into the face of a squat, burly man in an ill-fitting, new shirt and pants that were almost rags.
'Looks like you're going to live,' he said to Blake. Blake rolled onto his back and sat up. 'I'd say so.' 'Your people want you. Big surprise.'
'I'm sure most of your victims have people who want them.'
The man frowned at Blake as though he thought Blake might be making fun of him. Then he gave a loud, braying laugh. 'Most of you walled-in types don't give a piss for each other, Doc. You don't know family like we do. But the hell with that. What I want to know is who else wants you?'
Blake sat up straighter, staring at the man. 'What do you mean?'
The man pushed Blake over gently with his foot. 'Those your own teeth, Doc?'
Blake writhed back into a sitting position. 'Look, I'll tell you what I know. I just wanted to find out what's happened since I've been unconscious.'
'Nothing. Now who else wants you?'
Blake wove a fantasy about Eli's people, made them just another rat pack with ideas no loftier than this one's. Ransom. He said nothing about the disease. There was nothing he could say to a man like this, he realized. Nothing that would not get his teeth kicked in. Or if the man believed him, he might shoot Blake and both girls, then run-on the theory that if he got away fast enough, he could escape the disease. Blake had known men like him before; confronting them with unfamiliar ideas was dangerous even in controlled, hospital surroundings.
He got absolutely no response from the man until he mentioned the mountaintop ranch. The moment he said it, he knew he was talking too much.
'Those people!' the burly man muttered. 'I been planning for a long time to bury them. Maybe not bother to kill them first. Bony, stripped-down models. Shit, you're a doctor. What's the matter with those guys?'
'They never gave me a chance to find out,' Blake lied. 'I think they're taking something.' Drugs. That was something a sewer rat could understand.
'I know they're taking something,' the man said. 'One time I saw a couple of them running down jack rabbits and
eating them. I mean like a coyote or a bobcat, tearing into them before they were all the way dead.' Blake blinked, repelled and amazed. 'You saw them do that?'
'I said I did, didn't I? What have they got, Doc, and what do you think it's worth?' 'I tell you, I don't know. We were prisoners. They didn't tell us anything.'
'You got eyes. What did you see?'
'Dangerous, bone-thin people, faster than average, stronger than average, and close.' 'What close?'
'They give a piss for each other. Listen, who are you, anyway?' 'Badger. I head this family.'
He looked the part. 'Well, Badger, I didn't get the impression these people knew how to forgive or forget. They probably see us as their property. They probably want us back-or maybe they'll settle for a share of our ransom.'
'Share? You've got too much sun, man. Or they have. What are they doing, growing something?' 'I don't know!'
'I gotta know. I gotta find out! Shit, it must be good stuff.'
'They look like a strong wind would blow them away, and you think they have good stuff?'
Badger kicked Blake again, this time less gently. Blake fell over. 'You're a doctor,' Badger said. 'You ought to know! What the hell is it?' Another hard kick.
Through a haze of pain, Blake heard one of the girls scream, heard Badger say, 'Get away from me, cunt!' heard a slap, another scream.
'Listen!' Blake gasped, sitting up. 'Listen, they have a garden!' His head and his side throbbed. What if his ribs were
broken? Meda had said broken bones would be fatal to him now. 'Those people have a big garden,' he said. 'They never really let us see what they grew there. Maybe if you could-'
He was cut off by the crack of a shot. The sound echoed several times into a world that had otherwise gone silent. Another shot. It hit the window near them, somewhere near ceiling level, then ricocheted with an odd whine. More bulletproof glass. A house located where this one was was probably hardened as much as possible against any form of attack.
Someone outside had perhaps seen or heard Blake. Someone outside was either a bad shot trying to kill him or a good shot trying to protect him.
'Shit!' Badger muttered. He turned and ran from the room, slamming the door behind him.
'If we could break the windows,' Keira said when he was gone, 'Eli's people might come in and get us.' And Rane: 'If bullets couldn't break them, we sure can't with our bare hands.'
'But we've got to get out! That guy Badger is crazy. If he kicks Dad's ribs in, Dad will die!'
Blake lay listening to them, thinking he should say something reassuring, but now that the danger was less immediate, he could not make the effort. His side and head were competing with each other to see which could hurt more. He lay still, eyes closed, trying to breathe shallowly. He was desperately afraid one or more ribs were already broken, but he could do nothing. He felt consciousness slipping away again.
'I'm going to try something,' he heard Keira say. 'There's nothing to try,' Rane told her.
'Shut up. Let me do something for a change.' She paused, then spoke in an ordinary voice. 'Eli or whoever's out there, if you can hear me, fire three more times.'
There was nothing.
'What did you expect?' Rane demanded. 'All that stupid talk about seeing in the dark and being able to hear better than other people-'
'Will you shut up!' Keira tried again. 'Eli,' she said, 'maybe we can distract them. We can help you get them. You'll want them now that they've been exposed to the disease. Help us and we can help you.'
More silence.
Keira spoke again softly. 'I'm sorry I had to hit you.' She hesitated. 'But I did have to. You told me I couldn't have you, then you made me choose between the little I could have and my father and sister. What would you have done?' For a long while, there was no sound at all. Then it seemed to Blake in his pain, in his confusion at what he had heard his daughter say, he heard three evenly timed shots.
PART 5: JACOB PAST 23
Meda wanted a girl.
Eli merely wanted Meda to survive and be well. When that was certain, he would concern himself with the child.
He worried about her in spite or his confidence in the organism's ability to keep its hosts alive. This was something new, after all. None of the Ark's crew had been able to have children during the mission. Their anticonception implants had been timed to protect them and had worked in spite of the organism since no doctor had survived to remove them. Before the Ark left, there had been discussion of the unlikely possibility (emphasized by the media and de-emphasized by everyone connected with the program) that the crew might find itself stranded and playing Adams and Eves on some alien world. Thus, the effectiveness of the implants was intended to last only through the time allotted to the mission and the quarantine period scheduled to follow it. In spite of everything, Eli had been pleased to discover that his had worn off right on time.
Another fear played up by the media and down by everyone in the program was the possibility that faster-than-light travel might have some negative effect on conception, pregnancy, and childbirth. The Dana Drive that powered the Ark involved an exotic combination of particle physics and psionics. Parapsychological mumbo jumbo, it had been called when Clay Dana presented it. Even when he was able to prove everything he said, even when others were able to duplicate his work and his results, there were outspoken skeptics. After years of tedious, uncertain observation of so- called psychic phenomena, after years of trickery by 'psychic' charlatans, some scientists in particular found their prejudices too strong to overcome.
But the majority were more Hexible. They accepted Dana's work as proof of the psionic potential-specifically, the psychokinetic potential-of just about everyone. Some saw this potential in military terms-the beginnings of a weapons delivery system as close to teleportation as humanity was likely to come. Others, including Clay Dana himself, saw it as a way to the stars. Clay Dana and his supporters demanded the stars. They had clearly feared turn-of-the-century irrationality-religious overzealousness on one side, destructive hedonism on the other, with both heated by ideological
intolerance and corporate greed. The Dana faction feared humanity would extinguish itself on Earth, the only world in the solar system that could support human life. There were always hints that the Dana people knew more than they were saying about this possibility. But what they said in Congress, in the White House, to the people by way of the media, turned out to be enough-to the amazement of their opposition. The Dana faction won. The Ark program was begun. The first true astronauts-star voyagers-began their training.
Because of the psychokinetic element, a human crew was essential. The Dana drive amplified and directed human psychokinetic ability. Surprisingly, some people had too much psychokinetic potential. These could not be trusted with the drive. They over-controlled it, affected it when they did not intend to, made prototypes of the Clay's Ark 'dance' off course. Only strange, old Clay Dana tested out as having too much ability, yet was able to control his drive with a psionic feather touch. Both Eli and Disa had been able to pilot the prototypes and later the Ark itself. This meant they were psionically ordinary. And for some reason, old Dana had taken a liking to them, though Disa admitted to being a little afraid of him. And what she felt about Dana, was what a lot of people watching their TV walls felt about the Ark crew and backup crew. People were curious, but a little afraid-and envious. Earth was becoming less and less a comfortable place to live. Thus it was necessary that the crew have weaknesses and face serious dangers. People knew children had been born on the moon and in space safely, but the gossip networks with their videophone-in shows and their instant polls, their
