Stupid! he thought as he ran. You stupid, self-destructive sonofabitch!
In little more than a minute he reached the steel door to the living area, unlocked and spun the wheel, then entered and locked it behind him. For a moment he leaned on it. Connie had heard him, and stepped into the entryway. She started to speak, perhaps to ask him how it had gone, then saw his face and stopped, eyes widening, one hand moving to her mouth.
"What?" she whispered.
He didn't answer at once, just shook his head. Setting his harness and pack aside, he got his pistol from a drawer and put it in his waistband. Connie followed, watching, seeming not to breathe.
"I was seen at the forest edge," he said quietly, "and slipped back into the jungle. I didn't think they knew what they'd seen." He put a hand on her arm. "When I got to the entrance, I turned and looked back. And saw it-a military floater hovering above the jungle's edge. They'd followed me." He stepped past her, speaking more softly now. "They'll have called for a troop carrier."
"What will we do?"
"Let them know on Terra."
She stared up at him; she was barely five feet tall.
"We don't have much time," he said. "Get Robert ready."
She nodded soberly, and followed him into what served now as the family room. Robert was at the computer, browsing star charts, unaware that anyone had entered. "Robert," she said, "it's time for you to go to work."
Her voice was wooden, but Robert's response was deeply conditioned. Already in trance, he got up, walked to the divan and lay down, folding his hands on his chest while Connie moved a chair beside him and sat. After the connections were made, Morgan began to dictate.
He'd just finished when the alarm buzzed. His final words to Terra were, "They're here." Then he stepped to the alarm and turned it off. The first booby trap was small and distant; he neither heard nor felt the explosion. "I'm done now, Connie," he said. "Waken him."
He waited while she and Robert went through the brief withdrawal ritual. Robert sat up, saw his older brother, and grinned. "Hi, Henry," he chirped. "Did you bring me any flowers?"
"No, no I didn't. But I brought you a new story." A scenario was forming in his mind even as he spoke, rooted in an ancient movie, one that had touched him deeply. Initially, in pretechnological times, it had been shot on film, and since then copied and recopied in other media.
"Sit on your computer chair," he said, "and turn off the computer." He watched Robert comply. "Now look at the screen. Keep your eyes on it, and imagine you're seeing what I tell you. Seeing it like a movie."
His order sent his brother into a near-hypnotic revery. "Do you remember where we lived in Colorado? After father died?"
Robert nodded. "Yes," he said.
"Remember the garden behind the house. With all the flowers, and the lilac bushes. Do you see it?"
He'd made it all up years before, part of an imaginary past to help bury the ugly reality. Robert's head bobbed eagerly. "I see it."
Morgan heard or felt a booby trap explode, a small, dull, distant thump. Whether the second, or the last, or one in between, he wasn't sure.
"All right. Now see mother there. Do you see her?"
"Uh huh."
"Tell me what she's wearing."
The savant didn't hesitate. As Morgan drew his pistol from his belt, Robert answered. "She's wearing her white dress with the blue and yellow flowers." He chuckled. "And she's barefoot. She used to say it let her feet be friends with the grass."
Connie choked back a sob.
Morgan raised the pistol and put the muzzle almost against Robert's head. It wavered, and he gripped it with both hands to steady it. "All right," he continued, "now you and Connie and I are going there to see her. We'll be there in just a second."
He pulled the trigger, the explosion loud in the small room. Connie screamed and lowered her head, covering it with her hands as if knowing. He'd saved Robert once before by killing their father. Now he'd saved him again. Small tight sobs, like little chuckles, burned his throat, and his free hand wiped away tears. A much more powerful explosion roared from the other side of the steel door, knocking things from shelves. Morgan held the muzzle close to Connie's head and pulled the trigger again.
Tears blinded him. Then he heard alien voices; the safety door had been dislodged. A blaster pulse struck the family room door, sending a spray of Tuffboard fragments across the room. Morgan put the muzzle in his mouth and pulled the trigger a final time.
Chapter 23
Interrogation
Qonits' ranking bodyguard rapped sharply on the door, but not with the butt of his blaster, as he had at first.
Even that had been an improvement. In an early session, a half-hour charade with the chief scholar, David and Yukiko had managed to communicate that they didn't want guards, or even Qonits himself, walking in on them without permission. That it showed lack of respect, and they would not cooperate without respect.
Not that privacy was the point. Video cameras monitored them endlessly. The point they hoped to make was that they had rights. Of course if their captors disagreed, pain was always available to inspire cooperation. Neither David nor Yukiko imagined they could withstand serious torture. But the Wyzhnyny didn't know that, and might prefer not to risk their deaths, or possibly inspire unbreakable resistance.
When Qonits had left that time, they hadn't known whether he'd understood. But beginning the next day, the guard who'd brought their meals had knocked. And so had Qonits' bodyguard, all without apparent resentment.
"Who is it?" David called.
"It is Qonits."
As far as it went, Qonits' Terran was quite understandable. On the other hand, the Wyzhnynyc the humans had learned was negligible. For a while the exchanges had been fairly even, but apparently the Wyzhnyny had changed their minds and decided not to teach them. At any rate the humans had no artificial intelligence to run endless cross-references, refining and expanding on meanings and nuances.
As shipsmind acquired a working vocabulary, sessions had more and more been built around lists-requests for the meanings of words recorded during earlier interrogations and the prisoners' personal conversations. Words presumably chosen by shipsmind. Qonits' efforts to speak became less halting and uncertain. His main difficulty was understanding what was said to him.
"Come in!" Yukiko called back. She and David made a point of neither being the prime spokesperson. Let the Wyzhnyny consider them equal to each other in rank.
As always, Qonits' entrance showed what the two Terrans read as dignity without arrogance. They still didn't know whether that dignity and apparent lack of arrogance were idiosyncracies of Qonits, or shared by other ranking Wyzhnyny. But they'd come to like the chief scholar.
"Good morning," Qonits said carefully. "I wish you feel well now."
"We feel very well, thank you," David said, "and we wish the same to you."
The Terrans sat on a couch. Yukiko had sketched one for Qonits, and he'd had it made. His own people had such things, and Qonits could understand that humans might have greater need for them. It must, he'd told himself, be tiresome standing on just two legs. He'd wondered at first why they didn't fall over.