Stevens sighed. “If it is contagious, then Lori should have been infected. Regardless, we’ve all been exposed by this point. Myself, Corpsman Sellis, the ambassador...” Stevens’ eyes found Clayton and he nodded. “And you, sir.”
Clayton glared at the ambassador. If he’d stopped to think before he’d fled sickbay to go running through the ship like a headless chicken, he would have realized that he could be contaminating everyone on board in the process.
But maybe not. Maybe whatever this was it could only be spread through fluids. Maybe they still had a chance to contain it.
“All the same, Doctor, we’d better observe quarantine from here on out. Put us in separate rooms and keep us under observation. I’ll have Lieutenant Devon seal us all in sickbay until we’re cleared.”
Ambassador Morgan’s eyes flew wide. “You can’t do that! What if we’re not infected yet!”
“That’s why we’re also being isolated from Dr. Reed and her child. Thanks to you, it’s the best that we can do to keep everyone else safe.”
Dr. Stevens nodded along with that.
“And if we’re not infected?” Morgan asked. His eyes snapped back to the holoscreen. “What will you do with the child?”
“The child?” Clayton asked. “Don’t you mean your daughter?”
Morgan slowly shook his head. “That thing isn’t my daughter.”
Clayton sighed. “One bridge at a time. First we need to understand what kind of threat the child represents, if any.”
“Agreed,” Doctor Stevens said.
“Excuse me, gentlemen.” Clayton turned away, activating his comms. “Call Lieutenant Devon,” he said.
The comms trilled briefly in his ear, and then Devon’s voice answered: “Sir?”
“Seal the sickbay, Lieutenant. Don’t let any of us out until we’ve been cleared for release.”
“Cleared by who, sir?”
“Wake up Doctor Torres. From here on, she’s in charge of quarantine.”
“Yes, sir... is everything all right down there?”
Clayton glanced back at the holoscreen. Both baby and mother were asleep, and Corpsman Sellis was cautiously arranging the blankets to cover them.
“I hope so, Lieutenant.”
Chapter 20
Two Days Later...
“You’re clear, Captain.”
Clayton squinted into the light that Dr. Torres was shining into his eyes. “Are you sure?”
Torres put her penlight away with a frown. He stared through the transparent visor of her pressure suit, searching her hazel eyes.
“Positive, sir,” Torres replied. “All of your tests have come back clean.”
“What about the others?”
“Same.”
“And the infant?”
“She’s not contagious...”
“But?”
Torres cracked a fading smile. “But she’s fiercely resistant to contact with anyone besides her mother. I’ve never seen anything quite like it.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, she’s just a few days old. Normally newborns are helpless and docile. Keera is aggressive and distrustful.”
“Maybe her species is more aggressive.”
“Maybe,” Torres agreed.
“And you’re sure she’s not contagious?”
“Not at all, sir.”
“Thank you, Doctor.” Clayton rose from the bed on creaking knees and headed for the locker with his uniform in it. He was wearing a hospital gown, open at the back.
The door chime sounded.
“Come in,” Clayton said, glancing back to see Ambassador Morgan and Dr. Stevens walking in, both already wearing their uniforms.
He nodded to them as they came in. “Ambassador. Doctor.”
“Captain,” Stevens replied.
Clayton turned back to the locker and shrugged out of his gown, heedless of their presence. Modesty has no place on a starship.
“You can’t release them,” Morgan said.
“No? And why not?” Clayton asked as he got dressed in the mirror on the locker door. He pulled on his form-hugging uniform—black with gold stripes and the four gold bars of a UNSF captain glittering above each shoulder. After zipping up and buttoning the collar, he clipped the UNSF emblem to the right side of his chest, a five-pointed silver star with a laurel wreath around it. The symbol of victory. Finally, he bent to put on his mag boots.
“Because it’s not human, Captain! We don’t know what it could do. It could kill us all in our sleep!”
Clayton turned from the mirror to regard Morgan with a frown. This xenophobe is who the Union chose to make first contact? “Ambassador, we don’t judge an organism by its genes, human or otherwise. We’ll take sensible precautions, but if everything works out the way I’m hoping, Keera will be given all of the same rights as any other citizen of the Union when we return to Earth.”
“You can’t possibly believe that,” Ambassador Morgan replied. “She’ll be whisked away to a Union black site the minute we reach Sol. She’ll spend her life in captivity, poked and prodded and studied until the day she dies!”
Clayton snorted. “As her father, you don’t sound very concerned about that, Ambassador.”
“I’m a realist, Captain. Even if she were allowed to live freely, she’d be persecuted relentlessly just because of the way she looks. And if people knew what she is...” Morgan trailed off shaking his head. “It wouldn’t be long before someone killed her.”
Clayton scowled. “Yes, we humans are lovely creatures aren’t we?”
“He’s right, Captain,” Torres put in softly, her voice rippling out of the speaker grille in her helmet.
“Maybe, but we’re not going to add to those attitudes of prejudice and persecution. You are to clear both Dr. Reed and her daughter to return to their quarters effective immediately.”
“Belay that!” Morgan snapped. “Do not release them, Torres.”
“This is my ship, Ambassador,” Clayton replied.
“And I could have you court-martialed when we return, Captain.”
Torres’ eyes darted uncertainly between the two of them.
Clayton nodded to her. “Release them.”
“Yes, sir,” Torres replied.
“You’re going to regret this,” Morgan intoned.
“That’s my prerogative, Ambassador. I suggest you let me worry about my regrets and save your energy to worry about your own.”
* * *
Clayton stood in the cargo transfer airlock outside the entrance of one of the elevators leading to The Wheel. Since the ship was still under active acceleration, that elevator would actually function more like a tram, moving horizontally away from the direction of thrust and gravity.
In front of him stood Dr. Reed and her daughter, Keera. Ambassador Morgan was here, too, to see them off, but he looked intensely uncomfortable. Clayton understood that she’d insisted he come say goodbye to them, but he’d been hesitant. Ever since they’d all been quarantined together in sickbay, Morgan had kept his distance from both Dr. Reed and Keera. He couldn’t accept that the hybrid was his daughter. Clayton wasn’t sure if he blamed the man, but as a rule, it was generally best to assume that whatever Richard Morgan did, one should do the opposite.
“I guess this is goodbye, Captain,” Dr. Reed said. She was gently bouncing Keera in her arms, and the infant’s piercing red eyes were sinking steadily closer to shut.
Clayton nodded.
Delta stood beside him for added security, but so far there’d been no signs from Keera to warrant any kind of concern. She was just a baby—with alien DNA—but a baby nonetheless.
“We’ll see you in six months,” Clayton replied. The skeleton crews would take over from here on out: just two officers to watch the bridge for one week at a time between the more comprehensive bi-annual rotations in which routine maintenance, cleaning, and repairs were conducted. The thrusters would be offline for the two-man rotations, so there would be no
gravity beyond The Wheel, which meant that Dr. Reed and Keera would have to stay there until six months from now when Clayton and the rest of his section came out of cryo.
Dr. Reed nodded and flashed a wan smile before walking down the line to stop in front of Morgan.
“Richard,” she said. Tension crowded the air between them and neither said anything for several seconds.
“Lori, look, I’m sorry. I really am. I just...” His eyes were on Keera. “I can’t.”
“Yes you can.” Dr. Reed reached out and grabbed his hand. She dragged it up and placed it on top of Keera’s head.
Morgan leaned back, looking like he might chew his own arm off just to get away.
Keera’s eyes cracked open and she regarded him with a flinty look. Then she stirred and wriggled around inside of the blanket that Dr. Reed had her bundled up in. Clayton watched with a bemused frown.
“Let me go, Lori,” Morgan said.
“Just wait. She’s doing something.”
Richard shook his head vigorously, but then two pale, fish-scale patterned hands and arms popped out of the blankets.
A whistling cry escaped Keera’s black lips, and then she reached for the ambassador with both arms.
Morgan hesitated, and the baby sucked in her bottom lip. Her eyes grew wide and teary, and she began sniffling. If she weren’t so damn ugly it would be cute, Clayton thought. But then he chided himself for thinking that way. He couldn’t allow himself to judge by appearances. That would make him no better than Morgan.
“She wants you to hold her!” Dr. Reed said, and pushed Keera out from her chest.
Morgan didn’t immediately recoil or respond. He seemed to be frozen with indecision.
Then he snapped out of it, and took Keera in his arms. She wrapped both of her arms around his neck and nuzzled her head into the hollow between his neck and shoulder. Keera’s cries instantly quieted, and her eyes began sliding shut once more.
“She knows that you’re her father,” Dr. Reed said quietly.
“I...” Morgan trailed off, looking and sounding confused. “She’s...”
“Amazing, right?”
He nodded slowly, his face and jaw slack.
“This is one hell of a freak show you invited me to...” Delta muttered.
Clayton glanced at him and back without comment, not wanting to ruin the moment by saying the wrong thing. He backed up a few steps, and then nodded sideways for Delta to follow. “Let’s give them some space,” he whispered.
“You still want to go into cryo and leave me to raise her on my own?” Reed asked, her eyes searching Morgan’s.
The ambassador said nothing to that. He just quietly stroked the infant’s back and leaned his head against hers. The suddenness of Morgan’s change of attitude did set off an alarm bell in Clayton’s head, but maybe it was just a natural biological response to holding one’s offspring for the first time. He’d heard second-hand accounts of parents speaking about transformational moments like these before. Usually they occurred right after a baby was born... But isn’t that also when babies typically have first contact with their parents?
First contact. Clayton smiled wryly at the choice of words. Maybe more appropriate than not.
“You can’t leave us,” Dr. Reed said, stepping in to wrap her arms around them both. “Don’t let appearances fool you. She’s ours, more human than anything else.”
Morgan sucked in a shaky breath and let it out in a sigh. “Okay.”
Dr. Reed withdrew to an arm’s length, her eyes bright and sparkling with joy. “You mean it?”
Morgan still didn’t look a hundred percent convinced, but he gave in with a nod. “I do.”
A grin sprang to Reed’s lips and she crushed Morgan and their daughter into another hug. “You won’t regret it. I promise.”
Morgan said nothing to that, but it was a miracle he’d come this far. Maybe he’d been on the fence to begin with. Days had passed since the quarantine, and the entire crew had been given a chance to see that Keera wasn’t dangerous. She was antisocial, however, and just as Doctor Torres had first pointed out, she’d fiercely rejected contact with anyone besides her mother.
Now she’d expanded that sphere to include her father. Was that progress, or would Keera’s world remain that small forever? It was too soon to tell, and isolating them on The Wheel probably wasn’t going to help matters.
“Are you three ready to go?” Clayton asked.
“Almost,” Morgan replied, half-turning to him with a tight smile. “I need to go pack up a few things from my quarters.”
“We’ll be waiting for you,” Dr. Reed said. Morgan passed Keera back to her slowly—almost reluctantly. The infant squirmed and whimpered as she traded bosoms, but Dr. Reed adjusted the blanket to cover her and block out the light, and then Keera nuzzled in close and fell back to sleep with a sigh.
Clayton watched Morgan and Reed pull apart like glue—contact stretching and thinning until at last their fingertips slipped through each other’s hands. “I’ll be there soon,” Morgan replied, and then he turned and hurried out of the cargo transfer airlock.
Clayton nodded to Dr. Reed’s luggage—three large crates on a mag-wheeled dolly. “We’ll help you with that.”
“Thank you, Captain.”
Delta grabbed the handle of the dolly before Clayton could, and began pushing it toward the elevator doors. Clayton mentally opened the elevator and selected The Wheel for a destination. There was only one other possible stop besides that, at the mid-point airlock along the spoke, but it was only ever used for external maintenance and repairs.
Once they had the dolly inside the elevator, Clayton nodded to Dr. Reed and said, “I wish you three all the best.”
“Thank you, Captain.”
“If you need anything, and I mean anything, don’t hesitate to call the bridge. And if they need to, they can wake me at a moment’s notice. Understood?”
“Yes. And I appreciate it. I know you’ve been one of Keera’s strongest advocates since the day she was born.”
“I’ve always been a bigger believer in nurture than nature. Genes are just physical instructions. As far as I’m concerned, the difference between Keera and us is no bigger than the difference between two different breeds of dogs.”
Reed’s lips quirked into a wry smile. “Are you calling my daughter a bitch, Captain?”
He snorted and held up both hands in apology. “Sorry, bad analogy.”
“Yes, it was.” But Reed’s eyes were sparkling with amusement.
Clayton backed the rest of the way out of the elevator with Delta matching his every step. He tossed a crooked salute from his brow. “See you in six months, Doctor Reed.”
“Call me Lori. I think friends should call each other by their first names.”
“Lori it is,” Clayton replied. His gaze dropped a few degrees. “See you soon, Keera. I can’t wait to see you crawling around and driving your parents crazy.”
Lori laughed at that, and Clayton mentally triggered the door shut. A few seconds later he and Delta watched through the window in the top of the door as the elevator shot away, racing down the spoke like a train car in a tunnel.
Delta shook his head. “I don’t like this, sir. Something is seriously wrong with that kid.”
Clayton arched an eyebrow at him. “Something besides the way she looks? Something other than a hunch? If so, you’d better start talking.”
Delta pursed his lips into an unhappy scowl. “Nothing that specific.”
“Then I don’t want to hear it, Lieutenant. That kid is going to have enough problems with people judging her and discriminating against her without us adding to it. Let’s try to set the bar a little higher, shall we?”
“Yes, sir.”
Clayton turned and headed for the exit of the cargo transfer airlock. His mind was already switching gears, running through the remainder of his final checklist. In just eighteen hours he’d be handing over the bridge to the first in a long l
ine of two-person crews whose job it would be to watch over the ship for the next six months. He still had a lot of reports to read and inspections to perform before that happened. Not to mention he had to get some sleep. At this point he probably wouldn’t get more than a few hours. Everything needed to be running perfectly before he went back into cryo.
The cargo doors rumbled open, and Clayton started down the circular corridor that ran around this particular deck: one of seven storage decks on the ship. Curving rectangular viewscreens ran around the outer circumference of the corridor, giving them a stunning view of the myriad stars shining in from the void. Those screens gave the illusion that space was just on the other side of a thin barrier, but in reality the cryo pod rings and a whole other layer of hull still separated them from the void.
As they walked, Clayton felt Delta’s eyes on him. “Something else on your mind, Lieutenant?”
“We should at least lock them in.”
Clayton looked to his chief of security with a frown. “Lock them in?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Like prisoners.”
“The Wheel is hardly a prison, sir. And they’re confined to it, anyway. What would be the difference?”
Clayton resisted the smile tugging at the corners of his lips, but he couldn’t hold it, and it quickly blossomed into a grin. “Are you afraid of a baby, Delta?”
The former Marine’s eyes narrowed slightly at that, but he said nothing.
“If she were contagious, then we’d all be infected by now,” Clayton added. “Dr. Grouse started showing symptoms almost immediately, so we know the incubation period is short.”
“Yeah, maybe,” Delta replied.
“So if she’s not contagious, what else is there to worry about? Keera can’t even crawl, let alone walk. She has no teeth, no claws...” Clayton broke off laughing.
“Not yet, sir, but in six months she’ll have some.”
“Barely. And we’ll have plenty of warning from her parents if she starts showing signs that she might be a threat. Even then, I’d liken it to a puppy who might bite or scratch you if you’re not careful. I’m pretty sure we can handle that.” Clayton laughed again and shook his head. “Let’s not let our imaginations run away with us, Lieutenant.”
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