Ammonite

Marghe did not know how to begin to go about explaining Uaithne, and the legend, and the Echraidhe woman’s charismatic madness.

“If there was just a reason. If I could just make sense of it. They rode away laughing. Laughing.”

Marghe wondered if Aoife had been laughing.

The morning in Holme Valley dawned blue and hot. Danner listened to a report from Lu Wai: no contact with Captain White Moon’s party as yet. She told her to keep trying, then checked the temporary quarters and the sled moorings, finding that everything seemed to have held up well in last night’s storm. She found Sara Hiam in the field hospital, taking the equipment through a hypothetical diagnostic run.

Danner watched quietly for a while. The doctor worked steadily, competently. “For a researcher you seem to me to know what you’re doing.”

“The machine does it all.” Hiam hit a couple of studs, watched the display. “You know what the most serious thing is I’ve dealt with in the last six years? Sigrid’s tonsillitis.”

“Did you fix it?”

“Yes. Actually, I did more than fix it. I set up a culture and modified those bacteria so that their RNA couldn’t do anything. Then I reintroduced—Well, it took me two days. And after that, none of us will get tonsillitis again. It seemed more elegant than using drugs.”

“Lu Wai couldn’t have done that.”

Hiam paused. “No. No, I don’t suppose she could.” Her half smile turned to a frown as she looked at an anonymous dispenser on the wall. “Now what do you suppose these are? Ah, skin patches.” She pulled the lever and examined the slippery square that fell into her hand.

Danner smiled to herself and left her to it. The doctor knew much more than she realized, but there was nothing she, Danner, could say to persuade Hiam of that; the doctor would simply have to learn for herself. Just as a young lieutenant had learned how to be a commander.

She returned a sergeant’s salute, feeling good, and headed for the western corrals. She wanted to have a look at the Singing Pasture horses while they were here. Then she would have a word with T’orre Na, or Cassil, about trading for some of them—never too early to think about breeding stock. Perhaps she should have brought along Said, the zoologist. Plenty of time for that. They had reared horses at home; she knew enough to be going on with. Besides, it would be good just to see some horses again, and there was nothing more constructive to be done until they heard back from White Moon.

Her wristcom bleeped. “Danner,” she said cheerfully.

“Hannah, you’d better get here right now.”

“Sara? Is that you?”

“Just get here.” Sara disconnected.

Danner headed back at a run.

From three hundred yards she could see the hospital was a hive of activity: people were climbing out of a newly arrived sled, Hiam had a stretcher by the hatch, and she and Lu Wai and a native—not from Holme Valley, judging by the clothes—were lifting someone onto it. The stretcher hissed over the grass toward the hospital, Hiam and Lu Wai trotting alongside working feverishly to connect drips to each arm, the native keeping one hand on the injured woman’s head. Another stretcher carried a body bag.

Two Mirrors and another native, dressed like the first, climbed down just as Danner got there.

“Officer Twissel reporting, ma’am.”

Chauhan looked dreadful. Danner had seen that look before; shock. “You’re injured, Officer Twissel. You and Officer Chauhan report to the medic…”she stared at the native, “and I’ll be there to talk to you in a moment.” That native, it could not be… “Representative Taishan?”

Marghe nodded.

“With respect, ma’am.” Danner dragged her gaze from the woman in native clothes and back to Twissel. “I can wait half an hour for the medic. The viajera fixed it up. I’m ready to make my report.”

But I don’t want to hear it! Danner wanted to shout. This isn’t possible! But it was, it had happened, someone had destroyed her people, and she had to hear how. She studied Twissel; the Mirror’s face was drawn but her color was good. “Very well. But Chauhan goes to the medics. And we’ll find you a chair.”

Marghe stayed.

Danner listened carefully to the report of the storm, of weapons malfunction, to Twissel’s matter-of-fact recounting of stupidity and heroism, of the unidentified and mutilated bodies. But all the time she listened, her attention kept wandering to the SEC rep, to the missing fingers and scarred face, the bare wrist and strange clothes. What in god’s name had happened to the woman?

Twissel had stopped and was looking at her oddly. “Go on,” Danner said, and forced herself to concentrate on Twissel’s estimate of numbers and speed. Not listening did not make the truth go away: her people, eleven of her people, had been butchered. $he should never have sent them. She should not have split her forces. It was her fault. Her people were dead because she had let them down.