Vale of Stars

by Sean O'Brien

  Yallia could think of nothing to do but try to lift his body, to carry him out of the room. She tried for several minutes but could not move him. Part of her failure was due to her youth and Rice’s weight, but she was also hampered by a growing realization of horror at what she had done.

  “Watch out, there!” Voices behind her startled Yallia. Two firefighters in environment suits had entered the room, their faces ugly, insect-like behind their scrubber masks. One of them snatched up Yallia in a gauntleted hand and removed her from the scene. As she left, Yallia caught a glimpse of the other firefighter bending over Pem’s body. She could see, for a fraction of an instant, the firefighter’s expression through his faceplate as he lifted the boy from the carpet. Yallia saw the hope in the man’s eyes vanish.

  And then she was outside, cradled gently in the other firefighter’s arms. He set her down outside the Crèche where the other children wailed in mindless terror. The firefighter removed her mask and looked intently at Yallia. “My name’s Ioli. What’s yours?”

  “Yallia.”

  “Hello, Yallia. Are you having trouble breathing?”

  “No. Is Mr. Rice—?”

  “He’ll be fine. I need to put this on you, okay?” the firefighter said, withdrawing a plastic mask from her belt. A thin loop of plastic stretched to a small tank. She unclipped the tank and dropped it on the ground next to Yallia.

  “Oxygen?” Yallia asked.

  “Yes. It’ll make you feel better.”

  “But I feel fine.”

  The woman nodded dismissively. “Well, just put it on and keep it on.” She slipped the mask over Yallia’s face and looked to someone outside Yallia’s field of vision. “Make sure she keeps this on. She seems okay, but I want her on the oxygen until she gets to the hospital.” The firefighter got up and dashed back into the Crèche

  An adult whom Yallia did not recognize came around to face her. “Hi,” he said uneasily. He was an older argie man with wrinkles. “My name is Suth. Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” Yallia said, through the mask.

  “Good. We’ll just wait here until the doctors come, all right?”

  Yallia just nodded.

  Inside the Crèche, Ioli’s partner had run an intubation tube into Pem and was securing the area for field treatment. Ioli checked the atmosphere reading displayed on the inside of her faceplate. “Chlorine’s down to three p.p.m. in here,” she said through the radio to her partner. She took off her mask and blinked. The air was still acrid from the smoke, but whatever chlorine smell might have been present earlier was almost undetectable now. The computer warnings had ceased, and the sprinkler system shut down even as Ioli took her mask off. She bent to Rice and shook him. “Can you speak?”

  “Yeah,” he croaked, and coughed.

  Ioli fastened her facemask on Rice’s head and opened the valve. Rice immediately started coughing again.

  “It’s going to hurt, but you’ll need to take deep breaths if you can,” Ioli said. She waited for him to stop coughing, then added, “I’m going to help carry you out. Just relax and let me do the work.” She slipped one arm under him and lifted him off the ground. “Karem, stabilize the kid as soon as you—” A look from her partner stopped her in mid-sentence.

  “Stay with CPR, then,” she said in a low voice and left the room, carrying Rice over her shoulder.

  “How is he?” Rice asked when Ioli placed him gently on the ground outside. His eyes were still closed.

  “He’s in trouble,” Ioli said simply. “We can’t tell anything yet.”

  “Is he dead?” Yallia asked through her mask.

  Ioli stared at her. The girl was perhaps three, maybe a young four, she estimated. Time enough to know the truth. “He is now,” she said, “but the doctors at the hospital might be able to bring him back.”

  “Ms. Ioli?” Yallia said timidly.

  “Yes?”

  “I have to tell you something.”

  “What?”

  “I killed him.”

  Ioli felt something melt inside her stoic heart. Unlike her partner, she had seen death by fire before. Three years ago, when the Dome had been victim to an unprecedented storm which had opened a three-foot split in both inner and outer shells near Botanical Preserve Two, five people had died instantly when chlorine poured into the sector before the dome could be brought to overpressure. But thirteen people had been blinded. They had since been fitted with artificial eyes, but the initial pain of burning membranes had expressed itself in ghastly screams. Ioli thought she had hardened herself to anything after that, but now this child’s expression of guilt melted her again.

  “Oh, no, sweetie, you didn’t—”

  “Yes, I did. I threw up fire on him,” Yallia said, tears forming in her eyes as she finally admitted to herself what she had done.

  “No, no,” Ioli said, not really listening.

  “Yes, I did! I got mad at him and I felt it inside me and I ate all that salt today and I just—just—spit it at him and he was on fire and screaming—” Yallia broke down. The old man named Suth wrapped his arms around her and made soothing sounds.

  Ioli watched Suth comfort the girl, then forced herself to turn to Rice. “You need to do something for me,” she said carefully. “You need to open your eyes.”

  Rice shook his head in terror.

  “Yes. I need to see them.” She removed the faceplate and grabbed his cheeks.

  Rice opened his eyes slightly, mere slits.

  “Farther,” she said.

  Rice opened his eyes and Ioli placed her fingers above and below one eyelid, jamming it open and holding his face in her hands.

  Rice yelped but otherwise kept his composure.

  “Can you see anything?” Ioli asked.

  “I—No, not really. I see light, but nothing distinct.”

  “Good,” Ioli lied. “You can close them again.”

  “Will it come back?” Rice asked.

  “The doctors will work on you,” Ioli said. She looked up at the commotion behind the standing spectators. A crew of second-aid rescuers had arrived with a portable operating room. Ioli stood up and gave her report to the physician.

  “Three victims, one female approximately three years old, no symptoms, on oh-two right now. One male, approximately—” she glanced at Rice, “twenty-two years old, mild chlorine and smoke inhalation, severe optical damage. Also on oh-two.”

  “Where’s the third one?” The doctor looked about him.

  Ioli’s voice became even crisper as she covered the severity of the situation with formality. “Third victim is still inside with Mfuse,” she said, leading the doctor and a team of three assistants, who wheeled the equipment inside the Crèche. “Male, approximately four years old, third degree chlorine burns over sixty percent torso and limbs, ninety percent head.”

  The doctor swore softly. He entered the room and saw Mfuse still performing CPR.

  “Vitals flatline,” Ioli added unnecessarily. “Mfuse intubated him immediately. He’s been on pulmonary bypass for about three minutes.”

  “EKG?”

  “Flat.”

  The doctor bent down and worked around Mfuse. He pried open Pem’s eyelids.

  One of the assistants asked, “Pupils fixed and dilated?”

  “Can’t tell. They’ve been…melted,” the doctor said, a note of shock in his voice. “I’ll have to go in with the remote, see if there’s anything left inside.” Another assistant withdrew a tiny sphere on a flexible tube. The doctor maneuvered around Mfsue again and inserted the sphere into the intubation tube from the supply side, using an aperture on the pulmonary machine for just that purpose. The assistant hooked the probe’s telemetry into a monitor and all save Mfuse watched as the probe explored Pem’s blasted trachea and lung tissue.

  “Damn. It’s all burned,” the doctor mumbled. The probe flashed data in the monitor as it took samples of tissue and transmitted the findings to the computer. “Nothing left in there. The chlorine s
tripped away everything.”

  The monitor flickered once and then died.

  “What’s that?” Ioli asked, startled.

  The doctor pulled the probe out of Pem’s lungs and shut off the pulmonary machine. “Probe got burned up in the chlorine,” he said softly. He placed a hand on Mfuse’s shoulder. “That’s enough. He’s gone.”

  The six people paused for a fraction of a second and considered what had happened. The doctor consulted his wristwatch and said quietly, “Time of death: fourteen-fourteen.” He looked up at Ioli. “You say the other two are on oxygen?”

  “Yes. The adult male is complaining of impaired vision.”

  “What about the girl?” The doctor gestured for his crew to begin removing the intubation tube from Pem’s body.

  “Physically, she’s all right. No symptoms. She’s shaken up, of course.”

  “Sure.” The doctor looked around the room, seeing it for the first time. “What the hell happened in here?”

  Ioli had not examined the room yet. She turned to look, really look, at the blast pattern of the fire. “I don’t know. Looks like it started here,” she pointed at the carpet where Pem lay, “but how it started, I don’t.…”

  “What?”

  “Look at the wall here,” she said, pointing to a vaguely humanoid shape on the wall nearest Pem’s body. “The boy’s body shielded this part of the wall. Was he hit from the side?” Yallia’s words came back to her: “I spit it at him.” But what? How? Had she been holding some flammable liquid? The image of a circus fire-eater came unbidden to her mind, and she dismissed the thought as ludicrous. Besides, she thought, it didn’t explain the chlorine.

  “Let’s get back to the other two,” the doctor said suddenly. He directed two of his assistants to bag Pem’s body while Ioli continued to stare at the burn pattern. Mfuse stood up, still panting. He looked at Ioli for direction.

  “We’d better go with them,” she said absently, and left the two technicians to put the little boy’s body in a bag.

  Dolen arrived on one of the intra-dome wirebuses and leapt off before it had a chance to come to a stop. There was a crowd of perhaps eighty people being kept away from the Crèche by New Chicago police. Dolen fought his way to the inner ring of onlookers, hearing snatches of conversation as he went:

  “…Fire in the Crèche….”

  “Little girl sitting outside.…”

  “…Shippie girl started it all…”

  “…Hope it doesn’t spread.…”

  He pushed to the front and encountered the cream uniform of the police sergeant blocking his path.

  “Sorry, sir, you’ll have to…Professor?” the officer squinted at him.

  Dolen turned his gaze from the scene outside the Crèche to the face of the young officer. He was surprised to find one of his former students, an uninspired young man named Rober, looking back at him.

  “Let me through, Rober.”

  “Can’t, sir. There’s—”

  “My daughter is in there.”

  Rober glanced behind him, as if to check the resemblance. Yallia sat on the ground perhaps twenty meters away, a doctor and a female firefighter squatting next to her, talking to her. As Dolen and the officer watched, the doctor took what had to be an oxygen mask off her face.

  “Oh. Uh…” Rober managed. Dolen cursed him under his breath and forced his way past.

  The doctor and firefighter exchanged glances.

  “Look, sir, why don’t you…” the firefighter began.

  “Thank you for everything,” Dolen snapped and carried his daughter away. Rober hurried to him before he reached the crowd’s perimeter.

  “Uh, professor? You’ll have to stay here so we can, uh, ask her some questions. Go on back to the Crèche so we can—”

  “She’s going home,” Dolen said, not checking his stride.

  Rober hesitated, then said, “I’m sorry, Professor, but—”

  Now Dolen stopped and glared at Rober. “Look. You know where we live. We’re certainly not going anywhere. You want answers, you come to us. But I’m taking her home. Now.” Before Rober could answer, Dolen pushed his way through the crowd. This time through, he heard a different set of fragments of conversations:

  “…Hope she’s all right.…”

  “…Where’s he going with…?”

  “…The same girl from.…”

  “…Shippie girl from the school.…”

  And when he had broken free of the crowd, he heard behind him: “That girl’s the center of the trouble.”

  As he left the scene and started the walk home, Dolen knew his daughter was different. He did not have a degree in biochemistry, but recent events could no longer hide the inescapable conclusion: he was cradling in his arms something that was not the daughter he had known.

  Chapter 9

  Kuarta stared at her mother and at her husband that night after Yallia had gone to bed. The small family room in their cramped but cozy apartment had never been so solemn. Dolen listened as Jene and Kuarta had explained for an hour, in language as free from technical jargon as was possible, what Yallia had become. Now all three stared blankly at each other.

  “There’s going to be hell to pay,” Kuarta said.

  Dolen stared back. “I still don’t believe it. She’s a chlorine-breather? How could such a thing have happened?”

  Kuarta and Jene traded glances. “It’s not a natural mutation,” Kuarta said quietly.

  “Not a chance,” Jene said.

  “Wait a minute. Why couldn’t it be…uh….” Dolen stammered.

  Jene scowled at him. “Radiation? You mean effects of the trip?”

  “Yes,” Dolen said, not meeting her gaze. He knew the word carried strong connotations of inferiority and weakness when applied to any of the immigrants or Ship-descended, but the question had to be raised.

  Jene waited for him to look at her before answering. “The chances that random genetic mutation would result in such a complex and useful trait are so astronomical as to be impossible. Radiation almost invariably produces harmful or, at best, useless mutations.”

  “So it has to be something that has been done to her,” Kuarta added.

  Dolen looked at the two women with increasing horror. “Done to her? You can’t mean that. Who would do such a thing? Who could?”

  Jene laughed bitterly. “Dolen, I like you. You’ve been a good husband to my daughter. But, for Ship’s sake, man, haven’t you learned anything from your damn history books?” She leaned in close to his wide-eyed stare. “Governments obey their own laws when it is advantageous to do so—and only then. If there is something to be gained by a little illicit genetic modification here or there, don’t think your precious Commissar-General would hesitate. And it’s even easier to hack away at a few shippie chromosomes since we’re not quite as human as you.”

  “You don’t mean that, Jene,” Dolen said softly. “The part about being less human than me, I mean.”

  Jene didn’t answer.

  Dolen said finally, “Still—you think the government did this? Why?”

  “They’re the only ones with the means to do so.”

  Kuarta interrupted. “Look, this had to be a retrovirus, right?”

  Jene paused before answering. “That’s all it could be. I can’t see how else it could have been done.”

  “What’s a retrovirus?” Dolen asked.

  Kuarta said, “A virus that is tailored to alter the subject’s DNA. The virus sort of hijacks the cell and deposits the new gene inside.”

  Dolen still looked befuddled. Kuarta waggled her fingers, trying to prompt her memory. “In one of your history lessons, you asked me once about the AIDS epidemics of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, remember?”

  “Yes. I think I asked you why the epidemic happened at all. The medical technology of the age should have been sufficient to wipe it out or at least contain the—”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Kuarta flapped away his digression wi
th her hand. “The AIDS condition was brought about through the human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV. That’s a retrovirus.”

  “But…AIDS killed millions of people!”

  “No, no! HIV was a different kind of retrovirus. It didn’t simply deposit a gene in the cell—it forced the cell to make more viruses. But the idea is the same.”

  “So…Yallia is going to die?”

  “We don’t know anything right now,” Jene said gruffly, shooting a warning glance at her daughter. “If she gets sick, we’ll be able to handle it through gene therapy.”

  “Look, we’re missing the point,” Kuarta said, standing up suddenly and turning away from the table. “The traits Yallia possesses are far too complex and useful to be random. That means she has been the subject of some kind of genetic experiment. How was it done?”

  Dolen asked, “You mean, they gave her an injection or something?”

  Kuarta looked at Jene, who shrugged. Kuarta said, “Not necessarily an injection—it could have been in capsule or liquid form, I suppose. Or possibly airborne.”

  “Airborne delivery would be very risky,” Jene said. “Unless she were in some kind of hermetically sealed room, there’d be risk of contamination of the surroundings. And if this was slipped in a drink or given to her in some other form, like in food, there’d be a danger again of contamination. In her urine and feces, for instance, assuming there wasn’t some other mishap. Like dropping the food or spilling the drink. I say it was an injection. That’s how I would have done it.”

  “You think someone injected Yallia with some kind of retrovirus to turn her into a chlorine-breather?” Dolen’s tone was incredulous.

  “No,” Kuarta said at the same time her mother said, “Yes.” Kuarta rounded on her mother, but Jene spoke first.

  “Come on, Kuarta. You said yourself that this cannot be a natural mutation, and the delivery of the retrovirus would most logically be an injection. How else could it have been done?”

  “Ma, you’ve been out of medicine for ten years or more. You’re forgetting your basic genetics. There is no way any retrovirus could possibly have affected Yallia so completely after her birth. There are simply too many cells for the virus to infect. A human baby is a complex organism that has undergone nine months of painstaking development. No retrovirus could have altered her basic pulmonary system like that.”