F. Wilson - An Enemy of the State

And then there was the feeling that LaNague was maneuvering him toward something. It was all so subtle that he had no idea in which direction he was being nudged…but he felt the nudge. If LaNague was in such complete control of everything, why was he spending so much time with Broohnin? What did he have in mind for him?

“Mr. LaNague awaits you at the flitter dock.”

Broohnin spun sharply at the sound of the voice behind him. It was the same female guard who had led him out. “Something wrong?” she asked. He ignored her and began walking toward the dock.

“You'll be taking the Penton amp; Blake back alone,” LaNague told him.

Broohnin was immediately suspicious. “What about you?”

“I'm taking the Adzel back to Tolive. I've business to attend to there before I return to Throne.”

Both men sat staring out the view wall of the Bernardo de la Paz way station as the globe of Earth passed above them. LaNague had retrieved his tree from the quarantine section and sat with it on his lap. “And what am I to do until then?”

“You'll be contacted shortly after your return.”

“By Flinters?”

LaNague smiled at Broohnin's concern, but it was not a jeering grimace. He seemed relaxed, at ease, almost likable. The thought of returning to his home world seemed to have changed him into a different person.

“Flinters make up only a small part of my force on Throne. And they must stay out of sight.” He turned toward Broohnin and spoke in a low voice. “Have you ever heard of Robin Hood?”

“Does he live in Primus City?”

LaNague's laughter was gentle and full of good humor. “In a way, yes! You'll become intimate friends, I think. And if all goes well, people will come to think of you and he as one and the same.”

“What's that supposed to mean?” Broohnin found this new, easygoing side of LaNague disconcerting, and harder to deal with than the dour, reserved, omniscient conspiratorial mastermind he had been traveling with since their departure from Throne. Which was real?

“All in good time.” He rose to his feet. “My ship leaves before yours. Have a good trip. I'll see you again on Throne.”

Broohnin watched the Tolivian stroll away with his damned tree under his arm. It was obvious that LaNague thought he was going to use him. That was okay. Broohnin would be quite happy to play along for a while and wait for his chance. He'd let LaNague live as long as he was useful. When the time was right, Broohnin would step in and take over again. And then he would settle with LaNague once and for all.

The first time had been a frantic headlong dive to ease a mutual hunger of desperate dimensions, begun and ended so quickly that it had already become a dim memory. The second was more exploratory, a fruitful search for familiar responses, familiar patterns of give and take. And the third was a loving, leisurely welcome home that left them both drained and content.

“Been too long, Peter,” Mora said.

“Much.”

They huddled in deep-breathing silence for a while, then Peter spoke. “You haven't asked me about the trip.”

“I know. I thought it could wait.”

“Afraid we'd fight again?”

Peter could feel her head nodding in the dark next to him. “I was sure of it. With the new year beginning, I wanted us to enter it in arms instead of at arms.”

He smiled and held his wife closer. “Well, it's here and so are we. And this is the only way to start a new year.”

“You were gone when the Year of the Tortoise began. That was a lonely time. And you won't be here for the Year of the Malak either.”

“But I'm here now and we can discuss the rest in the morning. No talk now.”

Mora fell asleep first, her head on his shoulder. Peter, despite his fatigue, lay awake awhile longer, listening to the rumble of the storm-whipped surf outside. It was so good to be home. So comfortable. So safe. He knew he could not bring himself to leave again. Let someone else take care of things on Throne from now on. He'd had enough. Next Year Day and every other day in between would find him here in his little house on the dunes. Then the dream would stop.

That decision made, he drifted off to sleep.

The first one was a woman. She slipped through the open bedroom door and slinked across the room toward the bed, a large cloth-wrapped bundle in her arms. After peering carefully at his face to be sure that it was him, her eyes lit with maniacal rage and she dumped the contents of her bundle over him. Thousands of orange and white Imperial mark notes fell like a poisonous snow. She turned and called soundlessly over her shoulder, and soon a steady stream of strangers trailed through the door, all with hate-filled eyes, all with bundles and bushels of mark notes that they emptied over him. He could only move his head back and forth. Mora was gone. He had been left alone to face this silent, murderous crowd. And still they came, and the pile of mark notes covered his face, and he could no longer breathe, and he was dying, dying, suffocated by Imperial marks …

Peter awoke in a sitting position, drenched with sweat. It had happened again. The dream had pursued him across half of Occupied Space. That did it. He was through.

“COME on , DADDY! Hurry, please!”

Children, he thought, trudging up the celadon dune in the wake of his seven-year-old daughter. You go away for a year and a half and you don't recognize them when you come back, they've grown so. And they're a little shy with you at first. But by the next day, they treat you like you were never away.

“I'm coming, Laina.” She stood at the top of the dune, slim and sleek and straight and fair, staring seaward, her blond hair streaming in the stiff onshore breeze. Something began to squeeze his larynx and knot the muscles of his jaw as he watched her. She's growing up without me . He continued up the dune, not daring to stop.

The wind slapped at him when he reached the top. The weather did nothing to lighten his mood…one of those gray days with a slippery slate sky dissolving into a molten lead sea, small white clouds like steam obscuring the junction. Another two steps and he could see the beach: Laina hadn't been exaggerating.

“Daddy, it's really a malak, isn't it?”

“So it is!” Peter muttered, staring at the huge blunt-headed mass of fish flesh, inert and lifeless on the sand near the high water mark. “Last time this happened was when I was about your age. Must be at least thirty meters long! Let's go down for a closer look.”

As Laina leaped to run down the dune, Peter scooped her up and swung her to her shoulders, her bare legs straddling the back of his neck. She liked to ride up there-at least she had before he left-and he liked the contact. Needed it.

Sea wind buffeted their ears and salt mist stung their eyes as they approached the decaying form.

“A sieve malak, leviathan class,” he told her, then sniffed the air. “And starting to stink already. Before they were all killed off, there used to be creatures like this on Earth called baleen whales. But whales weren't fish. Our malaks are true fish.”

Laina was almost speechless with awe at the immensity of the creature. “It's so big! What killed it?”

“Could've died of old age out at sea and drifted in, but I don't see much evidence of the scavengers having been at it. Probably got confused by the storm last night and wound up beached. I read somewhere that all the insides get crushed when a malak is beached…killed by its own weight.”