Brother Death (28 page)

"Taz," Saval said. "You okay?"

"Yeah. You?"

Saval glanced at the big man on the ground. "Yeah. He was stronger than me."

"Didn't matter, though, did it?"

"No. That was all he had." He looked back at her. "What happened to him?"

"Something got him," she said. "He warped in and out of somewhere, I lost him for a few minutes.

When he came back, he looked like he'd spent a season in hell. Wonder what could be so scary?"

"Maybe he ran into his god."

"Yeah, maybe. Not somebody I'd want to meet."

"Me, neither. What say we try to find our way home?"

She nodded.

They came out in the ruins, not far from, where they'd entered. They were met by a pair of special teams.

A command post had been set up, and camp tents erected.

"You guys are pretty quick," Taz said.

The leader of the teams shook his head. "Jesu, Chief, you been gone three days. We could have walked here."

Bork smiled as Taz turned and raised an eyebrow at him. By their own time, they'd been inside maybe half an hour. Another thing to warn the scientific types about.

The teams herded the now-dressed church members toward waiting transports. Some of them were probably connected directly to the crimes instigated by their leader, some of them maybe just guilty of misplaced faith. Bork and Taz watched them go.

"Well," Taz said, "looks like that about wraps it up."

Bork nodded.

"I appreciate your help."

"We're family," he said. "That's what you do."

They smiled at each other.

"Ruul's probably worried about you," Bork said.

"I'll call him. You probably ought to call Veate, too, and see how my nephew is getting along."

"Oh, yeah."

"It'll probably be months before Ruul can shed his exowalker," she said. "And maybe he'll change his mind after having me around that long, but if not, you'll come to the wedding?"

"I wouldn't miss it, little sister."

She reached for him, they hugged, squeezing each other hard; ordinary people would have creaked under the force. But then, the Borks weren't ordinary people. "This was a good thing for me," he said. "I learned something important about myself."

"Me, too."

For a moment they let that rest between them. Life was about motion, Bork realized. You had to keep moving, keep learning, keep growing. On one level he knew that, but it didn't hurt to have it brought home. The big lessons always needed repeating until you got them. Or they got you.

"Come on, brother, let's go get something to eat. Seems like days since we did that. Pickle will have something rigged up, even if she had to cover the hole in her wall with a tarp. And she deserves another shot at you before you go back to your wife."

He chuckled. "You ought to be ashamed, tempting me like that."

"Oh, I am. Really."

They both laughed. Arm in arm, they walked to her flitter.

THE END