His conscious mind knew that he was not in danger. In the oddest
paradox, the flood of pain and the sense of danger existed simultaneously
with a sense of peace, and this he found confusing.
"What . . . what are you doing?" he gasped, alarmed at his own
weakness as they took his arms gently. Tenderly, perhaps. He wanted
to sink back into those sheltering, supporting arms and find peace
and release. Wanted it so abruptly that the very depth of his desire
frightened him. "Stop. I have to report—"
"You must heal," a familiar voice said.
It was the robed X'Ting who had met Sheeka outside her ship.
Yes. The ship. He knew this creature. Where had Jangotat seen him
before . . . ? "Who are you?"
"Call me Brother Fate," he said.
"Where is Sheeka?" Jangotat gasped.
"With her children," the robed X'Ting replied. A burr of other
voices filled the room around him.
"Her . . . children?"
"Yes. She makes her home here, among us."
"Is this where her husband lived?"
"Yes." Brother Fate paused. "Before she left this last time, she
asked us to take special care of her children. I believe she suspected
herself to be in danger." The voice paused again. "It seems she was
correct."
"Yes. But it was . . . in a good cause."
"Yes," the voice said. "So were they all."
"I have to go," Jangotat gasped. "Or at least report."
"Not yet. You will interrupt the healing process. You could die."
"The first duty of a trooper is to protect the safety of the whole. We live
but a few days, the GAR lives on forever..." His mouth seemed to be
moving without his mind being engaged, and in that automatic state
he momentarily seemed his old, fierce self. Then his strength ebbed,
and he sank back down again.
"Forever?" Brother Fate clucked. "You won't last an hour if you
don't stay quiet and let me treat this wound."
Jangotat groaned. Then something minty and cool was pressed
against his nose, and sleep claimed him.
Under ordinary circumstances, the only time Jangotat remembered
his dreams was when sleep-learning vast quantities of tactical data.
Then events in the external world might trigger the memory of an
odd dream or two. Aside from that, nothing.
But then he'd spent his entire life surrounded by troopers and the
tools of war. This place was different. This was all new and unknown.
Here in this alien place the darkness swarmed with odd images: places
he'd never been, people he'd never seen. It was all so strange, and even
while sleeping he seemed to grasp its oddness.
Twice . . . perhaps three times he rose toward the surface of his
mind like a cork bobbing up in an inky sea. Neither time could he see
anything, but once he felt something, as if something heavy and oblong
lay on his chest. When he began to move beneath it, it slithered
away, and once again he slipped from consciousness.
Jangotat awakened from a dream of a rising sun, and once again
felt a squishy, flat weight upon his chest, a resistence against inhalation.
This time, his skin no longer felt tender. It was a rather gauzy
feeling, if that made sense, as if he were filtering all sensation through
some kind of thin filter.
But the weight was there. He moved his hand much more slowly
this time, just a bare centimeter at a time.
Whatever lay on his chest pulsed more rapidly, but didn't move.
His fingertips probed at a solid, but gelatinous mass. Cool, but not
cold. It felt rather like a piece of rubbery fruit. He moved his hands
in both directions. It was about half a meter long, and . . .
But that was all the strength he had. His hands dropped away, arm
gone numb. He tried to call out, to ask someone to remove the thing
from his chest, but some instinct told him that it was this thing that
kept the pain from searing his mind. So he said nothing and settled
back again. Beneath the sheltering bandages his eyes closed, and
then relaxed. There was nothing he could do right now. That much
was true. So he could heal. Would heal, if such capacity remained.
Jangotat remembered the cave debacle. He remembered watching
their recruits scattering, mowed down by the killer droids, captured
by the JKs, or fleeing from the cave to be slain by enemy blasters.
Xutoo had perished in orbit. All right. And men and women who
to repay. And troopers knew how to repay debts. Yes, that was one
thing they understood quite well.
In the darkness, Jangotat s burned mouth twisted into a cold and
lethal smile.
61
Jangotat flowed through endless cycles of sleep and wakefulness.
Sometimes the cool, moist animal was on his chest, and sometimes
not. Sometimes he heard voices and sometimes he didn't.
When he awakened hungry, Jangotat was fed some kind of fruity
mushroom mash. The texture was vile and slippery but the taste was
incredible, fresh, as if made by hand.
From time to time he was massaged, and afterward felt someone
peeling dead flesh away from his back. The hands managing him
were the softest and most caring he had ever known. He was alarmed
to realize that there was a part of him that craved that, loved that, and
wanted more if he could have it.
No. This is not my life. Not a trooper's life...
He could not be certain but it seemed days later when the last twist
of gauze was finally unwrapped from his eyes. He reached up and
gripped his nurse's wrist. A thin wrist, like a stick, really. He could
have snapped the bone with a single wrench. By touch, he knew his
caregiver to be a male X'Ting. Brother Fate. He heard breathing, but
no words. "Where is Sheeka Tull?" he asked.
"Right here," she answered from nearby. He swore that he could
hear the smile in her voice.
Layer upon layer of gauze was unwound, and as it was, light began
to stream into his famished optic nerves. "We've turned the lights
down. Your eyes may still be sensitive."
And so they were. When he opened them slowly, blinking hard,
the light in the room struck like a physical blow.
He held up one hand in front of his eyes.
"Are you all right?"
He blinked and lowered his hand again.
As images began to resolve, he saw he was recuperating in another
of Cestus s endless cave formations. Sheets and blankets covered the
walls, and simple furnishings divided the floor space into living quarters.
There was a fair amount of equipment that he didn't recognize but
guessed to be medical materials of some kind. A makeshift hospital?
"Why did you bring me down here?" Jangotat asked.
The brown-robed ones glanced at each other in amusement.
"Who are you? Are you medics or mentops or something?"
"No, not exactly," Fate said. "It's a little hard to explain." Although
he declined further explanation, Jangotat felt no harm from the
X'Ting, and managed to relax.
"It's time for us to look at those wounds," he said. They helped
Jangotat to a sitting position and peeled away the leaves that had
been placed—
Leaves?
He hadn't looked more closely, merely felt them on his body. What
he had assumed to be cloth was actually some kind of broad, pale,
fleshy thin fungus.
They peeled the fungus away one sheaf at a time. They were dead,
that much was certain. In peeling them away, a thin film of mushroom
remained behind, clinging to his skin.
His skin . . .
The light in the room was dim, but there was enough to look down
at his body. He remembered when the killer droid's blast struck him,
searing away skin. He feared muscle and bone might be damaged
as well. Looking at his body now, he saw a pale shininess between
knee and hip, but nothing else to indicate that a burn had ever existed
at all.
This... this is better than synthflesh, he thought, comparing the fungus
to the healing compound included in ARC first-aid kits. This
discovery would have to go in his report. To see such results from
a healing chamber was one thing entirely. To see its equivalent
achieved with a few leaves was simply astounding. This was X'Ting
biotechnology? Certainly, on the galactic market these plants would
be precious.
Nicos Fate was joined by a human male and an elderly X'Ting
woman, and the three checked him from foot to follicle. Sheeka
At least, he thought she turned her head.
Finally they seemed satisfied with the general trend of his healing,
replaced the bed covers, and turned to Sheeka. "We've done what we
can. Now it's up to you."
And the three physicians filed out of the room, leaving Sheeka and
Jangotat behind.
For a long time Sheeka just looked at him, and then finally she
sighed. "I've endangered these people by bringing you here."
With a groan, he pushed himself up to a seated position. "Then I
should leave."
"It's not as simple as that," she said. "What you've brought to this
planet can't be unbrought."
Jangotat frowned. "I'm sorry things seem to have turned out so
badly."
"I thought," she said, "I really thought I might be able to avoid all
this. That never again would I have to watch people I love die." Her
face twisted with sudden sharp anger.
"You must hate me," he said. "I'm sorry."
Sheeka raised a reasoning hand. "I hate what you represent. I hate
the purpose for which you were made. But you?" She paused before
speaking again, and he filled that pause with a thousand hurtful comments.
I hate you most of all...
But what she said was the one thing he would never have expected.
"I pity you, Jangotat," she said. There was genuine compassion in her
voice. He looked up at her wonderingly, barely comprehending her
words at all.
A day later Sheeka and the insectile Brother Fate took him out of
the cave. This was a simple community, although what exactly they
traded in, he was not certain. Medicines, perhaps? They seemed to
have a fungus for all occasions: some were tough enough for shoe
leather; others said to be edible in a variety of tastes and textures.
Brother Fate pointed out a dozen medicinal varieties. The cave fungi
seemed the center of this village s activity. But was that all there was
to this place? He sensed something more.
"Why are you here?" he asked Brother Fate.
"Everyone needs a hive," the X'Ting said.
"But... I'd heard X'Ting didn't mix much with offworlders."
"No," Brother Fate said. "Strange, is it not? G'Mai Duris is Regent,
but the X'Ting are the lowest of the low."
"The offworlders did that to you, and you help them?"
He shrugged. "My ancestors were healers in the hive. Bring any injury
to us, and we want to heal. It is our instinct, and there are no
limits. Five hundred years of history doesn't change a million years of
evolution."
Jangotat bore in, disbelieving. "You help your oppressors?"
Brother Fate smiled. "No one here ever oppressed me. Many here
ran from Cestus Cybernetics, from the cities, looking for a better
way. How are they different from X'Ting?"
If that was really Brother Fate's attitude, then there was hope for
this planet after all. The X'Ting medications alone were a potential
spice mine.
There was so much to see here, so much that didn't perfectly reflect
his own worldview. There were many children in the community,
so whatever this village was, it was no mere sterile medical
enclave. No.
"I need to communicate to my men," he said to Sheeka on the first
day he was able to walk outside. Well, more accurately, she and
Brother Fate walked while he hobbled along between them. Children
wound their way around them, laughing up at him, aware that
he was an offworlder, certainly, but perhaps not completely understanding
exactly what the term offworlder meant.
"I can't take the risk of a message being intercepted," she said. "But
I'll figure something out."
Although his wounds were healing with abnormal speed, Jangotat's
impatience burgeoned. This was not where he belonged. Not
here in the mountains, where the air was clear and clean, the scenery
lushly beautiful.
This was not where he belonged, although Sheeka's stepchildren
Tonote, Tarl, and Mithail asked him a thousand questions about the
world outside Cestus: "What other planets have you been to?"
"What's the Chancellor like?" "Have you ever seen a Podrace?" He
found to his pleasure that he enjoyed answering them.
This was not his world, although two days after he arrived he was
well enough to be taken to Sheeka's round, neat, thatch-roofed
home.
And there in the house that her dead love Yander had built for her,
he saw another side of the formidable pilot who had saved his life in
the caves. Here he saw an aproned woman managing a houseful of
happy children. She merrily produced great heaps of bread and vegetables
and strange, fishy-tasting fungi. Jangotat liked his fresh steaks
and chops—but had to admit that his belly groaned with satisfaction
from the thick, chewy mushrooms alone.
He inquired about that, and little Mithail said: "The Guides tell us
that—"
Sheeka's soft, warning smile was enough to get the child to be quiet,
and Jangotat noticed that the conversation swiftly and sneakily was
turned to other things, and he was coaxed into discussing battles and
campaigns on far-off worlds. He was amused when childhood imagination
transformed grinding fatigue and constant terror into something
romantic and exciting.
He chuckled, and then let the amusement die, asking himself if he
wouldn't have responded the same way, given the same life and the
same stimuli.
And there at the table, his mouth filled with hot bread, he watched
the siblings' easy camaraderie. Not so different from his own brethren.
Not every clone trooper joke, jest, trick, or game was somehow
related
to the arts of death.
Just 95 percent of them.
Here, there was also farming, and gathering, the setting of traps
and the repulsion of predators. The entire community seemed to be
enthralled with the very process of living. The intensity of the work
seemed joyous, and he could appreciate that as well.
And he wondered . . . what would he have been here?
And the thought was so sudden, and so achingly strong that for a
few moments he stopped chewing, eyes unfocused on the wall,
thoughts previously unknown to him unreeling in his mind.
He turned and looked down at Sheeka's end of the table, and realized
that he was sitting where her former husband might have sat, and
that these might have been his children. Something very like a tide of
sorrow washed over him, one swiftly stemmed, but real nonetheless . . .
This is not my world...
Jangotat was sleeping when Sheeka Tull entered the cave infirmary,
and for this she was glad. Even with the healing fungus, his
body had suffered terrible insult, needing constant monitoring and
care to ensure that no infections set in.
She conferred quietly with Brother Fate, who reassured her that all
would be well.
She left Brother Fate's little cubicle and went back to the sleeping
area, looking down on Jangotat. He slept flat on his back, as Jango
had. His brawny chest rose and fell slowly, and he made the same little
sleep sounds that Jango had once made. That she had grown accustomed
to. That, once upon a time, she had foolishly allowed
herself to hope might be sounds that accompanied her own sleep, all
the days of her life.
She closed her eyes, trying not to think the thoughts tumbling into
her mind. Another chance, she thought. You know what Jango was. You
know how it felt to be with him. You never thought you'd feel love like that
again.
The most devastating male animal she had ever known. Was that
an insult to the memory of her dead husband? Yander had been good,
and kind, and . . .
And not Jango Fett. And now, here was Jangotat...
Another chance.
"No," she whispered. It would be wrong. It would be selfish.
It would be human.
The next day he felt well enough for walking in the hills, and accompanied
burly little stepson Tarl and red-haired stepdaughter
Tonote as they went to check chitlik traps up in the tree-line caves
above their fungus farm. The orange-striped, cave-dwelling marsupials'