World's End

Page 174

He sat down in his chair, listened to his heart still pounding. The adrenaline was flowing again, with the memories. . . .

The memory of his brothers standing over him as he lay, trying not to weep or moan, while they argued about whether to shoot him again. The memory of HK stealing the watch from his belt pouch before they abandoned him to die. . . . The memory of lying for hours on the floor while nameless, unspeakable things crept unseeing across his face; in too much pain even to move, but exquisitely conscious of every passing second, the blisters rising on his skin, the smell of charred flesh, his life's blood spreading out in a shining lake around him. . . .

Crying out for his brothers, for a passing stranger, for anyone in the universe but Song--

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217

JOAND. VINGE

Song, who stood staring down at him mindlessly, an empty vessel. He had begged her to get help, to find her mother, someone, anyone. But she went no farther than the door; and then returned, to stare down at him again with fathomless eyes, while the hours passed like years.

Until at last he heard a voice calling Song's name; and like a miracle or a hallucination, her face was transformed into the face of her mother. "Hahn," he had gasped out, once, twice; so afraid that she would think he was already dead, and leave him there. . . .

"Gedda!" Hahn cringed away from him, her face stricken--looked at her daughter, back at him, her hands fluttering in the air. "Song! Song--?"

Song's face reappeared, suddenly alive with fury, her eyes spilling over with tears. She began to scream at her

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mother, incoherent accusations and protests. Her voice was an endless outpouring of desolation, sweeping away her mother's words of rising grief and anger. They struggled, hands flailing--fell into each other's arms, weeping, while his vision slowly filled with blood, and they became the voices of ghosts, as he was already a ghost to them.

When he opened his eyes again it was to the perfect whiteness of fields of snow . . . until his vision slowly cleared, and he knew the whiteness for a hospital trauma tank. Somehow they had brought him help, after all

. . . though he knew from the silvery cocoon that surrounded him how close he had come to not needing it.

And then he had remembered why, and known what he had to do. He had dragged himself free of the life support, like a dead man rising from a coffin; bringing medical technicians on the run.

He remembered them staring at him in laughable disbelief as he demanded the time of day, and then a comm link, and an identity scan--