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spurts of white
agony through him that wiped outisight and sound. Hold-
ing it still with one hand, he scrabbled along the ground, until Bitsy's
shouulder and arm supported him, lifted him, half-dragged him toward the
multidrive.
Then came the militiamen: everywhere, circling them, laughing and lobbing
sling-thrown stones. One hit Rafe in the face, as the horsemen's circle began
to close in.
How long he was ringed, a living target cut off from the others by galloping
horses whose riders took chancy, classic shots at him (from under horses'
necks and bellies, over sweaty croups) while shouting taunts in a dialect
Penrose had not bothered to learn, he could never re-
member. Stones hit him and arrows snickered unerringly past his ears, until
the riders came in so close no weapons but their horses were needed. He was
buffeted and charged. Pinned between heaving beasts while their riders kicked
and pulled him, he was held off the ground by his hair so that he dangled some
few seconds before they dropped him.
He fell rolling, gained his knees. A horse kicked him in the chest, lifting
him off the ground fteetingly; he was flying. Then he lay on the ground, lungs
emptied, unable to breathe, his mouth wide open, trying to gasp. Just one
breath, and he would be alive forever . . , one breath.
But it seemed impossible. His lungs would not fill- When at last they did, the
sound was desperate, soughing, but the only sound he ever wanted to hear, or
could hear above the roaring in his ears. Then the ground shuddered by his
head and all he could manage was to turn it and watch the hooves come down
inches from his nose: once, twice, three times.
Something prodded him; he tried to gather his knees under him, failed, covered
his neck and head. Pulling his legs in close jammed the arrow in his calf
sideways, rip-
ping muscle, "Tell your master we will be in touch with him," Rafe heard. In
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his cavern of indrawn limbs, he could not
295
EARTH DREAMS
move. The hard, sharp thing poked twice into his lower back. "Hear me?" The
hoarse voice spoke in perfect
Consulese. Rate grunted, tried to rise. The sharp thing struck him across the
back of the skull. "Stay there, Pilot. Stay with your nose in our dirt for ten
minutes. I'll leave somebody here to see that you do."
Thunder, beyond his pulse-pounding, exploding head-
ache's own, could be felt through the ground as the horse raced away. He was
pelted with clods from its leave-
taking.
Ten minutes were easily up before he couItTmove. The
ground wheeled in place and he had retched intermina-
bly, tasting dirt and his own blood and the awful after-
math of trauma. He did not think about his blurred vision, or that he could
not under any circumstances stand up, or about the angle at which the least
blood would pour out of his nose. He simply crawled, slowly and steadily,
toward where he was reasonably certain the multidrive must be: a big,
blue-gray shape was looming, straight ahead in a dark patch. He paused only
once to snap off the arrow's shaft, which was torturing him more than anything
except the clots of blood and bile which kept meeting in his throat. Then he
tried to sit upright, to peer off toward the encircling trees. But all he
could see was peeked ground, full of troughs and humps which must be crossed.
The multidrive was only feet from him was the only safe place was his only
chance. His vision swam with pink spots, and he wanted to sleep. If he could
sleep, he could outwit the giant hammering out knives of anguish on the anvil
of his skull. He thought about Dance's famil-
iar bunk, his own bed. . . .
Knee before knee, hand before hand, not looking at anything straight on, eyes
slitted, he crawled. A single sob escaped him as he felt one palm graze the
multi-
drive's ramp.
But the ramp was steep and, worse, it was undulating, bucking from side to
side. No, that could not be ... He stopped crawling, head hanging, listening
to his own rat-
tling breath. He could lunge straight up those stairs, and make it to the con.
He could and he would. Weaving like a drunk, he tried valiantly, twice
staggering so that he
294
JANET MORRIS
fell, once hanging with his legs dangling off into space. It was not possible
that he could do this again if he fell to the ground.
That got him back on the ramp, so thoughtlessly nego-
tiated when he could see and think and move without pain. Step by step he
pulled himself aboard, drawing his legs in and lying, sobbing, curled on his
side long after the outer hatch had closed: he had had to stand up to hit the
plate. He would have to stand up again.
So close, he could not falter. He would just ignore the pain, and keep his
eyes closed. So he proceeded into his control room, hugging the metal walls.
When he could lower himself into his seat, he col-
lapsed there. After an interval, a disembodied voice, nagging that there was
something he must do, roused him, and he remembered what it was: time and
course.
He pushed himself forward, and lying across his console, cheek upheld by knobs
and buttons, he tried to read his
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watch. He brought his other hand up where he could see it, when the numerals
became legible to his vision, and went through his program, mumbling the steps
to himself like a rank junior as he punched them in. Finally, salty,
nauseating blood still fouling his mouth and nose, fresh and hot and
revolting, he hit "run" and slumped forward while the multidrive came to life
beneath him- He should have sat back, strapped in, hit the emergency-beacon.
He knew that, but he hurt, and as the fist of acceleration battered him, he
compromised with agony: he passed out.
Shebat saw Chaeron take an update, just as the last course had been cleared
and coffee and brandy set out.
He stopped stirring the lemon peel in his demitasse, star-
ing down into the amber froth as if it held the secrets of the universe, his
dusk-blue eyes unblinking. A shadow appeared at the corner of his lips,
smoothed away. She sought the nature of the message, using her own entree to
his secondary matrix's data-base, but was thwarted by an intelligencers' seal.
She did not backtrack through the sources to find the message-release code.
She simply waited to see what would develop, watching Marada, at
295
EARTH DREAMS
the head of the table, covertly out of the corner of one eye.
This small, intimate dinner could hold no more sur-
prises: in the first ten minutes, the siblings had put forth their positions
so civilly, so offhandedly, that they might have been discussing affairs in
distant consulates whose outcomes were of no import. Here was no animus, no
rancor, none of the rage she had expected. Marada had reiterated his intention
to take Spry back with him.
Chaeron had demurred that it was out of his hands, in the purview of the
arbitrational guild, and that if speed was of the essence, Spry's extradition
might conceivably be hastened by dropping concomitant charges against the [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
