Marek Huberath - Nest of Worlds

“We have to show him where we are, so he can pick us up.”

“Don’t be in a hurry, Throzz. Let’s keep our heads down. Maybe he won’t see us. The sod above us, it’s like a roof.”

Gavein was astonished.

“Wait,” said Saalstein. “And watch.”

The helicopter hovered over the ruins of the DS. Then it circled the volcano’s column of fire and plume of smoke. It was keeping low, to avoid retardation of time, and went lower still. A line of white dots unexpectedly flew from the copter to the ground. The shots couldn’t be heard in the thunder of the volcano.

“What is he doing?!”

“General Thompson is in command. Possibly they saw the body of Aurelia, or someone else’s body.”

I am stupid, stupid, Gavein thought. Only now did he recall the things that were said as they were putting him to sleep on the gurney.

Overhead flew a squadron of combat copters equipped with missile launchers. The craft were flying low, at the altitude of real time; the roar of their rotors could be heard over the volcano.

The two fugitives, under the overhang of sod, were not visible from the air. The squadron executed a model attack, unleashing all its firepower upon what was left of the Division of Science. After completion of this mission, they regrouped, turned above the ocean, and headed back to Davabel. The first copter still hovered, still circled, apparently to oversee and direct.

A second squadron came, then a third, fourth, and fifth. Each raked the area. The reconnaissance copter also fired at chosen targets.

“I wonder if Thompson himself is in that one.”

“Not unlikely. It’s his style. He likes to take part personally. Throzz, bring it down!”

“If only I could…”

“And you call yourself Death?”

“At least I have no qualms about this loot,” said Gavein, patting his belly.

“Doesn’t tickle anymore?”

“I shifted most of it to the back, where I have the skin of an elephant. All those years, you know, of sitting behind a desk…” He stopped. More squadrons were coming from Davabel. The destruction would be methodical. “They’re the same copters. I recognize their markings. They refueled, got more ammo, are going back to work.”

“Thompson is thorough.”

“Sparing nothing to put me out of the way.”

Saalstein nodded.

“Why that masquerade with the tests?” Gavein asked. “They could have killed me in my house.”

“Killing a man in his house… it’s awkward. Particularly a man who is innocent, legally, of any crime. Also, they wanted to understand the phenomenon. At first the tests were genuine, following Siskin’s plan.”

“But then they tried to cut me up alive on the table.”

“They made that decision earlier, when Balakian died. They all switched to Thompson’s plan, wanting to save their sorry asses. Medved’s statistics only added to their fear. Those numbers made an impression. And then, the failed attempts.”

“Attempts? What did you people do?”

“Well, first Winslow was supposed to put alcohol in your IV. Then Chechug was supposed to give you an x-ray dose strong enough to melt a tin can. When that didn’t work, Winslow tried to inject you with cancer cells, except she stuck herself instead, and no doubt is growing something from that, if she’s still alive.”

“Saalstein… Did those dogs do something like that to my wife?” Gavein went pale.

“I never heard anything along those lines. Her illness resulted from a time when no one knew that you were Death. Whatever the guards did to her during her trip from Lavath has nothing to do with us.”

He appeared to be telling the truth.

“Setting all this up for me must have been a ton of work,” Gavein said.

“Meetings that ran for hours: how to do it in such a way that you wouldn’t guess. Votes taken in the middle of the night. Then Lee… He was to hook you up to a high-tension wire, but you got him first.”

“I did nothing.”

“He died; that’s not nothing. And then your dissection was interrupted by an earthquake. You ended up pulling the plug on the division, not the other way around.”

“The volcano pulled the plug, not I.”

“Amounts to the same thing.”

“There was voting, you said. How did you vote?”

“For, of course. It seemed the best line of action.”

“Then why don’t you push me from this hiding place when one of the squadrons is overhead? A blast of machine-gun fire, and that’s the end of me. And Thompson wastes no more of the government’s money.”

“There are three reasons,” said Saalstein after a little thought. “I give them in no particular order. First, you saved my life, pulling me from the rubble. Whereas Thompson and company would have killed me. If not for you, I’d have been blown into little bits by their missiles.” He pointed toward the ruins. “Second, if Thompson’s boys catch sight of you, it won’t end with machine-gun fire. The whole area in the radius of a kilometer will be hit with such a quantity of bombs and rockets that not one molecule of me will be left intact. And third, even if I decided to lay down my life for humanity, I am convinced that I would be the only one to die. You would come out of it in one piece, once again. Death can’t be killed.”

“So you, too, believe that I am Death.”

“It’s not a matter of belief. I’m accepting the simplest explanation of the facts. You are what you are.”

Thompson’s squadrons flew over, one after the other, and pounded the remnants of the DS to even finer dust. As the ruins grew lower to the ground, the volcano emerged more: a lake of flame, still without a crater. From the depths spewed tongues of lava, red-hot boulders flew, and smoke gathered in a dark cloud. The rising cone, Gavein thought, will bury forever what is left of the DS. Several times the copters threw shells so close that he could hear the fragments whiz by, but the hiding place on the slope was never hit.

They waited until evening, though by then the copters hadn’t shown for a couple of hours. Despite the darkness, barely lit by the flashes from the volcano, they had to pick their way past the overhanging sod and slabs of asphalt. Gavein climbed first and helped Saalstein up. At the top, they looked around: the land toward the ocean had sunk several dozen meters with respect to Davabel. They saw rivulets of lava flowing from the volcano’s rising mound. The entire stretch of land was crumpled and cut by a hundred cracks and fissures. Beyond this, hidden by the cliff and darkness, lay the ocean.

It was hard for Gavein to believe that three weeks ago an imposing complex stood here.

They set out toward the skyline of the city, visible in the distance. All around them lay rubble, sections of wall, broken window frames, and other pieces of the buildings that had been leveled in preparation for Gavein’s arrival at the Division of Science.

A thought troubled him.

“Saalstein, do you think the murders of Zef and Laila were part of Thompson’s plan?”

“I know nothing about that, but it wouldn’t surprise me, judging by today’s performance. Maybe Thompson was told some little theory about isolating the contagion of this death.”

“You know something about Ra Mahleiné!” shouted Gavein, grabbing Saalstein by the jacket. “Out with it, you dog, or so help me, I’ll open your head with a rock.

“Easy, Throzz. I know nothing. Yesterday, she was alive. If yesterday was to have been your operation… Carry on like that, and you’ll bring a patrol down on us.”

That worked. Gavein lowered his head and walked quietly.

They passed an area where puffs of steam came from the earth. Again the stink of sulfur dioxide. On the ground were bright efflorescences and small irregular humps like mushrooms or little pegs.