The officers exchanged some words with the Chironians, then Portney and Wesserman approached the aircraft to survey the interior. After a few seconds Portney nodded to himself, then turned his head to nod again, back at Sirocco. Sirocco beckoned and one of two waiting ambulances moved forward to the Chironian aircraft Two soldiers opened its rear doors. Four others climbed inside the aircraft and began• moving bodies. As each body bag was brought out, Sirocco turned the top back briefly while an aide compared the face to pictures on a compack screen and another checked dogtag numbers against a list he was holding, after which the corpse was transferred to the ambulance.
Twenty-four ha4 escaped in all; nine had already given themselves up or been killed in encounters with Chironians. Anita had not been among them. Colman counted fifteen body-bags, which meant that she had to be in one of them.
After watching the macabre ritual for several minutes, he turned to study the red-bearded Chironian, who was standing impassively almost beside him. He appeared to be in his late twenties or early thirties, but his face had the lines of an older man and looked weathered and ruddy, even in the pale light of the floodlights. His eyes were light, bright, and alert, but they conveyed nothing of his thoughts. “How did it happen?” Colman murmured in a low voice, moving a pace nearer.
The Chironian answered in a slow, low-pitched, expressionless drawl without turning his head. “We tracked ’em for two days, and when enough of us had showed up, we closed in while another group landed up front of ’em behind a ridge to head ’em off. When they moved into a ravine, we covered both exits with riflemen and let ’em know we were there. Gave ’em every chance . said if they came on out quiet, all we’d do was turn ’em in.” The Chironian inclined his head briefly and sighed. “Guess some people never learn when to quit,”
At that moment Sirocco turned back another flap; Col~ man saw Anita’s face inside the bag. It was white, like marble, and waxy. He swallowed and stared woodenly. The Chironian’s eyes flickered briefly across his face. “Someone you knew?’
Colman nodded tightly. “A while back now, but…”
The Chironian studied him for a second or two longer, then grunted softly at the back of his throat somewhere. “We didn’t do that,” he said. “After we told ’em they were cooped up, some of ’em started shooting. Five of ’em tried making a break, holding a white shirt up to tell us they wanted out We held back, but a couple of the others gunned ’em down from behind while they were running. She was one of those five.” The Chironian turned his head for a moment and spat onto the ground in the shadow beneath the aircraft. “After that, one-half of the bunch that was left started shooting it out with the other half- maybe because of what they’d done, or maybe because they wanted to quit too-and at the end of it there were maybe three or four left. We hadn’t done a thing. Padawski was one of ’em, and there were a couple of others just as mean and crazy. Didn’t leave us with too much of a problem.”
Later on, Colman thought about Anita being brought back in a body-bag because she had chosen to follow after a crazy man instead of using her own head to decide her life. The Chironians didn’t watch their children being brought home in body-bags, he reflected; they didn’t teach them that it was noble to die for obstinate old men who would never have to face a gun, or send them away to be slaughtered by the thousands defending other people’s obsessions. The Chironians didn’t fight that way.
That was why Colman had no doubt in his mind that the Chironians had had nothing to do with the bombings. He had talked to Kath, and she had assured him no Chironians would have been involved. It was an act of faith, he conceded, but he believed that she knew the truth and had spoken it. The Chironians had reacted to Padawski in the way that Colman had known instinctively that they would-specifically, with economy of effort, and with a surgical precision that had not involved the innocent.