Heris Serrano

by Elizabeth Moon

  The scents of a spring night still enchanted her. They must be in a vehicle with open windows: she could smell the new grass, a fruit orchard in bloom, all the good smells of open country. No one talked; all she could hear was the windrush outside. When the vehicle stopped, she felt movement again, as her surface (bed? stretcher?) was lifted out and rolled somewhere. She sniffed again. This smelled mechanical, almost industrial. Metal, plastics, pavement . . . something that sounded like a very large door on rollers, with metallic echoes beyond. A warehouse? A factory?

  Another lift, and she was in a different set of smells. Almost all plastics and fine oils, like a . . . like a . . . shuttle. A shuttle—she was being shipped offplanet? Still no conversation, just the faint sounds of feet on the floor, and the snick of buckles fastening. If I were making this up, Cecelia thought, I would figure out some way for my heroine to communicate. It's entirely too boring to lie here knowing nothing.

  Footsteps moved away, and something went chunk with the finality normally associated with hatches closing. She could feel no more vibration—no, there it was, the slightest rhythmic thump that must be tires passing over seams on the runway.

  Her mind ran through the private shuttleports, and decided they were at Bunny's Crown residence. She felt the firm pressure of acceleration on her body, and the rhythmic bumps came closer together . . . then ceased. Wherever they were going, they were on the way. Wherever they were going, it had to be better than where she'd been.

  "I'm sorry I couldn't talk to you earlier," Brun said. Her hand, smelling of soap lightly pine scented, lay along Cecelia's cheek. "Those who helped me could not know who you were." She chuckled, and went on. "They think you're a drunken friend of mine, who's going to wake up on Station as the result of a Festival wager. You're wearing balloonist gear, and it's fortunate you don't look your age. You probably wonder why we took the risk of taking you offplanet right away."

  Cecelia hadn't yet wondered that, but now she did. Why not simply hide her somewhere until she recovered?

  "We expect a solid search effort," Brun went on. "We weren't sure if they'd implanted a locator of some kind, and we wanted you out of range of detectors. And they might start checking private shuttle flights after tonight. Luckily, with the Festival, there's sure to be more than one private shuttle up. And . . . we don't know how long your recovery will take."

  Behind that, Cecelia caught a concern that it might not come. She wanted to signal, to convince Brun that she was alive inside, but nothing worked.

  "We need to get you to good medical care—someone we know is safe, and not part of the plot—in a place where it won't be interrupted."

  The questions she could not ask whirled through Cecelia's mind. What about Ronnie? Where were they going? What had happened to her own yacht? And Heris? What kind of medical care, and how did Brun know the doctors were safe, and how long was it going to take to get her life back? She didn't even know exactly how long she'd been like this—months, at least, because the Festival was in spring, but she couldn't remember exactly when it had happened. She did remember that rehabilitation took longer the longer someone was down.

  "It's going to seem disjointed, I know." Brun's voice had the edge that came from trying to stay calm when it wasn't easy. "First yanking you out of that bed and into the balloon basket, and then into the shuttle—and the transfer at Rockhouse Minor is going to be tricky, too—and we've got a priority undock already filed. We couldn't get most of the equipment Dad's neurologist said we needed onto the yacht, so some things will have to wait until we get where we're going."

  Which she still hadn't said. Cecelia wondered if Brun knew, or if she had a reason not to say it aloud. She'd already said enough to make any surveillance tapes dangerous.

  "Actually we're still arguing about that." Again, it was as if Brun had read her thoughts. "The specialists want you at a major medical facility, but Dad says that's too dangerous; whoever did this is bound to be checking the best-known facilities. He wanted you back home, but your Captain Serrano said the same argument applied to that. She thinks you ought to be somewhere with horses, somewhere obscure. There's a couple of possibilities—Dad's been checking them out, and once we get to the yacht, I'll have his latest advice. But there's the medical problem."

  The medical problem. Whatever had been done to her, whatever might be undone. She wanted to argue her own case, demand the risks of the top specialists, explain who might have done this, and why. But that would have to wait until she could talk—if she ever could.

  Cecelia surprised herself by falling asleep in the shuttle. Real sleep, deep comfortable sleep. She felt safe, with Brun's hand on her cheek, safer than she had felt in months.

  When she woke, the voices overhead sounded medical again, and for a moment she panicked. But the medicinal smells interwove with more pleasant ones, and Brun's voice made up part of the conversation.

  "—better strip the programming on those sphincters." A woman's voice; she sounded as if she were scowling. "We'll want to keep her hydrated, but we don't want any distension."

  "But let's check the drug port—they may have an implanted delivery system, and there might still be residuals."

  "Just remember that she can hear you," Brun said, from a little distance. "Talk to her, not just about her." Then, taking her own advice, she spoke to Cecelia. "You're on the yacht now; I think you went to sleep for a while, though it's hard to tell. You've got Dr. Czerda and Dr. Illik with you, right now."

  "I'm Czerda," the woman's voice said. "I'm a geriatric neurologist, with special interest in pharmacological insults. I'm checking the ports on your chest: cardiac monitor, venous access, feeding tube. There's a . . . yes . . . a set of three miniature pumps in the venous access. I'm going to have to take these out very carefully . . ." Cecelia could just feel a faint tug, disconcerting but not painful. "Brun—if you'll take these over to the bench there—"

  "Can you tell what the drugs are?" Brun asked.

  "Probably. At least we can tell the class, and if it's referenced we can identify it precisely. If not . . . it may take a while. What the drugs do is my specialty, but identifying them isn't. We can get it done, though. Now . . . I'm going to leave the rest of this in; we'll want the cardiac monitor and the venous access, although I hope we can get her—you, sorry—off the feeding tube and back on oral."

  "I've got the signals on the implants," the man's voice said. "Standard Zynnis model fives, and we have the manuals." His voice came toward Cecelia's head. "Brun says you're hearing us; I know that's possible. I'm Dr. Illik; you met me at Sirialis when young Ronnie was in the hospital there. I was the tall skinny bald one." Cecelia remembered a pleasant, homely face and jug ears. "We're going to give you the same kind of care that you had, except that we'll be triggering your bladder implant more often. Right now you need that again; it's been over twelve hours." He sounded embarrassed; Cecelia had long given up embarrassment. It wasn't her fault someone else had to operate her once-private functions. She could tell when they changed her body position, although she wasn't sure how much, and she could hear the result when the implant opened. It did feel better, although she'd hardly known what the vague discomfort was.

  "We're not going to mess with your cranial access right now," Czerda said. "There's a small chance they put in a lockout circuit that could hurt you if we didn't key in correctly. I want a full readout of everything else first, and we're going to try to get your cranial implant to talk to our monitors. So far it's not. But I would like to see if you can swallow. We did that ultrasound when you first came aboard, and I don't think they bothered to do an esophageal pinch."

  Cecelia had no idea what an esophageal pinch was, but assumed it had something to do with whether or not she could eat. The thought of actually tasting food again thrilled her. Her mouth filled with saliva. Surely she had to be able to swallow, or she'd have choked before now.

  "Now . . . what I'm going to put at your lips is a soft plastic nipple, on a water bottle.
When you feel it, try to suck."

  She felt nothing, then a dull bump as something hit a tooth. She tried to suck, but wasn't sure she remembered how. She had not had anything in her mouth in a long time.

  "Serious loss of sensation," Czerda said. "Let's see . . ."

  A cool wetness tasting faintly of lemon filled her mouth. Cecelia swallowed without thinking; her tongue felt ungainly and misshapen, but she didn't choke.

  "Very good," Czerda said. "That time I squeezed some out; I'd like you to do it this time."

  Cecelia struggled with a recalcitrant tongue and cheek muscles that no longer worked willingly. A tiny drip rewarded her, then a trickle.

  "That's too much," Illik said. "Look at the cardiac monitor—she's straining."

  "But it's something." Czerda sounded angry. "Even a tiny, weak suck, and we know she's still got that. Let's see about something else—"

  This time it was cold, and sweet, and smooth . . . a chilled custard, perhaps. The flavor developed in Cecelia's mouth, from the initial sweetness to a rich, fruity taste . . . and she was able to swallow the spoonful, savoring the feel of it all the way down her throat. Date-caramel custard, with a touch of almond essence, she thought.

  "Oh, very good," Czerda said. "Brun, do you happen to know what foods she liked best?"

  "She had one of the best cooks anywhere," Brun said. "She liked good food, all kinds." Not all kinds, Cecelia thought. Prustocean cuisine is ghastly, and there's no way anyone can cook Abrolc cephalopods so they don't taste like oily rubber. Surely Brun could remember her favorite spices, at least.

  "Great. If she can eat custards now, she'll be able to eat solids very soon. I'm glad I insisted on including a dietician in the primary team." Dietician! Cecelia wanted to glare. Dieticians thought more of nutrition than flavor; she imagined herself with a mouthful of pureed halobeets, unmitigated by spices. "We'll leave the feeding tube access in, just in case, but the sooner she's on an oral diet, the sooner we can get her an oral communication system."

  "You mean talking?"

  "No, not at first." Cecelia hoped she was wrong about the undertone that suggested Maybe never. "Her inability to talk could be all neuromuscular—loss of control of voluntary muscles of speech—or it could also involve central language problems. I suspect the latter. But if she can swallow, that means she can control her tongue and breath—and that means she can learn to suck and blow, and that means she can use a mechanical system to signal. Yes and no, at least, and probably a lot more."

  "But if she can swallow, then why can't she move her jaw?"

  "Good question. It could be a local paralysis, either from an injection into the nerve, or maintained by the drugs we found in that packet. Or, in a woman her age, it could be simple arthritis of the temporomandibular joint. If they kept her jaw immobilized for long enough, muscle atrophy and arthritis together could produce what seemed to be paralysis. At any rate, until she has control of her jaw, she can't chew. We can open and close it—and we will—but that's not really chewing."

  Cecelia knew exactly whom she'd bite if she had the chance, these long-winded idiots who blathered on as if she weren't there.

  Lorenza grimaced when the light flashed on her deskcomp. Someone wanted her badly enough to override the recorded message explaining that she wasn't available. She hated being interrupted after dinner. It had better be a real emergency. She picked up an impressive-looking pile of documents before flicking the screen on. That way whoever it was would know she had been interrupted in the midst of real work.

  On the screen, Berenice's distorted face looked much older, as if her rejuv were failing all at once, and her words at first made no sense. "She's gone! She's gone!"

  "Who?" A maid, a cook, even a pregnant cow, thought Lorenza idly. Why did people think she was a mind reader?

  "Cecelia!" Berenice said, too loudly. "She disappeared from the home sometime today. After Ronnie's visit, in fact; he says she was certainly there when he was. The attendant who let him in remembers that—"

  "Maybe Ronnie's playing a prank." Lorenza's mind raced. Crazy young men did such things. Cecelia gone? What would it mean? She felt cold, and then excited. "Perhaps he took her out for a joyride or something." Perhaps another enemy had abducted her, raped her, killed her.

  "No—there was some kind of mixup with the Festival, lots of balloonists coming down in that meadow, and some getting caught in the trees. Lots of people saw Ronnie leave, and he was alone. Besides, he's as confused as I am—I can tell; I'm his mother. Lori, she's gone. She'll die without care—I can't bear to think of it—" Berenice, who had quarrelled with Cecelia for years, still actually cared about her. Lorenza thought that was stupid, but knew better than to argue that Cecelia was better off dead. Especially for her own purposes.

  "Who do you think—could it be that awful yacht captain?"

  "Oh, no. She's been gone for weeks—and she couldn't have come back in the system without being caught. It's just—I can't figure out why anyone would do this!" Lorenza made soothing noises. She could think of several reasons, and after a while produced the one she thought most useful.

  "There's always kidnapping for ransom, although in her condition most such people would expect you to abandon her. Perhaps . . . someone, some business associate, wants to do something with her assets. If they produced an imposter, and claimed she'd recovered . . ."

  "I hadn't thought of that." Berenice's voice had calmed; she might be overemotional, but she wasn't stupid. Not really. "We've had auditors checking things over to be sure that captain hadn't been embezzling—maybe someone else was."

  "Or maybe that captain had an ally," Lorenza said.

  "I'll tell Gustav," Berenice said firmly, and cut off what Lorenza was about to say.

  Surely it would be all right. Someone had kidnapped a helpless old lady—it would be either for ransom or—the idea made more sense the longer she thought about it—to produce an apparently recovered imposter, whose remaining lapses of memory and function could be laid to the injury. Or Cecelia herself, with an AI unit implanted so that she seemed to speak what someone else had chosen. If they had enough time, whoever had done this, they could even produce a clone-Cecelia. Of course, not even a clone-Cecelia would know what had been done to her, or how, or who.

  She was, therefore, unprepared for the second call, from her medical agent.

  "What do you mean, trouble?" she asked airily. "It's nothing to do with us; I didn't snatch her."

  "Have you forgotten what I told you? She needs maintenance doses—and anyone who scans her now will find those implants. If they're removed, a high-level scan will show brain activity."

  "You said it was irreversible." She fought the impulse to scowl at the screen. She never scowled; scowling caused wrinkles.

  "Under the circumstances we had, yes. But not in a medical facility I can't get into, or send someone to. Oh, she'll never get up and walk off—at least, I don't think so—but once someone suspects she's still cognating, they'll start looking at her old scans and know they were falsified. And then they'll figure out how, and that leads to who. I want out—I want transportation and a lump sum, enough to live on—"

  "Wait a minute—you're running out on me? Won't that make it obvious you did it?"

  "Not if you set it up right. Do you know what they do to medical professionals who do something like this? I'll be in therapeutic reassignment the rest of my life. No. I want out. You've got to get me out of here."

  "But you say she can't really recover . . ."

  "Of course not. Not really. But they don't need her testimony to put me at risk, I tell you. And if they catch me, I'll tell them who it was—I've no reason to protect you if I'm going to prison. It's to your advantage to keep me safe."

  "I see. Well, then . . . it will take me a day or so . . ." To choose which way to eliminate this unstable and most undesirable of accomplices. To make sure it would not be traced to her. To see if it could possibly be done in person . . . she would m
iss the visits to Cecelia, the chance to savor that triumph. This one could make up for it.

  Chapter Twelve

  The transfer station at Naverrn had none of the luxury and elegance of Rockhouse Major. It was as large—it had to be, to handle the transfers of entire troopships—but only in the Exchange did any civilians color and brighten the drab corridors and docksides. The Better Luck had come in, with its new identity unchallenged—just another scruffy little tramp freighter and her slipshod crew.

  "Recognition's supposed to be easy," Heris said, eyeing the material she'd been given. "The prince has seen me; I've seen him."

  "But the double," said Petris. "You might mistake the double for the prince."

  "The double doesn't know me. He won't approach. It's true, both of them will be there . . . but only one will come aboard."