Assegai

by S J MacDonald

  At its very simplest, five-year old level of explanation, Kate was attempting to get cores to synchronise with one another more effectively.

  Space was not a perfect vacuum, and there were vast distortions in it, too, with both matter density and multidimensional energies impacting on the ship rather like an ocean-going ship moving through waves, calms and storms. The way mix-cores responded to this was nowhere near as straightforward as running hot when energies were high and colder when conditions were flat. Much of the time, forces were pulling the mix cores out of phase, destroying the balance which kept the particle of fuel spinning in twenty four dimensions simultaneously. Keeping cores in phase, calibrated, was a constant, vital task. This was only possible using a phenomenon which nobody really understood, not even Kate, but which had been known and used since the earliest days of interstellar travel. A single mix core was inherently unstable, but they stabilised one another when they were hooked up in pairs. No data-transfer was required, merely a simple telemetry cable enabling each of the cores to detect the other’s output. Once hooked up, they synchronised and balanced one another.

  What Kate was doing was to experiment with tweaking the comms link so as to enhance the synchronisation. She was, though, fumbling in the dark with that, using a trial-and-error approach and trying to figure out what was going on as she watched the outcomes. Anyone asking whether she was trying to work out the theory by watching the experiment, or to work out the experiment as she figured out the theory, would have been missing the point. Kate was doing both, experimental and theoretical physics combining in her quest for understanding.

  She would get it, Alex was sure. And she would get it because she was here, working in a real engine room, listening and feeling the thrum of those energies. And if she had to spend time in cadet classes which were ludicrously beneath her intellectually, that wasn’t wasted time either. Kate herself had chosen to train as an officer because she knew so little of normal life, of working with people who didn’t have ‘genius’ on their ID. It was good for her to have a break from research, too. And, as Alex had seen, focussing on something so mundane as cadet work could free her subconscious to figure things out, striking her suddenly with revelatory realisations. Alex had seen her, in the midst of a cadet prep session, leap to understanding of how to increase the range and accuracy of the already amazing Naos navigation system, a subroutine she’d written in less time than a coffee break. She was, after all, one of the most brilliant minds in the League.

  ‘Sorry…’ she wound down eventually, seeing that Alex was starting to look a bit glazed under the impact of wave space math she was barely grasping herself, ‘I get a bit carried away,’ she admitted, which made Alex laugh.

  ‘I asked,’ he reminded her, and as he got up, letting her go back to work, ‘You’ll get there,’ he said. ‘Just remember, you don’t have to crack it today.’

  ‘I know, skipper – pace myself!’ she got up too, putting her hands behind her back and adopting, absurdly, the Academy Yap, ‘Sir, yes, sir!’

  Alex walked away chuckling.

  Eight

  On the evening of his third day aboard, Alex was asked to call in to sickbay for a checkup.

  He went without protest, though he couldn’t see why it was necessary. There was a mediband fastened discreetly around his ankle which was not only providing him with meds but feeding back detailed monitoring to sickbay, including hourly blood tests. He was barely aware of it, beyond a slight, cold pressure at the hypodermic interface. It was, he was sure, reporting good progress. He was sticking to the detox and feeling very much better for it, losing that liverish, bloated feeling and the perennial headache. He’d slept better, too, with improving nights and afternoon naps on the aquadeck.

  ‘Ah – captain, thank you for coming in.’ Dr Payling was waiting for him, bustling and self-important as usual as he ushered him straight through into a treatment room. ‘Nothing to worry about,’ he assured him, indicating that he wished Alex to take a seat on the treatment table, currently set into a chair position. ‘I just wanted to double-check the mediband. If you could just make yourself comfortable there, and I’ll just raise your legs up, if that’s all right with you…’

  Alex folded his hands over his midriff and sat passively while the doctor fussed at his feet. First he removed the mediband, flitting it away to a diagnostic console where he made dubious mmm noises and little clicks of his tongue. Then he came back, bringing rather more elaborate equipment with which he scanned and sampled and analysed over several minutes. He seemed to be getting more and more puzzled, till eventually he stood back, looking at Alex as if he was an insoluble conundrum.

  ‘I wouldn’t,’ he said, obscurely, ‘have believed it.’ And as Alex looked at him in enquiry, the doctor seemed actually embarrassed. ‘I have to ask,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry, sir, but I do have to ask… have you been undertaking any form of medical treatment or therapy I haven’t been informed of?’

  ‘No.’ Alex was a little uneasy himself, now, wondering what the doctor had found. ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘Nothing.’ Dr Payling shook his head, baffled. ‘Nothing at all. Your recovery is almost complete, in fact… which is remarkable. Quite remarkable. So much so that I thought there must be some kind of malfunction in the mediband. But there isn’t, it’s right, your liver is back to normal function, your digestion is working normally, you have a flourishing diversity of biome, and all your biochemistry is within ‘fit for duty’ tolerance.’

  ‘That’s good,’ Alex observed, ‘isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, yes, of course – marvellous, indeed. But I don’t understand how you’ve done it!’ the medic confessed. ‘When you said that you expected to be back to normal in two or three days I thought, well, I considered that completely unrealistic. A week, ten days, minimum. But here you are, three days, and if not back to your normal standards of fitness, certainly fit enough to be certified as fit for work. And I know, I know, that none of the meds I’ve given you could have achieved that, so I have to ask, sir – if it is some quarian therapy you prefer not to divulge then I will of course respect that, but I do have to say that there will be a massive question mark over the speed of your recovery at Medical HQ. So if there’s anything you can tell me which would help to explain it…’

  He looked imploringly at Alex, who just couldn’t help but laugh at the poor man’s bewilderment.

  ‘No therapy!’ he assured him. ‘I’ve been taking naps on the aquadeck and spa treatments, massage, but that’s just for relaxation. I do have quite a strong constitution, I suppose. But mainly I’d guess it’s due to my having such excellent doctors, the tremendous care I’ve had from everybody here, and the fact that I’m having so much fun.’

  ‘Fun, sir?’ Dr Payling echoed, faintly.

  ‘Yes, enjoying myself very much,’ Alex confirmed, ‘Which is always very motivating, don’t you think? Of course if you ask Dr Tekawa he’ll tell you it’s down to the tea. The healing tea. Which in a way may actually be a factor, as there’s a view on the Heron that patients recover as fast as they possibly can so they don’t have to drink any more of the stuff.’ He chuckled, but the medic just looked incredulous. ‘Joke,’ Alex clarified, helpfully. ‘But seriously, Dr, I don’t think it’s anything more than the treatment plan – meds, detox, rest and care, relaxing and having some fun.’

  Dr Payling stared at him. He’d been almost wholly focused on the ‘meds’ part of that treatment plan, dismissing the detox as irrelevant quackery and regarding the amount of rest specified as inadequate. If he’d had his way Alex would have spent the first twenty five hours in sickbay and the next on bed rest in his quarters. No way would he have allowed him to start work with the trainee group, holding briefings and seminars. Nor would he have approved Alex spending his time walking about the ship so much, since ‘taking it easy’ in his mind was synonymous with enforced inactivity.

  Now he realised that Dr Tekawa knew better. Knew this patient better, an
yway. And regardless of the dubious efficacy of detox diets and herbal tea, he’d known exactly what to prescribe both for meds and therapeutic activity.

  It occurred to Dr Payling that Rangi Tekawa, half his age and significantly below him in rank, might actually be a better doctor than he was himself… a disconcerting, even ego-busting realisation.

  ‘If it’s of interest,’ Alex suggested, ‘you might like to write it up.’ Then, as the medic stared at him in jaw-dropped astonishment, ‘Sorry – it’s just that on the Heron we’re in the way of regarding anything that surprises us as an opportunity for research.’

  ‘Oh, um… well, that would certainly be…’ Dr Payling could see his name heading the paper in the League’s most prestigious medical journal, and felt quite dizzy at the prospect. ‘If you really think… and if Dr Tekawa wouldn’t object…’

  ‘No, he’s very much focussed on his empath research, for now,’ Alex said. ‘So if you’re interested in analysing the factors in my recovery and writing that up, do so by all means.’

  If Dr Payling had been a rather less uptight personality he might well have punched a fist into the air at that and yelled Yes! As it was, he inclined his head gravely.

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  ‘And don’t worry,’ Alex added, ‘I will stick to the whole two week programme.’

  Dr Payling gazed at the rarest of phenomena – a patient who didn’t start ditching meds and disregarding medical advice the moment they started to feel that they were better.

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ he said, and was moved to continue, ‘I have to say, you are a remarkably cooperative, responsible patient, sir – all that any medic could hope for!’

  Alex grinned. ‘Thanks,’ he said, and with a slightly plaintive note, ‘I really don’t know why I’ve got this reputation for being difficult. I think, somehow, people just expect me to be.’ He gave a philosophic shrug. ‘Anyway, there it is – good to hear that things are fine, and my thanks to you and your team for the care you’re taking of me.’

  He left a very happy medic there, and he was as good as his word, too. Rangi’s programme had him on detox for another two days before moving him onto a low calorie but rather more varied diet. At that point, and only at that point, Alex would be allowed two mugs of coffee a day, rising to four by the time they got to Karadon.

  So, he was still on the tofu and water when he had lunch with Jarlner and Bennet the next day.

  ‘It is good to see you so much recovered,’ Bennet observed, as they could see a marked improvement both in his complexion and the brightness of his eyes, and then, diffidently, ‘The events you were going to on Chartsey must have been very important, to merit your becoming so exhausted.’

  Alex grinned. The Samartians had never developed diplomacy skills, never having needed any beyond their very effective greeting of missiles fired at any approaching ship. They had nothing like the slippery contesting politics of the League, either, with a culture founded in the importance of truth, honour and service to others. So this very obvious pawn-sacrifice was about as sophisticated as they got. And it was obvious, crashingly obvious, that the two of them had discussed this extensively and decided that Bennet would raise the issue, in just those words, in this informal setting.

  ‘Yes, it was,’ Alex said. He had no doubt that the Diplomatic Corps had tried to explain this to the Samartian delegates, but the Corps did have a tendency to speak a very subtle kind of diplomatic language which could often go straight over Samartian heads. ‘Have you heard the expression, ‘As goes Chartsey, so goes the League?’’ Bennet gave a nod of assent, so he went on, ‘And it’s true – however much people complain about Chartsey-centrism, what happens at Chartsey carries huge weight across the League. This is a time of huge turbulence in the League, really is – the discovery of Carrearranis was challenging in itself, upsetting to people who had it settled in their own minds that we’d already found all the inhabited worlds there are to be found – don’t ask me where they get such a daft idea, but it is what most groundsiders believe, you see, that the age of exploration ended centuries ago and what we know about now is all there is. So finding an inhabited world so close to our borders rocked people’s certainties, made things unsettled. It could have gone one way or the other, either into excitement or into fear. Last time such news went out, at the discovery of Quarus, the reaction was very definitely one of fear, panic. But this time – I don’t know, perhaps we’ve advanced as a society or perhaps it was just the fact that the Carrearranians are so obviously no kind of threat to anyone, but the reaction was one of excitement, and such a surge of interest in and enthusiasm for exploration, our government decided that the time was right to try and report about Quarus again. Which is, believe me, the biggest information-management exercise the human race has ever undertaken, mind bogglingly massive, at least ten million people actively involved in it at every level from the Senate to local city councils on the furthest worlds in the League, and millions more if you include the media. We were brought to Chartsey as a crucial phase in that, to provide the celebration and closure people expect at the end of such important events. Which it is – as far as the public is concerned, this is our first and only contact with an alien race, at least since the mists of history when we found the Marfikians. Contact with a peaceful, fascinating alien race is just mind-blowing to most people, the biggest event of the millennium. And in that, whatever happened at Chartsey will go out to all our worlds, you see, and they wanted, needed, that to be a big climax, a huge blast of celebration which will flood out across the League and take all our worlds with it. People will be happy, then, satisfied, you see? And it was important that I was in the middle of that, visible, very visible, throughout. That’s what people expect of a guest of honour at a party, see, and questions would have been asked, concerns raised, if I’d been doing any less. So I am sorry – I would very much have liked to spend time with you and the other delegates at Chartsey. But it was, it really was, important to finish the Quarus mission in a way which satisfied and settled our people, not just on Chartsey but right across the League.’

  Bennet inclined her head in a half-bow, conveying respect.

  ‘It is like when we revealed your arrival, Revellin Day,’ she commented. ‘The Dakaelin spent much time travelling around the world, appearing at parades, reassuring citizens that there was nothing to be feared.’ A slight, mischievous little flicker crossed her face. ‘But we would not expect them to go to parties, and nobody would think it right or good to keep making them eat too much!’

  ‘The otherness of us can be hard to comprehend,’ Alex said, knowing very well how deeply shocking the Samartians would have found that. They struggled with so many concepts around food which people in the League took for granted – not just the prevalence of their revolting mush-based vat food, but the fact that rich people in the League ate better food than the poor, and that so much food was wasted, too, in rich and poor homes alike.

  ‘It can seem, at times, beyond comprehension,’ Bennet admitted. ‘Beyond our comprehension, anyway. The way they kept racing you from one party to the next was hard enough to understand, but that they would think it right to over-feed anyone so much it made them ill was just – it would be illegal to do that as a punishment to a criminal in your culture, wouldn’t it? And yet they did it to you, their hero.’

  Alex laughed unreservedly at that, and after a moment or two, both of the others joined in. Bennet had an infectious laugh – more rarely heard now that she’d achieved the dignity of Caldai, but all the merrier when it did break out. Jarlner’s guffaws, on the other hand, sounded rather like a donkey with something stuck in its throat, which made the other two laugh even more.

  ‘Oh…’ Bennet shook her head as they recovered composure, though grinning at the captain. ‘It is like being at home, with you,’ she observed. They were eating in their quarters, sitting on the mats with dishes on a serving-rug between them.

  ‘Good,’ Alex said, recognising that
this was as relaxed, comfortable and happy as it was possible for them to be. ‘So,’ he asked, with a twinkle, ‘does that mean you’re feeling ready to meet Silvie yet?’ He cracked into another laugh at their sudden, frozen expressions. ‘No pressure!’ he promised. ‘She will keep her distance for the whole five months if that’s what you want. I just thought that you might, now you’ve settled in, be considering a meeting.’

  The glance they exchanged told him that they had been discussing this, too. Of course they had. One of the sticking points they’d had during first contact had been when they’d identified Shion as a Pirrellothian. The Samartians retained some folk-memory of the time of the plague, though incomplete and distorted. For many centuries, their culture had been dominated by a religion which worshipped, effectively, the memory of the beings who’d created them, the Old Ones. Shion met the criteria for an Old One in several significant ways, causing the Samartians to respond with great indignation against what they saw as a claim by the Fourth to have a living goddess aboard their ship. They had been very reluctant to have any direct contact with her in first-phase, and even now were cautious, not entirely sure that they really could regard her as just an ordinary person.