Chagrined, Amy replied, "I was listening. I guess we took a wrong turn. We'll have to go back."
Back they went till she found a passage that would take them in the right direction. It led through a women's intensive-care ward. The casualties were out where the harried nurses could examine them at a glance. There were at least three hundred women crammed into a ward meant for fifty. "It's really bad, isn't it?"
"They're moving the walking wounded into the residential blocks."
Moyshe stopped suddenly, stricken. The face of the final patient, confined to a burn tank, was one he had not expected to see again. "Marya!"
She was alive, and inside her tank, amid the jungle of tubes, she was aware. She met his gaze, tried to communicate her hatred. Her I.V. monitor fed her a little nembutol.
"Moyshe? What's the matter?"
He pointed.
"You didn't know?"
"No. I thought she was dead."
"She would have died if we hadn't gotten her here so quick."
"But... "
"You used the torch from too far away."
"I see."
She dropped the subject, realizing he wanted done with it.
He should have realized that Marya would not go easily.
Did she have a partner? The answer was critical. His life might depend on it.
And if he survived here, Marya would come after him landside. He was winning the battles, but the war remained in doubt.
He did not look forward to their next encounter.
"What's the rush, suddenly?" Amy asked. He was almost running.
Kindervoort was not pleased with his being late, but he shuffled Moyshe into a testing room without remonstrance. "This's benRabi."
Psych types took over. Moyshe suffered through the old parade of idiot questions. Since childhood he had been trying to beat them with random answers—which was why his test sessions always lasted so long. The computers needed a big sample to pin him down.
When the psychs were done they turned him over to regular medical types who gave him a thorough physical. They were in love with his head. He told the life story of his migraine three times, and endured dozens of shallow and area skull scans.
They also wanted to know all about his instel implant.
He developed a sudden muteness. Bureau activities were beyond discussion.
Just when he was about to scream they turned him loose. The chief examiner apologized profusely for taking so long. There was not a hint of sincerity in his tone. Both he and Moyshe knew the time factor was Moyshe's fault.
Moyshe was told to get a good night's rest before going back to work.
He hoped they had not learned anything, but suspected that they had. Profile tests were hard to beat.
Time slipped away quickly, almost as swiftly as it did in the mad, hectic culture groundside. Moyshe returned to Damage Control. His working hours were gruesome.
Somehow, they got the drives functioning and pushed Danion into a stable orbit. Then the real work began. Everyone not engaged in rescue work, or in keeping the ship alive, began preparing her for a hyper fly to the Yards.
Moyshe's work was less demanding than he expected. Danion had suffered more damage to personnel than to plant, had been hurt more by shark attack than by Sangaree fire.
He heard rumors claiming half the harvestship's people had perished, or had been made as good as dead by mindburn. His acquaintances had been lucky. He knew no one who had been a victim. But every day, in the course of work, he encountered new faces, and missed a lot of old ones.
Every time he wakened Moyshe was amazed to find himself still alive. The battle of Stars' End was over and won, but winning had left the harvestfleet on the brink of disaster. New problems arose as fast as old ones were conquered.
And the sharks had not given up. They stalked the fleet and herd still, their numbers growing daily. In a week, or a month, they would strike again.
The fleet was in a race against time. It had to make the Yards before the sharks reached critical...
Time fled swiftly when sudden death lurked behind the veil of time, and every day passing brought Moyshe closer to an hour he dreaded, the moment when he would have to return to Carson's and his old life.
He did not want to leave.
The I want had not sipped at the blood of his soul since the battle, nor had he had visions of imaginary guns. He seemed to have undergone a spontaneous remission of his mental diseases. In that way the weeks were close to tranquil. His problems became more direct and personal.
He had found what he needed, a combination of things to do with belonging: a woman, a useful occupation, and a place in a society that considered him something more than a bundle of statistics to be manipulated. He could not yet quite understand what had happened, or why, but he knew he belonged here. Even if he was not yet wholly accepted.
This was what he had been seeking when he had abandoned Old Earth. Navy had given him some of it, but not enough. This was the real thing.
He had come home.
But how could he stay? There were prior demands on his loyalties. He simply could not accept Kindervoort's terms. He could not betray the Bureau.
Should he see Jarl and try to arrange something?... He vacillated. He swung this way and that. He decided and changed his mind a hundred times a day.
What about Mouse? What would he think? What would he do and say?
And all the while, like a recording mechanism, he kept making his notes for the Bureau. Sometimes he worried about getting them off the ship, but that did not much matter. Writing them down fixed them in his backbrain, from which the Psychs could dredge them with narcohypnosis.
Assuming he went home.
Assuming he wanted them recovered. He had not wanted this mission back when, and wanted it even less now. By carrying it out he might destroy something that had become dear.
He was in a proper mood for concluding Jerusalem. And he had found just the quote for summation:
The world was all revenge and thou hadst said:
"It is a seething sea!" Earth had no room
For walking, air was ambushed by the spears,
The stars began to fray, and time and earth
Washed hands in mischief...
—Firdausi (Abul Kasim Mansur)
All Jerusalem's characters had perished while trying to seize their hearts' desires. Farewell, old companions, he thought.
So much for that. It had been a pretentious trial of modern literature anyway. He did not like the thing anymore. Only his suicidal mood had let him finish quickly, rather than with the intimate detail he had planned originally. Sometimes he felt so like his own creations, denied anything but a deadly end...
Ten days remained on his contract when he received the second summons from Contact. Jarl Kindervoort relayed it personally.
"I'd really rather not do any more mindteching, Jarl," he said. "I'm not trained for it, and I'm perfectly happy where I'm at."
"I'd rather you didn't myself." Kindervoort seemed caught in a baffled daze. "You know too goddamned much already. But orders are orders, and these came from the top."
A chill breeze swept Moyshe's cabin. He knew too much... Would they let him go? If they did... Kindervoort was capable of arranging a deep-space accident that would silence the returning landsmen.
Would Jarl's superiors authorize an incident? Starfishers were feisty, but did not go out of their way to provoke Confederation.
"What's going on, Jarl?"
"I don't know. And I don't like it. They've shut me out. They want you reassigned to Contact. That's all I know. I'm just a messenger boy. Grab yourself a scooter and go. Here's your pass."