Cryptikon Far Freedom Part 2

by Warren Merkey

holding his. It was too real, too desirable, and too undeniable. He started to shake.

  He pulled away from her as a wave of vertigo struck him. He heard a medical alarm. In a few seconds Nori appeared in the hospital room, followed soon by Mai. Nori checked him quickly, before stepping aside for Mai.

  "There's nothing wrong physically," Mai concluded.

  But everything wrong mentally! He gave up denial. He began to take responsibility. "I remember you singing," Patrick said. He couldn't look at her anymore. He couldn't look at any of them.

  "You remember me?" Zakiya queried.

  "I never forgot you!"

  "Why did you pretend not to remember, Patrick?" He just shook his head and closed his eyes. She let him have his self-pity. "I wish we could both be happier finding each other again, Patrick."

  = = =

  "That was one reason I wanted Mai to come with us," Aylis said. "She has experience with patients with aberrant behavior, with traumatic injuries. I assumed that, if they survived physically, they might not have survived emotionally. The stress had to be monumental, like being in combat for a century. There are things Mai can do to soothe their brain chemistry. We don't want to fix them, not at this stage. The medical protocols require extensive evaluations we don't have the personnel and the patient history to perform."

  "You're starting with Koji?" Zakiya asked.

  "After Patrick, Koji will take the longest to repair. All three will be in treatment at the same time. As we progress, I will have nearly a hundred specialists in training for trauma and regenerative surgery."

  "They have physical augments," Mai commented, reminding them of another danger.

  "Mostly combat-related," Aylis said. "Shall I remove them?"

  "No, I have another idea," Zakiya said.

  "I heard you ordered Iggy to install a hundred cannons in the ship," Aylis said.

  "The cannons may not be important. Time is important. It will take time to acquire raw material and to manufacture them. More time to modify the ship for them."

  "The cannons are only a delay?"

  "I hope they're never used," Zakiya said. "With time, our wounds will heal, our anger soften, and new possibilities for action may arise. It will also give us time to follow your medical protocols with Alex and Setek and Koji. Perhaps the arming of the ship will focus their minds. They'll plan to take over the ship. That will, at least, give us the will to try to heal their personalities, and a deadline before which to do it."

  "You think they will try to take the ship?" Aylis asked. "Yes, of course they will! I keep forgetting who they've become and remembering who they were. This is so terrible!"

  = = =

  "Why are you pregnant?" Patrick inquired bluntly, since he was not sharp enough to do it cleverly.

  "So you do have something to say," Aylis said. Pat had said so little to her, she who had known him best. She had been his fellow expert in the life sciences. He had led her to important discoveries in human biology through comparative studies of alien life. He didn't know yet that without his research during the Frontier voyages she probably would not have founded the Mnro Clinics. Aylis had taken all the credit and had become the "Mother of Immortality." But someday she would distribute credit to all of the others who deserved it.

  Aylis walked among the flowers, followed by Patrick who, despite the serenity around them, seemed anxious. Aylis took his hand and led him through the English garden at a leisurely pace. She patted the back of his hand absently, comfortingly. He seemed to relax a little, but he kept looking at her in puzzlement with his bright green eyes.

  /

  "You couldn't have wanted it," he remarked. That Aylis was raped disturbed Patrick deeply. He even felt responsible in some way. Patrick knew he and the other three shouldn't have stayed in barbarian space so long, thus prompting Aylis and Zakiya to risk their lives in search of them. Alex, Setek, and Koji had lost perspective and soon after had lost the real meaning of their lives. Whether their rescue would be a rebirth or an abortion remained to be decided. That two unborn children should be so close to what might become an extremely dangerous situation was a terrible risk.

  /

  "The baby?" Aylis asked. "No, I didn't want it at first." Where had he got those green eyes? Aylis had always wondered. Patrick was an animal as exotic as any he had studied in the far reaches of space. She never heard a true word about his parentage but she knew he was no pure Scotsman. It occurred to her that she should be able to find his lineage in the database of the Mnro Clinics, if she would ever gain access to it again. He was slender and brown. When his hair grew back it would be sandy and curly. Patrick fell silent, perhaps because he sensed the tension the subject of her fetus caused. "Tell me about your travels, Pat. Did you find any interesting creatures?"

  /

  "Nothing much." Patrick had lived and breathed the medical science needed to keep his friends alive - at least in their bodies. They were so aggressive in their investigations, Patrick could find little time for anything else. He had to find periods of relaxation and recuperation and isolation from the other three, in order to be ready to face the nightmare responsibility of repairing them. He had slept much of his life away, sealed in a stasis coffin until Koji would wake him.

  "But your journeys covered such a vast volume of space," Aylis said. "There was even a vein of habitable planets mentioned in your logs.

  "They would bring me specimens - when they thought about it."

  "They wouldn't let you take field trips, Pat?"

  "No. I spent most of my time in stasis."

  "You must have done something. You could never let your brain stop wondering. Like the rest of us, we always find questions to try to answer."

  "I did some anthropology, Aylis."

  /

  He seemed unwilling to speak at length, unlike the old Pat who would always go on until you made him stop. She had to keep telling herself that no matter how familiar her old friends might seem to be, they were also new friends, and different. "Phuti and Zakiya will want to know everything about that! So will I. Give me a sample."

  "The diaspora of the human genome is much larger than we theorized." Pat frowned. "It's like a plague. There is also good evidence of an active non-human sentient species present in the galaxy. Perhaps along another collision seam on the other side of the hub." Patrick stopped and pulled his hand away from Aylis's hand. "You will resist them, won't you?"

  "Koji and Setek and Alex? We'll be careful."

  "Careful? You have no idea! Have you read their logs? You need to rewire their brains! Now! Before you turn them loose!"

  "We don't want to discuss them with you, Pat. It's for your own safety. We know they're dangerous. We also get the understanding from reading their logs that they may not remember us."

  "I barely remember you myself!"

  "Eventually I will have to test your memory, Pat. You and I and the others of our age are at the forward edge of a great human experiment. We are learning, as we live to an advanced age, how the human brain will retain its memories and other functions."

  "I do remember you, Aylis. I remember all of you. I don't trust any details of what I seem to remember but I do trust the feelings I have for you. I warn you again: don't trust any of us!"

  "Pat, give yourself time to get to know us again and learn what we had to do to find you. Perhaps you won't feel as worried as you do now. No matter how terribly life has changed them, we intend to do everything we can to heal Setek, Alex, and Koji."

  They resumed their walk, turning down the hillside toward the lake.

  "How much farther, Aylis?" Patrick questioned impatiently. "My legs are tiring."

  "Just a little farther around the lake. You can see it from here."

  They completed the walk to a cluster of apartments near the lake. Aylis showed Patrick his residence. When they finished the tour of his rooms, Pat dropped into a soft chair. He was perspiring. Aylis went to the kitchen, filled a glass with water, and brought it to h
im.

  "This is water!" Patrick pulled the tumbler away from his mouth with a frown and set it down.

  "I've done a bad thing, Pat. I added something to your plumbing to temporarily circumvent any attempt on your part to become intoxicated. But you can still enjoy the taste of scotch, if that's important to you."

  "Damn, woman! Oblivion is important to me! Continuous reality is probably lethal to someone as sensitive as I am!"

  Aylis laughed. "What you need is a friend, not a bottle of scotch."

  "I lost interest in relationships when Iggy took Ana away from me."

  "You were never that interested in serious female relationships, Pat."

  "Maybe not. I think Iggy rescued me from disaster. How is Iggy? How well does he remember Ana? I want to talk to him."

  "Get some rest and I'll see if Iggy will pay you a visit tonight."

  Aylis got up to leave. Patrick stood to show her to the door. "There are some things," Pat said, "I used to do to them when I was putting them back together, to lower their level of hostility. If you have to revive them, I want to help."

  2-33 Koji

  "Can you hear me?"

  "Patrick?"

  "Do you know who you are?"

  "I am Hoshino Koji. You tricked me, Patrick!"

  "I hoped you would forget that."

  "I was getting old enough to die. You could have waited."

  "You were too quiet, Koji. You scare me when you're quiet."

  "Are we not friends, Patrick? If I frightened you I am a poor friend and I apologize. Who won the game?"

  "What game?"

  "I don't remember. There was always a game. Am I