`Safe?’ he repeated urgently, trying to raise one hand to emphasize his need to know.
`Yes, of course they are. The most important find ever! The `Dinis are triumphant. Mind you,’ she added swiftly, with a glance over her shoulder, `there’re some who were for blasting `em to space dust but the captain stopped `em. Well, it took you guys long enough!’ she added in a brisk critical tone.
There was movement beyond him, movement and noise and his head began to throb painfully in reaction.
`Gotta get his suit off `im first, a male voice said.
`How’d he get through the port with it on?’ `Never mind. Is Commander Exeter there?’ Gravy asked in a no-nonsense tone. `The man’s badly injured and will need heavy sedation before he can be moved.
Here, Commander,’ and Thian felt in every nerve of his mangled body the reverberation of heavy feet as the medic entered the pod.
Gravy dropped her voice. `He’s been stunned, Ted, with one of the Hiver weapons.
Exeter inhaled sharply. `That’s criminal!’ A second cool spray on Thian’s throat and he thankfully dissolved into a painless world.
He regained consciousness a number of times for very short periods, finding himself immersed in a thick liquid, his head resting on a cradle. Mostly it was pain that woke him but he was immediately medicated and was sent back to sleep. The third, or maybe it was the fourth time, he awoke, the pain wasn’t so intense. And his mother was sitting beside him.
`Ah, Thian, back with us for a bit?’ she asked, her expression loving and yet oddly stern. She smoothed his hair, the silver streak that matched hers, back from his forehead, and, with that tender gesture, the pain was also smoothed from his body.
`Mother?’ `Didn’t you know I’d come if you were hurt?1 Absently, she gathered the long hair that had fallen forward across her shoulder and flicked it to her back.
`You’re improving. No brain damage, no lasting physical damage, though you may twitch occasionally. The worst discomfort will disappear very soon now. You were lucky to get only the fringes of that blast the tunnel as well as the suit protected you from a direct hit. Which you wouldn’t have survived.’ `D’you know who, yet?’ `Lieutenant Greevy said you mentioned an enemy.’ Her lips thinned briefly with displeasure. `D6 you know who?’ `I had suspicions only.
I got resentful sendings, malicious ones, but I could never identify who. I had choice.’ `I must see what I can discover then.
Thian’s reaction was ambivalent.
`The punishment should fit the crime?’ his mother asked, wryly amused at the dominant thought in his mind.
`Well, I know Primes aren’t supposed to be vindictive but…’ he began in a rueful tone, `but I’d sure like to pay back in kind for something like this.’ `Natural enough,) Damia replied neutrally.
`Oh well,’ and Thian found himself forced to rationalize. `He or she was only spouting the usual anti-Talent-privileged position nonsense we’ve all heard from time to time,’ he said, having thought better of inflicting that degree of agony on another human, however misguided. `I suppose me wanting to have the larvae was the last straw!’ `Something like that,’ Damia agreed easily.
The `Dinis were right, Thian mused, humans were soft. `How long have you been here?’ `Three days now. I had to push your father out of the way to come,’ she added with a grin. `But I am your mother and the stronger Talent. He had to admit that I have a special touch for easing pain.’ Her smile was extremely tender but Thian knew she wasn’t thinking of him just then. She stroked his face again, her fingers marvellously gentle and reassuring as she moved down to gently knead muscles in his neck and shoulders. `You were very wise to have contacted Dad. He had me in a capsule and on my way with Fok and Tri before the boarding parties had assembled at the larval combs. I made it eminently clear that no larvae were to be destroyed.
That was my first priority. That was, of course, before I realized I couldn’t “feel” you on the wreck.