Charles Ingrid - marked man 02 The Last Recall (28 page)

"Yes. You suggested a week or so ago that one ought to meet when you presented your report on the Vaults. Didn't you? That's scheduled for tomorrow."

He now had an idea why she'd kept him bottled up all day with paperwork. He closed his mouth at her audacity as she returned to the writing desk. Then, grudgingly, "I've been set up."

Lady replaced her ink pen in its holder and capped the inkwell. She gave him a dazzling smile. "Don't fuss, Thomas. In the words of the immortal bard—at least, I think it was him—-united we stand, divided we fall."

Alma's footsteps hesitated on the alleyway, the soles of her shoes catching on a pebble, throwing her off stride. Her shopping bags fell from her hand. She leaned against the back wall of the bakery, her senses filled with the overwhelming smell of yeast and dough as it rose for the evening's late baking. She felt a hundred years old. The building's solid warmth felt comforting as it braced her. If she hurried, she could catch the dinner hour cart up to the Warden compound, but her body betrayed her. She couldn't move another step if she had to.

A dull throbbing pain rose in her ankle. She bent over and ran her hand over the joint. Already it was swollen and the pain, though not sharp, was constant. Hot tears filled her eyes. She blinked them away. It served her right. She would be skulking down alleys when there was a perfectly good main street, with sidewalks and gutters, she could be using. But she hadn't felt up to the jostle of the foot traffic, the stares of folk as they recognized her—the pity she thought she saw in their eyes.

A divorced woman. Not proven fertile. The hope of the Seven Counties, and there she was, scarcely seventeen years, and barren. That's why he left her, you know.

Oh, God, she thought, straightening up and clinging to the corner of the building as if it could save her. What would they think if she'd told all that had happened to her? She shuddered so violently she had to catch her balance to stay on her feet.

"Alma—are you all right?"

She jumped with a half-scream. She caught herself with a hand to her mouth, stifling her startlement. Drakkar retrieved the fallen shopping bags in a fluid stoop. He handed them to her.

"I didn't mean to frighten you."

Her heart pounded in her chest. Her ears rang with her pulse. Vomit pushed up the back of her throat with the suddenness of her fear. She took a deep breath and backed away a step before he could touch her. She couldn't stand the thought of—anyone—touching her. "I'm fine. I just . . . gave my ankle a wrench."

"What are you doing back here?"

"Taking a shortcut to the cart stop." Alma gathered her nerve to brush past him. "I'm in a hurry, Drakkar."

He caught her by the elbow. His deep blue eyes reflected an unfamiliar emotion as he looked at her. He did not let her go even though she tried to free herself.

"I'll be late."

"I'll take you up later if you want. Alma, you don't belong in the shadows."

Those tears sprang up again. Damn her, what was wrong with her eyes. The DWP should declare her another water source! She blinked furiously. "I'm not in the shadows, I'm in a hurry."

He let go of her arm abruptly. "Then go. You're free. Free of Stefan and free of me. But you remind me of a hunting bird I had once. A red-tailed hawk. When I left boyhood and became a man, Micah presented me with a falcon, more befitting my status. I couldn't stand the thought of anyone else flying my little hawk, though, so I freed it. It didn't know what to do when the gear came off. It stayed to its perch. We tried to shoo it away and it came back. It didn't seem to comprehend its freedom."

Alma felt her cheeks grow warm. She looked down the tunnel of alleyway, toward the streets she'd avoided, wondering if she could bolt away from Drakkar, and knowing she couldn't. Reluctantly, she asked, "What happened?"

"It nearly starved to death. The falconer wouldn't feed it. We hoped it would leave in search of game. Finally, one day, I took it out. My beauty was so weak, I had lost all hope for its survival. Then, on a butte overlooking the dry wells, with the sun so low in the sky I couldn't see the horizon, I flew it one last time. The effort, I thought, would kill it painlessly. I had to cast it into the air with all my might to get it to leave me."

He looked at her then, keenly, and she found it hard to swallow. "And then?" she said.

"And then another red-tailed hawk flew overhead. They circled a moment, and I could tell the other hawk was a potential mate, and luring it away from me. I whistled for my bird, trying to recall it in spite of my original intentions. It never faltered. It never came back." Drakkar sighed abruptly. "Meaning, I suppose, that love and the mating instinct is even stronger than that for food, at least in red-tailed hawks. My little hawk had traded its love for me for a greater freedom and a greater love."

A dizziness swept her. She shifted weight to keep her balance. She felt Drakkar's presence suddenly overwhelm her. Alma cleared her throat. "A pretty story," she said.

"One with a moral. Take your freedom, Alma. You'll never know what is waiting for you out there if you don't."

A bell rang out, signaling the arrival of the transport cart. Biting her lip against a stab of pain from her ankle, she launched herself down the alleyway, calling back to Drakkar, "I know there won't be a cart waiting for me if I don't hurry!" She ran awkwardly, shopping bags hitting her skirts, and feeling his unrelenting stare after her.

Drakkar stared for long moments after she'd been gone from his sight. He found it difficult to believe he'd ridden nearly two weeks with her, unaware of who she really was. She radiated a sexuality now that was like a heady perfume, alerting all his senses, and it was totally unconscious on her part. Her short cropped hair had filled out, now cupping her head with its dark, curled beauty. Her eyes had looked as large as pigeon eggs, he thought, and chided himself for startling her. He moved his head, felt his feathered crest brush his shoulders.
I am a hawk, circling you. Will you have the strength to see and fly away with me?

Drakkar took a deep breath. He had other business in town. Shankar showed signs of being involved in some most unambassadorial activities. One of his guard had passed him the word that he'd located what he thought was a private cote, used by Shankar to house the pigeons carrying messages he did not wish Drakkar to see.

Drakkar was not a blind man. Shankar acted in his own behalf as often as he acted in that of the Mojave. His father was not pleased. Perhaps, and Drakkar stirred himself into action, he could find a way to make his father happier. It was always wisest to nip revolutions in the bud.

He kept to the alleyways, following his guard's directions.

"Do you like it?" the clean said, smoothing down the front of his caftan. A violent wind shook the chieftain's quarters. It had been blowing steadily all day and might well for weeks.

Ketchum stared. The black robes had been hand painted by some of the finest nester artists. Fetishes were hand stitched to the patterns, along with beads and pyrite flakes and quartz gems. He thought privately that the fetishes would take a great deal of trouble to keep fresh and potent, and that the robe would be difficult to ride in. But he said only, "It reflects your power, Dean."

"As well it should." The man held up a shield of polished metal, scavenged off the hood of a truly old vehicle, an item of inestimable value in itself. It reflected his image adequately. The violent dip of one cheekbone, the ruined bridge of his nose, the mottled bruising now faded to a light shadow, he regarded those imperfections as he would a warp in the hood's surface rather than his true reflection. "As the clans pledge their allegiance to me, the decoration will be increased." He picked a stray bit of feather off the black cloth.

The tracker more and more did not approve of this man. He could not understand why the Shastra had brought him to them, or why it did not bring the man down when its power had been usurped. The Shastra was shy with its powers, not often seen. In Ketchum's own lifetime, the beast had only been seen twice, both times during forest fire, appearing and then leading clans to safety. The shamen claimed to speak with the beast, but Ketchum thought privately that that was more a rattle of bone and seed than speech. As for himself, he had seen the beast once, the night he had ridden to bring the dean his box of lights. He would have followed the beast, but something had not been quite right about its appearance—it had not come to him, he'd decided, and therefore he would not follow. Finding the dean wounded had settled the matter. He would put more store in the sha-men had one of them had been able to tell him he would be seeing the Shastra while doing the duty they claimed the Shastra had sent him on, but none of them had predicted that happening that night.

Privately, he wondered if perhaps the Shastra had not taken its anger out on the dean rather than one of the Protector's riders, as the dean had claimed. But signs in the camp did not uphold his theory. If anything, it indicated that the Shastra had followed the dean's attacker. Rather than dismiss the idea, Ketchum merely put it aside, waiting for the day when the Shastra would deal with the dean chieftain. It was the main reason he stayed.

The dean looked up at him suddenly. ' 'As soon as the wind dies down," he said, "we'll have a landing time."

Ketchum could not comprehend a machine that stayed in the air, circling the earth. But he'd been told by those in a position to know that such machines had existed and might still exist. He did not allow his skepticism to surface. "Give us three travel days," he reminded.

"If I can. If not, we'll have to run the horses to death and go from there. I
will
not be late for their return. Do you understand me?''

Running a horse to death would not accomplish the clean's desires, but Ketchum only inclined his chin as if in agreement. The wind spoke to him as it snapped tent ropes, making them sing quivering notes, while branches rattled and dust peppered the hides of those unwary enough to be outside. The wind would stop blowing when ii willed. It would take a prophet to know when that would be. It would take a prophet to keep the dean from being late.

But Ketchum did not believe in prophets and kept his tongue silent because the dean did.

The plot room on the
Challenger
was empty except for Sun and Dusty. Dakin rubbed his eyes. He'd gotten lined in the last eight years, she thought. She pushed away the remnants of a birthday cake—hers—she'd celebrated two actual years of wakefulness, making her all of the ancient age of twenty-seven. She slouched back in her chair and waited for him to speak.

At last he tapped a fingernail on his folder. "It's not pretty," he said.

She looked at the surveillance file. Most of the personnel aboard the ship had been banned from the surveys. After what happened to the
Maggie,
Dakin wanted no talk, or even thought, of mass suicide, no matter what they faced on the earth below. Without thinking further, she reached for the folder. Her sister had been in Pasadena, near the JPL facility. Silent, all these years, in spite of what they'd been molded for and promised.

Dakin let her slide the folder from under his slender hand. She opened it and hunched over it on the table top.

Dusty looked at it and felt as though she'd gone blind. She stared a moment, then looked up at her commander.' 'I don't understand."

Dakin reached out and shuffled photos. "Look at the computer enhancements and reproductions. They're better."

An auburn hair drifted down from her shoulder and lay curled across the photo, a crimson line across an aching crater. "What is it?"

"Four strikes. Meteors of incredible size. Two in North America, one in Asia, and one in Europe. We guessed as much from the probe Chandler sent out, now we know. The dust cloud raised must have shrouded the earth for nearly a century.''

She stared at a landscape that reminded her of early lunar photos. "This. ..." her throat felt dry. She tried to swallow. "This is the farmbelt. Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, Illinois. ..."

"A dust bowl. The Mississippi runs through mudflats. The wind has stripped away most of the topsoil. It could be reclaimed, now, if there were enough people with know-how. But the people are gone, too."

"Animal life?"

"Some. Mainly close to the riverbanks. Vegetation and trees on the fringe areas."

Her hands were shaking. "California. What about California?''

He guided her to the photo. "The strike was in Nevada, but there was a—a bounce, I think you'd call it— in the L.A. basin."

Her sister, dead. Not silent all these years, but dead. Dusty put her hand to her mouth and felt sundered. Alone for the first time since her birth. She sensed, rather than felt, Dakin's hand sheltering hers.

"You knew it. You had to have known it."

"I thought. ..." Dusty choked. "There was a bunker. Another lab below. I hoped, maybe . . . God," and she rocked in her chair. "I don't know what I thought." She caught her breath. "All those people, dead."

"Actually, Peg was right. They might have made it, even with the dust, but there were some nuclear strikes in the third world, accidents probably, set off during famine rioting—and then there was all the pollution and no longer the technology to continue cleaning it up. We'd made a start. We just weren't around to finish it up." He moved his hand. "We've got everyone covered, all the land masses." He started shuffling out photos, but Dusty put her hand over her face.