than a hole in the rock.
The man had gray, frizzy hair, clipped short; a scratchy looking beard, almost pure white; and wore a dusty, muddy green jumpsuit and black boots. He had wide shoulders and slouched over the communications pack as he spoke.
"You know I can't do that," Lin had been saying as Bain peered around the edge of the curtain.
"Yes, you can," the man insisted. He had a scratchy voice, like someone had tried to strangle him once and cracked his voice box. "You're a Free Trader. You don't owe the military anything."
"I also can't dictate policy to them. My words will carry more weight with them if I'm not being coerced into asking for help for your people."
"You're not asking, Captain Fieran." The man sighed. He sounded tired. "You're passing along my demands. As long as I hold your apprentice, I know you won't give up until I get what I want."
"But why do you insist on having the healthy colonists moved and the sick left here? They'll die without timely medical care." Lin let loose a growling sigh of exasperation. Bain knew that sound, from other times she tried to reason with dense, overly-officious port officials.
"You still haven't figured it out yet, Captain, have you?" The man shook his head. Bain caught a glimpse of bloodshot blue eyes and a big, rounded nose. "Your ship-brain told you about us. No other colonies wanted us. Do you know why? We're all misfits. All with genetic tweaks and quirks that might not mean anything. Then again, they might create monstrosities ten or fifteen generations down the line."
"Or they could turn into talents like Spacers or Healers or Mnemonics in the Scholars Guild," Lin hurried to say.
"Only someone who nearly got cast out of the Human race could think of that brighter possibility." He chuckled. "We don't want our ill taken away from Bareen because we don't want them examined."
"They're not going to a laboratory to be tested, you idiot! They're going to a hospital ship to be healed. That's all! None of the doctors or healers have the time to run tests." Another growling sigh escaped her. "At least let me talk to Bain, make sure he's all right."
"He's fine. He's just sleeping off the drug."
"In a puddle," Bain said. His voice chose that moment to crack and creak and waver through three octaves.
"Did you hear that, Captain Fieran?" the man said. He turned around to face Bain and smiled at him. He gestured for the boy to take a seat, as casually as if they were good friends and not kidnapper and captive.
"I heard. Bain, they took your collar link when they took you. Ganfer has no way of knowing how you are," Lin said.
"I'm sick to my stomach and dizzy and my eyes don't want to focus." Bain settled into the chair. It felt good to sit down.
"That will pass," the man said.
"He could have an allergy to your home-made drugs," Lin retorted.
"Then you'd better take that first load of my people to their new home and get back here quickly, Captain, so you can check on him. Snowder signing off." He reached for the controls for the communications pack.
"Snowder, don't---" Lin's voice stopped with a short, sharp click.
For a long moment, Bain held perfectly still. He didn't look at Snowder, didn't even blink or breathe.
"Now that the water is safe to drink again, how would you like a big, cold one?" Snowder said. Bain just stared at him, and the man let out a sharp bark of laughter. "You need food and liquid in your system to purge the last of the drug, son. You'll feel better in no time."
He got up from his chair and beckoned for Bain to follow him. Bain knew he wouldn't be in any more danger if he complied, but he might find new trouble if he made his captor angry. He pushed himself slowly out of the chair and stumbled down the rough passageway after the man.
"Uncle!" A little girl's voice echoed down the passageway, bouncing off the uneven walls and seeming to come from all directions. "Uncle!" Her cry turned into a shriek.
"This way, Dacia." Snowder's easy stride turned into a fast, long-legged jog.
Bain didn't even try to keep up. He leaned against the wall and watched the man run away from him. Then a little blonde girl in a faded red jumpsuit hurried around the corner and nearly ran into the man. He went to his knees and caught her before she fell and set her upright on her feet.
"What is it?" He grasped her shoulders and looked directly into her face.
"Gorgi threw up," the child whimpered. She stuck her fingers in her mouth and chewed on them and did a little dance of impatience on the uneven stone floor. The man just stared at her for a few seconds.
"I thought they were safe down here," he said, loudly enough for Bain to hear. Snowder glanced over his shoulder at the boy. "That plague of yours is even down here. How do you like that?"
"It's not my plague," Bain felt compelled to say. "It's the Mashrami's plague and I don't like it at all."
His words earned a ragged, brief chuckle from Snowder. He picked up the little girl and cuddled her close, then came back down the hall to meet Bain.
"Come on," he said, taking hold of the boy's arm. "It's time for you to meet the rest of the kids."
Bain bit back a longing to say that he wasn't a kid---he was a Spacer and crew, the best crew Lin Fieran ever had. He didn't, though. As long as his captor was inclined to be kind, Bain didn't want to ruin the situation by arguing.
Snowder led him around the corner. Ten steps later, the passageway opened into a cavern carved by nature from the rock. Bain saw places where the rock was smooth and rounded, where erosion had eaten away at the stone; other places were rough, where cataclysm had shattered the rock. Sharp chunks of stone and hunks of rubble lay in depressions and crevices where they had either fallen or been shoved to make room for the living quarters.
Bunks lined the walls, with makeshift dividers of crates and curtains between every three or four bunks. A huge tank sat in a wide crevice, with five taps along the rounded end. Bain saw clear liquid dripping from one tap into the shallow basin set underneath and guessed the tank held water. Tables and chairs and ragged rugs were scattered over the rough stone floor of the cavern. Children played in groups or worked at the tables or slept on the bunks.
"Where is he?" Snowder asked Dacia. The little girl shook her head and hid her face in the man's shoulder. "Morna?" he shouted. His voice echoed off the jagged ceiling and startled some of the children into silence. They sat back from their games and studies and watched.
Bain stood up straight and clenched his fists as he felt their gazes move over him, studying him. He had never felt like a stranger, an intruder before as badly as he did right now, in front of people his own age.
"Over here," a woman called. A hand stuck out from behind a screen and waved, beckoning them over.
Snowder didn't let go of Bain's arm and nearly dragged the boy over to the bunks behind the screen.
A boy a few years older than Bain lay on his back on the bottom bunk. His face was flushed with fever, his eyes half-lidded, his mouth open as he took short, ragged, gasping breaths. The woman, Morna settled back onto her knees next to the bunk and wiped at his face again with a damp cloth. The boy pushed it aside, mumbling something Bain couldn't hear clearly.
Both boy and woman had long faces and wide shoulders, blue eyes and platinum, thick, curly hair cropped short. Bain supposed they were mother and son, or at least very close kin. He remembered times when he had fevers and threw up, and his mother had stayed by his bed and wiped his face with cool cloths, just like this.
"I can help," he said.
"You?" Morna turned around and looked him up and down. "What can a boy like you do to help? I hear this is a gift from the Mashrami."
"It is." Bain looked at Snowder. The man met his gaze for five long heartbeats, then nodded and released his arm. "The Fleet's scientists have been working on vaccines." He opened his jacket and dug inside for the hidden pocket.
Bain froze, terrified for a moment that he had been searched and the vaccine capsules taken just like his collar link. Then he felt the spray injector and the protective plastic box holding the capsules. He bit his lip against a relieved grin, and opened the pocket.
"I thought you said taking the boy was a spur-of-the-moment decision," the woman said, glaring at Snowder.
"It was." Snowder didn't look at all surprised at the sight of the injector or the clear red gel capsule Bain slid into the prep chamber.
"Then why is he prepared?"
"When you're fighting the Mashrami, you have to be ready for everything," Bain said. He glanced at the man, then the woman. Neither one moved or gestured to give him permission. Swallowing hard, he stepped over to the bed.
"Wha's 'at?" the boy, Gorgi mumbled.
"Medicine." Bain tried to smile. The truth was, this was the first time he had actually done this to a person. He gently tipped Gorgi's head to the side, exposing his neck, and pressed the injector's tip against the big vein coming down behind the jaw. It hissed and the other boy flinched.
"Cold!" He tried to twist away. Bain held him flat in the bunk.
"It'll probably take a while to work," he said, turning to look at Snowder again. "I mean, he's already sick. It's not bad yet. Throwing up is ... mild," Bain said after a moment's hesitation. He tried to remember all the things Dena had told him about the different stages of the sickness, during all their quiet hours traveling to colonies from the Mercy.
"Mild." Morna snorted. "What's harsh, then?"
"Bad fevers and sweating so bad you make puddles in the blankets in half an hour, and you hallucinate and all your muscles cramp up and everything hurts. It's really bad when you go unconscious." He decided not to tell them that when a patient lost consciousness, it was nearly always too late.
"You have a lot of experience with these Mashrami plagues, huh?" Snowder looked at him with narrowed eyes. Bain didn't like the feeling that the man hadn't really considered him a person until then---he was just a tool, a pawn to make Lin agree to his demands.
"Not a lot." Bain couldn't guess what the man wanted, but he knew he would avoid trouble later if he was completely honest now. "I talked with the medics and I helped in the hold when we were transporting sick people to the hospital ship."
"You've been vaccinated, then?" Morna asked. She reached for the spray injector. Bain hesitated a moment before giving it to her.
"They'd be stupid not to take precautions, if they're going to insist on taking sick people off-planet," Snowder said with a snort.
"Gonna get sick?" little Dacia asked, breaking her silence since the man picked her up.
"Well, will she?" Morna asked Bain.
"How should I know?" Bain's voice cracked and skidded through a whole octave.
Now, he was scared. He had a sudden mental image of Snowder and Morna putting him in charge of all the sick children in this cavern. Or worse yet, they would put him in charge of making sure no other children got sick.
"How many doses of vaccine do you have?" Snowder asked. He didn't wait for Bain to reply, but snatched the box out of his hand and counted the gel capsules. "Not enough for all of us."
"You should vaccinate anybody who's had contact with him in the last fifteen hours," Bain said, pointing at Gorgi. He knew that much, at least. "It takes about five hours for the virus to incubate and become infectious, and show visible signs. That's if it's a bad variety," he added.
"What if it's not a bad variety?"
"Keep everybody as far apart as you can and wash everything with boiled water and disinfectant and make sure there's lots of fresh air and fresh food." Bain swallowed hard and braced himself. "You should call my captain and ask her for vaccine for everybody."
"Right." Snowder snorted and shook his head. "Just tell her where to bring it. Give her our address so the Rangers can swoop in and shoot us to pieces."
"Rangers don't shoot anybody."
"We're the misfits, boy. Nobody wanted our parents and grandparents, and nobody will want us now."
"I don't see any mutations." Bain gestured around the room at the children.
"It's the chance of mutation that makes people want to destroy us and take away our futures." He put Dacia down. "Morna, put him to work. Check everybody for sickness if you have to. I have things to do." He stalked away.
Morna set up an examination room in one of the sleeping alcoves. She had Bain show her how to use the spray injector. She vaccinated herself, first, then had the children come in one by one for a thorough physical exam. Anyone showing aches or fever or complaining of headache or nausea went into one holding area. The children who showed complete health went into another.
Three children were flushed with fever when they walked into the room. Their feet dragged on the floor and they sweated so their hair clung to their heads and their shoulders slumped. Morna injected them immediately and didn't bother examining them.
By the time one of the older, healthy girls brought a lunch tray for them, every child had been examined and eight ended up in quarantine with Gorgi. Bain was told to stay with them.
"You might as well be useful while you're here," Morna said. She smirked when she said it.
"If they get more sick, they won't be any good as guards," Bain said.
All eight children were already curled up under their covers on the rearranged bunks. Bain didn't really mind being told to watch over the sick children, unless they started throwing up or hallucinating or tried to run away. What he minded was that six of the eight were girls, and Gorgi was the only one anywhere near his age. No one to talk to, nothing to study, no projects to work on.
Lin had always told him, when he was in trouble he had to keep busy so his mind wouldn't dwell on the problem until he turned crazy. Being kidnapped was trouble, definitely. Bain knew Lin would find a way to get him free, but he also knew it could be a long wait. He didn't like waiting, even when he was safe.
"We'll see how good that vaccine really is," she said, nodding. Her eyes sparkled like Toly Gaber's when the bully was about to play a nasty trick on defenseless smaller children. "Don't even think about trying to run away. Our tunnels aren't connected to the colony. You have to go above ground and cross the river before you get anywhere near the colony."
"Oh." He tried not to feel any more afraid than he already was. It was hard. His stomach tried to twist into a knot.
"Go sit down and eat your lunch." She gave him a nudge in the small of his back, aiming him for the table in the alcove. "You have to keep up your strength until your captain comes back for you."
Bain chose not to say anything. It bothered him that adults could be nasty bullies worse than Toly Gaber. He sat down and reached for the tray and tugged it closer to himself. The soup was mostly beans with a vegetable broth, gone cold, and a gritty, spicy bread that was dry at the edges. Bain ate everything. He had to keep up his strength, after all.
Bain jerked awake and nearly fell off the bench where he had been sitting. How long had he been asleep?
The last thing he remembered.... He couldn't remember what he had been doing, besides sitting at the table and wishing he had something to read.
His head hurt, in the middle of his forehead and his temples and at the base of his neck. Bain pressed both hands to his temples to rub, as Lin had taught him for pain relief. He stopped short when he felt the heat radiating from his forehead.
Terror choked him and made his heart race. Bain closed his eyes and tried to take deep breaths to calm down. He wasn't allowed to get sick. How could he escape whenever he got the chance, if he was sick? He couldn't take deep, slow breaths. His lungs kept trying to suck in short, fast breaths.
Concentrate. Lin had always told him he could accomplish anything if he concentrated and tried his best and thought about what to do before he tried it.
His breathing slowed down. Gradually. Bain grinned and kept his eyes closed and concentrated on listening to his heart and his breathing.
Bain felt a chill creep over his body, made worse by the sweat pouring down his back under his shirt. He shivered and wrapped his arms hard around himself. When that didn't help, he opened his eyes and got up and stumbled across the little room to yank a blanket off an empty bunk.
The other children were all asleep. Bain envied them. He wanted to lie down on the bunk and sleep, too, but the bunks were too close together. Those children had the Mashrami plague. He didn't. Not a plague. Something else. Maybe he was just achy from lying on that damp cave floor for hours before he woke up.
That was it. Bain smiled and imagined his headache had begun to fade already. He wrapped the blanket around himself and curled up on the bench, leaning against the table.
Bain blinked and looked up to see Snowder towering over him. When had he come in?
"What's wrong with him?" the man asked, talking over Bain's head to someone.
Bain tried to turn. His whole body ached, his joints frozen and his muscles stiff and hot.
"Looks like he caught something," Morna said. She got up from checking on Gorgi and the other sick children. "They're doing a little better, I think." She stepped over and brushed the back of her hand against Bain's forehead. "Low-grade fever. Whatever he's got, it isn't what they've got."
"Could have told you that," Bain grumbled. He winced. Even his throat hurt.
"If he's sick, he won't be running away any time soon," she added. "Here. You might as well get into bed with the rest of them." A snort of laughter escaped her when she nudged Bain to get up and he resisted. "What's the matter, Spacer boy? Afraid of catching something? What about your vaccine? Don't you trust it?"
"I trust it." He scooted forward on the bench, out of her reach, and stood up.
Bain turned to look at the sick children. The girls were all grouped together in one line of bunks. There was an empty bunk, both beds, between the girls and the boys, and an empty bunk on the outside of the row, next to Gorgi. Bain chose that bunk. If he was going to be sick, he might as well be by somebody his own age. Maybe when they were both feeling better, they could talk.
Through the rest of the day and the long night, Bain slept fitfully. He would close his eyes, sleep a few minutes, then a new ache in his muscles woke him. He opened his crusty, aching eyes and roll over and look around the room. Nothing had changed. Then he would tug the blankets back up under his chin and try to fluff up his ragged pillow, and fall back asleep. Bain lost count of how many times that happened. The lights dimmed after a while, so he assumed it was night. How else could they tell day from night underground? Then the lights were turned up again.
The sixth time Bain woke up, he realized he didn't feel quite so achy and his face didn't feel quite so hot.
"Told you so," he whispered, though there were no adults nearby to hear him. He knew he hadn't caught any of the plagues. It was something else. Something stupid and simple.
"Told what?" a scratchy, low voice asked. Blankets rustled in the bunk next to him. "Who're you?"
"Hmm?" Bain pushed down the blankets and sat up and rubbed at his eyes.
Gorgi sat up, frowning at him, blinking and rubbing at his eyes. He looked at Bain, then around the sleeping room at the other children. Nobody else moved.
"How do you feel?" Bain asked.
"Hungry." He rubbed at his face. "I've been sick, huh?"
"For a while." He debated telling the other boy that he had the plague. Bain wasn't sure how much longer it would last in Gorgi. Another few days, at least, if he had been injected early enough.
"How'd you get down here? Nobody is supposed to know about this place. The Rangers could come down and drag us all away and throw us in jail if we're not careful."
"For what?" Bain's voice cracked.
"Our grandparents were almost mutants. People would get mad if they knew all of us had been born." Gorgi scowled as he spoke.
"That's stupid."
"Yeah? What do you know?"
"If your grandparents had mutated genes damaged badly enough to make them outlaws, none of you would have been born. Or the mutations would have geometrically progressed with each generation of in-breeding. You wouldn't look like normal people."
"Yeah?" This time Gorgi didn't look quite so angry. "How do you know that?"
"I studied it in my genetics text. Besides, people tried to classify Spacers as mutants when my ancestors first showed the gift. Spacers are careful about things like that, so other people don't get hurt."
"Then how come my grandparents and all the others came here, instead of real colonies?"
"This looks like a real colony to me." Bain shook his head. "Somebody has been telling you a lot of wrong stories."
"You're not a Spacer."
"I am too."
"You're too little."
"You're a Spacer from the day you're born."
"Uh huh. And I'm a Ranger."
"I thought you were scared of Rangers."
"I'm not scared of anything!" Gorgi stopped short, coughing, his shoulders shaking and his face turning red. Bain watched him, holding his own breath as he waited for the other boy to stop coughing.
"Who says Rangers are going to hurt you?" he asked softly, when the other boy lay back in his bunk and rubbed the sweat off his face.
"Uncle Snow."
"Rangers are too busy fighting the Mashrami to care if you had horns and your skin turned purple."
Gorgi rolled over and just stared at Bain for five long heartbeats. Then he grinned.
"What's it like, being a Spacer?" the older boy asked.
"A lot of studying. A lot of boring times when all you do is watch the control panel and try to figure things out before Ganfer tells you what the numbers mean."
"Who's Ganfer?"
"That's the ship-brain."
"Why'd you give it a name?"
"Ganfer's not an 'it', Ganfer is a person. He's from one of the really old ship designs, back before the Downfall, when computers had personalities."
"Wow," Gorgi breathed. "Can I meet him?"
"Sure. You can come with me when I go back to my ship." Ban hoped he would be allowed to bring Gorgi. He had no idea what mood Lin would be in when this whole mess was over.
"When's that?"
"Whenever your uncle lets me go."
"Let's you go? What's that mean?"
"He stole me from my captain and he took my collar link so Ganfer can't find me, and he won't let me go until Lin agrees to take all the well kids away from here."
"But---" Gorgi shook his head. "Uncle Snow said the Spacer captain was our friend and he was going to help us."
"Lin is a she. I bet she probably would help if your uncle had just asked her, instead of demanding and making threats and beating up on us."
"Oh." The older boy seemed to wilt a little bit. "I bet she'll be mad when she gets you back, won't she?"
"I'll tell her you're my friend. She won't be too mad at you, I'll bet. Lin's great. Ganfer says she still thinks a lot like a kid, so she understands things we do. She doesn't get mad like lots of other grownups."
"Yeah?" Gorgi tried to smile a little. "What's it like, in space?"
For more than an hour, Bain described free fall and the music of space, his lessons, some of the people who had traveled on Sunsinger and some of the people he had met. Gorgi listened with wide eyes and his mouth sometimes hanging open. Bain had to stop when Morna came in with breakfast and to examine all the children in the makeshift infirmary. He promised Gorgi in a whisper that he would tell him more later.
Bain's fever had left during the night, so Morna wouldn't let him stay in bed any longer. That didn't make sense to Bain, since he had to stay in the infirmary with the others anyway. There was nothing else to do, after all, and sleeping was as good a way as any to pass the time when he couldn't talk to Gorgi.
The other children slept through the day. It was an effort to get them to rouse to eat their meals. Morna didn't make Bain help feed them, which the boy appreciated. He held the tray for Gorgi, though. His friend was still slightly feverish and cold, but at least he kept his food down and he emptied his bowl. Most of the others didn't eat even half their portions at any meal that day.
During the morning, Bain finally learned why Snowder and his supporters wanted so desperately to get the healthy off the planet.
"Uncle says nobody really recovers from the plagues. He says he thinks there really aren't any Mashrami, but it's just a bunch of lies to keep people from settling more planets," Gorgi said. He dropped his voice to a whisper when one of the girls in the closest bunk whimpered in her fevered dreams and stirred restlessly in her bunk.
"The Commonwealth is spread out pretty thin, yeah," Bain admitted. He thought back to one of his last conversations with Lin. "But I don't think the Council would do anything that bad, just to stop people from spreading out."
"That's what I think, but you can't tell Uncle Snow anything. He says he thinks the plagues are a bunch of new viruses to get rid of people with bad genetics."
"Then why would we be flying all over the Commonwealth delivering medicine and taking sick people to hospital ships?"
"He says people who get sick are taken to a deserted planet to die, not hospital ships."
"I've seen them," Bain insisted. "I've seen people get well, too. You're getting better, aren't you? I brought the medicine they gave you."
"Yeah, I know." His new friend shrugged. His sheepish, lopsided smile told Bain his friend was changing his mind about something he believed and felt stupid for believing at all.
"If he thinks the plagues are just to weed out bad genes, why does he want all the healthy people to go to another planet, and leave the sick people here like he told my captain?"
"Well.... "Gorgi scratched his head. "See, Uncle says that if he's wrong, then everybody left on the planets that are getting sick could be left behind for the Mashrami to fight. He says we're expendable, since we weren't supposed to be a colony at all. The Commonwealth is going to leave us here to get in the Mashrami's way and slow them down."
"I wish he'd make up his mind," he grumbled.
"Me, too," the older boy said with a snort of laughter. "Have you ever seen a Mashrami?"
"Nope, but I saw their homeworld once."
"Yeah?" His eyes got big and his mouth dropped open. "What's it like?"
Bain wondered if what's it like? was actually one word, and the most often used word in Gorgi's vocabulary.
"Well, the sensors say the ecology is all poisoned and everything is dying and there's too much radiation for Humans to live there very long. There's been a lot of star trouble in that sector, and Lin figures the Mashrami homeworld is dying. She figures that's what pushed them into attacking all our worlds, to try to take them for their own colonies."
"But we have so many colony worlds. Why do they have to take them all?"
"Mashrami are stupid. They'd rather fight and take than ask for help and be friends. Can you keep a secret?" Bain glanced over his shoulder, checking for unwanted listeners.
"Sure." Gorgi made a gesture with his finger, crossing his heart in pledge.
"The Mashrami are dying out," he whispered. "In another generation or two, there won't be any Mashrami. Then the war will be over."
"Yeah? How come nobody told us?"
"Nobody is really sure yet. There's a bunch of scientists checking out everything to be sure. They aren't going to say anything until they're sure."
"When will that be?" Gorgi asked.
"Maybe five more years." He shrugged. "Who knows?"
"What are you going to do when the war is over?"
"Huh?" Bain stared at his new friend. Where had that question come from, and what did it mean?
"When the war is over and you don't have to work for the military anymore, what are you going to do?"
"We don't work for the military now," he said with a grin. "They ask us to help them, and Lin agrees. If we said no, they couldn't make us."
"Why are you doing this, then? You could get hurt really bad. Your ship could get blown up."
"Because ... because it's the right thing to do. Lin says if we don't work together, we're just helping the Mashrami beat us. Know what I mean?"
"Yeah. I guess so." Gorgi shook his head. "It just sounds so weird, people helping because they want to instead of because they have to, or because they'll get in trouble if they don't."
"It's the right thing to do. Fi'in tells us we should help each other."
"Fi'in?"
"You never heard about Fi'in? Who do you say your prayers to?"
"Nobody. Uncle says only weaklings pray."
"Well ... I pray to Fi'in and Lin prays, and the Rangers. And we're the ones in ships and we have medicine and we know what's going on. Your uncle has been telling you a lot of things that aren't true and he's scared of things that won't happen to him. I think I'd rather be weak and pray to Fi'in than be like him."
Bain watched his new friend as the words slipped out between his lips. Maybe that wasn't the right thing to say, or the right way to phrase it. The words and ideas made sense to him, though.
"I'd sure like to be a Ranger," was all Gorgi would say. He curled up on his side in his bunk and smiled wistfully.
"I could ask Captain Gilmore if he'd let you be a cadet and take training," he offered.
"Yeah?" The older boy's eyes sparkled in greedy delight.
Over the next three days, as Gorgi recuperated from his brush with the plague, they talked about Rangers. They talked about Free Traders and the worlds Bain had visited. They talked about the Order and the self?defense lessons Jax had given Bain. Gorgi told him all about the colony; the mining they did and the tunnels the colonists lived in during the scorching hot months and the blistering cold months of winter; the crops they grew and the medicines they harvested from native plants. Gorgi was an orphan; his parents had died in a mining cave?in. Morna was his mother's sister and Snowder was his father's cousin and Dacia was Snowder's niece by marriage. Neither adult really liked each other, and that little revelation surprised Bain. They worked together to take care of Gorgi and Dacia. They also led the people who still believed they would be sterilized or deported from Bareen or even killed because of their ancestors' bad genetics.
Bain racked his brains to remember everything he had learned about genetics and the mutation scares, to reassure his new friend that the people of Bareen weren't in any danger from the Commonwealth. He talked until he was hoarse and his voice cracked and changed a dozen times in an hour, telling Gorgi about history and the way things really were in the Commonwealth.
Gorgi believed him after the second day. Morna, who came by several times during the day to check on all the sick children, listened and shook her head and said nothing. She let out little snorts that Bain interpreted as disbelief, but that was the only indication he had that she really heard anything.
"I used to think the Rangers could do anything, go anywhere, handle any problem in the Commonwealth," Gorgi said after supper of the third day. He grinned at Bain and turned around on the bench so he leaned back against the table.
Gorgi and three other ill children were allowed out of bed now. They weren't allowed to leave the sickroom, in case they could still infect the healthy children. Bain wondered how he had been able to stand the isolation for so long. Listening to the sounds of children laughing and playing and moving around freely on the other side of the wall made the enforced confinement worse. If he didn't have Gorgi to talk to, Bain didn't know what he would have done.
"They could if the Commonwealth was smaller," Bain said after a few seconds of thought. "Lin says there are more than three hundred colony worlds. That's a lot of space to cover just for patrols. What if they needed lots of ships to fight and track down pirates or evacuate people away from solar storms and radiation flares?"
"So, they need more Rangers." The other boy shrugged. His expression said clearly he thought that was a simple answer someone else should have thought of years ago.
"The problem is ships and supplies. I heard Captain Gil say they have more cadets and trainees than they can handle. The Order would be glad to help, if we had ships and pilots to take medicine and supplies and defense equipment where it's needed."
"You need lots of Spacers."
"There are lots of Spacers, but not enough. And we don't really work together, coordinated, like the Rangers do."
"Why not?"
"I don't know." Bain pushed away the tray piled high with dirty dishes so it was out of his way. He leaned back against the table like Gorgi. "Whenever there's trouble, all Lin has to do is call and nearly every Spacer who's free and hears her comes running. The problem is.... "He felt a throb of excitement as he latched onto this new idea. "The problem is the time that gets wasted calling people and waiting for them to answer. You never know who hears you, and who isn't too busy to respond. We need to keep people in contact all the time and have them ready all the time."
"So, do it."
"It's not that easy."
"Well, yeah." Gorgi nodded, but his grin just kept growing. "But we're just kids right now. When we're older, we'll be able to talk to people and get into things they won't let kids near. We'll know what to do when we're older."
"We?" Bain's face ached with the width of his grin. "You'll help me?"
"Sure. Why not?"
"The first thing we have to do is get out of here." He gestured around the sickroom. "Out of here, out of the tunnels, and off Bareen." Bain winced when his voice cracked, three times in one sentence.
"Don't worry. That won't last too long. Didn't for me." Gorgi rubbed at his jaw. "Then when your voice finally settles down, you start growing a beard and you get all this really prickly hair on your chest."
"Thanks a lot."
"Shaving isn't that bad."
"You're not old enough to shave."
"Am so." He leaned forward and nearly shoved his face into Bain's. "See those hairs on my chin? That's a beard."
Bain squinted and stared at the spot on Gorgi's chin. Sure enough, five stiff, curling platinum hairs sprouted from the corner of his chin.
"You're not going to shave them off already, are you?" He fought a throb of envy and sat back. Shaving a beard wouldn't be half as much trouble as his voice breaking all the time.
"Nope." Gorgi grinned and stroked the tiny patch of stiff hair. "I'm going to let it grow and have a beard."
Silence for a few moments. Bain glanced around at the other inhabitants of their sickroom. The girls basically ignored him and Gorgi, and the other boy, Charli, was too little to be any company. Everybody else was asleep already. The sounds of life from the other side of the wall had faded while Bain and Gorgi talked. He could hear children and adults talking, but no more sounds of running feet or wheels rolling on the uneven floor or balls bouncing.
"What do you think your captain is doing right now?" Gorgi asked, almost whispering. He didn't look at Bain as he asked.
Bain was grateful. He tried not to think about Lin and what she had to be feeling or thinking or trying to do. Had she taken the load of healthy children to another planet as Snowder had demanded, or was she still on Bareen, trying to talk some sense into the council leaders? Maybe she had lifted immediately and gone looking for the Rangers.
Whatever was happening, Snowder wouldn't tell Bain or the other children anything. He only came by once a day to check on their health, and left the rest of the work to Morna. He never talked directly to Bain. Except for the first day, when Bain was still sick, he never even looked at him.
"I don't know," Bain finally said. "I can't see her just giving in and doing what your uncle tells her. The Mashrami aren't anywhere near Bareen and the Rangers aren't going to hurt anybody and there really is a hospital ship to take care of the sick people. Lin isn't going to waste time taking healthy people away when it's the sick people who need help."
Unless she's playing for time, or playing a trick on Snowder to keep me safe, Bain thought.
"Uh huh." The older boy nodded and lapsed into silence again. Then he sat up straight. "What does a plague bomb look like?"
"You saw it."
"How?" Gorgi's voice almost broke. Both boys grinned. "If I knew what a plague bomb looked like, I sure wouldn't go near it."
"You went swimming after that meteor storm, didn't you? That's how you caught the plague, right? You found those meteors in the river, right?"
"Yeah. How'd you know about that?"
"Councilman Juhan told us about the storm and how everybody started getting sick after the kids found the new meteors in the river."
"How would he know?" Gorgi nearly growled. "Grownups never listen to us anyway. I bet nobody even went down to the river and looked at those meteors after we told them. Besides, that swimming hole is our private place. I bet no adults know how to get there."
"Then who destroyed the plague bomb?"
"Who says anybody did?"
For a long moment, both boys stared at each other. Bain felt a shiver run through his whole body. Was this what it was like to read somebody's thoughts? He knew what Gorgi had to be thinking right that moment.
Nobody had gone looking for the Mashrami plague bomb.
Nobody on Bareen besides the children---most of whom had fallen ill---had seen the meteors that could be plague bombs.
The plague bomb was still in the water, spreading its Mashrami?designed virus in the water.
"We have to find it and blow it up," Bain whispered.
"How?" Gorgi whispered back.
"I don't know. But somebody has to stop it before more people get sick."
"We have to get out of here."
"You know how?"
"Sure. I grew up here." The older boy grinned. "Uncle is going to be storming mad when he finds out."
"Good." Bain grinned back.
"How do you blow up a plague bomb?"
"I don't know ... exactly." His grin faded as he thought. The dangerous part of a plague bomb was the virus it spread, so, the virus had to be killed. "I think we need to make it burn. Really hot and really fast. And make sure nothing gets away, so it all burns up."
"Mine sludge burns forever."
"What's that?"
"The sludge that gets all over the floor in the mines. It makes the air really stink and sometimes it's hard to breathe. It's like lubricant for the machines, but comes out of the ground and it's dirty. Aunt Morna says it never comes out of our clothes and we're in deep trouble if we get it on us."
"How much do we need?"
"I don't know." Gorgi shrugged. "How big is the plague bomb?"
"About.... "He gestured, measuring a distance off the ground level with his shoulders. "Round. Kind of. With all these bumps all over it, like sting yams."
"What are sting yams?"
"They're from Lenga where I was born." Bain shook his head and waved his hand to brush the question aside. "Think we'll need enough to cover it?"
"There's lots of mine sludge underground by the swimming hole. We can get buckets on our way out." He frowned, concentrating. "We just cover it with sludge and set it on fire and that ought to take care of it. You think?"
"I guess. We have to do something."
"You know.... "The older boy nodded slowly. "I think, the thing you described, I did see it. Up in the rocks where the water comes through the crevice and down the inside waterfall. It's ugly. Weird."
Bain nodded. He shivered a little, remembering his first sight of a Mashrami plague bomb. How could something so stupid?looking be so dangerous? But it was, and that was what mattered.
"When can we go?" he asked, his voice dropping down to a whisper again.
"Tonight. When everybody else is asleep."
Bain wished he could have taken one of the blankets from his bunk. The tunnels were cold and damp once he and Gorgi stepped out of the areas that had heaters and dehumidifiers. The blankets had to be left behind, though. Gorgi insisted. He rigged up the blankets to look like he and Bain were huddled under the covers, sleeping. Bain knew that was necessary, to keep from being chased. That didn't keep him from wishing for at least one blanket. The jacket Devon gave him so long ago wasn't nearly warm enough.
It was hard to believe that only a few dozen meters over their heads, above ground, everything was hot and dry and dusty and the winds blew with enough force to scour surfaces and drive grit into unprotected eyes and mouths. Bain hoped the sun would be rising when he and Gorgi reached the falls area by the swimming hole, where the children had found the plague bomb.
Right now, Bain huddled in a dark little corner in a tunnel, arms wrapped around himself, waiting for Gorgi to come back. The older boy had insisted Bain stay there. He knew where everything was underground, after all. Gorgi reasoned that he wouldn't run into things in the dark and make noise and bring people running after them. He would go and get the buckets to hold the mine sludge and the igniter Snowder had used for the gas welding tanks, and ropes. Gorgi knew a short?cut to get to the falls and the swimming hole, but it meant climbing up a steep hill and over rocks and crevices instead of taking the long way up and down paths. The adults didn't know about the short?cut. Bain was counting on that. Once someone discovered the boys had vanished, they would come looking for them. They had to get to the plague bomb fast, cover it with mine sludge and set it on fire before anybody could stop them.
Bain didn't like the darkness. Not this total darkness with no sound, no color, no feeling of movement in the air. The damp smell of rock clung to the back of his nose and mouth and made him feel soggy inside.
In space, it was never dark. Not total darkness. There were always the multi?colored lights of the control panel or the stars or the streaks of energy trails and the flares of stellar dust when it ignited. Never total darkness. Bain pressed back against the gritty, damp rock wall behind him just to reassure himself he wasn't floating away in nothingness.
Something scraped, rock against rock, then metal against rock. Bain sat up straight and strained his eyes, trying to see something, anything in the utter, enveloping blackness. Nothing moved. Nothing changed.
His breath sounded too loud in his ears. Bain held his breath and then all he could hear was the panicky thumping of his heart.
Light burst into his eyes, blinding him. Bain closed his eyes and held up his hands, and still the light burned into his eyes.
He was caught. He just knew it. In two more seconds, Snowder was going to reach down and grab him by the arm and drag him into a wet, dirty hole worse than the place where Bain woke up. He would never see Gorgi again. He would never see Sunsinger again. He would never see Lin.
Lin was going to be furious.
"Come on," Gorgi whispered. He grabbed Bain's hand and yanked him up from his half?crouch.
"What are you using the light for?" Bain whispered back. He stumbled and nearly ran into the wall with his face.
"We're far enough away from the living area, nobody'll ever see us. Here." He shoved two nested buckets into Bain's hands.
Rope was crammed into the buckets and spilled over the edges, rough with sharp fibers that bit at Bain's hands until he adjusted his grip.
The boys ran. Bain could hardly hear the thudding of their boots on the damp stone, echoing off the jagged sides of the tunnel walls. His heart jerked and skipped and thundered in his ears loudly enough to drown all other sounds.
If they got caught now, Bain knew Gorgi would be in just as much trouble as him. He supposed that wasn't very nice, but he felt a little less worried. Maybe if he got thrown back into that cave to wait for Lin to free him, Gorgi would be with him.
"Okay," Gorgi gasped, after they had run for at least eighty meters. He reached out and grasped Bain's arm, slowing the younger boy with him. "Here it gets really slippery. We should tie ourselves together, so if we fall we won't get separated."
"Separated how?"
"You'll see." He stuck the end of the light tube into his mouth and aimed it down. Gorgi reached for the ropes in the buckets Bain held and pulled out a length. He tied one end around his waist, and the other around Bain's waist, manipulating the light tube in his mouth to illuminate his work.
When he was finished, the boys had nearly three meters of scratchy, finger?thick rope between them. Bain clutched the buckets under one arm, leaving one hand free.
"Now what?" he whispered. He supposed it was stupid to keep whispering, when they had just made so much racket by running, but he couldn't help himself. Lin had raised him to be careful all the time.
"It's really cold," was all Gorgi would say when he took the light tube out of his mouth. He turned and continued down the tunnel.
With the light pointed ahead again, Bain saw the slick, glistening black wall where the tunnel abruptly came to an end. Gorgi pointed the light down---into a hole. Water trickled down the sides of the rock, into the hole. Faintly, like the sound came from kilometers away, the water tinkled into a pond.
"I'll go down first." Gorgi put the light in his mouth again and knelt on the edge of the hole.
He turned around, on his knees, and braced himself on his elbows. He grimaced, nearly dropping the light tube, and slid down to his chin. Then he stopped. He slid his arms off the edge of the rock, and didn't go down any further. He took the light tube from his mouth and grinned at Bain.
"Not as cold as last time."
Bain nodded, feeling stupid. He stepped up to the edge of the hole. With Gorgi standing in the hole now, and the light illuminating it from within, Bain could see the opening in the rock was a little more than a meter deep, filled with black water up to Gorgi's knees. It extended under the wall, into darkness.
Bain knew without asking that he and Gorgi would have to duck and slosh through that water, under the wall, into that darkness. He told himself to be glad Gorgi knew the way, because he wouldn't have found it on his own. He wouldn't have dared go into that darkness on his own.
It took a minute or two to force his body to follow Gorgi's example. Bain was a head shorter than the older boy; the water rose higher on his body than it did on Gorgi. He found out that even though the water wasn't as cold as the last time Gorgi had to take this route, it was still cold enough. Almost liquid ice.
"Hold on like this," Gorgi instructed, and showed Bain how he gripped the rope with enough slack between his hand and his body so it hung down almost to his knees. Bain copied the grip. It was hard, holding the buckets under his arm, but he managed. "And reach out with your other hand like this." He bent over and held his arm out almost straight before him, shielding his face. The beam from the light tube penetrated the darkness and was swallowed up by it.
Bain kept his mouth shut tight, to keep his teeth from chattering. He bent over and held his arm out and followed Gorgi when the older boy ducked under the edge of the wall and started wading.
Gorgi fell.
Gorgi stumbled and his leg buckled and he went down almost to his chin in the black water. He lost his grip on the light tube and it went flying.
Bain let out a yelp and threw himself after that beam of light. He dropped the buckets and they splashed in the water, spattering his face with icy wetness. A moment later, Bain went down into the water, grappling for the sinking light. He didn't feel the bone-chilling water close around his body and soak into his clothes. His panic kept him warm.
His fingers scraped against rock and then closed around the light. Bain clutched the light tube close against his chest and pushed for the surface. It felt like he had been underwater, hundreds of meters down, for hours when he finally broke the surface. He struggled and kicked and gasped for breath, then finally found his legs and stood upright.
"Are you okay?" Gorgi asked. He grinned, his face sparkling with drops of water, when Bain held out the light.
"Are you?" Somehow, Bain managed to speak clearly despite the tripled chattering of his teeth.
"Stepped in a hole." He held up the buckets, which had floated when Bain dropped them. "No, you take that one," he said, when Bain held out the light tube to him. "I have another one."
"You have another one?" Bain didn't feel cold anymore. His voice cracked six times and he thought his throat would shatter from the effort. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"Didn't think about it. Sorry." The older boy really did sound sorry. It was hard to tell by his expression in the shadows with his face glistening wet.
"Rangers have to think of everything," he grumbled.
"Sorry." Gorgi gestured out into the darkness again. "Come on, it's only another twenty meters maybe. When we get outside, it'll be hot and we'll get dry fast."
"I hope so."
Bain waited until his friend had pulled the other light tube from his pocket, then they headed out again. His teeth chattered and shivers worse than his fever rippled through his body before they had taken ten more steps. Bain concentrated on counting his steps, telling himself every two steps was another meter closer to the end of the water; another meter closer to dry air and heat.
Gorgi miscalculated by fifteen steps. Bain didn't hold it against him, though, when they reached the upward-angled tunnel and felt the air moving, sucking damp air up to the surface. That movement meant a difference in temperature and humidity between underground and the surface. Dry and hot above, damp and cold below. They were heading toward the heat.
They stayed tied together until they reached the top, just in case. Bain went on his hands and knees, with the bucket handles slung over his shoulder. Gorgi did the same with the other bucket. The surface of the tunnel was smooth, carved out by water some time in the past. With their wet, cold clothes, their boots soaked thoroughly, their footing was uneasy at best. Every time Bain tried to rest on his feet instead of his knees, his boots started to slide. He only needed to be slammed down to the ground twice to give up and stay on his knees. Bain imagined huge purple, sore bruises growing on his knees, and grimaced.
"We're almost there," Gorgi hissed back to him. "You can turn off the light now."
"Huh?" Bain stopped until the rope between them tightened again, then he continued climbing. It took three tries, in momentary pauses, before he could find the control and switch off the light.
Darkness surrounded him again. He flinched and listened to the sound of Gorgi crawling a meter or so ahead of him, the hiss of the rope on the rock, the wet slaps of Gorgi's hands and knees.
Then, gradually, a soft silver glow spilled down the tunnel from the top. Bain nearly stopped again, momentarily stunned with delight at the sight of the moonlight filling the darkness and washing it away.
As his eyes adjusted, he could make out more details of the tunnel. The sides were smoother, softer in the moonlight than they had been in the golden glow of the light tube. More important, Bain saw the end of the tunnel and the star-speckled expanse of sky.
"Getting on toward dawn," Gorgi said. He paused for a moment and gestured at the starry sky through the opening only three meters ahead of them. "See that little bit of silvery-peachy color on the bottom there?"
"Yeah." Bain felt warmer just looking at it.
"That's where sunrise is going to be."
"Good."
The two boys grinned at each other in the silvery shadows and by unspoken agreement, started crawling again. Bain kept his gaze on that bit of growing color among the stars and darkness. He wondered if he had ever really looked at sunrise before and appreciated it.
Their hands were raw, their knees bruised and holes worn nearly through their pants when they reached the top. Gorgi climbed out and perched on a shelf of rock and stared down into the river splashing silver only a few dozen meters below them. Bain paused on the lip of the tunnel mouth and grinned, panting a little.
"Feels like I've been down there forever."
"I grew up down there," the older boy said, shaking his head. "I don't ever want to go back."
"You don't have to. You're old enough to join the Rangers, I'll bet."
"I have to prove I'm good enough to be a Ranger, first." He grinned and stood up slowly, wincing at the aches from being cramped into one position too long. "Let's go blow up that plague bomb."
They untied the rope now, and jammed it back into the bucket that Gorgi carried. He led the way down the rocky slope, to a faint path worn along the bank of the river. It was an animal trail, he told Bain, worn by all the animals in the area as they came down to drink.
"See that sparkle up there?" Gorgi said. He pointed at a rocky formation perched at the bend in the river. Beyond it, the land sat higher against the sky, as if someone had drawn a line and dropped the riverbed dozens of meters lower into the ground.
"I think so." Bain strained his eyes and thought he caught a glimpse of water sparkling in the rising sunlight.
"That's the falls. We go through, underneath the falls, and that's where our swimming hole is. The meteorites are in a little clump at the top of the inside falls."
"The grownups don't know about that?"
Gorgi just shrugged for answer and started walking. Bain followed. It felt good to put the rising sun to his back and feel the cold wet slowly seep out of his clothes. The rocks under their feet still retained some heat from the day before, radiating into their wet boots. They left wet footprints that evaporated visibly as the boys walked away.
The river ran deep and ragged over the rocks filling its wandering bed. Bain wondered if there were as many rocks in the river as littered its banks. He couldn't look at the river much as he walked---he had to keep watching his feet to avoid stumbling or stepping into holes or twisting his ankle.
Warmth beat down on them, and a dry breeze tugged at their hair. Bain grinned despite the ache of the sunlight flashing off the water into his eyes. It felt good to be warm. His clothes were still damp, but they weren't chilly, clinging to his body and sucking at all his warmth.
Now all he needed was something to eat.
"Wait a minute," Bain said. He held up the bucket he carried. "What about the mine sludge?"
"We'll get it when we get there. We found a crevice in the rock that leads straight down to the storage room. All the sludge you could ever want. It'll last forever."
"Why do they store it?"
"I don't know. Some of the old people on Council are kind of crazy. They think everything has some kind of use and they've been working for years trying to figure out how to sell mine sludge."
"What's it good for?"
"Burning. Smells something awful, so nobody will buy it." He shrugged again. "Like I said, they're kind of crazy."
Bain nodded. It made sense to him.
They kept walking, stumbling through the rocks, periodically changing the buckets from hand to hand. After an hour of walking, they had dry clothes. Their boots were still squashy wet inside. Bain wished they could stop and take off their boots, but then their soaked, tender feet would have no protection on the jagged, wobbly, hot rocks.
After another hour, Bain's stomach stopped complaining of its emptiness. His lips started to crack from the heat and dryness. He stole longing glances at the river, only arm's reach away.
It wouldn't be smart to drink from that particular river, even if he could manage to get down to the surface without falling in. The plague bomb was upstream from the river. Everything that came down it would be contaminated with the Mashrami virus. Morna had taken away all his vaccine gels and the injector and there would be no more for him to use until he found Dr. Anyon or Lin again. Bain doubted his first aid kit would be any good against the plague.
"Hey!" He grinned and felt his bottom lip split open a little. Bain licked the blood away and grabbed hold of Gorgi's arm to stop him. "My first aid kit."
"Yeah? So?"
"It's a Ranger first aid kit. I bet it has Erations and other things besides medicine and bandages."
Gorgi grinned and let his bucket drop to the stones. He went to his knees and waited for Bain to sit down and search through the hidden pockets inside his coat.
The kit was a inside an opaque green plastic bag with an airtight seal, soft and flexible around the contents, folded up tight to a packet five centimeters thick, ten wide and twenty long. Bain broke the seal and the bag unfolded to twice its size. He reached in and drew out a plastic temperature gauge strip, a sealed pouch of individually sealed pills for fever and blood poisoning, water purification and a general antibiotic. Next came a tube of blood coagulant wrapped in a long, clear plastic-sealed strip of bandages. Antiseptic cream in a tube came next. Then a strip of salt pills. Bain took one and gave one to Gorgi. The older boy swallowed it without question.
Three tiny signal flares with computer transponder chip attached came next. The heat of the flares created enough energy to send a radio location signal for searchers.
A silver packet, when unfolded, turned out to be a thermal blanket, thin as gauze but tough enough not to rip even when it was cut.
"Wouldn't be very comfortable sleeping on the ground in that," Gorgi said, after examining it.
"Who cares?" Bain grinned in triumph as he pulled four energy bars out of the bottom of the packet. "Breakfast!"
The energy bars, which contained all the essential nutrients, healing co-factors, proteins and carbohydrates for a day's requirements, tasted like sweetened glue soaked into wet cardboard. It chewed like old boot soles.
They ate two bars each and wanted more.
Long after the last chewy, sticky scrap of energy bar went down their throats, the boys sat there on the heating rocks in contented silence. They smiled at the sun that drew sweat from their skin and sucked it away before it could bead. It felt very good to be alive at that single moment in time.
They had a job to do, though. Reluctantly, joints creaking, muscles protesting with bruises and cramps and strains, they struggled back to their feet and resumed walking. The sun traveled higher into the sky, slanting painfully bright into their eyes.
The water of the falls beckoned silver brilliant in the harsh light. Spatters of water steamed as it hit sun-scalded rocks on either side.
"We go through that?" Bain asked, staring at the solid wall of water.
More intimidating than the thought of getting soaking wet again was the stretch of rocky, foaming water between the bank where they stood and the foot of the falls. Water gushed over the rocks, spattering high into the air, falling down to create foam that floated away with the strong pull of the current.
"Yeah, we do." Gorgi hunkered down on his haunches and studied the underwater bridge of rocks. "Usually, though, we go in from on top. This way is faster."
"If we ever get across."
"We can get across." He grinned up at the younger boy. "Don't tell the grownups, though. We're not supposed to go anywhere near the bottom of the falls."
Bain nodded and swallowed hard. He understood why the adults didn't want children down here. One slip, and someone could knock themselves out on the rocks, or fall into the water and hit something and drown.
They had a job to do, though.
"Okay," he said, nodding. "Let's cross."
Halfway across, Bain wished they had tied themselves together with the rope again. True, if Gorgi fell, he could pull Bain in after him. If Bain fell, the force of his fall if not his weight would pull the other boy over. But at least they would stay together. Bain didn't know what he would do if he lost Gorgi. How would he get up to the top of the falls and find the crevice leading to the mine sludge storage chamber?
He gave up thinking about it---they were nearly across now, anyway. Too late to stop and tie the rope, or go back to do it. Bain concentrated on his feet and holding his bucket tilted so the spray from the splashing water didn't fill it and pull him off balance.
Gorgi slipped as he stepped up onto the ledge at the foot of the falls. Bain froze, unsure what to do, and watched as his friend grappled against the rocks, slipping and sliding and scraping his hands raw. Water poured into the bucket slung over his shoulder, adding weight and throwing him off balance.
He got a solid hold and just hung there, his legs halfway down in the water beyond the rocks, the current tugging at them. Gasping, Gorgi held perfectly still, waiting. Bain shivered and waited.
"Okay," the older boy said. He slowly lifted one hand and slid it up the rock face until he found the edge of the lip of rock. He grasped it hard, pulling to make sure he had a firm hold. He levered himself up until he knelt on the wet rock, then reached up with the other hand.
Bain's legs went numb with the cold, rushing water tearing at his footing while he waited and watched Gorgi struggle up onto the ledge. He prayed, hard.
When Gorgi got up onto the ledge, he sprawled out full length on his stomach and lay still for another ten heartbeats. The bucket spilled out next to him, sending a trickle of water over the ledge to join the falls. Then he rolled over. The front of his pants were torn where they had caught on the jagged rock face. Blood welled up through the long shreds from his hips down past his knees. The skin was white from the chill of the water.
"How come the water is so cold if it's so hot out?" Bain asked. He didn't even care right then how stupid the question sounded.
"I don't care," the other boy mumbled. He levered himself up on his elbows and wiped water off his face. "Are you coming?"
Bain threw the bucket across the gap. Gorgi caught it, fumbled, then tossed it down next to the first one. Holding his arms out for balance, reaching for the ledge, Bain took careful steps. He watched his feet and felt for every step before he put his weight down. Twice he thought he was slipping, but he leaned back a little, putting his weight where the footing was secure.
His heart thudded in his throat by the time he reached the ledge and Gorgi reached down to help him climb up. He didn't slip, and in moments they stood side by side, staring up at the silver curtain of the falls.
"From here it's easy," the older boy promised. "There's even a staircase up to the top of the inside falls."
"That sounds good." Bain grinned crookedly and took a deep breath. He had never felt so tired in his whole life. Maybe those energy bars weren't any good
They held the buckets upside down over their heads as they went through the waterfall. The force of the water pushed the bucket sides down on Bain's shoulders, leaving a promise of more bruises. He was glad he had something to cover his head.
Then they were through. Bain turned the bucket over and held it by its handle and stared.
Sunlight filtered down in streaks across the top of the rocks. He and Gorgi stood in a deep, round depression in the rock, in a shallow stream that came from a thin trickle of waterfall at the far side.
The sunlight picked up streaks of green, crimson, amber and blue in the rock, sparkling softly in the shadows. Moss carpeted the floor of the mini-canyon in brilliant green and azure and yellow, up to the edge of the shallow stream where the boys stood.
"Wow," was all Bain could say for several long minutes.
"Isn't it great? We come here a lot when it gets too hot to even swim in the river. Can't tell the grownups, though. They'd figure there was something dangerous here and find a way to keep us out." Gorgi pointed to the head of the waterfall. Sunlight streaked across it, almost a solid ceiling between the little canyon and the world outside. "The meteorites are there."
"How do we get up? Or should we get the sludge, first?"
"Sludge." He bent over and caught up his bucket. "This way."
The way down was easy; a hole in the canyon wall led to a shallow slope paved with sand. Bain guessed this had to be another place where water had flowed at one time. It curved down and around into darkness. They turned on their lights and raised sparks from silver and gold bits of metal in the rock.
The slope ended in a pile of rubble, and a crevice in the rock wall. Gorgi stepped through, a tight squeeze that took shreds from his already ruined shirt. The bucket banged against the side, but it didn't catch. Bain worried about that. How could they get the mine sludge up to the top if they couldn't get it through the crevice? Then he squeezed through and was careful with his bucket, and it didn't even scrape the sides of the crevice.
Their surroundings changed abruptly from rough, naturally formed passages to smooth walls and floor and sharp angles. Gorgi flashed his light along the wall until he found a sign reading 'sludge storage chamber twelve.'
"Twelve?" Bain whispered harshly. "You have that many places just to store sludge? Why?"
"Like I said, the grownups are crazy. They think this stuff will sell someday." Gorgi smirked. "There are twenty-six storage chambers for this junk." He stepped down the hall three more steps and the beam of his light revealed a door. He pushed it open and stepped in.
Bain followed him. When the door clicked closed, Gorgi reached over to the switch panel in the wall and turned on the light. They paused a moment, blinking hard and fast, until their eyes adjusted.
The storage room consisted of rows of ceiling-tall barrels, three meters wide, with spigots half a meter up from the floor. Gorgi knelt and put his bucket under the first spigot and turned the handle.
Thick, chemical-smelling, black liquid oozed out, puddling into the bucket with a soft splatting sound. Bain wrinkled up his nose at the smell. It smelled like lubricant, but dirty. It smelled like dead things, rotted so long it didn't smell exactly rotten.
When Gorgi's bucket filled, he snatched Bain's bucket and slid it under the spigot and shoved his own out of the way. Not a drop of the mine sludge hit the floor or the outside of the buckets.
"They use this place to get their samples for tests and things," Gorgi explained while they waited for their buckets to fill. "Sometimes we sneak in and get enough to start bonfires. Nobody ever notices. They don't keep track of how much they use, and whenever it gets low, they just bring in more from the mines."
"Crazy," Bain muttered.
Gorgi shrugged. There was nothing more to be said on that subject.
Then the buckets were full, with a five centimeter gap between the top of the sludge and the lip of their buckets. They walked slowly, afraid to slosh and leave a trail or lose any of their precious load.
When they reached the crevice, Bain went through first and Gorgi handed the buckets through to him. They didn't spill a drop.
Just like Gorgi had said, there was a natural staircase leading up the inside of the mini-canyon to the top of the inside waterfall. The steps were a little higher than Bain was used to, forcing him to stretch his already bruised and weary legs. Bain still grinned when they reached the top.
Then he saw the plague bomb and his grin faded in perfect synchronization with the cold dropping sensation in his stomach.
Not one plague bomb, but three, clumped together, rather flattened and almost melted together at the spots where they joined. As if they had smashed against each other in space, or maybe when they launched, and stuck together all the long journey through space. They were just like the rubbery looking, dark brown and greenish and orange spotted globe Bain had seen before, with knobs and bumps and warts like sting yams.
Glistening greenish-yellow, thread-thin streams streaked out of at least half a dozen of the warts and trickled down the sides of the plague bomb, into the shallow puddle of water where it had come to rest.
"Is that a plague bomb?" Gorgi asked, when both boys had stared at it in silence.
"That's three, all melted together. Never saw that green stuff come out of one before, though." Bain stepped back, almost to the edge of the cliff. "That's got to be the virus."
"Yuck. Mashrami are really gross."
"I know." He took a deep breath. "I guess we should---" He gestured at the bucket and made a pouring motion.
Gorgi nodded. Neither boy made a step toward the plague bomb for a few moments. Then Bain shook his head and silently scolded himself for being stupid. If they came all this way and did all this work and didn't burn up the plague bomb, what was the use?
Bain stepped into the stream and as close to the plague bomb as he dared. He left a quarter of a meter of air between his body and the Mashrami device and leaned over, lifting the bucket as high as he could. Mine sludge spilled down, coating the three joined globes, like syrup poured over pudding balls.
Gorgi stepped up on the other side and did the same. They held the buckets up until their arms ached and the black stream of sludge dwindled to a trickle and then individual drops.
"It's not enough." Gorgi looked at the streaks of plague bomb that showed through the thick black coating. "We have to cover the whole thing, or some of it might not burn."
"One more load?"
"It better be enough."
Sighing, the boys took their buckets and went back down the staircase, into the tunnel, through the crevice, to the storage room. The barrel glugged halfway through filling Gorgi's bucket, and sputtered and gave them driblets of sludge. They had to move over to the next barrel. Somehow, that little, easily-solved problem worried Bain more than anything else they had gone through.
It was the time wasted, he realized. Every minute they delayed setting the plague bomb on fire was another minute the searchers could get closer to them and maybe stop them. Someone had to be searching for them by now. It was nearly noon, and he and Gorgi had escaped in the middle of the night.
This time, when they reached the top of the waterfall and started pouring the sludge, they were careful to make sure every bit of the triple plague bomb was covered. The sludge ran down the sides and trickled into the water and left black threads through the water and floated on top with rainbow streaks in the sunlight. Bain felt dirty just watching it.
"Okay," he said. "Now what?"
"Light it and run." Gorgi reached into his pocket and brought out the igniter he had taken from the gas welder. It had a tiny power cell that shot an arch of electricity. The older boy pressed the trigger switch and demonstrated.
"What if this stuff doesn't want to light?"
"It has to." He turned to look at the plague bomb. "Look at that junk. It's getting into the water. It's going to go over the falls pretty soon if we don't burn it up."
"Yeah," Bain whispered. He wanted to drop to his knees and just stay there. The moss carpeting the rocks and the floor of the canyon suddenly looked very inviting.
Then he got an idea. He reached into his jacket and brought out the first aid kit. Kneeling, Bain emptied it out on the ground and snatched up the three flares. He grinned and held them out to Gorgi. The older boy grinned back and snatched them out of his hand.
"How do you aim these things?"
Bain showed him the little fold-down plastic and wire handle. He held a flare while Gorgi touched the igniter to the end. Bain hunched his shoulders and held his arms out stiff and straight and angled the flare so the streamers of sparks from its tail didn't touch his hand. Shrieking, it shot out of its holder, straight into the side of the plague bomb. It penetrated with a wet, squelching sound like a rotten melon smashing against hot stones. The sparks from the end sprayed across the sticky black surface of the sludge. And spread.
"Yes!" Gorgi clenched his fist in a triumphant salute. "Next one."
They moved around to another side of the mound of plague bomb and repeated the procedure. This flare flew crooked, but it still lodged almost to its tail in the top of the largest section of the plague bomb. The sparks of fire spread out in nearly concentric circles. The third flare hit low, and the flames stretched out along the water line. A few floating strings of mine sludge ignited, turning the water of the shallow pool golden.
Thick, black, stinking rotten smoke gushed up in a pillar from the plague bomb. Rainbow flames crackled and reached for the sky.
"Do you think it should do that?" Gorgi murmured. He stepped back and stared in awe at what they had done.
"I don't know. I never burned up a plague bomb before. Is mine sludge supposed to burn like that?"
"Never burned so much before." A pause. "Maybe we should get out of here."
They ran, slipping and sliding down the stone staircase. Bain tripped and measured his length in the moss. It wasn't as soft as he had imagined, and gave off a bitter scent when it crushed. Gorgi grabbed him by his collar and yanked him to his feet and they kept running, all the way to the waterfall curtain.
"Think we'll be safe here?" Gorgi asked, gasping. He sank down to the ground and knelt, staring at the thickening black pillar.
The rainbow glints rose higher in the smoke, oily, sticky, somehow sick-looking. Bain wondered if that was what huge amounts of virus looked like when they burned.
Was the fire hot enough to destroy the virus? Something was burning, something more than the mine sludge. It had to be destroying the plague bomb.
Then the smell hit them. Thick and rancid, like rotted meat mixed with fertilizer and allowed to boil in the hot sun, soaked in bad perfume and sealed into an iron box until it rusted from the inside and exploded.
Gagging, the boys stumbled into the curtain of the waterfall. The pounding force battered at them, knocking them off their feet. They clung together and tried to move to one side to hold onto the rock face for support. Somehow they got turned around and stumbled back toward the smoke and stench.
Bain wiped water from his eyes and took one last look at the burning plague bomb.
"Gorgi---look!" he yelped, and pointed.
Green and red and purple flames boiled from all over the plague bomb. The smoke gushed and churned, black and green, slithering like a snake through the air. Gorgi turned white and grabbed Bain by the arm.
"We gotta get out of---"
The first wave of the explosion hammered through the air, picking up the boys and flinging them through the waterfall curtain. Bain yelped when he slammed sideways against a rocky outcropping. The sound died in the water gushing down across him. He coughed and choked and dragged in a deep breath that was half water.
Then he plunged under the water and with his ears blocked he felt the second shock wave and heard the mammoth explosion with his whole body. Gorgi lost his grip on him. Bain struggled against the churning of the torn current. His breath tried to twist free of his lungs, but somehow he held his lips and jaw tightly closed.
Shock waves buffeted through the water, thrashing him down to the riverbed, banging his legs against rocks. A red haze filled the darkness behind his eyelids. Numbness flowed through his body. Blackness hovered at the edges of the red haze. His breath started to turn to fire in his lungs. Bain couldn't seem to move his arms to swim and fight for the surface. All he could feel was water, muddy grit churning against his face, twisting him in every direction.
Then the blackness began to take over, swirling in closer from the edges until it swallowed him. From far, far away, Bain felt the breath escaping his lungs, bubbling out past his lips. He couldn't do anything to stop it. Worse, he couldn't seem to care.
Consciousness returned with the heavy, scorching brilliance of the sun beating into his face. And pain.
Fire raced up his left leg, pulsing in perfect rhythm with the ragged thundering of his heart.
Bain groaned and tried to turn his head to escape the relentless brassy whiteness of the sunlight. Movement only made his head hurt, threatening to explode.
"Hey, are you waking up now?" Gorgi's voice boomed through the pulsing emptiness of pain in Bain's head.
In answer, he groaned and tried to lift a hand to shield his eyes from the sun.
"You're going to be okay," Gorgi continued. A shadow fell across Bain's face---blessed relief---and a wet cloth plopped down across his eyes and cheeks.
"Hurts," he managed to whimper.
"Be glad it hurts. At least you didn't break anything really important. What if you couldn't use your legs anymore?"
"Break?" His voice cracked, but not from the changes of adolescence.
"Broke your left leg. Not bad enough to see any bones," the other boy hurried to say. "Just a really gross angle. But I got it all straightened out and set before you woke up."
"Set?"
"Ripped up what was left of your shirt and used it for bandages and used some branches for splints. I think I did pretty good." He moved the wet cloth across Bain's face. "Sorry, but we lost the first aid kit. I don't have any pain pills. Do you hear that?"
"Don't---hear---anything," he managed to mumble. Wet touched his lips. Bain tried to suck on the edge of the rag and get some moisture into his parched mouth.
"I hear something." Gorgi's voice sounded far away. Footsteps told Bain his friend walked away. "Yeah! There it is! A shuttle---no, two of them! Hey! We're over here!"
Bain reached up, slowly, and dragged the cloth off his face. His whole body screamed fire, with jagged spots of pain like his skin had been scraped with broken glass and his muscles twisted into knots. He gritted his teeth and ignored it as best he could and tried to push himself up on his elbows.
Fortunately, Gorgi had his back to Bain and to the sun. He jumped up and down, waving his arms, continuing his shouts. Bain tried to tell him he was being stupid; shuttles flew too high up to see one person jumping up and down on the ground.
Then the low rumble and shriek of shuttles descending reached his ears. Bain squinted into the bright afternoon sky and stared as the shuttles banked and turned and flew low over the smoking top of the mini-canyon. Then he held his breath as they turned again and flew straight toward the boys.
"Please, please," Bain whispered, repeatedly, as Gorgi continued jumping up and down and shrieking at the top of his lungs.
And the shuttles did land. They sent up clouds of exhaust and dust and settled on the rocky slope leading down to the bank of the river. Bain gasped and panted, fighting the pain as he turned himself around to watch the shuttles land. Gorgi ran up the slope to meet them, still waving his arms.
Nearly two dozen men in the light gray-and-olive combat uniforms of Rangers piled out of the shuttles' hatches. Bain clenched his fists and grinned and tears filled his eyes. He barely heard when one of the Rangers broke away from the group and ran down the slope toward him, shouting his name.
It was Devon. Gorgi ran with him, telling him everything he had done since he had pulled Bain out of the river and saw his leg was broken. He told him twice, as Devon yanked off his uniform jacket and folded it into a pillow and put it under Bain's head and gently lowered the boy back down to lie flat.
"Have you taken anything for the pain?" the medic asked. He pressed two fingers against Bain's neck, checking his pulse.
"Lost---lost the first aid kit," Bain whispered.
"I'll take care of that first thing, then."
He winked and pulled out his hypo-spray and slid a medicine cartridge into it. The tip was cold and Bain flinched at the shock at first touch to his neck. It hissed. Moments later, cool relief spread through his body.
"What were you two doing in the river?" he asked as he ran the diagnostic wand over Bain's splinted leg.
"We ran away to blow up the plague bomb," Gorgi said. He squatted down on Bain's other side and intently watched the medic work.
"Blow up a plague bomb? You found it?" Devon nearly dropped the wand. "Sergeant!" he yelled, and half-rose to his feet.
"Yeah. Over there." The older boy pointed at the dissipating smoke coming from the tall pile of rocks at the bend in the river. The waterfall fell undisturbed. The river still rushed by, tossing and spraying against and around the rocks.
"How did you---" He stopped as the Ranger sergeant skidded down the slope to join them. "This is Sergeant Coreen, boys. She's in charge here. Tell her what you just told me." Devon grinned. "Maybe you should tell her your name, first."
"Gorgi Cole, ma'am." Gorgi tried to salute. That earned grins from Devon and the sergeant. "Bain told me about the plague bomb and we both figured nobody could have found it yet because we found it in a place only us kids go. So we had to run away and blow it up."
"Blow it up?" the red-haired, freckled woman echoed. "How in the name of the Five Mothers did you manage that?"
"Well.... "Gorgi looked at Bain. For a moment he couldn't seem to speak. "We had to. It was still oozing all this goopy green stuff into the water and we knew people were going to keep getting sick."
"Of course. That was very sensible." She nodded and smiled, and then reached out and put a hand on his shoulder. "Why don't we go take a look at it, and you can show me what you two did, all right?"
"Go? You mean---" He looked back and forth between the far-off trail of smoke and the shuttle. "I can ride in a real Ranger shuttle?"
"How else are we going to get there?" Sergeant Coreen nodded toward Bain. "How is he?"
"He's going to be just fine," Devon replied. "Right?"
"I feel a lot better already," Bain said. "Go on and show them, Gorgi."
Devon gave Bain another shot as the other two walked to the shuttle. He opened up his backpack and started spreading the contents on the ground.
"Your friend did a good job with setting and splinting. I'm almost sorry to take it off," Devon continued, covering the sound of the shuttle launching.
"He wants to be a Ranger."
"Well, if he keeps impressing the sergeant, he has a good chance of getting in. Where did you find him?"
Bain told him the whole story, starting from the beginning as Lin had taught him to tell a story or make a report. Devon grinned in some places, chuckled in others, shook his head, frowned, and in the end said the one thing Bain needed to hear.
"You did your captain proud, Bain. She's on the verge of turning gray, fretting over you. The whole time, she kept saying she knew you could handle whatever happened because you were smart and strong and good." Devon checked the set of the inflatable cast that encased Bain from the arch of his bare foot to halfway up his thigh. Then he sat back on his heels. "You did a great job. Not many grown men I know who could turn an enemy into an ally in a few days."
"Gorgi's not my enemy. It's all those stupid, wrong stories his uncle kept believing."
"That too." He shook his head again. He had been doing that a lot since Bain started his story. "This could have turned out a lot worse than it did. The idiots here on Bareen are going to be sorry they tried to pick on Sunsinger and her crew."
"You're not going to hurt anybody, are you?"
"We don't have to, Bain. They wasted valuable time and put a lot of people in danger. Every person who dies because they didn't get to proper medical treatment on time is going to be their fault. I think that's hurt enough."
Bain swallowed hard and silently agreed.
The Rangers had come out searching for Bain, trying to find traces of the tunnels that Lin insisted he had to be imprisoned in. The tunnels underneath the colony had been searched end to end with no sign of Bain. Lin remembered his remark about waking up in a puddle and decided he was underground somewhere else. The Ranger shuttles had far more sophisticated equipment than the sensors Ganfer used. They had been attracted by the seismic shock of the explosion and had come in that particular direction to investigate. The pilots had decided to fly low and follow the river, to see the reaction to the explosion and maybe find some clue to the cause. If not, they never would have seen Gorgi and Bain.
Lin met the shuttle when it landed. She didn't jump inside, but she was waiting at the hatch when Devon helped Bain climb out. Her hair didn't show any new gray, but the shadows of sleeplessness and worry under her eyes and in her cheeks were too visible. Bain didn't feel at all embarrassed when she hugged him.
"So," she said, drawing back, "you've been trying to rescue the universe again, I hear."
"Trying." Bain swallowed hard against a thickness in his throat that threatened to turn into tears.
"You're growing up too fast."
"Huh?"
"Here, let's try this." She took hold of his arm and guided it around her shoulder.
That took some of his weight off his good leg. Bain found he could walk if he kept the steps short and in synchronization with Lin's steps. Devon slid into step with them and put Bain's other arm around his back, taking more weight off the boy's broken leg.
"You're growing up too fast," Lin repeated. "Don't you know only grownups take big risks like that?""You're not mad at me, are you?" He grinned as he asked, already knowing what the answer would be.
"I'm too proud to be angry." She nodded toward Sunsinger, waiting exactly where Bain had seen it last. "Let's get you inside. Anyon is waiting to give you another exam and Ganfer has a new collar link---a bigger one, since you were ready to outgrow the old one anyway---and we even got a new batch of hot chocolate and some diswi, straight from Mordor Caderi."
"What about Gorgi?"
"Hmm? Your friend? He can have some too, when he catches up with us." Lin grinned and shook her head, stopping Bain when he opened his mouth to protest. "Gil was with me when Devon called in his report. For his part in all this, Gorgi can join the Rangers right now if he wants."
"Good." Bain looked at Sunsinger, shining bright in the sun, and he smiled. His leg didn't hurt. His new friend was going to get what he wanted. They had blown up a Mashrami plague bomb and saved people's lives.
Everything was going to turn out just fine.
END
About The Author
Michelle lives in Strongsville, Ohio, just about half an hour from Lake Erie and Cleveland. She graduated from Northwestern College, Iowa, with a BA in theater/English, and from Regent University, Virginia, with an MA in communication (film/writing). She has over 40 short stories and poems to her credit in fan fiction---Star Trek, Highlander, the Phoenix, Beauty&the Beast, Stingray, among others. Her first professional sale was also a first-place win in the Writers of the Future Contest, with the short story "Relay." This story introduced one of her favorite "Barbie Dolls," Rhea Jones. She's a pivotal figure in a series of books Michelle calls Wildvine County. Someday they'll even see print....
"Sunsinger" belongs in a universe Michelle created called "The Commonwealth". Bain and his adventures are about 3/4 of the way through the planned books---there's a lot of history she's still fleshing out. It's great fun, having thousands of people and stories running around in her head. And someday she'll get them all on paper.
Visit her web site, members.aol.com/MLevigne, to see some of the other universes Michelle plays in, and other books available or keep track of her Writers Exchange Releases at: www.writers-exchange.com/epublishing/michelle.htm
OTHER BOOKS AVAILABLE THROUGH WRITERS EXCHANGE:
SUNSINGER: Sunsinger Chronicles Book 1
Bain Kern wanted to crew a starship and explore the galaxies. But an orphan on a colony world in the path of an alien invasion had no real hope of his dreams ever coming true.
SPACER'S CREED: Sunsinger Chronicles Book 2
Bain's prayers were answered: Captain Lin Fieran wanted him to stay on Sunsinger and be her crew for another evacuation trip to Lenga. When they got there, everyone had already been evacuated, so they went to the next world in the path of the Mashrami invasion.
DEAD WORLD: Sunsinger Chronicles Book 3
Bain and Lin meet up with Ranger Captain Gilmore again. Gil has an important mission for Sunsinger's crew: helping test a new device to protect ships from the alien Mashrami. The only problem is, Lin has to get Sunsinger very close to the aliens in order to test it!
THE LADY AND THE ORDER: Sunsinger Chronicles Book 4
Bain and Lin meet up with Sister High Scholar Marnya, a member of the Order of Kilvordi---the Church scholars and scientists who brought civilization back from the destruction of the Downfall and took Humans back into space. Marnya needs their help on a very important mission: She needs to travel in disguise, to see if the conditions on the colony worlds match the reports that she receives. Plus, someone is trying to kill members of the Order, and Marnya is the most important target of all. Bain's dreams of having the power and resources to help the helpless come a little closer to reality as he learns from Marnya and her bodyguard, Jax.
Visit www.fictionwise.com for information on additional titles by this and other authors.

