Xi approached him, gave him a shove tomove him out of the way and then took his place.
The sign of aggression unnerved Ultimaa little.
Not that it was really excessive, butshe’d thought they lacked the sort of aggression common tohumans.
The question was, where had come from?Was it theirs? Or was it because of the cyborgs they’d had takenover?
It couldn’t be of human originsbecause he hadn’t downloaded the data yet.
They were warriors, though, shereminded herself.
They had been sent, according to Tau,to take the one they referred to as the traitor. And that couldonly mean that they were capable of violence andaggression.
They certainly wouldn’t stand asnowball’s chance in hell of taking the bastard if they had onlycome to speak to him and tell him he was bad and muststop!
So there was a miscalculation—maybe—onher part.
Xi startled her by taking her hand inhis when he had hooked up to the portal.
She looked down at the hand forseveral moments and finally turned slightly toward him, lifted herother hand and placed it over his.
He met her gaze for several momentsbefore his eyes became glazed and distant.
Quan got up after a short ‘rest’,stood over Xi for several moments as if he was contemplatingretaliation and finally met her gaze. “My head hurts.”
Surprise flickered through Ultima, butshe immediately lifted her hand from Xi’s and beckoned Quan to theopposite side of the bed. “Kneel there and I will rub it and makeit better.”
He knelt, settling his head on the bedbeside her and she massaged his head, awkwardly, one handed, but itdid seem to soothe him. By the time Xi had completed the download,he seemed more himself.
Xi glared at him pointedly, and thenthe two of them left the tent.
“Do you think that waswise?”
Ultima glanced at her sister when shespoke from the far end of the hospital tent. “I think we ran out ofoptions a long time before we realized it,” she responded after amoment.
Emily was silent for several moments.“They aren’t human.”
“No. And I don’t thinkthey ever had any intention of helping us. But they came to takethe monster back or to destroy him, and that’s goodenough.”
“You don’t think … they’llfinish us off?”
“I don’t think we matterto them one way or another. No. I don’t think that.” She shrugged.“I was dying. I didn’t have a lot of options.”
Emily swallowed hard. “I know. Butyou’ll live to fight another day … now.”
“Because they savedme.”
Emily frowned. “They saved you becausethey aren’t familiar with anything about our world. They needed aguide to help them find their quarry.”
“I know. That’s goodenough. As Tau said—the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”
Emily bit her lip. “That’sours.”
Ultima smiled faintly. “Iknow—and he knows. And now he understands us a little better. Andthat’s important to me, too.” And she would be ok, she knew, aslong as he didn’t decide she was his enemy. Ortheydidn’t decide it.
They’d given evidence of empathy. Butshe knew better than they probably did themselves, that that wouldonly take you so far and no further. Self-preservation could andwould kick in at some point if it came down to that—to life ordeath. A person was very likely to make the ultimate sacrifice fora loved one—particularly a parent for a child. People could andoften did give up their life to preserve the way of life of theirpeople. A person might make the ultimate sacrifice for a completestranger.
But when it came down to a life for alife—well very likely the person didn’t know which way they wouldjump themselves and no one could bet on it as a surething.
