Hidden Variables (46 page)

"Can't you see that to twins like us, what you'd do is the worst thing that we can imagine? Worse than killing us, worse than putting us into a prison—if we were together. But you'd do it to us and think you were helping—and not one of the other species on the Council would help us, because they have no idea what it means to be identical twins."

Rebka grunted again, but he had himself under control. "I've been blind," he said. "Blind for years. I've been conceited enough to think that I can empathize with any creature, from any world. Now I find that I don't understand my own species. No single individual can ever truly understand a compound being, that's obvious. That's why you fled from Delta Pavonis?"

"Of course." Both spoke together.

"We would have treated you," went on Rebka, as though to himself. "We
would
have broken your dependence. Of course we would. All our psych profiles would tell us that it was unnatural. In anyone else, it would be."

"But not for us. We would rather die."

"I understand. Your pain is my pain." Rebka sounded as though he were repeating some familiar litany, some phrase that he had used many times to soothe himself in his work. But it was true, I was sure of it. Their pain
was
his, and he felt it all the more keenly because he had missed seeing it for so long. I knew that the rehab procedures back on Earth were due for a big shake-up as soon as Rebka got back.

If he got back. The view from the front screen grabbed my attention. Ahead of us, dim through the smoke, I could see the great column of the umbilical. It was about a kilometer and a half away—but it was no longer attached to Quake at its base. I looked at my watch. We were more than an hour after our last deadline. The controllers must have waited as long as they dared, held it well past the promise they had made to me. But at last they had been forced to begin the lift. Worse yet, dead ahead of us I could see a ribbon of red-hot lava, winding between us and the foot of the umbilical stalk. I could find no way around it—the top of the hill that we wanted was surrounded by a moat of fire.

I killed the engine that gave us our forward motion and we remained hovering on the air cushion. I tracked the lava with the scope, confirming that our way ahead was blocked, then turned to the others in the rear of the car.

"Problems," I said. "There's a lava flow ahead, about thirty meters wide. We have to make a choice. I don't see any way across it, but we could look all the way around and see if there's any sort of break. That will cost us a good deal of time—and we'll risk more eruptions here while we do it. We're right at summertide maximum."

Rebka had been sitting with his head down, concentrating on his own problem. He slowly looked up. "And what is our alternative? So far you have offered no choice."

"We can shoot the lava. I think I can get the car across it all right—it's not impossibly wide. But I think the heat will burn through the skirts around the base, and we'll lose all our lift. We might have to get out and go the rest of the way on foot."

He came forward and looked ahead, noting that the umbilical had been raised but apparently seeing no point in mentioning anything that would further worry the Carmel sisters. "It would only be about a kilometer," he said.

"A bit more than that. But take a look at the outside temperature. It's a furnace out there. I don't see how we could take more than ten minutes of it."

"Are you sure that the lava will burn the skirts on the car?"

"No, we might get lucky. But even if we're not, I think it's the best bet we have. Feel that tremor? Quake's getting more restless, will do until we're past summertide. We don't have much time to think about this."

Rebka turned and looked at the twins. He seemed to be able to read their faces and the look that passed between them. I was beginning to feel like a blind man—Elena and Jilli could read each other, and Rebka could read both of them, but I couldn't even track my own emotions. I looked back at him, and he nodded.

"We agree. It's the best hope we have. Let's go over the lava, and hope that we will reach the foot of the Stalk before the skirt burns through."

It was not a time for debate. I nodded, turned, and pushed the forward power control to maximum. We jerked forward, accelerated to our top speed, and lurched up onto the river of lava.

After the first second, I lost sight of the path ahead. The view was blocked by a thick black smoke that rose from the burning skirt of our car. I had no idea what lay in front of us, but I held the speed to maximum—we had nothing to lose. We ploughed on, shaking and swaying, and after a few more seconds there was another lurch, this time downwards. We were over the molten river with no obstacle between us and the foot of the umbilical.

But we were sitting in a dead hover-car. I applied maximum forward power and it produced nothing but a rough grating sound. The underskirt was gone. I cut all power and stood up.

"Come on. We have to go on foot. The faster we do this, the better."

I swung the door open and stepped out onto the surface. The lava lay behind us, ten meters away. After the cool interior of the car, the air of Quake hit me like a solid wedge of heat. I held the door for the others to step through, as faucets turned on inside my skin. Ten minutes? I doubted that we could stand more than five. Elena came out first, then Jilli. I helped them to the ground—the contact with Jilli's hand made my skin tingle, as though there existed a big potential difference between her skin and mine.

Last of all came Rebka, stumbling down and heading for the base of the stalk at a shambling run. I realized that I had shown more speed than sense. I was still wearing his boots, that he had lent to me when I looked at the second crater, and he was wearing my shoes—two sizes too big for him. We were like a couple of cripples, hobbling and staggering along after the Carmel sisters.

They were making good speed, about forty meters in front of me. They were running side by side, almost holding hands, but as I watched Jilli had to slow a little and turn in her path to avoid a patch of jagged rock. And in that same moment I saw, five meters ahead of Elena, the odd blurring of the flat surface.

It was like a slight shimmer, a hint of loss of focus in my view of the ground. I had seen it once before, four years earlier. I stopped and screamed. Even as I shouted my warning, the scene before me was dimming, over-written by memory so intense that it had never faded.

Amy, laughing and playful in the heat, ran on ahead of me, back to the foot of the umbilical. It was just a few hundred meters away.

"Hey, slow down. I'm the one that has to carry the equipment."

She spun around and laughed at me. "Come on, Marco. Learn to have fun. We don't need all that stuff—leave it here."

Her tone was teasing, making me smile in spite of the heat. "I can't just leave it—it's official property. Wait for me, Amy."

She laughed, and danced on, on into that blurring of the surface, the shimmering ground of summertide.

There was less than a centimeter of solid crust. Beneath it lay boiling, pitch-black slime. The surface bore her weight long enough for her to get beyond my reach, then it broke. While I watched, she plunged screaming into the bubbling mud.

Before I could reach the edge she was gone, down into the seething pitch. I threw my self flat and plunged my hands down into it, up to the elbows in the boiling blackness. I could grasp nothing solid. All that I could take back from Quake was pain, physical and mental. The scars were inside and out. The grafts could replace my skin, but nothing could replace Amy; not work, not sex, not even another visit to Quake at summertide.

I stood, screaming and screaming, as Rebka came alongside me. He looked at me for one split-second, then hit me savagely across my left cheek. I jerked back to the present.

Elena, chest-deep in the boiling pitch, was writhing in agony. Four paces from her was Jilli, running towards her. Rebka and I threw ourselves at her, falling as we did it. I managed to get a hold of her waist and he grabbed the back of her boots. One more step and she would have joined her sister, as Elena disappeared beneath the seething surface.

Whose screams was I hearing? Not Elena's, she was gone. Jilli's, certainly, and probably my own.

Working together, Rebka and I managed to drag Jilli away. She would have gone back, to plunge herself after her sister, but between us we managed to hold her and work our way along to the foot of the umbilical. The main tether was well above our heads, seven or eight hundred meters and still rising steadily.

I let go of Jilli with one hand, relying on Rebka to stop her pulling free. I took the thick cable that hung from the umbilical, wound it about the three of us, and pressed the activator at the end. We were hauled aloft, crushed together by the tension in the cable—it had been designed to accommodate only one person.

Up we went, into the smoke-filled sky of Quake. All about us, the summer lightning flickered, and the ground beneath swayed and shuddered like a drunkard. Jilli was weeping desperately, and Rebka was beyond tears. The loss of Elena was doubly affecting to him—he felt his own loss, and shared Jilli's.

And I? Selfish as ever, I was back again in my own past, four years gone, watching Amy sink into the boiling mud. But now Amy was Elena, and Amy was Jilli. And I was Amy, sinking forever into the molten interior of Quake, while we slowly ascended, swinging and turning, to the safety of the foot of the umbilical.

None of us was aware of our danger, dangling from a system strained beyond its safety limit, five hundred meters above the ground. How could we feel danger, when each of us was ready to welcome death? Perhaps not. Perhaps Rebka's control still existed even then. There are stories about Sector Moderators—perhaps I ought to call them legends—stories of Moderators cut in half by lasers, and still able to discuss terms logically with their attackers. I can't believe those stories—the body control needed to maintain the blood pressure and keep the heart pumping would be too much. But I do know, from my own observation, how much pain Rebka could stand, and still run, think and work. My proof?

The crew who received us into the Emergency Entrance of the umbilical took one look at us and at once called ahead to Midway Station for complete physical support functions in the hospital. All of us had been burned by hot ash and spatters of boiling mud. Most of Jilli's long hair had been burnt off, and I had plunged one of my legs above the boot top into the molten pitch. But Rebka had fared worst of all.

He had lost both my shoes in our final struggle to the umbilical, and the underside of both his feet had burned through to the bone. I saw them when we reached the umbilical, bloodied slabs of raw meat, oozing lymph and crusted with burnt tissue. Rebka had carried Jilli on those, for more than a kilometer—and was able to comfort Jilli as we were hoisted up by the cable.

That I saw, and nothing more before heavy sedation plunged me into a sleep too deep for dreams.

* * *

It took two days to get us back to the hospital on Egg. I drifted, always on the edge of consciousness, as we were carried carefully back along the umbilical. My first real memory came when I awoke in my hospital bed. It was night and the dome was transparent above me. I must have somehow operated the controls myself.

It was after perihelion now, and close to midnight on Egg. The daylit face of Quake hung above me. It was blackened and smoking, with ash clouds hiding most of the surface features. I watched and watched, until the surface lost the sunlight and glowed on, a dull and savage red. Then I turned my face to the wall and waited for another dawn.

Before it came I awoke again and found Rebka by my bedside. He was a tough specimen. His legs ended in giant swollen balls of padding, but he was up and about and fully alert. He was still a small, thin man with a sad mouth, but I was under no illusions. I watched him warily.

"Jilli is doing well," he said. "I wish I could say the same for you."

"I'm fine."

"No you're not. Did you realize that you had been losing blood ever since you went down into that first crater?"

I shook my head. "No. I put coagulant on my legs. The bleeding didn't begin again until I was climbing out of the crater with the Carmel sisters. There was no time to bother with it after that."

"You were lucky to make it to the umbilical." Rebka smiled. "I suppose I'm lucky too. I don't think I could have handled Jilli on my own."

He sat down on the end of my bed, watching me with steady eyes. I glowered back at him.

"Jilli and I will be leaving in three more days," he said. "She will be fit enough to travel by then."

"To Earth?"

He nodded. "She'll need more rehab than ever now. For her childhood and for the Zardalu. And for Ellie."

I didn't like to hear that. I began to replay everything again inside my head. Elena and Amy were tangled up there—I could no longer separate the two deaths.

"Can you help her?" I asked after a few seconds.

"Of course. We can help anyone. In her case, the punishment will be waived, but she will badly need the rehab treatment. The death of the Zardalu is merely my guarantee that she will be obliged to take it. In some cases I have no powers of coercion."

I looked up, out of the transparent dome. "You can only force someone to treatment if there has been a crime."

"It is worse than that." He shrugged his thin shoulders. "There are really two kinds of crime. I can pursue and bring to justice—and to rehab treatment—one type of criminal. The one who commits an act of savagery or injustice against another sentient being. But I am not allowed to do anything about a person who commits a crime against himself."

"It's not easy to rehab a suicide." I said it intentionally, to see if he would wince. He did, but then he smiled. I knew he had seen through me again.

"Not suicide. I didn't mean suicide." (He was proving to me that he was tough enough to use the word). "What kind of crime is it if a man blights his own great potential? I feel just as badly if a man cripples his own hopes and dreams, as if he does it to another." He leaned forward. "Captain Mira, when Jilli Carmel and I leave for Earth, will you come with me?"