Cordell Scotten - Renegade

As Derec was wrapping SilverSide and Wolruf round and round with rope, Ariel turned back to the aliens in time to hear Sarco say, “Perhaps this gives us a better idea what further menace lies off-world, Miss Ariel Welsh. We resume construction of the node compensator tomorrow morning.”

He had rotated his hook forward as he spoke. Then, as he turned away, a broad green flame a meter long blazed from below his eyes, and he flapped into the air.

The heat from the flame hit her like the breath of a blast furnace.

The alien Synapo stood facing her as his colleague flew off.

When he spoke it was in a fashion that left no doubt as to the temper of his thoughts. The words seemed to modulate the small green flame that flickered below his glaring red eyes, a waxing and waning fluorescence that resonated with the strange buzzing sound it imparted to his words.

“You have violated a trust and humiliated me before the elite, Miss Ariel Welsh.”

And he, too, turned and flapped into the air.

She stood there a long time watching them as they slowly and gracefully circled higher and higher above the dome. The first leveled off and took up a flight pattern around the exact center of the dome. The second, however, continued upward, circling and circling until she lost it in the shimmer of the atmosphere.

Derec had come back to stand beside her, but she had not heard him.

“A setback, surely, but perhaps not a large one,” he said.

Startled, she turned to look at him coldly but said nothing before walking back to the lorry. Jacob was standing at the controls. Mandelbrot, standing between him and SilverSide, had hold of the end of a rope where it trailed away from the coils that encircled SilverSide and pinned his wings to his sides. Wolruf was sitting on the front seat directly behind SilverSide. Derec had unwound her from SilverSide once they thought he was under control.

Ariel climbed slowly in and sat down on the back seat.

Derec climbed in and came back to sit beside her. Jacob drove the lorry onto the road and then headed rapidly down Main Street toward the apartment.

“I warned you about SilverSide,” Derec said. “You knew he could change form. I admit I didn't expect a change at so inauspicious a time. What did the aliens say before they flew off?”

“They were frightened, naturally, and angry. They had no reason to suspect we were going to produce a being in their own image, and twice as big. In their minds, I have betrayed their trust. They said as much. And they will close the dome tomorrow morning,” Ariel said. “Your new protege has just closed this planet to further development. Unless your genius and his remarkable abilities can somehow miraculously arrest the inevitable.”

“You're being sarcastic, my dear,” Derec confirmed.

A couple of intersections passed swiftly behind, and then he said, “But you know we might just pull off that miracle.”

“Fat chance,” she said.

“No. A slim chance, but a chance nonetheless.”

She didn't answer, but got up and went to the front of the lorry to sit on the front seat directly behind Jacob Winterson. Right then, Jacob seemed like the only friend she had. She looked right through him, though, staring into a grim tomorrow and not seeing at all his remarkable musculature.

Wolruf reached over and laid a fat-fingered hand atop Ariel's small hand. Ariel didn't move and hardly noticed. After a moment the hand was withdrawn.

When they got to the apartment, she jumped out before the others and strode off. It was a walking pout, a demonstration for Derec's benefit, and she admitted that with one part of her mind. With the other part, she half expected him to come after her and was disappointed when he didn't. She could now think of several things she wanted to say to him. She returned as Jacob was putting lunch on the table.

After a lunch that tasted like sawdust, she went out on the balcony to get away from the others but took Jacob with her. They sat down on the bench that lined the streetside rail.

“Jacob, did SilverSide give any indication he was going to pull a stunt like that? Where is he, anyway?”

She hadn't thought to ask until that moment. She had wanted to forget about SilverSide, and she had succeeded better than she expected. Her thoughts had been on Aurora. She had felt quite homesick all through lunch, and Derec hadn't helped. He had been just as silent as she. Her walk had cooled her irate thoughts. She didn't feel up to an argument so she kept quiet and ate. Immediately after lunch Derec had jumped up and gone into the small bedroom.

Her feeling of isolation had been intensified not only by Derec's silence, but by Wolruf's silence as well. That, too, had persisted all through lunch. She felt again the soft touch of Wolruf's hand as it came to rest on her hand when they were riding back in the lorry.

“To answer your most immediate question first, Master Derec forced SilverSide to lay on the floor of the small bedroom when we first came in,” Jacob said. “SilverSide had trouble getting through the doorways. He was both taller and wider than the openings. It was difficult for him to bend over and at the same time go through the doorway sideways while wrapped with rope.

“To answer your first question, the wild one, as Mandelbrot calls him-it seems particularly apt-the wild one talked to us briefly, but he gave no indication that a change was imminent.”

“He said nothing unusual, then?” Ariel asked.

“He seems not to know what humans are. This matter of imprinting and changing from one form to another: were you aware that he goes through these changes seeking to find the species he can finally call human?”

“Derec suggested that might be the case.”

“Will he then cease to protect what he considers the lesser species?”

“I presume so. Derec seems to think so.”

“Does that not make him an entity of some danger to humans?”

“It would seem so.”

“Then should he not be deactivated?”

“I hadn't thought so before today. Derec seems to regard him as a valuable experiment that must be protected. And from the brief conversation we had, I suspect he still feels that way.”

“Perhaps you should talk to him again, Miss Ariel. Both Mandelbrot and I are concerned that the wild one may get out of control. We are both perturbed by the First Law, and find it even more difficult to be around the wild one now that he has taken on this new alien form.”

“You're right, Jacob. I should talk to Derec.”

She placed her hand on Jacob's neck and softly traced the muscles as though she were stroking a pet. His concern touched her. It was she he was concerned about. It is difficult for a young woman to ignore such concern when it comes from a warm-skinned being as handsome as Jacob. He was a dear, like a big brother.

That thought confused her. When had she stopped thinking of Jacob as a robot? Her regard for him was sisterly, was it not? It couldn't be anything more than that, surely. In spite of the way Derec ignored her in his interest with the wild one, SilverSide.

Perhaps her own impetuous experiment was getting out of hand. Since Derec had arrived on Oyster World, he had not seemed the dear thing she had dreamed about so intensely.

And Jacob's concern was pleasing, and the feel of his muscular neck was certainly stimulating.

With that wild thought she jerked her hand away, jumped up, walked into the apartment, and threw open the door to the bedroom where Derec had gone immediately after lunch and where Jacob said they were keeping SilverSide.

Derec had removed the rope, and SilverSide was sitting on the floor between twin beds. He was leaning back against the wall and had balled in that curious way the aliens had of reducing their surface area. That decreased his height by half.