Battleground Read online

  “Coming around,” someone said.

  “Hanna?” said Jameson’s voice. “Can you hear me?”

  “Starr . . .” A whisper.

  She sat up slowly. She was sore all over, especially her jaw, which felt like it had taken an efficient left cross. She picked up an image from one of the shadowed figures around her—picked it up from the man’s nervousness at her movement. There had been some kind of fight, she had been at the center of it, had started it, had beaten up somebody in Communications, had finally been overpowered.

  She uttered a soft expletive. The people around her stirred.

  “What happened?” Jameson said, almost casually.

  She turned her head and he was standing there. It was holo, of course. He held Mickey’s hand.

  Something leaped in her chest. Longing shook her; she drank in the sight of her child. She must have made a move to get up and go to him, because Jameson put out a warning hand. She felt, then, the distrust that surrounded her. People were afraid of her. She made herself hold still.

  “Mommy!” said the little boy, laughing with joy, but he didn’t try to run to her either. He knew the difference between reality and holography. Children learned that early.

  “Mickey . . .” Her voice was unsteady. She calmed herself, a tremendous effort. Never mind the people around her. She would do nothing that might frighten Mickey.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “Did I hurt anyone?”

  Jameson answered. “Not seriously.”

  The tension in the room began to ease. She could not take her eyes off Mickey. Her arms ached for him.

  She said slowly, “There was a child, a boy. Only it was like touching the consciousness of an insect. Not even a mammal. More intelligent than an insect, but confined, limited, like being in a box—” She shuddered. “I got it mixed up with Mickey. I had to make sure nobody’d done that to him.”

  “As you see . . .”

  Mickey bounced up and down, steady enough on his feet with a hand to hold. He was happy, his eyes bright. They were not his father’s eyes; they were the eyes of his paternal grandmother, almost black. Hers were dark, Michael had said, she hid things in them.

  “Mommy home?” Mickey asked, the words astonishingly clear. “Mommy someday?”

  “Someday . . .” she said, and pain filled her. He was talking and she was not there to hear him; she had not even known it.

  She found that she was pushing at her hair, a habit almost abandoned. It had been a habit of the ghost.

  Jameson said, “I’m curious as to why this happened. I believe there’s often a kind of emotional backlash when you break from the trance state, yes? But you appeared to be—I’ve seen Communications’ visual log—in some sort of fugue. That’s not usual, unless I’ve misunderstood the process.”

  “You didn’t misunderstand. It’s never happened to me before and I’ve never heard of its happening to another Adept.”

  “A new factor, then. Not just the contact with an alien mind. That’s not new; even these aliens are no longer new to you.”

  He looked down at Mickey, who was watching something outside the holo field; who suddenly laughed, pulled away from Jameson’s hand, and wobbled off toward whatever fine thing beckoned.

  Come back! she wanted to cry out; she leaned toward the image, and felt all the eyes that watched her. She could see Mickey’s nursery suite dimly, like a ghost of itself, and a glow that suggested it was bright with sunshine. Jameson must have gone straight home and commandeered the child as soon as he was notified of Hanna’s outbreak.

  “A new factor. Having a child?” Hanna said.

  “Maybe. That’s about as primal as instinct gets.”

  “I must have thought—oh, that something had been done to the child. Because I know—” Her voice wavered. “Because I know a little boy and he’s not limited at all. He never will be. I won’t let it happen.”

  “Nor will I.” Jameson looked away from her, in the direction Mickey had gone. There was a sudden flurry of unexpected noise: sharp yaps, a shout of laughter from Mickey.

  “You got him a Pup?” Hanna said.

  “Of course not. He’s got a young Dog,” Jameson said, meaning an animal that had not been genetically tailored to remain cuddly all its life. He added, “It’s a Mutt.”

  “Mutts are imports! They cost a fortune!”

  “There is also a Cat.”

  “But you detest Kits—”

  “An infant Cat. An Alley Cat.”

  “Oh, God,” Hanna said.

  • • •

  Hope Metra issued an order that prohibited Hanna from attempting further telepathic contact with the beings of Battleground. Hanna told Jameson about the order, and waited with interest to see how long it would take her director to trump Metra’s commissioner.

  Not “if.” Just how long.

  Jameson had regained the prestige he had lost when he was forced to leave the Coordinating Commission. Alien Relations and Contact had been elevated to department status in the first place because Jameson’s former Commission colleagues did not want him wasted on Heartworld. Under Jameson, the department had gone from being the object of horrified fascination to an object of fascinated respect; it had become a force. Hanna thought negotiations on a compromise might take a day or two, but she was still contemplating her bruises when Jameson contacted her.

  Back to voice only: apparently she was not to see him (or her son) unless she became violent again. It was tempting.

  He told her she was to resume doing what she had been doing. “But with a condition attached,” he added.

  “That being?”

  “Guards. Armed only with stunners, and they’ll be outside the room. No ship’s personnel inside with you, but you can have people from your own team monitoring you, as usual.”

  “I guess the captain doesn’t care if I attack them.”

  Jameson ignored that. “There is some concern about your stability.”

  “When has there not been?”

  “I’ve shared it, from time to time. This could be one of those times.”

  “It was a fluke—I think. There are a great many—I can’t think of them as children, call them the beings’ young—but they’re . . . undifferentiated. A recognizable stratum. It won’t be hard to stay away from them.”

  “Good. How much choice do you exercise in which subjects to observe, by the way?”

  “I’ve been drifting,” she admitted. “Sampling. I don’t know what else to do at this stage.”

  “Can you return to an individual? Do you learn enough about any single personality, know it well enough, to do that? You can do it with human beings you’re familiar with, I know.”

  Hanna thought about it. She was not in a conference room but in her own cabin, lying on her back, waiting for the bruise-absorption compounds to do their job, along with something she had been given to restore a strained muscle or two. She put her arms behind her head and looked up at the plain white ceiling. In the bedchamber she shared with Jameson the ceiling bore a tranquil design in glossy wood. She did not know when she would see it again, feel the downy pillows under her head—feel, above all, those big hands, strength barely restrained, moving slowly across her skin.

  “Could you repeat that?” she said.

  “Aren’t you listening?”

  “I was distracted. Just say again, please.”

  He did. She thought about the questions.

  “I don’t know. They’re individuals, but most don’t have sharp personality profiles,” she said. “Why?”

  “You said you did a certain amount of guidance with one of the subjects—pushed him, I think you said. How far can you go with that?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Use one individual to direct you to another. Leapfrog, so to speak. Do
that until you connect with a pre-selected target. A high-ranking official, perhaps.”

  “I don’t know if they have any ‘high-ranking officials’ as we understand the term. Military authorities, maybe. Religious figures.”

  “Same thing. Can you do that?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “How do you know? Have you tried?”

  He was at his most didactic. All thoughts of eroticism vanished. She said dubiously, “All right. I’ll try.”

  • • •

  Akkt scans monitors all through the long day, a long day indeed, much longer than a Standard day. He looks for anomalies, sometimes corrects errors. At least one other worker has scanned the same data, made some corrections, missed mistakes that Akkt finds. Akkt misses some too; still other workers will scan the data until all the errors are gone. Akkt misses them because he often falls—

  “H’ana?”

  “Um?”

  “What happened? It seemed like you just went to sleep.”

  “Oh. I did. That was the most incredibly boring experience I’ve ever had.”

  • • •

  Twek and Kwrr and the facilitators are mating—

  Hanna broke out of trance quickly, but not quite quickly enough. She looked at Joseph and Bella, the monitors today. She knew what her expression must be. It had been described to her. Smoldering was one word for it. She knew what she was projecting, too, and saw its effect, but she could not seem to stop.

  She smiled at Joseph. He smiled back.

  She smiled at Bella. Bella smiled back.

  Hanna preferred men, unlike Bella. But she had been known to make exceptions.

  Oh, yes! Bella said.

  Hanna thought: Backlash.

  Then she thought: NO.

  There were few absolute prohibitions in the free-floating cloud of D’neeran sexual mores, but NO was unassailable. Joseph’s mouth was nearly on hers, Bella’s fingers reached to caress her hair; both wrenched away abruptly. Their hurt and confusion washed over her. She picked a question from the tangle. She said, “I don’t know why! Just because!”

  Bella, immediately accepting, eyed Joseph; Bella occasionally made exceptions, too. But Joseph’s attention was still fixed on Hanna. He said, “It’s not like you have a vowed bond with that man. What could you have with a true-human anyway?”

  “It’s not because of him,” Hanna answered. She got to her feet. Her legs shook. “But it wasn’t—it didn’t come from me. It’s not me. That’s sufficient. Leave it.”

  They left it, left her; left the room holding hands. She thought for a moment about Michael Kristofik and about Starr Jameson. She said to the silent room, “Those two spoiled me, I think. Spoiled me for uncomplicated pleasures.”

  She let it go and thought about the backlash effect. Something in that brief contact was outside her experience—and there was no one as experienced with aliens as Hanna to go to. She was on her own.

  Almost.

  new, said the ghost. what do we know about instinct?

  oh you’re back. eat, breathe, breed—

  fight, said the ghost, remembering alien blood.

  fear, Hanna said, remembering terrors the ghost had known.

  universal? the ghost wondered.

  so far. here, too, I think. though not fear so far

  but could there, said the ghost, be something else . . . ?

  Hanna was at the door. Her moving hand stopped in the air, but the door opened anyway.

  She said slowly, aloud: “If a nonhuman has a drive that does not parallel any of mine, how in heaven’s name will I know it for what it is?”

  “Are you asking me?” said a flustered voice; she had forgotten the guards, who had not left yet. She didn’t respond, listening to a different voice.

  it’s not what they have. it’s what they don’t, said the ghost. It was said with a lot of conviction, for a ghost.

  is that it

  the mate is not a person. the child is not

  i don’t like these beings

  they won’t care. they can’t

  • • •

  Woort takes inventory.

  One case of vegetable-based protein food. One case of vegetable-based protein food. One case of vegetable-based protein food. One case of electronic wrenches—what is that doing here? One case of vegetable-based protein food—

  “H’ana?”

  “Mmmm?”

  “You fell asleep again.”

  • • •

  INCOMING, INCOMING! IN

  • • •

  “Status, please.” The voice sounded tight.

  “I’m not having any luck with—”

  “I understand one of the beings died while you were in contact.”

  “Oh. That.”

  A silence.

  “Hanna?”

  “Yes. What do you want to know about it?”

  “I want to know”— (with careful patience) —“if the event affected you emotionally.”

  “No.”

  Silence. She didn’t break it because she had nothing to say. When he did, the voice was so controlled as to be expressionless.

  “I’m told your heartbeat spiked and you lost consciousness.”

  “Yes.” She resigned herself; he wasn’t going to give up. “I was out for less than half a minute. The being—I don’t even know if it was male or female—was in a combat situation and under attack. I had barely touched its mind when it died. It did not even have time to know it was going to die. A consciousness was there and then it just . . . wasn’t. Don’t worry. All right?”

  “If you say so.”

  “I say so. And I wouldn’t put the mission at risk by lying about my ability to continue.”

  “My apologies for interrupting. You were saying?”

  “I’ve had no luck re-establishing contact with a previous subject. I don’t know any individual I’ve touched well enough to do it easily, and we’re still a long way out. You know distance is a factor in telepathy, although no one knows why. We’re so far from our own space now, from human space, that I couldn’t even touch your mind—”

  She thought: Or could I? Don’t I know you well enough by now?

  And heard, as distinctly as if he had been in the room: I hoped you did not!

  Such a long silence this time. How strange this transcript would look!

  Hanna was too shaken to speak. She did not reach out again; she had not meant to do what she had done, and if she was shaken, he must be reeling. It was one thing to put up with occasional invasion when you lived with a telepath, but how he must hate it from five hundred light-years away!

  She tried to remember what she had been saying. He remembered before she did.

  “You think the effort to find a known individual is a waste of time, then?”

  Hardly anyone except Hanna would have heard the strain in his voice.

  It was a few seconds before she could respond, but when she did, she thought she sounded normal, too.

  “I do think so. I’ll continue trolling, hoping for a useful contact. Unless you want to abandon this line of inquiry altogether.”

  “No, not yet. You are aware that Endeavor’s initial target position is a point approximately five light-days from Battleground?”

  “Yes. I’ve lost track of our ETA, though.” Endeavor, mapping as she went, might cover light-years with one Jump, but working out calculations for the first transit into unknown space took days, sometimes weeks. Where they would end up if the calculations went wrong was unknown, although one of the other universes—known to exist but inaccessible—was most likely. No probe that disappeared had ever been found or heard from again.

  “You might as well continue until Endeavor reaches the target. The probability curve suggests a period of
two to eight weeks. Of course, that could change.”

  It could change drastically after the next Jump, depending on calculations based on the new position. Hanna shrugged. She imagined him doing the same.

  “Until tomorrow?” she said.

  “Until tomorrow. Endit.”

  No possibility of asking, even if she dared, about the undercurrent to the words that had formed in his mind in that fleeting contact—the surprise that bordered, contrary to anything she might have expected, on pleasure.

  • • •

  She couldn’t have picked a worse time.

  Jameson closed the call, saw the blip of light that meant the transcript was being routed to the dozen people who monitored Hanna’s daily oral reports and theoretically read her written reports as well. He doubted that most of them did all that—he did—and this report would get submerged in all the rest. Even if others thought something was odd about it, no one else could know that she had touched his thoughts, his mind, his self, from that inconceivable distance. Mickey, yes—the child who had grown inside her body, was formed from her flesh. That would surprise no one. With great effort she could, probably, communicate with her own mother, or with another beloved telepath like Iledra, the Lady of Koroth on D’neera. But she should not be able to do it with him, a true-human not of her blood and with virtually no natural bent for telepathy.

  I’m glad she has survived as long as she has so that when she gets back I can kill her, he thought—thought as he went into a meeting with the Commissioners of the Interworld Polity with no time to spare. It was an informal meeting, too, in Peter Struzik’s chambers instead of the elaborate formal hall, so there were no busy aides to provide distraction, no technicians monitoring recordings. And the only two commissioners present in the flesh were his closest friends.

  Andrella Murphy shot him a look as soon as he sank into one of Struzik’s comfortable chairs. Struzik, president of the Commission for almost as long as Murphy had been the commissioner from Willow, saw it and looked narrowly at Jameson too.

  “Don’t ask,” he said.

  The three who only appeared to be present barely looked at him at first; the meeting had been going on for half an hour, and earlier agenda items still occupied them. But Muammed al-Nimeury did take a second look. Jameson nodded to al-Nimeury, so old an enemy that he was almost a friend. Al-Nimeury was far away on Co-op; Jameson wondered where the other two were in reality. Karin Weisz supposedly was on her homeworld, Colony One, and Abel Chu, like Struzik a native of Earth, officially was at least on the same planet as Polity Admin. He was probably, in fact, with Karin, wherever they were, while maintaining the polite fiction that they were professional colleagues only.