TWELVE
He expected to get a bullet in the face at every step. Two more shots crashed out, both of them going wild, as he raced toward the other room. He could see the five of them, now, huddled behind desks as though that could shield them from the subsonic. Patterson was the man with the gun. As Harris reached the threshold of the room, Patterson stood up and squeezed off a shot. And scored a hit.
The bullet ripped into Harris’ shoulder an inch from the cradle of bone that supported his head. He felt a shattering pain, felt bone splitting, and his head lurched wildly to the side. His left arm dangled limply, and pulsing waves of pain radiated through him. He stumbled, nearly fell.
Patterson was taking aim again.
Harris dropped to his knees. He scrabbled forward across the floor.
Reaching across his body in an awkward way, he jabbed down on the neural nexus at his hip, and activated the subsonic. In the same moment, Patterson fired, but he was falling and losing consciousness as he fell, and the shot went completely wild, flying off to the left and embedding itself in the walls.
Harris jammed hard and tingled with the kickback of the subsonic waves, and watched them fall.
Patterson, Reynolds, Tompkins, McDermott, Carver. They slipped to the floor and lay there in huddled heaps. Harris got to his feet, slowly and in great pain. He looked down at himself, saw the blood seeping its way through his torn tunic, saw the gobbets of flesh and the lances of shattered bone. If the bullet had been three inches further to the right, it would have split his chest open and ripped his heart apart.
He looked at the five unconscious men. Five Darruui wearing the skins of Earthmen. Five Servants of the Spirit.
He drew the disruptor.
It lay in his hand for a moment. Once before this evening, he had held the power of life and death over a fellow Darruui. Then it had been Carver alone, and he had been unable to fire the fatal blast. Now he had a second chance, and not only Carver but the other four as well.
He waited. He wanted a word of encouragement from the unseen, unborn mutant whom he knew was monitoring his actions. But no word came.
He was completely on his own now.
The pain half-blinded him. He looked down at the disruptor, so tiny, so deadly. Thoughtfully he released the safety guard, pointed the snout of the instrument at Carver, took a deep breath, and squeezed the trigger. A bolt of bluish energy flared out, bathing Carver. The man gave a convulsive quiver and was still.
It was a great deal easier than he had thought.
He turned to Reynolds next, aimed the disruptor at the man’s corpulent belly, squeezed.
Then Tompkins.
McDermott.
Patterson.
Five of them. Five Darruui, five Servants of the Spirit.
All dead, dead by his hand.
The pain in his shoulder suddenly became impossible to bear. He turned away from the five corpses, dropped the disruptor back in his pocket, and lurched desperately for the door. He fell on his face in five steps, and lay there, thinking that it was ridiculous not to be able to get up, absurd to lie here bleeding to death in the presence of his five victims.
But at least he had done what he had come here to do, without cowardice, without hesitation.
Well done, said the voice in his mind, breaking the silence of hours. We were not deceived in you after all, it seems.
Harris smiled oddly and tried to struggle to his feet. The pain was too much for him. But then the silent voice said, You will feel no more pain.
The throbbing died away.
Rise.
Harris fought his way to a stand.
Come forward, now. Out of there. Come to us, and we will heal you. There is more work for you to do. Other enemies to be dealt with. You have only just begun.
He staggered and lurched his way down the hall, no longer in pain but still woozy and bleeding. The nervous reaction started to swim through his body. He had killed five of his countrymen. He had come to Earth on a sacred mission, a mission of holy obligation, and he had turned worse than traitor, betraying not only Darruu but the entire future of the galaxy.
He had cast his lot with the Earthmen whose bodily guise he wore. He had joined forces with the smiling yellow-haired girl named Beth beneath whose full breasts beat a Medlin heart.
Another wave of dizziness took him as he reached the front door of the office. He paused for a moment, clung to the door, then began to walk out, slowly, in a measured tread, not looking back at the five corpses behind him.
The police would be perplexed when they held autopsies on those five, he thought, and discovered the Darruui bodies beneath the Terran flesh.
He reached the gravshaft, stepped in, flipped the lobby indicator. Bumping sickeningly from side to side, the ancient gravshaft descended. He waited a moment in the lobby of the building, fighting back the nausea that assailed him, and then stepped outside into the clear, warm night air.
He looked up at the stars.
They spread like diamonds over the black velvet backdrop of the sky. Somewhere out there, lost in the brilliance, he knew, was Darruu. Wrapped in its crimson mist, circled by its seven moons.
He remembered the Mating of the Moons as he had last seen it: the long-awaited, mind-stunning display of beauty in the skies, and the laughter at the festival table, the singing, the hymns to the praise of the brilliance in the skies.
He knew that he would never see the Mating of the Moons again.
He could never return to Darruu now.
A strange emptiness grew in him. He felt utterly cut off, a man without a world. As he stood there, alone in the night, a helicar circled above, came to a landing in the street. A girl’s head peered out.
“Abner!” Beth called. “Abner, come! Are you all right? We’ll get that bullet out.”
He did not reply. He took an uncertain step toward the waiting helicar, then looked up again at the stars.
The radiant sky seemed to be spurning him.
He would never return home, he told himself. He would stay here, on Earth, serving a godlike race in its uncertain infancy. He had to sever all bonds with his past. Perhaps he could manage to forget that beneath the skin of Major Abner Harris lay the body and the aching mind of Aar Khülom, onetime Servant of the Spirit.
Forget Darruu.
Forget the fragrance of the jassaar trees and the radiance of the moons, forget the taste of the new wine, forget the kisses of the maidens.
Earth has trees that smell as sweet, it has a glorious pale moon that hangs high in the night sky, it has maidens of its own with ready lips. Put homesickness away, he ordered himself sternly.
Forget Darruu.
It would not be easy. He looked up again at the stars, trying to drink them in.
“Abner, come!” Beth called from the helicar.
He nodded distantly.
Earth was the name of his planet now, he thought.
Earth.
He took a last look at the speckled sky covered with stars, and then, as he began to move toward Beth, he wondered for the last time which of the dots of brightness was Darruu. He shook his head. Darruu no longer mattered now.
Smiling, Aar Khülom turned his face away from the stars.