Judgment at Proteus

THIRTY-THREE

The victory had been costly. Sixty of our two hundred men and women had been injured, along with nine of Fayr’s thirty commandos. Twenty-one Humans and twelve Bellidos also lay dead. More lives, I reflected bitterly, for me to add to my conscience.

But the lives hadn’t been given in vain. The Shonkla-raa, all of them, were dead.

And the galaxy was once again safe. At least, for now.

“We’ll need to send the defenders back to the Tube as soon as possible,” Bayta said as she and I wearily headed through the now silent tunnel toward the parked vehicles that had brought us here. It was night outside, and I could feel the cool desert air flowing in across our legs. “They’ll be able to organize special transport for the wounded once everyone’s able to travel.” She hesitated. “We’ll need to deal with the bodies, as well.”

“McMicking and Fayr will probably want to handle that personally,” I told her. “They can laser whatever requests they have up to the station, and from there to Earth and whoever’s been backing Fayr’s group.”

“All right.” Bayta paused. “I never thought the Modhri would be willing to do something like that.”

“I was rather surprised myself,” I admitted. “The Modhri as a whole won’t be affected much, of course. But it’s still very impressive that an entire mind segment would be willing to sacrifice himself for us.”

“Because he understood freedom,” she said quietly.

“Yes,” I agreed. “The big question now is whether or not he understands responsibility.”

Bayta hunched her shoulders uncomfortably. “You mean whether he’ll be willing to eliminate the colonies inside people who don’t want them?”

“That’s part of it,” I said. “He may also have trouble with some of his more far-flung mind segments who may resist these changes.”

Bayta gave a small almost-laugh. “You make it sound like he’s heading for a civil war.”

“That is a very weird image, all right,” I agreed. “But it may not be all that far off.”

“He’ll come out of it all right,” Bayta assured me. “And I think he’ll be all right with his colonies, too. Agent Morse is already talking about going back to Yandro to get another colony for himself, and some of the Hardin Industries people were saying the same thing. They seemed to like the kind of instant communication and information access they could get from their symbionts.”

“Their symbionts?” I asked, frowning. “I thought Riijkhan used the older version of Modhran coral on them.”

“He did,” Bayta said. “But Agent Morse’s hybrid colony was able to influence the rest of the mind segment into creating the same relationship with the others that he and his colony already had.”

“I didn’t know a Melding colony was strong enough to do that,” I said. “In that case, scratch my concerns about the far-flung Modhran colonies. That solves a lot of problems right there.”

“Yes,” Bayta said. “I’m mostly relieved that we won’t have to worry about the Elders creating more defenders.”

“Amen to that,” I agreed. “Like I told the Elder at Yandro, I like the Spiders and Quadrail just the way they are.”

“And the Elders, too?” Bayta asked, her voice suddenly a little odd. “Do you like them? Even when they try to kill you?”

I threw a sideways look at her. “What are you talking about?” I asked cautiously.

“You don’t need to deny it,” she said. “I was right there, this afternoon, when you offered to tell Osantra Riijkhan about the Shonkla-raa origins. I saw the reaction of the defenders, moving toward you even though I’d ordered them to stand still. And I also saw they were so intent on silencing you that they continued moving even over the first few seconds of the command tone. That implies whatever you were about to say was a secret they very much wanted kept hidden.”

She took a deep breath. “Which can only mean that it was the Chahwyn. They were the ones who created the first Shonkla-raa.”

I grimaced. So there it was. The Elder had promised me death if I told their secret. And now Bayta knew it. There was no way they weren’t going to jump to the wrong conclusion on that one. “You never heard that,” I told her firmly. “Not from me, not from anyone. You weren’t supposed to ever know that.”

She shook her head. “You’ve trained me too well,” she murmured. “I see things now. I hear things. I understand things.”

“And sometimes all that cleverness is a damn curse,” I said harshly. “If the Chahwyn find out you know—”

“They won’t find out,” she said quietly. “Not until it’s too late for them to do anything.”

I felt my pulse suddenly speed up. “What do you mean, too late? Bayta, you’re not—?” Impulsively, I stopped short and grabbed her shoulders, turning her around to face me. “Bayta, what are you saying?”

“I’m not going back to them,” she said, her eyes smoldering with a cold fire. “They’ve manipulated us, over and over again. They’ve schemed and lied—they’ve especially lied. And now I find out they created not just one, but both of the threats who’ve killed so many people? The threats we’ve been risking our lives all this time to fight?”

“They were forced to create the Modhri,” I reminded her. “As for the Shonkla-raa, it probably seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Bayta said. “I’m tired of it—I’m tired of them. I’m finished, Frank. I want to go someplace where I won’t have to deal with them anymore.”

“Such as?”

“I was thinking about Yandro,” she said. “Most of the Melding is there, or will be soon. They’ll be helping to nurture and teach the Modhran segment-prime. Maybe they can find something I could do to help.”

“Ah,” I said. “I don’t suppose you’d consider coming to Earth instead?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. What would I do on Earth?”

I let go of her shoulders and took her hands. “Be with me,” I said.

She gazed at me, her mouth dropping open a little. “You mean … you still want me with you? Even now that it’s all over?”

“Especially now that it’s all over,” I said. “I don’t have a lot to offer you, Bayta, with the Chahwyn about to cancel my stipend and my handy little first-class Quadrail pass. Maybe I’ll take Hardin up on his offer—he’s obviously got some loose cannons on his payroll, and McMicking can’t smoke out all of them by himself. But whatever I end up doing, I’d like you to be a part of it.”

Her eyes glistened with sudden tears. “Even though I’m not Human?”

“Human and Chahwyn are just labels,” I said. “What’s important is that you’re Bayta. The whole package is the person I’ve been working with.” I braced myself. Two years of fighting and battling and denying even the word, let alone the thought— “The whole package is the one I’ve kind of grown to love.”

It was a long kiss, a deep kiss, a satisfying kiss. And when it ended I felt as if the weight of the universe had finally been lifted from my shoulders.

Because it was finally over. The Shonkla-raa were defeated, the Quadrail wasn’t about to be changed forever for the worse, and the Modhri … the Modhri would find his own way.

From the far end of the tunnel, I heard footsteps approaching. “We’d better go,” I said, taking Bayta’s arm and starting toward the exit again. “Under the circumstances, we probably shouldn’t send Sam and Carl back to the Tube quite as quickly as we’d planned. We don’t want the Chahwyn getting even a hint that we both know their deepest, darkest secret. Not until we’re well beyond their reach.”

“That’s okay—we don’t need the defenders to be physically there,” Bayta assured me. “We can laser up our medical requests, then make any final arrangements in person once we reach the station.” She paused. “And on the way back to Earth…?”

“Yes?” I said cautiously.

“Do you think we could find a dit-rec of Casablanca?” she asked. “I’d really like to hear this story you keep talking about.”