Paul Collins - Earthborn The

"Mira, quiet, girl!"

"Let her have her say," Gillian said impatiently. She knew she'd get more out of the impetuous Mira than the level-headed Patrick.

"The fool girl's got a fierce tongue on her—" Patrick began, but a new voice interrupted him.

A voice they all knew.

It chilled the blood in Gillian's veins. It made Welkin feel suddenly light-headed, and he might have reeled giddily if it hadn't been for the water he had just splashed over his face.

Sarah rose out of the bracken several yards away and brushed herself down amid a cloud of dust and chaff.

"Sis?" Gillian said doubtfully. "I don't believe—"

Sarah strode forward and threw her arms around Gillian and hugged her tightly. Within seconds they were both crying. "It's all right. Everything's all right."

"Sarah—why? When?"

"It had to be. I'll explain it all. Just hold me."

Gillian let the tears come. Her body shook, and within seconds she was sobbing as no one had ever seen her sob before.

"I thought you were . . . dead!"

"Everyone did." Sarah stroked Gillian's hair. "That's what I needed them to think," she said.

The five of them stood like that for some time: Sarah gently swaying with Gillian, Patrick and Mira exchanging sheepish looks, and Welkin's mind going through all the implications of Sarah being alive. And healthy! The wasting disease had vanished as though it had never existed. Conflicting thoughts fought for understanding. How could she possibly have conquered the cancer that seemed to be destroying her? Or maybe she'd shammed the cancer and not eaten for two months to mislead everyone into believing she was dying?

And the O'Shannesseys. Where did they fit into all this? Why had Sarah chosen them as her confidants?

The sheer scope of Sarah's duplicity was beyond Welkin's comprehension. He was still a kid after all, he reminded himself. He held off saying anything until at last Sarah pulled back from Gillian and wiped the tears from her face.

"You've been patient, Welkin. Thanks for that," Sarah said as she retrieved her laserlite from the grass. "But we should talk on the move. We need to reach Elab before it's too late."

"Too late for what?" Welkin asked suspiciously. "Just what's going on, Sarah?"

"I'm not really sure," she confessed. "It's a long, long story."

"And we've got a day or two, I reckon," Welkin reminded her. "Maybe start at A and work your way through to Z?"

Gillian looked sharply at Welkin and realized that under normal circumstances Welkin would never have addressed Sarah in that manner. But right now, it seemed reasonable.

"First up," Welkin forged ahead, "does Elab know you're still alive? And the others?"

Sarah looked sharply at Gillian. "No, Welkin. No one but Patrick and Mira." Sarah sighed wearily.

Most of her major plans had their flaws, but most of the time they achieved their purpose. This one hadn't managed even to get off the ground. She knew why, of course. She'd been battling her own sister—a piece of her that was younger and less experienced but every bit as cocky as the older sister. How could she best a younger, more resilient version of herself? It was a part of the equation that she hadn't even taken into her calculations. Silly, silly woman, she chided herself.

"I guess all this began way back when Patrick and Mira told me that Bruick had done a deal with Colony for the longevity drug."

"You knew and didn't let on," Welkin said, disbelieving.

"Let me finish," Sarah said. "Then you might begin to understand. Anyway, all his other crimes combined couldn't equal this one. It was treason—the betrayal of all the Earthborn. I knew the family would never sanction an attack on the Stockade, and I wouldn't have wanted so many deaths on my hands, anyway. No, it was far easier for me to go it alone in a more clandestine manner. But then I got sick, so sick I thought I was going to die. My mind made up, I sought the help of Patrick and Mira. Then something really strange happened. After a week of living in the bush, I started feeling better."

"She was being poisoned," Mira cut in. "Probably a Bruick plant—"

"Poisoned!" Gillian echoed.

"Forget it," Sarah said. "We don't know for sure. But anyway, it changed my mind about my future. I made other plans."

"The three of us might have got away with it," Patrick added.

"But things got complicated," Sarah continued. She ruffled Gillian's short-cropped hair. "It was no one's fault."

"But if you'd only trusted me. —" Gillian blurted.

"—you would have still insisted on coming, and I couldn't have allowed that," Sarah cut in.

"Why not?"

Sarah searched the slate-gray sky for answers. "Simply because the family needs you. And will need you for many years to come, Gillian. It needs the Skyborn, too. You've got to understand these things.

Sometimes I feel so damnably old."

"So it was your sister's intention to even the sides a wee bit. Get rid of Bruick for starters," Patrick said, summing up Sarah's plans. "We had hoped to give you the slip and adjust our plans accordingly."

"But you're every bit as determined as your sister," Sarah said fondly to Gillian. She looked over to Welkin who was trying to keep up with all these revelations. "I saw Welkin at the Stockade and prayed for him to go off someplace so I could maybe rescue something of my plans." She laughed at Welkin's reaction. "It was sheer vanity on my part, Welkin. I wanted so desperately to help you, to be with you, rope you in, but I couldn't bring myself to drag anyone else into this. It was bad enough that Patrick and Mira would have . . . well, maybe gone down with me. Since I thought I hadn't long to live, laying my life on the line wasn't such a big deal."

Welkin turned to the O'Shannesseys. "And what's your stake in all this?" Envy and jealousy were bubbling inside him like lava.

"That be none of your business," Mira said curtly.

Sarah held her hand up to quell what might become dissension. "Mira has her reasons." She smiled briefly. "It's a personal thing, Welkin, to do with Bruick's past. . . crimes. Best left alone."

"So you didn't figure on Elab and the others leaving camp to search for the Colony renegades?"

Welkin prompted.

Sarah shook her head distractedly. "Now that really threw me. The last thing I wanted was for Elab to take off on a wild goose chase. I could've cried when Patrick and Mira told me about it." She cleared her voice. "There was just nothing I could do to prevent it."

"Would anything have changed your plans?" Gillian asked in a challenging voice that Sarah instantly recognized as so like her own.

"I don't know," she replied honestly. She eyed Gillian and the others speculatively. "It's hard to know what to do sometimes, Gillian. Go with the flow—fight against it..." She put her arm around Gillian's shoulders. "I have a hunch we'll know how all this is going to turn out soon enough."

It took the best part of the next day and night for Gillian to come around to Sarah's way of thinking.

At times, as she watched Sarah organize a rope across a swollen stream, or direct them to higher ground that might cost them time yet afford them shelter beneath broad belts of eucalypti, her resentment slowly abated. It came as a shock to her to realize how angry she'd been at being abandoned. It seemed to have awakened some long-lost feeling of terror that she couldn't even begin to explain. And anger had helped her shut the door on that dreadful feeling.

But if it was on Gillian's mind to apologize for her earlier behavior, the gunfire they heard pushed it to the back of her mind.

They were less than a mile from what Sarah's old map described as "The Falls" when the dull flashes of ballistic fire dotted the night. The steady drizzle that hadn't abated for the past few hours did nothing to dampen those sharp reports.