Shockball (34 page)

“We’re both looking forward to the championship games.” Reever held out his hand. “Wish us luck, Chief.”

“You have what will serve you better—skill and heart.” Rico took Reever’s hand and shook it.

I watched the chiefs eyes glaze over for a few seconds, and the two of them stood there like statues, not moving or even blinking. Finally, Reever released the chief’s hand.

“Luck will be welcome, too.” Rico had sort of a blank look. Then, without saying another word, he turned and went back to the group of players by the viewer.

I moved in front of Reever, trying to block him from the gazes of Milass and the other Night Horse. He was pale and beads of sweat had broken out over his upper lip and brow. “Are you okay?”

“No.” He wiped a hand over his face and stared at the chief. “I linked with him, but I— His mind—”

I saw Milass heading our way. “We’ll talk about it later.”

Later turned out to be that night, in our hogan.

It is safer to use telepathy
, Reever told me.
He cannot read us, and it will be easier to explain this way
.

You looked terrible after you linked with him. What went wrong?

His mind does not operate the way a Terran’s usually does. He thinks almost completely in images
—
memories, I believe
.

What are the memories of?

Reever obliged by summoning up the images he’d seen. I watched the mature Rico looking at himself in the mirror, and seeing the image transformed into a young boy with a battered face. Rico picked up something to eat, and melted into an emaciated adolescent.

He’d been beaten, and starved. No wonder Reever had been upset.
I’m sorry. I had no idea he’d been through that kind of thing, or I would have never let you do this
.

It explains much about his need for dominance and control over others
. Reever pulled me closer.
That much of his character I understand completely
.

It made me think for a minute.
Is that why you became a linguist? So you could control others? Because of what your parents did to you
?

It was more out of my need to control my environment. Many times in my youth I found I couldn’t communicate with the beings around me. It was frustrating, especially when I was left behind while my parents were out gathering data in the field. I was never beaten by my parents, or intentionally starved, but inadvertently through their negligence, I suffered the same deprivations.

I was glad they were dead.
I can’t believe they did those things to you. You were just a little kid
.

I survived. You survived. But Rico
… He shook his head.
He is completely without conscience or remorse for what he does. That much, his parents taught him
.

I tried to make out the image Reever had retained of Rico’s parent, but all I saw were huge, black-and-white blurs were shaped like hulking monsters.

Maybe
. I was beginning to have my own suspicions about the source of Rico’s mental imbalance.
I
have to find a way to examine him, somehow
.

That will not be easy.

I live for the day something is.

We both sat up when a loud, automated screech sounded throughout the cavern.

“What’s that?”

One of the players stuck his head through the entrance flap to our hogan. “Intruders have penetrated the entrance traps to one of the outer tunnels. Come, we must hide.”

We followed the other members of the underground down a tunnel into a section of old subway I hadn’t seen before. Behind us, the rumble of collapsing rock and weapons being fired in the distance sent deep vibrations through the stone walls.

At the end of the ancient platform, Hawk was standing at the entrance to some kind of room, ushering people in.

“What’s going on?” I asked him, and he waved me and Reever over to one side.

“The Shaman discovered the entrance to the sewer pipes from his underground facility a few days ago.” Hawk pointed back in the general direction of the estate. “We didn’t expect him and his men to find the traps so quickly, but they may be using wide-range thermal proximity scanners. Our scouts report they’re also using some kind of chemical detectors.”

That made no sense, until I remembered the solution that had splashed everywhere when Rico had destroyed the embryonic chambers. “We must have tracked the duralyde in here. That’s how he found us. What happens when they get to the central cavern? Are we going up to the surface?”

“They won’t. Rico is sealing off access to all the tunnels that lead to the cavern. They’ve all been rigged with frequency displacers in the ceilings.”

“Hawk!” someone called from the tunnel.

He pointed into the room. “Go in the bunker now. We reinforced this section to resist collapses. There will be many when the displacers are activated.”

Inside the large bunker, which had once been a large, tile-lined lavatory, it was cold, dark, and crowded. Someone put up a couple of temporary emitters, while a few of the women started handing around blankets. Reever and I found a place against one wall and stood with our backs to it, watching and listening to the tunnels collapse.

“What are these displacer things he was talking about?” I asked him, keeping my voice low.

“They’re used in mining to create tunnels and break down rock into workable ore. The units tap into the atomic frequencies of the stone, then alter them at the molecular level. The stone molecules subsequently disintegrate, and the solid mass turns to gravel.”

“How charming.” I looked around at the tired faces of the Night Horse, waiting patiently for the all-clear. “Any chance we can get our hands on one?”

“Possibly.”

The vibrations abruptly stopped. An hour passed before Hawk called for everyone to return to the hogans. Reever and I went back, but neither of us were able to sleep very well. My still-ringing ears kept me staring at the roof for the rest of the night.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

«
^
»

A Promise to Keep

W
hen I heard the women preparing the morning meal outside, I left Reever to go and check on the cats, whom I’d left in Medical. They were both hiding under the equipment, but I coaxed them out with a bowl of leftover stew.

Ever the practical stray female, Juliet didn’t waste time, but got right to wolfing down her meal. Jenner paced around her protectively, giving me some surly looks.

“Hey, it wasn’t my fault the guy in charge decided to blow half of this place last night.”

Jenner sat down beside his hungry companion and regarded me without a shred of sympathy.
You’re never around when things start going boom
.

“Yeah, I know. I’m sorry.”

“Patcher.”

I turned to see a couple of the men standing in the entrance. “Did someone get hurt?”

“The chief wishes to see you. Come with us.”

I was escorted to the central cavern, where nearly the entire tribe was assembled around the fire. Milass was standing on the speaking rock, holding something and shaking it.

“We offer nothing but life and meaning and purpose and
this
is how we are repaid for our generosity. It is beyond forgiveness this time. Our way of life is threatened. Our lives are threatened.
We
are threatened.”

Rico was standing below, and he didn’t look happy, either.

I turned to one of the guards. “So who’s in trouble?”

I got my answer when I was led up to the speaking stone.

“Patcher.” Milass threw down the object at my feet. It was a tunic, torn and filthy. My physician’s tunic, which had disappeared a few days ago. “You led the whiteskins here. You showed them the way into the tunnels.”

The demon dwarf had gone way too far this time. “Um, no, I didn’t.”

“We found this where the whiteskins broke in from the sewers. It is yours.”

“Yes, it’s mine, but—

“You treated the unclean cast out from this tribe.”

“Yes—”

Rico came up and grabbed me by the hair. “I trusted you and you betrayed all of us. How did you lead them in here? Did you work a spell? Did you mark the way with magic? Is that how their machines led them to us?”

“No!”‘ He was scaring me. “I don’t do magic or spells. It was the duralyde from the lab. We must have gotten it on our footgear.”

“Let her go.”

It was Reever, and he was not happy. Hawk came up behind him and grabbed his arms.

“She is a
chindi
, intent on destroying
Leyaneyaniteh
.” Rico shoved me forward, toward one of the tunnels no one was allowed into. “I will deal with her.”

The last I saw of Reever was him struggling with Hawk, then going still as Hawk said something to him. When I stumbled, Rico dragged me back on my feet by my hair. My scalp burned as I kept trying to free myself.

“What are you doing? This is crazy!”

The chief kept dragging me forward, past the stern faces of the tribe and into the forbidden tunnel. Once inside, he hauled me down what seemed like miles of rock to a wide, open area. Where we stood hung over a huge, dark hole like a cliff. He forced me to the very edge.

“I believed you were one with us. I treated you as one of the blood, and you do this to me. You betrayed me.”

“I didn’t betray you!”

“Lies!” He shoved me over the edge, and held me for a moment, dangling by my hair. I clawed at his hand, trying to hold on. “If only he could see you now.”

He let go and I fell into the dark abyss below. I screamed, waiting for the bone-shattering impact, but it never came. I simply kept falling and falling.

Something came out of the dark at me from below, and claws sank into the right side of my abdomen.

Animal? Monster?

The wrenching grab sent me spinning out of control, until my head smashed into hard rock. My last thought was of Reever, and how glad I was that Rico hadn’t made him watch me die.

I didn’t expect to survive that fall, much less wake up in Reever’s arms. It was a lot like how I’d woken up, after coming in direct contact with the Core back on K-2. Especially the being naked and floating in water part.

Maybe I’m just having a flashback.

I opened one eye, not sure if I was going to trust my senses. No, I was definitely naked, and absolutely floating in water. If this was a flashback, it was happening inside a dimensional simulator.

A dimensional simulator that strongly resembled a cave half filled with an underground lake.

Reever was doing something to one side of my face. The same side that was throbbing. I’d hit the side of the pit there, I remembered. There were more aches and pains. I felt the distinct sting of lacerations below my ribs and gingerly touched them. Claw marks. Big claw marks.

There really was something in that hole.

“They are not bad,” he said. “I don’t think you’ll need sutures.‘’

“Thank you, Dr. Reever.” I opened the other eye and looked around. “Mind telling me what happened?”

“Rico threw you into an interior shaft.”

“I remember that part.” I winced. “Ouch, stop. That hurts.”

“We almost didn’t have time to get you before you fell too far.”

“We?”

He looked over at the side of the pool. So did I. Hawk was lying facedown under a blanket, apparently unconscious. I jerked up and found the bottom of the pool with my feet. “What happened to him?”

“You’d better see for yourself.”

I got out of the pool and went to Hawk. He wasn’t unconscious, only curled over and in considerable pain. As soon as I pulled the blanket aside, I saw why.

“I need my medical case right now. I left it in the bunker,” I said to Reever, who disappeared into an opening in the rock wall beyond the pool. I started a therapeutic massage to loosen the cramped muscles along Hawk’s abdomen and back, talking to him as I worked on the knotted tissues. “This is why you never wanted me to scan you.”

He looked up at me, and managed a nod.

“Now that I know, are you going to let me help you?”

“Can… you?”

I sat back on my heels. “Yeah. I think I can.” I got the rest of his clothes off and rubbed his limbs briskly to promote circulation. That’s when I saw the open sores. “God, you’ve been infected, too. Who was it? One of the outcast women?”

He shook his head, and refused to answer any more questions. Reever arrived a few minutes later, and handed me dry clothes along with my medical case.

I scanned Hawk, took a blood sample, and confirmed he had first-stage syphilis.

“I’m going to start you on antibiotics to treat the venereal disease, but I have to know who gave it to you so I can stop her from spreading it.” He didn’t answer. “Once we get the syphilis cured, we’ll start you on a regime of physical therapy.” I adjusted my scanner and performed a spine series. “Maybe some minor surgery, too. But I need to know whom you’ve been having sex with. Not because I’m nosy. They’re going to need treatment.”

The analgesics I infused him with helped dull the pain of his cramped muscles, and he sighed. “I am the tribe’s only
hataali
. It is my place to perform the
Tl’ééjí
, the Night Ways.”

“Which is?”

“The necessary ceremonial to cure the diseased one.”

Not this Indian superstitious nonsense again. “There may not be just one diseased person. Dozens of people could be infected.” Be nice if I could confirm and actually do something about that. “A lot of singing and dancing won’t cure syphilis.”

He closed his eyes. “It is what must be done first.”

“No, the entire tribe needs to be inoculated, including the woman who gave you this disease.”

“If I fail, I will tell you everything you need to know.”

I laughed once. “Look, I’m all for cultural integrity. But praying to your gods to get rid of venereal disease is about as intelligent as throwing the only doctor you have down a bottomless pit.”