Assumption of risk

by Michael A. Stackpole

  The Zur woman pulled her son into her arms and shook her head, though she never let her broad smile die. "Thank you, Doctor." She nodded her head, then hugged her child and repeated, "Thank you, Doctor."

  Deirdre kept her own smile just as constant, then opened the examining room door. "Anne, have you got a minute?"

  Anne Thompson immediately appeared in the doorway. "What do you need, Doc?"

  "Your language skills. I think Jimmy Looduc here has allergic rhinitis. He had it last year and six months ago and I'll bet it's related to some local blossom, but I can't get details from his mother."

  Anne nodded, her short brown hair bouncing in ringlets as she did so. "Okay, I can ask her that. Anything else?"

  "The nasal discharges are clear, so I don't think we're dealing with sinusitis. If they get cloudy, she should bring him back for another check." Deirdre took a prescription pad from her pocket and wrote out a quick message. "This is for an antihistamine, Rondeka. Four times a day, with meals if possible. It's good for two weeks. If he's still got a runny nose after that, have her bring him back. Ditto if he develops an earache."

  Anne smiled. "I know the drill."

  "I know. Thanks."

  Anne winked at her and guided Mrs. Looduc and her son out of the room. Deirdre waved at them, then leaned back against the door jamb of the examining room. Her legs hurt from standing all day and her eyes were burning. She had no doubt it was a reaction to the same sort of airborne pollen that was making Jimmy Looduc stuffy, but she also acknowledged a big slice of fatigue sitting on her plate.

  "You look beat." Rick Bradford said over his shoulder as he bent to wash his hands in the sink across the hall from her. "Ghost plague days are really bad."

  Deirdre arched an eyebrow at him. "Ghost plague?"

  Bradford nodded as he dried his hands with some paper towels. "The locals have a fairly rigid theology by which they live. Ghosts and spirits play a big part in it."

  "I gathered that from what you said about their treatment of rapists who get their victims pregnant." Deirdre slipped the stethoscope into the pocket of her white lab coat and crossed the hallway to wash her hands. "What's a Ghost plague?"

  "Three days ago the Zhansheng de Guang hit a truck carrying some ammunition and fuel to some troops that are establishing a forward patrol base. Four men died in the truck, and reports put five terrorists down. I think you were off the night of the hit. We got two of the wounded troopers here. Nothing much, but the four guys in the truck were DOA. I don't know about the terrorists.

  "Anyway, the Zurs believe that the ghosts of men who die violent deaths are determined to reenter a physical body to exact revenge upon their killers. They believe these ghosts travel through the world and are sufficiently powerful to pull the soul out of a living body so the ghost can take over.

  They enter through any body orifice, and a fight can take place for dominance. A fever is a sure sign."

  Deirdre finished washing her hands, then shut off the water with her elbows. "Runny nose, coughing, diarrhea, burning upon urination, or an infected cut would all be signs of possible ghost entry, right?" She pulled paper towels from a dispenser to dry her hands.

  "You're catching on." Bradford glanced at the schedule on the wall and crossed off the patient he had just seen. "The Zurs consider us about the least spiritually oriented people in existence, so they bring possible ghost-hosts here for our medicine. They think our science is repellent to the ghosts. If our stuff doesn't work they will exorcise the ghost through traditional means. The ritual takes about a week and a half."

  "The time it takes for a cold to run its course."

  Bradford laughed. "Normally, men and women of science are skeptical because of that coincidence."

  She shook her head. "I've practiced medicine on a half-dozen different worlds. I've seen diseases that would cause a panic on one world being treated like a cold on another. I've had patients with allergic reactions to plants and animals never seen on their world of birth, and I've heard of local cures for things that are a scourge on worlds hundreds of light years away. For all I know the Zurs may be right."

  Deirdre crossed Jimmy Looduc off her schedule and smiled. "Looks like I'm done unless you want me to pick up one of your sickies."

  Rick glanced at his schedule. "Nope. Boondao is likely a haunting and Langkuoki is a recheck on an otitis media. Go on, get out of here. If you take David off Carol's hands, that'll give us a fighting chance of getting home before we have to turn around and come back."

  "Thanks, Rick." Deirdre cut through the records room to the small office she'd been assigned. She took off her lab coat and hung it on the rack beside the door, then went to her desk, fingering the mail and choosing a medical journal holodisk to review at home. She slipped it into her jacket pocket, looped her canvas carryall bag over her shoulder, and turned off the light.

  Carol Bradford had created a wonderful daycare center from a suite of four rooms originally intended as on-site housing for the clinic's medical director. Huge murals featuring well-known holovid characters covered each wall in brightly colored splendor. On one the alphabet and Arabic numbers wound round the characters like a red ribbon, while on another approximately two hundred of the most basic characters in written Chinese provided the decoration.

  Toys, desks, and other furnishings dominated two of the rooms. Mats covered the floor of the third, which served as the sleeping room. The fourth and smallest had been converted into Carol's office, but was really a room all overflowing with supplies, lost and found items, and a tiny desk. Carol was emerging from that room when Deirdre caught her eye and waved.

  "Hi, Deirdre. David's got a surprise for you."

  At the sound of his name, David got up from behind a wall of blocks and ran over to his mother. A big smile on his face, he held out his arms to her. "Wan'an muqan!" He laughed as Deirdre blinked. "It means 'Hi.' "

  Deirdre smiled as she knew she should, both because David obviously wanted her to and because of Carol watching discreetly but expectantly. Deirdre slowly dropped to her haunches, letting her bag slip to the floor as she gave her son a hug. Then she held him out at arm's length, grasping the hem and right shoulder of his navy t-shirt trying to get a better look at the design on it.

  The BattleMech emblazoned there had been romanticized to such a point by the artist that it looked as much like a cartoon as the man standing beside it. Deirdre instantly knew that the man had been drawn out of scale, for he stood half as tall as the war machine that would have towered over the whole clinic. She did not know who Larry Acuff was, but she recognized the 'Mech as a Warhammer. With a shudder she remembered the kind of destruction one of those could leave in its wake.

  "Carol," she began cautiously, "where did David get this shirt?"

  "We had an accident earlier and David's shirt got wet, so I lent him one from the last shipment that came from CCI." The brown-haired woman smiled easily. "David wanted a Yen-lo-wang shirt, but this was all we had in his size."

  Deirdre felt her guts knotting up. "Yen-lo-wang?"

  Carol nodded to reassure her that nothing was out of the ordinary. "CO had a lot of shirts and other clothes to distribute because of a lawsuit or something. A couple of our older kids were wearing the Yen-lo-wang shirt and David liked the design. I think he might be a budding artist, because that one is definitely the most colorful. Of course, the older kids like the shirt because it's the 'Mech Kai Allard-Liao pilots."

  David's smile slowly died. "What's wrong, Mommy?"

  "Nothing, honey." Deirdre frowned and enfolded him in another hug. "Deirdre, are you all right?"

  "Yeah, Carol, ah, I think so." She stood up, lifting David up with her. "Look, I appreciate what you did and I know you meant well. It's just that, well, I've tried to shield Davy from things."

  Carol looked stricken. "Oh, God, you were in the war. Rick said that. I didn't think. I'm sorry."

  "Don't worry, Carol. I know you had no way of anticipating my reaction. I thin
k if we don't make a big thing of it, no harm's done." Deirdre fought to control her emotions so as not to lash out at Carol. "I'll, ah, I'll get the shirt washed and you can pass it on to someone who needs it more than Davy here. I'll also bring another one of his shirts tomorrow, a spare, in case we run into trouble again."

  She forced a smile and actually started to feel a bit better. "The way Davy is growing, pretty soon you'll have all his old stuff to give away ... I mean, if you want that kind of donation."

  "Yes, by all means, of course." Carol closed the gap between them and hugged Deirdre, then helped her slip the carryall back over her shoulder. "Look, I'm really, really sorry. We don't allow war toys in here, but I was thinking of the shirts as, well, shirts; not what they had silk-screened on them."

  Deirdre nodded and patted Carol's arm. "Chances are Davy won't remember a thing about it tomorrow. Will you, honey?"

  "I won't, promise."

  The two women smiled at each other. "I'll see you tomorrow, Carol. I really appreciate your sensitivity about the war toys." Deirdre put David down, then took his right hand in her left. "I'd have thought CCI would be more sensitive about that sort of thing, too."

  Carol looked surprised. "You would?"

  "It's a charitable organization. I wouldn't think ..." Deirdre frowned in response to the puzzled look on Carol's face. "What am I missing?"

  "Deirdre, CCI is Cenotaph Charities Incorporated. It's based on Solaris." Carol opened her hands wide. "They pay all our bills, which means that for all intents and purposes, our boss is Kai Allard-Liao himself."

  Tharkad

  District of Donegal, Federated Commonwealth

  Victor Davion clapped his hands as Curaitis finished his report of Peter's action on Lyons. "That's utterly fantastic news, and Lord knows I need it. I had Peter assigned to the Skye Militia because I figured it would minimize the amount of damage he could do on an assignment. I never expected him to handle himself so expertly." The prince's blue eyes half-closed with suspicion. "Are you certain the report is accurate?"

  Curaitis did not reply immediately, but Victor had learned enough about the man to know the hesitation had nothing to do with trying to tailor his answer to curry favor. He's just checking his facts and evaluating them. Victor resisted the desire to smile, but he allowed himself some pride in having a man like Curaitis in his service.

  "It is accurate, Highness. The words used may not have been verbatim, but it's close." Curaitis' expression darkened. "The report took a long time to reach Tharkad because the information about the Skye uprisings bumped it from priority transmission. Had the incident been specifically directed against Peter or had it resulted in any security breach, it would have gotten a higher priority. As things are going, though, Lyons is utterly cool."

  Victor rose from his leather-upholstered chair and began to pace along the back wall of his office. He looked down, for a moment almost shocked out of his reverie by the matted path already worn in the carpet along the walnut bookcase. He realized that most of that wear had taken place while Skye and the border worlds where Ryan Steiner held sway had gradually been erupting into rebellion.

  "It's not rebellion—yet," he muttered out loud. "Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it, but those who remember it sometimes turn to it for inspiration."

  Curaitis nodded, just the slightest acknowledgment that he'd understood. "Duke Ryan Steiner is on his way to Solaris, so he won't be in a position to win influence by quelling the crisis as he did twenty years ago."

  "I know, which is what convinces me he's the one behind this trouble." Victor stopped and turned to face the security man. "In thirty thirty-four the separatist movements in Skye went overboard. When Duke Aldo Lestrade died, his organization fell apart because he left no successor. The lesser leaders struggled among themselves, first one and then another putting on a show of power on his or her world, then others answering in kind, if not even more outrageously.

  "Ryan, who had been handpicked by my grandmother's rival Alessandro Steiner, had hoped to inherit Lestrade's organization. Even though he had some of the keys to exerting control over it, Lestrade's people considered him a new player with nothing beyond a war record to commend him. But after he negotiated a settlement that kept my father's troops from destroying a rebel faction on Skye, his stock rose like a rocket among the separatists."

  Curaitis nodded. "You're thinking that he would find the current situation analogous to the one in thirty-four."

  "Correct." Victor slowly rubbed his hands together. "If Ryan wasn't in command of the situation, he wouldn't have gone to Solaris, but would be fighting to gain control of it. Ryan isn't stupid. He knows that to seem like a leader one need only determine which way the crowd is going and then run ahead of them. Perception becomes reality at that point."

  He sighed aloud and, interlacing his fingers, capped his blond head with his hands. "By going to Solaris, Ryan makes himself visible. He has a soapbox and an alibi. He's hoping I'll make the same mistake my father did in calling out troops quickly. He'd love blood in the streets, but I can't afford it. At least, with the news you've brought, I don't have to worry about Peter going nuts on me."

  "The protests on Lyons have been peaceful and the local constabulary has been able to handle them."

  "Good. Intelligence has nothing directly linking Ryan to the riots, I assume?"

  Curaitis nodded. "Ryan is decidedly cautious and the ELINT resources we had in his office on Porrima provided us only spotty coverage. The people he had sweeping his office were very good, and electronic intelligence-gathering devices are not very flexible. If Ryan had worked out an elaborate set of signals with subordinates—a sign language based on where he positioned the keyboard of his computer or the window shades in his office—our ELINT equipment would have missed them entirely."

  "We have no one close to him?"

  Curaitis looked over at the prince with the closest thing to a smile that Victor had ever seen on the man's face. "We came close, but Ryan hired Sven Newmark as his aide before we could put someone of our own in his path. The Secretariat now has a number of agents infiltrating the Rasalhague community to see if we can find a line on Newmark and to come up with a cover that would make the individual as attractive to Ryan as Newmark was."

  "Commendable."

  "Ryan's move to Solaris has provided us an opportunity." Curaitis clasped his hands behind his back. "Quentin Clark is the name of the man who has, so far, kept Ryan's office clean of our devices. He worked for us for a while and knows a few tricks. When Ryan prepared to ship out to Solaris, Clark liquidated a number of bank accounts. He has enough money to finance a high-rolling lifestyle oh Solaris. In comparing the amount of money he withdrew with the amounts he's reported as income since first filing, we have a big discrepancy. When we mentioned that to him, Clark suddenly decided to sow ELINT devices instead of harvesting them in Ryan's offices on Solaris."

  "Very good, very good, indeed." Victor smiled broadly. "I will settle for Ryan implicating himself in the growing Skye disturbances, but I'd like it even more if he would start bragging about having my mother assassinated."

  "I doubt that will happen. I would not have thought him foolish enough to make that sort of mistake, but he has."

  Victor frowned. "Mistake?"

  Curaitis nodded once, curtly. "The mistake of placing himself on Solaris. There are many things that can happen on Solaris that could easily be ascribed to accident or bad luck."

  "I see." The matter-of-fact tone in Curaitis' voice belied the gravity of his words. Victor thought about how they had found and captured his mother's assassin on Solaris, thanks to Fuh Teng soliciting for a contractor to have Kai's mother killed. The cover story had been that Fuh Teng had embezzled a great deal of money from Cenotaph and wanted Candace Liao killed so Kai would be forced to sit on the throne of the St. Ives Compact. The man who had killed Melissa agreed to take on another job of equal difficulty, and the Intelligence Secretariat had swept in and captur
ed him.

  Though Victor would never wish harm to Candace Allard-Liao, he found himself wishing Kai did sit on her throne. The year he and Kai had spent together at the New Avalon Military Academy and the time they had spent fighting the Clans had showed him how impressive Kai could be—not just in a Battlemech, but as a strategic and tactical planner.

  Victor shook his head. "I was just thinking how different the whole situation would be if Kai weren't wasting his time on Solaris, but was here helping me deal with this crisis instead. The man never met a problem he couldn't defeat and I know he'd be as sharp at politics as he is in war. He would see opportunities to defeat Ryan where I see nothing but chaos."

  "If Kai is that good, you're fortunate he's on Solaris."

  "Because that's where Ryan's heading?" Victor cocked his head to one side as he reflected. "I suppose you're right. Ryan will doubtless do some meddling and Kai can deal with him there. Speaking of related items, has the approval for those Jade Falcons to go to Solaris been finalized yet?"

  "ComStar has still not responded. The International Relations subcommittee of the Estates General is willing to report out of committee a recommendation for recognition of the Jade Falcons as a political entity. They're also willing to have a consulate established on Solaris, as we planned. But we might have problems if anyone in the Skye bloc learns that Jade Falcons will be passing through their space."

  All I need is for Ryan to find out that I'm permitting Clanners to slip through Skye to a world beyond the line established by the ComStar treaty. "I'll have the Majority Leader brief me on that situation. That old dog loves media opportunities."

  It suddenly occurred to Victor that he shouldn't assume he understood Curaitis' remark concerning Kai. Making any assumption where Curaitis was concerned was a dangerous proposition. "You had something else in mind when you spoke about Kai."

  "History is full of men who have been unseated by trusted advisors and comrades given too much responsibility in the power structure." Curaitis half-shut his eyes. "If Kai is the man you believe him to be, is having him close a good idea?"