Distantly, she became aware of a reverberating siren, one long hoot followed by three short. Her mind recognized it was important, but it took vital seconds to recognize it as the "hull breach" signal. They were losing pressure.
Mary looked around. She'd been holding the suit helmet when the floor had bucked, but couldn't see it now. Normally she'd close up all external vents. As a CySap she could happily live for several hours without an air supply, but her flesh body parts wouldn't tolerate vacuum for more than a few minutes.
Dragging herself around a stray bench, she saw the helmet rolling around in the corner like some grotesque decapitated head. She panicked for a moment, her hand snapping up to reassure herself that her reinforced skull was still there.
"Mary. There's…" The SLink buzzed. "…got to… losing atmo…"
She reached out, the agony in her leg pulsing viciously as she grabbed the helmet with her finger-tips. She felt cold and knew it was either a side-effect of the pain or they were losing a lot of atmosphere. Neither was good. She fumbled with the helmet, cursing it as she tried to snap the seal closed.
The suit tightened as pressure built up inside it and Mary realized she'd closed the helmet without thinking. A few seconds later it was fully inflated, but the increased compression worsened her pain, blurring her vision. She scrabbled at the controls at her waist, gasping loudly as the trauma system delivered its narcotic payload into her left thigh. It blotted out the pain almost instantly and Mary hauled herself upright before activating the suit comm channel.
"Ben? Are you there? What happened?" No answer. "Ben? Can you hear me? What's wrong?"
Mary dragged herself towards the flight deck, her one good leg kicking her forward, the other trailing uselessly. Even with the drugs it was agony pulling herself into her seat, but finally she strapped herself in. She checked the main screens. Ben was tumbling wildly and three quarters of the main diagnostics were pulsing red. She plugged the suit into the control panel, connecting directly to Ben's comms.
"Ben? Can you hear me now?"
"Mary?" Ben started whistling the mournful theme from "Love Is," one of the shows they'd watched together over a hundred years ago. "Where'd you go, Mary?"
"Stop that Ben, this isn't the time."
Mary's suit had less than three hours of air. There was a spare tank somewhere, but after that she'd be dead if they couldn't get the environment systems back on-line. She worked the controls, bringing up the auto-repair systems to check their status. Luckily some were still active.
She'd never controlled the ship systems manually, except in emergency simulations. Theoretically she knew enough to do everything Ben normally would. That was part of her role on the ship, but the chasm between practice and reality was huge.
"Time to earn your pay, Mary Reyes…"
Ben started to whistle a raucous version of "New Folsome Prison Blues" and Mary switched off the audio.
****
"Are you awake?"
Something cold pressed against Mary's arm and she shrugged away from it. The cold spot seemed to heat up, the warmth spreading through her until every part of her body buzzed pleasantly.
"Ben?"
She tried to sit up, but couldn't. Opening her eyes she saw she was lying in a trauma-unit in a hospital room. Glowing multi-colored lights from various instruments blinked at her, as if she were being watched by strange animals in the darkness. A viewball hovered next to her, the face of a medical attendant on its screen.
"That's good. You're focused." The attendant glanced to one side. "Your vitals are stable, but we've got you in stasis as a precaution."
Mary felt fine, other than a little sleepy. "Is that necessary?"
"Not really, but we have expensive toys and like to show them off now and again. It makes people think we're smart." The attendant smiled. "Seriously, we just needed to keep you motionless to give your leg chance to heal and this was the easiest option."
"What happened to Ben?"
"Sorry, I've no information about anyone else. You have a caller though, that's why I woke you."
The screen went dark momentarily then Tartoa's over-sized head appeared, the blue veins clearly visible behind the hairless skin. "I hope you're not too tired for visitors. I ordered you placed in isolation since they brought you in. I knew you wouldn't want a lot of people around you."
"Things are a bit hazy." Mary inexplicably had an urge to physically take a drink. Not just in the sense that she was thirsty, but actually from a real glass, something she hadn't done since becoming a CySap. "What happened?"
"We've pieced together the story from Ben's logs. It looks like the universal shunts overloaded when he deployed the Sensor Swarm. There were some cascade effects and that damaged two of his thrust units sending you tumbling. Somehow—and we don't know the direct cause—the hull breached and you lost pressure."
"How did we get here?" Mary could remember some of that, but parts were completely blank.
"We're not sure how, but you managed to manually pilot Ben and trigger the Jump back to Haven. We detected the incoming Jump signature, but no subsequent clearance request, and they spotted you drifting in the outer rim. Your oxygen supply was almost exhausted. It was pure luck they got to you in time."
"How's Ben?"
"Mary, you're incredible. You came this close to dying." Tartoa held up a thumb and finger pressed firmly together. "And your first thought is of your partner. Loyalty like that is precious and rare."
Mary said nothing, waiting for an answer to her question.
"Ben suffered a lot of damage," Tartoa continued, all business once more. "More serious than before. Many of his Cynetic interfaces have decoupled, his Dataract is extensively fragmented and needs a complete rebuild. He was conscious, barely, but extremely uncomfortable so we're maintaining him in hibernation. I wanted to talk to you first, but we can bring him out of it at any time. He may have trouble maintaining coherence with the disruption he's dealing with."
"How much?" Mary realized Tartoa was avoiding the main issue.
Tartoa slid back from the screen. "The repairs would be extensive, Mary. You don't have the credit."
"Damn it, Tartoa. Don't tell me that. Don't just write us off like a line in a ledger, you unfeeling bastard. Tell me how I can make it work."
"If we can rebuild the Dataract we might be able to recover enough data on HR4788-4 to make a few thousand, but that wouldn't even cover the rebuild costs. The company would never sanction such a risky investment."
"You're just going to pull the plug on us? Why bother even bringing us in? I'm not going to sign over the salvage rights on Ben, if that's what you're thinking."
The words snapped out. Mary wanted to curl up and cry, but she wasn't capable of either. Instead she just lay there helplessly, burning with hatred at the situation. This was her fault. If she hadn't pressured Ben all those years earlier…
"There may be another option." Tartoa was grim. "You won't like it though."
****
Mary brushed her fingers over the door patch and limped inside Ben. She wanted to talk to him in person. It was going to be hard enough to explain the situation, but she wanted Ben to understand. The medical team had objected to her leaving, but a call to Tartoa took care of that.
She slipped into her seat and winced. She was still in pain despite being loaded with drugs. Mary plugged a headset directly into the comms channel, her hands moist and clammy. "Ben? Are you there?"
"M-mary?" He sounded confused, like a child woken from an afternoon nap. "Yeah, I'm here."
"Do you remember what happened?"
"Sure, I do. We're going to sign-up for the CySap program. You filled in the papers, didn't you?"
"We've been a team for a long time. Don't you remember?"
"Man, I could just eat a big slice of lemon meringue. Your Mom made the most delicious ones in the Galaxy—do you think she'd make us one now? We haven't seen her in such a long time. Did you two fall out again?"
"Your Mom? Don't be silly. You know what though, we should visit Mitilla again soon. That would be fun. Don't you think?"
They'd honeymooned on Mitilla over ninety years—a whole lifetime ago. "Ben, I need you to focus really hard. You may not understand right now, but hopefully you will when they fix you. I have to go away, for a while. When I come back, I'll be… different. Things won't be the same, but it means you'll get repaired and that's all that matters right now."
"Different? How? Where are you going, Mary?" Ben sounded almost normal. "I don't like this. You're scaring me."
"It doesn't matter where. Just remember that-" Mary swallowed. "That I love you and I'm coming back. Hold on to that."
"You know what?" Ben's voice changed again. "We should get a puppy. I saw some really cute Altarian Sheepdogs last week over at Osaku's. Maybe we could buy one?"
Mary sent a signal and unplugged herself as the technicians hibernated Ben's consciousness once more. A cab waiting outside took her straight to Tartoa's office.
"That must have been hard," he said.
"Is the paperwork ready?"
Tartoa span around, then turned back holding a data tablet crowded with glowing numbers. Mary carefully examined the services and procedures listed, knowing how serious it was for both her and Ben. Something caught her eye and she went back over the line items entry by entry.
She looked up at Tartoa who was flipping through several remote data channels. "There's something wrong."
"I don't think so. I prepared the documents myself."
"According to this, the income from selling all my Cynetics doesn't cover the total of Ben's repair estimates, and the cost of the reclone is missing."
"As I said, there's nothing wrong. I don't make mistakes."
"Whatever sneaky trick you're trying to pull isn't going to work, Tartoa." Mary tossed the tablet onto the bench next to her, the plastic-on-plastic clatter loud against the soft electronic chattering that formed the usual office background.
"No tricks. I promise."
"We agreed that Ben would be fully repaired."
"He will. Trust me."
"Who's paying the rest?"
Tartoa spun around and slid to the window overlooking the bustle of the Main Avenue. The flickering lights on the various consoles silhouetted him so Mary could barely see his face. "I know what people think of me. None of it's good. They either hate me or fear me or both. I never felt that from you. You always treated me as an equal, almost like… like a friend. Some try to do that out of fear or hate, but you were different. You were pleasant to me because you're that kind of person, not out of deference."
"You always played fair with us. Until now…"
"Did you know I had a sister? Once." His voice rasped, almost becoming a whisper in the semi-darkness. "When the Company carried out their big experiment, they made two of us. One male, one female. Apparently they weren't sure which personality would fit their needs best."
Mary's clenched her hands, unable to find anything to say. A sister?
"Kerensa was younger than me. Or her growth was less accelerated. However you want to look at it. They SLinked us right away so we could train and practice together, but it also had … other personal 'benefits' which you can probably guess."
Mary stiffened, despite herself. "That would be natural in the circumstances. You shouldn't feel guilty."
Tartoa grunted. "I don't. We didn't create the situation, we simply tried to survive as best we could."
"What happened?" Mary saw the outline of Tartoa's shoulders shake.
"When they caught me, they terminated the SLink. It was years before I found out what happened." Tartoa sobbed. "First, they experimented on her. Trying to understand what had gone 'wrong' in the gene sequencing to bring out my criminal tendencies. Then, when they ran out of experiments, they terminated her like a laboratory animal."
"I'm sorry." It was inadequate and Mary dragged herself over to the window, putting her hand on his huge shoulder. "You couldn't stop them."
Tartoa reached back and patted her hand briefly. "The path you've chosen is very dangerous. The procedure has a significant chance of failure if neural-rejection occurs."
"I have to chance that."
****
Mary rolled over and stretched. A wave of nausea hit her and her body shook as if she'd been hit by 10,000 volts. She struggled to breathe and her stomach clenched repeatedly. She stuck her head past the edge of the bed and vomited a foul, choking spray of clear liquid onto the floor. Almost immediately a small service bot scurried in to clean up the mess.
Then the significance of what she'd done hit her—she'd rolled over.
"That's a lot better than previous days." The viewball floated close by. "Do you know where you are?"
"H…hospital. Haaa.a.ven" Her throat was raw from the acidic bile. "W.w.water."
A small dispenser tube appeared and Mary wrapped her lips around it, swallowing as much as she could. It wasn't water, but it soothed nevertheless.
"Do you know who you are?" the face on the viewball asked.
"Mary. Mary Reyes." Mary's vision was distorted, as if she were seeing things through a thick lens. She could tell the face on the viewball was male, but couldn't read the name display near the bottom.
"Much better. That's a big improvement on the last few times."
Mary's thoughts cleared slowly, but she could sense immediately that her body had changed significantly. All the "normal" sensory signals were gone, leaving her feeling naked and vulnerable. She'd expected it, but it was different feeling it. "It worked?"
"There were some complications, but overall you're making good progress."
Mary slumped against the pillows. Everything felt strange. The precise feedback from her Cynetics was gone, replaced by disorganized and simplistic impressions that teased rather than informed. The result was fuzzy and imprecise, but somehow felt warm and comforting.
The "warmth" surprised her, but she definitely felt it. The Cynetic signals she remembered as "cold" in comparison to those the meat body was sending. The beep of an incoming call sounded and she croaked permission for the connection.
"Ben?"
"Hello, my dear." Tartoa's face appeared. "Not the wake-up call you wanted obviously, but I wanted to check on you as soon as they said you were conscious. How do you feel?"
"Different. Strange."
"It will take a while for the nerve bundles to fully interface, so they tell me. You're bound to feel different while that's happening."
"How long have I been… out? How's Ben?"
"Longer than anticipated. The initial relocation went well and the clone tissue presented no rejection issues. Brain stem splicing was touch and go, as anticipated, but we managed." Tartoa's large face seemed to almost split in two as he grinned. "Near enough for Company work, at least."
"Ben?"
"There was a major cardiac failure. Something went wrong during the accelerated growth phase and the reclone developed an acute dysrhythmia that we didn't catch soon enough. We replaced it with an artificial unit which is working perfectly. You'll suffer no side-effects from the substitution, but as a result we had to hold you in Equilibrium for an extra two weeks. That wasn't a bad thing as it gave your neural pathways more time to knit together and you should feel less disoriented as a result."
"You're avoiding my question, Tartoa." Mary shuffled more upright and the viewball adjusted to match her change of position. "How's Ben doing?"
Tartoa turned away from the optical pick-up slightly, focusing on something to his right. "Sorry Mary, I still have to run things here. Ben's completely repaired. All system diagnostics checked out after the work. He's been fully functional for the last seventeen days."
Seventeen? That was much longer than anticipated. "When can I see him?"
"You can call him whenever you like." Tartoa hesitated. "But it mig
ht be better to wait a while until you leave the hospital. They want to monitor you further. It's quite an accomplishment and everyone is very proud. Only seven CySaps have ever been recloned and survived, so you're a bit of a celebrity with the med team."
Mary didn't want to speak to Ben remotely. Calls would undoubtedly be monitored, hampering free discussion. She wanted to be inside Ben. To talk directly to him. That was the only way she could really be sure he was okay.
****
The hatch slid open and Mary shuffled inside, her movement hampered by the canes that she still depended on. Her new body didn't lack strength, but her coordination was impaired despite gritty sessions with the rehab therapists. Her medical team didn't want her to leave, but her determination forced Tartoa into arranging a ride to the space docks.
Ben was whistling. Mary couldn't place the tune, but that wasn't surprising considering how off-key he usually was. It was a good sign though and Mary smiled. She wondered if he was trying to add in ultrasonic harmonies, something he did when he was really happy and usually failed. But if he was, she couldn't hear them anymore.
Mary dragged herself through to the main control room, the sight of the acceleration chair and control surfaces flooding her with happy memories. They'd shared so many years with her in there and she was glad she hadn't lost all that now she no longer had her supplemental memory.
"Ben?" She spoke quietly, not really wanting to interrupt.
The whistling stopped and several seconds passed before the audio crackled. "Is someone there? Jennar?"
Mary's skin prickled at the sound of Ben's voice. It had been decades since she'd actually heard him physically, unfiltered by any CyTech. His voice still had the warmth she remembered from when they'd first met. Without her SLink she'd entered undetected, she realized. Normally Ben would just know. Now she was just 'meat' and didn't register with him unless he specifically checked.
"It's me, Ben. Mary."
"Mary?" Ben hesitated. "Mary? It's really you?"
"Don't sound so shocked. You knew I was coming back. Right?"
Three Lives Of Mary Page 3
