?Because of us,? she said.
Because of Gabe, she meant.
?He thought I was dead, Akin. He panicked.?
?I know.?
?I?ve talked to him. We?ll help you gather people. We?ll go to the villages?alone, with you, or with other constructs. Just tell us what you want us to do.?
His sensory tentacles smoothed again with pleasure. ?Will you let me improve your ability to survive injuries and heal?? he asked. ?Will you let someone correct your Huntington?s disease genetically??
She hesitated. ?The Huntington?s??
?You don?t want to pass that on to your children.?
?But genetic changes
That will mean time with an ooloi. A lot of time.?
?The disease had become active, Tate. It was active when I healed you. I thought perhaps
you had noticed.?
?You mean I?m going to get sick with it? Crazy??
?No. I fixed it again. A temporary fix. The deactivation of a gene that should have been replaced long ago.?
?I
couldn?t have gone through that.?
?The disease may be the reason you fell.?
?Oh my god,? she whispered. ?That?s the way it happened with my mother. She kept falling. And she had
personality changes. And I read that the disease causes brain damage?irreversible
?
?An ooloi can reverse it. It isn?t serious yet, anyway.?
?Any brain damage is serious!?
?It can be repaired.?
She looked at him, clearly wanting to believe.
?You can?t introduce this to the Mars colony. You know you can?t. It would spread through the population in a few generations.?
?I know.?
?You?ll let it be corrected, then??
?Yes.? The word was hardly more than a moving of her lips, but Akin saw it and believed her.
Relieved and surprisingly tired, he drifted off to sleep. With her help and the help of others in Phoenix, he had a chance of making the Mars colony work.
7
When he awoke, the house was aflame.
He thought at first that the sound he heard was rain. The smoke scent forced him to recognize it as fire. There was no one with him. The room was dark, and he had only a stored memory of Macy Wilton sitting beside him, a short, thick gun across his knees. A double-barreled gun of a type Akin had not seen before. He had gotten up and gone to investigate a strange noise just outside the house. Akin replayed his memory of the noise. Even asleep, he had heard what Macy probably had not.
People whispering.
?Don?t pour that there. Throw it against the wall where it will do some good. And throw it on the porch.?
?Shut up. They?re not deaf in there.?
Footsteps, oddly unsteady.
?Go pour some under the mongrel?s window, Babe.?
Footsteps coming closer to Akin?s window?almost stumbling closer. And someone fell. That was the sound Macy heard: a grunt of pain and a body landing heavily.
Akin knew all this as soon as he was fully awake. And he knew the people outside had been drinking. One of them was the man who had wanted to get past Gabe to see Akin.
The other was Neci. She had graduated from attempting mutilation to attempting murder.
What had happened to Macy? Where were Tate and Gabe? How could the fire make so much noise and light and not awaken everyone? It had crept up outside one window now. The windows were high off the ground. The fire he could see must already be eating its way through the wall and floor.
He began to shout Tate?s name, Gabe?s name. He could move a little now, but not enough to make a difference.
No one came.
