Extremis (56 page)

“Oh, he did, did he? Well, what poison has good old Harry been spewing about me this ti—?”

McGee turned back and held her face in both his hands. “No, no, Jen. You’ve got it all wrong. Harry came to—to warn me. To warn us.”

But even as McGee made his enigmatic, ominous announcement, Jen’s face lit up like the dawn. Indeed, she looked happier than he had seen her in a year—since before the invasion. “What?” he said, puzzled.

“You love me. You love me again,” she answered, her arms up and around his neck they way they used to be, fast, smooth, and effortless. “You do, don’t you, Sandro?”

Did he? Of course he did. Had he stopped? No. Had he
forgotten
that he did? Not exactly. But with her constant, desperate plea that he understand the Arduans, that he consider their side of the tragedy, it had been very hard to stay in touch with his feelings for her. But now…

“Of course I love you, Jen. You’re my—my Jen,” he finished eloquently.

She laughed, and it was like music, like water tumbling over tiers in a fountain. “Then everything else is going to be okay,” she said. She drew him to the seat closest to hers. “Now, tell me what Harry said.”

McGee told her. She listened quietly, nodding occasionally. “You know, I do see Heide’s point.”

“You do?”

“Well, sure. But it’s going to backfire on him. And kill me.”

McGee felt as though he were corkscrewing down from a high-altitude drop with both chutes tangled and blood pounding in his temples. “You seem pretty calm about all this.”

“I’ve had a lot of time to think, Sandro. And I realize that I can’t convince people about what happened to me, of how the Arduan telempathy works—and what it can and, more importantly,
can’t
do. Because all of you can’t really
hear
any of it, not when you are already convinced, deep down, that having me around is like having a bomb under your bed. Sure, while I’m talking, I’m only a minor annoyance. But if you believe that the Arduans are able to control me, to ‘detonate’ me, at their will, then…” Jennifer shook her head.

McGee put his hands together between his knees, like a worried little boy. “I wish I knew what to tell you, Jennifer. I guess I’m no help, because you’ve tried so hard to convince me of who and what the Baldi—er, the Arduans are and what they want. And look at me. For all your arguments, I haven’t changed one bit. I’m still—”

But McGee saw that Jennifer’s eyes had widened, and then she shook her head as if trying to rouse herself from a mental fog. “That’s it. That’s what I’ve been doing wrong. Sandro”—she grabbed his face and kissed him hard, once, on the mouth—“Sandro, my love, you are a bona fide genius.”

“I am?”

“Yes, you saw the problem—the problem I’ve been struggling against all these months.”

“I did? I have?”

“Sandro, it’s there in what you just said—that I’ve been trying to
convince
you, and to use arguments to make people understand. But of course that was never going to work. Not with something as strange and unprovable as
selnarm
and mind-links. No, what I have to do is
show
you how it was, not
tell
you how it was.”

She sat again and folded her hands in her lap, and although she seemed very composed now, she also seemed excited, the way she used to be when she had finally figured out how to get a sculpture to work the way she wanted it to. Her voice was quiet, almost difficult to hear, as she started. “Sandro, let me tell you how it was while I was with the Arduans—and I mean the day-to-day details, the little things and the big things together. Maybe then you’ll better understand what I did and why I believe what I believe now. I’m not saying you’ll accept it—I just want to work at having you understand it. After all, people who love each other don’t—can’t—agree about everything all the time. Even things as important as this. But understanding each other, why we do what we do…that’s essential. Don’t you think?”

McGee nodded, and leaned forward to listen to her and gaze at her wonderful, expressive, quirky face. At the face of his Jen.

* * *

Two hours later, McGee remembered the glass of water that he had brought with him, and handed it to Jennifer, who had been talking almost nonstop. As he watched her drink down the water and admired the cycling of her long, smooth neck, he reflected:
She sure as hell doesn’t sound like a traitor. She doesn’t even sound deranged, deluded, or brainwashed.

She just sounds like she’s telling the truth.

20

None So Blind

There’s none so blind as they that won’t see.
—Swift

West Shore District, Punt City, New Ardu/Bellerophon

Ankaht assisted Tefnut ha sheri to his seat in the speech lab’s observation chamber. He waved off her arm and pulsed (gratitude, regret, dismay) at her. “I had thought to be discarnate by now. But with so many of our trained brothers and sisters gone down the gullet of war…” He made a gesture of feeble futility.

Thutmus—rejoined with Ankaht for the first time in four months—rested the lesser tentacles of his left cluster gently upon old Tefnut ha sheri’s arm. “We appreciate your continued wisdom,
Holodah’kri’at
. We wish your body was not such a discomfort.”

“It is long past the time I should have been rid of it—but these times force changes and sacrifices upon us all. No matter. Besides, we have not come here to share the
narmata
of my infirmities and woes! Where is this—human—translator?”

Ankaht sent (fondness, amusement) and gestured with a lesser tentacle. “You will note the two humans in the—”

“
Ankaht!”

She jerked erect. It was Mretlak, on the secure
selnarm
repeater. “I am here.”

“Leave the floor, and then the building—now.”

“Why?”

“I will show you.”

And then Ankaht was seeing—imperfectly, since the visual perceptions and memories of another were not so complete nor clear as those experienced directly, personally—her concealed security station down off the lobby. The image was flat, gray, as though imparted by a, a—

“Yes, this is a human surveillance camera,” intruded Mretlak.

In an eerie reprise of the Death-Vowed attack of just weeks ago, her double-staffed Enforcer detachment was dead, sprawled about. Not all had been killed by
skeerba
; some were dead from what looked like gunshot wounds. But there had been no report, and she had not heard—

“The assassins are using commandeered human infiltration weapons—machine-pistols with what they call sound suppressors. Crude, but effective.”

“Why haven’t the alarms gone off?”

“They have been deactivated.”

“Deactivated? But how? The anti-intrusion systems are all controlled by the Enforcers and Secur—”

“Yes, Ankaht. And those who in turn control the Enforcers and Security are obviously a part of this conspiracy. Now go.”

Ankaht had already drawn the rather frail Tefnut ha sheri back to his feet with a pulsed warning of (danger, flight, now), and Thutmus—wonderful mate that he was—had taken the rest of the observers from the Council in hand, as well as the two humans.

Ankaht passed Tefnut ha sheri off to Thutmus, who led the way. “Temret,” she pulsed as she found and donned her
skeerba
.

“Here, Elder.”

“I have a situation to share.” He signaled (ready) and she flooded the images at him, including one that arrived from Mretlak in the midst of her sharing: an image of the new assassins, all
Destoshaz
, but not displaying any of the garb that would be the hallmark of warriors who had taken the Death-Vow. Instead, the five she saw were dressed in ballistic armor; four had firearms, two of which were the humans’ suppressed machine-pistols. A fifth was unarmed. They were gliding swiftly up the north stairwell.

Temret signaled (coming, hide) as Mretlak commented. “I believe there are two other teams. We are conducting a five-minute look-back into the buffers now.”

Ankaht sent (gratitude, life-debt) and moved to get back to the head of the group as they reached the double bank of elevators. She signaled Thutmus to “Turn left.”

“Where do we flee?”

“Toward Temret and his team. They are coming from—”

The left-hand elevator chimed, began to open—and a flurry of automatic-weapons fire came pouring out. Marcus Chin—the most promising of all the remaining human translators—caught half of the spray directly in his chest. His body tattered and bloody, he fell back, quite dead before he hit the floor.

Thutmus, well to the left of the elevator, leaned back into a crouch that was the attack posture known as Tentacle Poised. Ankaht dodged farther back to stay out of the line of sight, and sealed her
selnarm
entirely within her; she was surprised at how complete her withdrawal was.

The assassins—two, bearing the typical Arduan machine-pistols—came out of the elevator low, one to either side.

As they did, Thutmus unleashed from Tentacle Poised into Wave Curls Over: throwing himself forward, he boosted off the floor with both feet. As the assassins emerged, he was already airborne and nearly over their heads; he reached down, a
skeerba
already in his cluster.

The assassin on the right thrashed spasmodically as Thutmus’s blow landed, clutching at his severed spinal artery with both clusters. The other assassin, ducking, perceiving the overhead threat without fully seeing it, spun, tracking with his gun, which had almost come to bear on Thutmus—

Three
skeerba
claws came slashing through the front of his neck. The assassin’s blood sputtered out and bubbled as he wheezed and died. Ankaht stood behind him and let the body’s weight drag it off her
skeerba
.

Thutmus, who had not landed squarely, picked himself up with a small limp.

Ankaht felt a strange desperation as she rushed to him. Why should Thutmus’s discarnation mean so much more now than it would have a year ago? But she only asked: “Beloved, are you hurt?”

“No. I am unharmed—thanks to you.” He picked up one of the Arduan machine-pistols. “I see, by the way, that you have been training.”

“I have been prudent. Let us go.”

They did.

* * *

“Elder.”

“Temret. Where are you?”

“Approaching with my volunteers, Elder. Are you in a safe place? Can you remain there?”

Ankaht peered into the atrium before her: she could see all the approaches. The corridor behind her was long, and—other than the deactivated service elevators—the only entry into it from another floor was at the opposite end. “We are safe here—for a minute. Perhaps.”

“I will be there in fifteen seconds.”

(Gratitude) radiated out of her as the link closed: to think that she had been tempted to reject Temret’s offer to provide her with an independent security force.

A distant, amplified
selnarm
spike startled her. “Ankaht.”

“Mretlak. We are—”

“No time. Attend. The hallway behind you has an access shaft that follows up alongside the service elevators. I believe that one of the assassination teams is—”

As Mretlak started explaining, Ankaht took the precaution of getting the surviving human translator behind cover. Tefnut ha sheri, trying very hard not to dodder and fall behind, either failed to see or understand the Elder’s hurried gesture that he should follow her, out of the corridor’s line of sight.

Only ten meters behind him, an access panel—set flush with the wall—fell outward, and five assassins came out in a rush. Thutmus had his machine-pistol up swiftly and ripped a long burst down the hall: the last of the five sagged and hung limp in the mouth of the access shaft. Another spun around and fell, and a third was knocked backward—but those latter two immediately attempted to rise. Thutmus’s fire had evidently not penetrated their ballistic armor. The last pair—one with a machine-pistol, the other unarmed and unclothed except for a long formal robe—charged at them.

Thutmus tried bringing his aim over to the last of the armed assassins—but that one had already gone down on one knee, a steady laser-point bead drawn on Thutmus’s torso—

A loud report reverberated from across the atrium, and the kneeling assassin pitched backward.

Ankaht spun, saw one of Temret’s
Destoshaz
volunteers still sighting down the barrel of his rifle. Temret and two of his other private-security contingent were racing toward her across the ramp from the other side of the atrium.
Good. We may yet
—

As she turned back toward Thutmus, she saw him attempt to get the last assassin to halt—but that attacker kept racing forward, eyes wide, mouth open and emitting a rising roar.

What happened next occurred so fast that Ankaht had trouble reconstructing the sequence later on. Thutmus lifted his weapon as he pulsed out one more “Halt now!” The charging assassin’s robe fluttered open, revealing the bricks of plastic explosive that fronted his body like a wire-laden wall. Thutmus leaned slightly forward and squeezed the trigger; two rounds spat outward—which hit, and slowed, the suicide bomber—but then the machine-pistol jammed. Thutmus tossed it aside, pushed Tefnut ha sheri to the side with a mighty shove, and then leaped straight at the bomber.

Ankaht felt an emotion she had not known before—a desperate, aching fear of loss—and leaped after Thutmus to stop him—

Just as Temret tackled her from behind…so hard that she was carried sideways, the two of them airborne: they landed behind the opposite corner.

A columnated fury of flame and debris exploded outward from the corridor’s mouth and into the atrium behind them. The building shook; windows in the atrium shattered; tumbling bits of prefab, doors, and wall fixtures ricocheted down the wide skylight shaft to the lobby level.

Ankaht screamed—the first time in her life—and clutched outward with her
selnarm
. “
Thutmus
!?”

But his
soka
, his lifeforce, was gone. As if it had never been.

“Elder, are you hurt?” Temret’s inquiry also contained an assurance that Tefnut ha sheri was safe, having been sheltered to the other side of the corridor mouth.