Assumption of risk

by Michael A. Stackpole

  Deirdre stiffened and the fire that flashed through her eyes made Anne blanch and stopped Cathy cold. "I will tell you this once and then I will not speak of it again. While you were graduating from secondary school, I was on Alyina. I ran a medical field station there, and boys and girls even younger than you are now came to me in bits and pieces, hoping I could put them back together again. Sometimes I could, but more often I could not. I had to watch them die, screaming in pain, praying for death but fearing it all the same."

  Deirdre felt anger rising in her chest and she fought to keep it out of her words. "Whether they were natives of Alyina or soldiers who had traveled hundreds of light years to die on a world they couldn't have found on a star chart, they all bled bright red. They died so you'd get a chance to finish school and decide to come here or join the army or chuck it all and become an opposition politician. It didn't matter to them because they were fighting to keep the Clans from robbing you of your future."

  "You were on Alyina?" Anne Thompson voiced her question in a whisper, willingly deflecting Deirdre from her ashen-faced companion. "You fought against the Clans?"

  "I ran from the Clans." Deirdre reigned her temper back in. "When they tried to capture Prince Victor, they overran the sector where my hospital was located. We medivacced everyone we could, and the rest of us took off into the brush."

  Rick shook his head. "You didn't stay with your patients?"

  "Twycross showed me that the Jade Falcons considered battalion aid stations to be legitimate military targets." When she looked up, Deirdre saw all three of them staring at her. "Look, I was in both places because I'd joined the army and been assigned to the Tenth Lyran Guards."

  Anne's face brightened a bit. "Were you with them when they rescued Hohiro Kurita on Teniente?" Her question ended on a high, hopeful note that trailed off when Deirdre shook her head.

  "No. I spent the rest of the war on Alyina, running from the Clans."

  "And?"

  Deirdre forced a smile on her face for Anne's benefit. "No more story. We're here for orientation. We're here to learn how to help people." Seeing Anne's disappointed look, she relented slightly. "Yes, I've met Prince Victor and maybe, just maybe, on a slow shift I'll tell you about it over coffee."

  Anne's face brightened and Cathy wanted to frown but seemed to lack the energy to do so. The blond woman scratched at the back of her neck. "I didn't mean to disparage what you did, Dr. Lear. I ..."

  Deirdre hugged the other woman. "I know you didn't, but maybe sometimes we get so wrapped up in our own ideas that we don't check out the other side of the story. At this point I think we'll be fine if we just concentrate on doing the best job we can here in the clinic instead of worrying too much about politics."

  "Amen to that." Dr. Bradford pointed to a door a bit further on down the corridor. "That's the female staff lounge. You can go in and pick out a locker and stow whatever you want before we continue."

  Deirdre hung back as she sensed her colleague wanting to talk to her. As the other two women disappeared through the door, she turned and smiled at him. "I apologize for that little tiff there."

  Rick shrugged. "It's not the first time something like that has happened. Not everyone is happy about Tormano Liao financing us, because some consider him just another warlord waiting for his chance to strike. As far as I'm concerned, I'll spend his coins as fast as anyone else's as long as he's interested in improving the quality of life on Zurich. Now that we've got CCI, though, that's no longer a concern."

  "How bad are things here?"

  Bradford shrugged. "That's kind of hard to say. The average life span of someone in the Federated Commonwealth is ninety-seven point eight years, barring sex modifiers. Zurich is one of the worlds that lowers the average. The planet enjoyed a certain amount of development before the war— Maximilian Liao had a master-pet fixation on this planet, which is one of the reasons Tormano pays so much attention to it. All the people had to do was transfer their loyalty from Max to his son. And it's Tormano's interest in Zurich that has prompted Sun-Tzu to back the local dissident and revolutionary elements."

  Deirdre held her hands up. "I've already had a bellyful of politics, Doctor. What interests me more are the kind of medical problems that are typical or problematic here. Most of the major diseases should have been eliminated."

  "They have. We've got a nasty local flu that goes around and gets some of the old folks and kids, but we've been grinding away at the death toll on a regular basis. When flu season comes along, we actually buy ads on the holovid to get people in for vaccine. Other than that, it's mostly parasites and bacterial infections, cuts, and breaks—very rarely do we get rapes, and then it's usually a case of a local girl getting mixed up with a soldier or visitor to Daosha."

  "From the way you say that I gather that the indigenous people keep quiet about rape among their own people?"

  "Something like that. The man, when caught, has a choice of fates: If the woman isn't pregnant, he pays the restitution she demands of him and then, at her whim, is castrated or not. If he cannot pay, he is castrated and made her slave un-lil he has performed tasks equal to the value of the restitution she demanded. Then he is killed."

  "That's barbaric!" Deirdre blurted, knowing that her words reeked of ethnocentrism, but reacting instinctively.

  "Not to the Zurs. If the woman is impregnated by the man, he's held until she's in labor, then killed. He provides the soul for the new child. It all makes sense in their cosmology."

  "Why wouldn't a non-local be held and treated the same say, then?"

  "The Zurs see us as an inferior people. They'd no more want us inhabiting one of their bodies than we'd want the spirit of a goat inhabiting one of ours." Bradford smiled. "Anyway, the incidence of rape is low in the indig culture."

  "Not much chance of repeat offenders, I would imagine." Deirdre folded her arms. "How much violence?"

  Rick hesitated. "Not that much, really. Fistfights sometimes, a knifing on the rare occasion. We do get gunshots every so often."

  She nodded. "I see. Domestic violence, or something more organized?"

  "The revolutionaries live out here in the jungle, but we don't have much to do with them. I've been here four years, and the only one I've seen was for an infected leg break. That's it. They do occasionally stage attacks against Dao-sha's police barracks or shoot a patrol going through the jungle, but they stay away from us. We're neutral ground."

  Deirdre raised an eyebrow. "Is there another shoe to drop, Doctor? My son is in Daosha with my landlord's daughter. Is he safe?"

  "I'm sure he is. The Zhanzheng de guang never hit civilian targets." Bradford smiled reassuringly. "But you can bring him here and keep him in our daycare facility if that would make you feel safer. We maintain it for the locals who are sick or who work for us. My wife runs it."

  "I think I'll do that, thanks. I like seeing David during the day anyway."

  "I understand." Rick glanced over as the two nurses came back into the corridor. "Well, let's continue our tour. Down here is emergency admitting ..."

  Lyons

  Isle of Skye, Federated Commonwealth

  Sitting with his teammates in the Hart of Gold tavern, Peter Davion focused beyond his friends and stared at the large-screen holovision unit in the near corner of the common room. His view of it was unobstructed because it rose above the rail isolating the booths in the back from the lower floor of the bar level. The screen showed the local news anchor all prim and pretty in a blue silk blouse and yellow wool jacket. Hovering over her left shoulder was a map of the Sarna March. Four of the worlds on it suddenly turned into multi-pointed explosions.

  He held his hands up to quiet his two friends, who caught the gesture and immediately fell silent. "... series of strikes which hit a number of garrison and police facilities in Zurich, Aldebaran, Styk, and Gan Singh. Pro-Liaoist War of Light factions have claimed responsibility for the attacks. They state that resistance to the illegitimate occupation government of
Victor Davion would continue until the Sarna March was reunited with the Capellan Confederation. Federated Commonwealth officials claim the strikes are 'pathetic attempts by reactionary forces to deny what their fellow citizens had come to embrace and profit from.' "

  Peter shook his head, then noticed that one of his two security watchdogs aped the motion from a table away. "Sun-Tzu is getting bold. Someone ought to explain to him that he can't turn back the clock."

  Eric Crowe nodded in agreement as he poured the last of his Timbiqui Dark into his mug. "He's playing a game with his uncle. Tormano has been making noises for a long time about returning to take the throne. Now that your brother's decided to put Tormano's Free Capella movement on a diet, Sun-Tzu's decided to push to see how seriously that may have weakened his uncle."

  The man across from Crowe scratched at his short blond hair. "Could be, Eric, or maybe it's that Sun-Tzu is probing to see how weak we've become on the Sarna border. With the Clans up here to occupy us, some of those worlds might look ripe for the taking."

  "You could be right, Ben, except for the fact that Sun-Tzu hasn't got the military strength to take a world away from us." Peter snorted as he heard his words play back through his head. "Well, maybe I should say that he could conceivably take a world, but he couldn't hold it. We'd get it back, and he'd lose a lot of prestige in the exchange. Besides, it might make us mad enough to give him a pounding, and do what his uncle can't."

  "But what if Sun-Tzu attacked from the Free Worlds League?" Ben leaned forward, setting Eric's empty beer bottle up and placing his half-full one across from it. "If he hit from the Free Worlds, then retreated back across the border, we wouldn't go after him."

  Peter held his own beer bottle out at arm's length away from the table. "Thomas Marik won't allow that because his son is with the doctors on New Avalon. Even though we'd never do anything to harm young Joshua, Thomas can't be sure of that. Besides, if Joshua can't be cured of his leukemia, Thomas is stuck with Sun-Tzu marrying his daughter Isis and one day taking over his realm."

  "That would make it the only time a Liao has taken over anything in the last couple of centuries." Eric lifted his bottle and waggled it in the air to signal the waiter. "Chances are this is a play to give Sun-Tzu some room to maneuver if Kai Allard-Liao beats Wu Deng Tang. Let me amend that: if Kai clobbers him as bad as all the bookies are predicting."

  "He will." Peter took a swallow of beer, then smiled. "I was at NAMA when Kai was in the graduating class. He was the first person ever to defeat the La Mancha scenario. Anyone who can turn a no-win situation into a victory isn't going to be stopped by a single Liaoist in a BattleMech."

  The three men laughed together for a moment, but then an angry shout from a patron seated at the bar drowned out their merriment. Peter looked up and saw the holovid viewer displaying a scene of police using watercannons on a crowd of protesters. He thought he'd become inured to such scenes, then felt a jolt run through him. Wait, that's Freedom Square downtown. They must have cleared the streets before the game tonight! I didn't know there were protesters out there.

  "Yeah, we have freedom of speech, all right," the patron ranted. "As long as our name is Davion, that is."

  "What do you expect from a whelp what killed his own mother!"

  Peter saw the two security men move toward the back door to give him a way out. He stood and started toward them, having been trained to entrust his safety to his bodyguards. This time, though, one too many beers after playing a game of basketball slowed him down considerably.

  "Victor's a vicious little pissant who throws temper tantrums when he can't get what he wants." The shouting patron looked around the room as others nodded in agreement. "See, there isn't a man-jack among you who will say different!"

  Peter stepped forward, resting his hands on the railing. "I will."

  "What?"

  Holding his head up high, Peter saw the people below him transformed as they recognized his face. Some looked shocked, then smiled and whispered to their companions. A few became angry again and stared in hostility, but most grinned as they looked from Peter to the man at the bar and back again.

  "I said I would dispute your claim. I doubt anyone here has better knowledge of Victor than I do." Peter felt exhilaration run through him as he took the anger burning his stomach and shunted it away. That brought a calm even more powerful than the anger. It filled him and made him aware of everything going on in the room.

  More important, he didn't suffer all the mental static that usually accompanied his fury. Thinking clearly, Peter could feel the rhythm of the room and could orchestrate it. He smiled carefully, purposely letting his gray-eyed gaze touch as many pairs of eyes in the room as he could. "I will agree that my brother is small, but from my perspective there aren't many men who are not." He shrugged helplessly and laughter coursed through the crowd.

  You were right, Katrina. After a recent basketball game against Kelswa-Aptos he'd received a holodisk recorded by his sister. In it she'd tried to tell him that he was only hurting himself when he let his temper get the better of him in sports or other unimportant settings. She went on to say that if he couldn't control himself in those harmless situations, no one would ever trust him with greater responsibilities.

  Then she chided him for being about to pick up something to throw at the viewer. He'd put down the glass, and listened as she explained how he could use his celebrity and intelligence to great advantage if only he could conquer his temper. She suggested that he start while engaging in his pastime sports and it had worked. He learned to achieve a mental tranquility, which permitted him not only to excel in his performance but to become even more skilled than before.

  The patron planted his hands on his hips. "Victor's still a pissant."

  "Is he?" Peter arched an eyebrow and let the question sink in before shrugging nonchalantly. "Who really knows what a pissant is? I know what it sounds like, but I don't think I actually know what it means. Do you?"

  The patron, an older man with a goatee and no more than a fringe of hair on his head, gaped for a moment. He opened his mouth to reply, then frowned and shut it again.

  Peter didn't give him a chance to speak. "Anyone else have a guess?"

  "A pissant is an annoying twit," someone shouted from the back.

  "Hmmmm, annoying twit." Peter screwed his face into a frown. "Annoying, sure, Victor can be that. His idea of relaxation is to work on only two projects at once instead of his normal workload- Not much fun in doing that. Twit, on the other hand." He shook his head. "Twit always strikes me as a sort of inconsequential fellow, and I don't think anyone would call Victor that."

  The patron snarled over the laughter Peter's comments had elicited. "He still murdered your mother!"

  Peter let his face go blank as a new wave of anger raced through him before being transmuted into more cool calm. He straightened up, then clasped his hands staunchly at the small of his back. "Sir, I have no doubt that you believe you have evidence to back up that claim. If you do, I wish you would present it to me so I could act upon it."

  "You wouldn't do nothing."

  "If you knew who had murdered your mother, wouldn't you do something about it?" Peter said quietly.

  "I'm not a Davion."

  Peter held himself rock-still as he fought an inner battle. "Nor am I, sir. I am a Steiner-Davion. As are Victor and Katrina, Arthur and Yvonne. You mock us and what we felt for our mother. Moreover, you mock her if you imagine she could inspire love and admiration in the hearts of her countrymen and yet be unable to do the same in the hearts of her own children. You may insult my brother all you like, but do not insult my mother."

  "And if I decide to insult you? You gonna have your police come in here and soak me down?"

  "No. I'm like my brother Victor. I'd never ask others to do what I can do myself." Peter again leaned on the railing, letting his smile make his hulking form seem menacing and benign at the same time. "However, I think a better solution would be if I offered
to buy you a drink ..."

  "I'll not drink with the likes of you to your brother's health."

  "I offer the drink to my mother's memory." Peter let those words sink in and felt the mood of the room shift. Where there had been jocularity and high spirits, with everyone enjoying the exchange, a chill feeling seeped in, quieting the crowd. "If you'll not join me in a drink to my mother's memory, well, what more can I do to reach someone so cold? My offer stands, though, to you and everyone here. A round in her memory on me."

  The first man tried to look defiant, but Peter had won the others over, isolating him. The man's fists knotted, then opened several times before he shrugged. "Be the first time I've gotten some of my taxes used for a purpose that benefitted me."

  "No, my friend. To be contrary. I am buying out of my own militia salary." Peter held up his wallet and pulled out a handful of bills. "I hope you all enjoy this, for I'll not be drinking for a month because of it."

  The people below him mouthed comments and laughed, and Peter laughed along with them even though he couldn't make out the remarks. His heart filled his ears with thunder, and he smiled broadly at the pure giddiness running through him. This is incredible! Katrina is right, this is fantastic! Peter gave out a whoop that the other drinkers echoed loudly enough to drown out his laughter. As high as I feel now, I won't need another drink for the rest of my life!

  10

  Solaris City, Solaris VII

  Tamarind March, Federated Commonwealth

  25 January 3056

  Kai waited for the other stable owners to be seated in the Sesame Inn's handsomely appointed tower dining room before passing through the doors of the private elevator into the little mirror-walled lobby. The floor was carpeted in a black and red design that began as a chaotic tangle of color at the elevator, but resolved itself into twisting bands that scrolled around the perimeter of the large room. The black and red competed to create mythological creatures and to depict Chinese greetings and proverbs.