The Galactic Circle Veterinary Service

by Stephen Benjamin

  Dean Altschul sat again and I followed suit.

  “As Reb Levi said, we have a job for you. One that will not entail your permanent separation from our world.”

  I let out the breath I had held, but took particular note of the “we” and waited for more.

  “As you may know, our College of Veterinary Medicine once had many students from other worlds, but for various reasons we now have no students from offworld. We need someone to go to other planets, to seek out and recruit students, to entice them to enroll here. It is important to the, um, finances of our Academy. Income from other planets has been lacking since our government—” Altschul snapped his mouth shut and glanced at Reb Levi. His fear that he had said too much permeated the room.

  Reb Levi’s eyes did not change, but a wave of disapproval radiated from the man’s brow.

  After an uncomfortable silence, Altschul coughed and began again. “Dr. Berger, you are a persuasive speaker as you have shown both inside and outside the Academy. We feel this would be a good opportunity for you.”

  Anger began to replace my fear of Reb Levi. Blood pulsed in my temple. Good opportunity? Leave my home, for God’s sake? And why me if I was such a pain in the ass? The obvious answer hit me like a bucket of ice water. No matter how they cut it, they were getting rid of me.

  “We will empower you to offer scholarships to accomplish our goals.”

  Your goals, not mine.

  “What do you say?”

  Was I supposed to agree to give up my plans and aspirations for my own veterinary practice? The farmers and ranchers in my home county needed a veterinarian, and I had planned to go home to fill that role. Was I to Leave Dovid’s World and my family? Like hell, I would. I conveniently submerged any thought of my precarious situation.

  “No thanks. I’m not leaving my home.”

  Reb Levi’s voice cut through me like the parting of the Red Sea. “The Council would very much like you to take this assignment, Dr. Berger. Though you have spoken harsh words about our government, there is no evidence that you are an active revolutionary. This appointment will give you a chance to prove yourself.”

  “I don’t need to prove anything—”

  “And to see that your family remains in good health.”

  My heart clutched in my chest. I turned to him. His face was smooth. A slight smile curved his lips. His blunt fingers stroked his scar as his left eye twitched. I did not need my empathic ability to read him. I was now responsible for my mom and dad, whether or not they would become targets of the government, victims of the Inquisition. This was torture in itself. My fists clenched. I had to restrain myself from attacking him bodily. I had trained in martial arts as a teenager, and I wondered if I could take him. He looked strong as a bull.

  The Dean must have taken my silence as acquiescence. “Ah, good. Good. I knew you would be willing, Dr. Berger. We can work out all the details later. See my Associate Dean for recruiting. She will train you.”

  I glared at Reb Levi, fists balled. What I saw made further protestations moot. His eyes were narrow, and he nodded once, sharply, as if to shake something unpleasant out of his nonexistent hair. His demeanor was clear: Take it or suffer—you and your family. There were no alternatives.

  “One last thing,” the Dean said. “You will have a companion on your travels.”

  I arched my eyebrows.

  “Reb Levi.”

  I glanced at the smiling rebbe and shuddered. I’d rather share a spaceship with a giant Antarean scorpion. I wondered if only one of us would return from this journey.

  CHAPTER 3

  The front door opened and Lucky, our chocolate Labrador retriever, rocketed through and bowled me over. He straddled me, tail wagging like a jet-propelled windshield wiper. He expressed his joy in a thorough tongue washing of my face. He also laughed.

  Yeah, dogs laugh, but because of my empathic ability, I’m the only one who can hear them. Lucky thought knocking me down in greeting was hilarious.

  Our ginger tabby, Einstein, looked out the door at me, meowed once, and disappeared. Cats laugh, too. But dogs laugh with you; cats laugh at you.

  I hugged Lucky then pushed him away. I missed him as much as he missed me. We had the twelve-year-old dog for almost half my life. Our time together had been limited since I’d gone away to school.

  I rose and faced my smiling parents in the doorway. My mother opened her arms, and I hugged her before we moved inside.

  “Sit,” my mother commanded. “We want to hear all the details of what has happened. This whole business is quite extraordinary.”

  I picked at a hangnail as I spoke. “This is an honor. Because I’m at the top of my class, I’ve been appointed Assistant Registrar for Recruiting for the Academy College of Veterinary Medicine. The university wants offworld students. There haven’t been any in recent years, and they need the revenue.” I had to convince my folks that the whole thing was kosher; Reb Levi ordered me to say nothing about the Inquisition or the threat against my parents. “They chose me because I’m a good speaker.”

  Mom and Dad looked at one another. Their skepticism was tangible. They well knew my political leanings.

  “Assistant Registrar,” Dad repeated. “Sounds fancy enough. But will you have the opportunity to practice medicine? That’s something I know is important to you. You’ll be giving up your own plans.”

  “I’ll run an interstellar veterinary service in a ship outfitted as a mobile clinic. I haven’t seen it yet, but I’m told it has great equipment.”

  “Mazel tov, darling. I’m sure that will be exciting. How long will you be gone? Will you be able to return home regularly?” Mom looked at me expectantly, but concern leaked through her happy façade.

  My dad’s steel gray eyes probed me as I answered, as if he sought something beneath my words.

  “I’m not sure what the schedule will be. I haven’t been given an itinerary. But I’ll send you hyperwave transmissions whenever I can. Promise.”

  “I’m sure you will,” Dad said. He stood. “Come with me. Let’s have a drink while your mother gets dinner on the table.”

  I followed him into his study. In an age where most databases were digital, an impressive library of cloth and leather-bound books covered the shelves. This was where I got my love of literature. He motioned me to one of two leather-covered armchairs and doled out a couple of glasses of schnapps.

  “Okay, let’s have the truth. Who put the thumbscrews to you?”

  I choked on my schnapps. “Wha-what do you mean?” A vision of The Wall skewered my brain. How could he know—?

  “I don’t need your empathic talent to know what you told your mother and me is drek. You did not get chosen because you’re an expert speaker or because you’re a good student. This is mishegas. It makes no sense.”

  Mom and Dad were among the few people who knew about my empathic ability. I sensed the emotions of animals and my empathic connection allowed me to soothe stressed beasts. I also perceived human emotions—I sensed what I call auras, for lack of a better term. Rarely, powerful human emotions came through as a fleeting vision, but I was not a telepath. I did not read minds. I certainly couldn’t influence people in the way I could animals.

  Animals’ emotions caused both physical and psychological reactions, but people were worse. If I let them through, strong emotions caused nausea, vertigo, and headaches. A psychiatrist, a family friend, helped me learn to deal with my ability, but I had to develop my own mental shields by trial and error, and they were not perfect. In the inevitable fistfights of youth, I was doubly handicapped. Along with any physical beating, I got an emotional one from the anger of my opponent. While I avoided reading human emotions, leakage was all too common. One of my veterinary college professors knew of my empathy for animals, but kept the secret. I did not want other faculty and students to see me as a freak. After reading Asimov’s Foundation books, I worried I would be looked at like his Mule character, and that people would fear and shun
me. So I kept my secret close.

  However, I never could hide anything from my parents, and I often wondered if they had some of the same talent and could read me as well as I read them.

  “But that’s it...” I came to a halt under my father’s hooded stare. “Dad, please. I can’t say anything more.”

  “You’re in trouble again, aren’t you?” He sighed. “What did you do this time?”

  I hunched my shoulders, but looked him in the eyes as I answered in a small voice. “I blew it. I shot my mouth off in front of some rebbes.” I held up my hands, palms forward. “I didn’t know they were there.” I knew that was a miserable excuse and dropped my eyes. “Now, the Council wants me out of their hair—way out.”

  My father’s lips thinned. “I’ve told you a hundred times, Cy: All the intelligence in the world is useless without common sense. You know the Test-Lits don’t tolerate dissent.”

  Yeah, I knew. For the past eighty years, the fundamentalist Testamentary-Literalist party ruled our planet with an iron hand and had become an oxymoron, an evangelistic Judaic tyranny—with an Inquisition, yet. Our people left Old Earth more than a thousand years ago, refugees from an oppressive Islamic world government. The age-old enmity between Hebrews and Muslims became intolerable and forced what Jews hoped would be the final stage in the Jewish diaspora.

  My voice shook. “Reb Schvartz is a member of the Rebbinical Council. He...he threatened me with the Inquisition—you and Mom, too—if I don’t do as he says.”

  Dad’s face creased with pain. “Reb Schvartz. From what I’ve heard, he’s the most sadistic of the Inquisitors.” He shook his head. “You really know how to pick them.”

  “How can they justify what they do?” I cried. “The Inquisition was a church tribunal to torture heretics, particularly Jews. To have Jews use it to torture their own people..?”

  Dad frowned. “The Test-Lits’ use of the term Inquisition is deliberate. Even two thousand years later, the original Inquisition echoes in the fears of Jews throughout the galaxy.” He opened his arms.

  I stood and stepped within his embrace. Tears filled my eyes. I felt his strength. I had attained his above average height, but not his muscular physique. I stepped back and looked at him. I saw myself in his reddish brown hair, his gray eyes, his chiseled face, and the hook of his prominent nose—the latter, unfortunately, even more exaggerated on my face.

  “One more thing,” I said. “Reb Schvartz is going with me.”

  Dad’s rush of fear washed over me, roiling the small amount of schnapps I had managed to swallow.

  “That is a dangerous man, Cy. You need to keep your wits about you. You need to control your quick temper.”

  “I can take care of myself.”

  Dad shook his head. “I know you are a fighter. We had to pull you out of enough scrapes as a kid. But I’m not talking about your martial arts training. You can’t let it come to something like that. You cannot antagonize Schvartz. Promise me, son. Don’t start a fight you can’t win.”

  I swallowed hard and nodded.

  “Say nothing of this to your mother. Come. It’s time for dinner.”

  It was Friday night and we lit the candles and recited the shabbos prayers. I no longer attended synagogue—the Test-Lits brand of religion had put me off that—but the traditions I had been raised with meant more to me now than they had at any time in my life. Mom had prepared my favorites: matzoh ball soup, brisket with potato kugel, and rugullah pastries for dessert. Dinner sat in my stomach like lead.

  On Saturday morning, I promised my folks that I would visit before I shipped out. I merged my land drone onto the autoroad, let the autopilot connect with the road’s traffic system, and sat back. I watched the pastoral scenery flow by. Golden grain fields and hay meadows stacked with bales were interspersed with verdant pastures dotted with cattle, goats, and sheep. Those animals and chickens came from earth during the diaspora in the giant, multi-generation seedships. They allowed Dovid’s World to develop as a self-sustaining agricultural ecology. Even now, other than the roads, vehicles, and farm machinery, much of our world would have been familiar to Terrans of a thousand years ago.

  Since the takeover by the Test-Lits, the latest technology was difficult to come by for the average citizen. The government and military restricted the use of winged aircraft, whirlydrones, and hovercraft to approved personnel. Antigravity propulsion technology was even more restricted, and space travel was out for all but the military. Most people made do with wheeled land drones. The Test-Lits monitored movement between local districts to keep tabs on revolutionaries, who were always thorns in the side of the government despite official pronouncements that they were of no concern.

  Even as I thought this, my vehicle slowed for the first of a half dozen military checkpoints I would negotiate before I reached Jerusalem City. A camouflage-clad Zionist Guard member motioned me to roll down my windscreen. I wondered at the ubiquitous camouflage uniforms of the military. Did they hope someone might miss them standing in the middle of the road so they could unlimber their blasters to fry some rebel?

  He stuck out his hand. “Papers.”

  I guess military mothers never taught their kids to say please. I handed over my documents. The guard looked at the folder, looked at my face, glanced back at the papers, and then returned them. Without another word, he waved me through.

  The fields blended to an aureate blur and I closed my eyes. I wished I could be more like my dad, stoic and wise, never one to speak without careful forethought rather than the impulsive idiot I tended to be.

  At school, I had never missed the opportunity to show off my smarts, which antagonized most other kids. My ability to read human emotions went beyond facial expressions and body language. I sensed what lay deep within, feelings no one was willing to show. This was more a curse than a blessing, since I perceived the hostile vibes I engendered. I learned that even supposed friends harbored negative feelings.

  I isolated myself because I did not know how to deal with the perceived antipathy, and the resulting constant queasiness and headaches were intolerable. As an only child, I became a loner and a compulsive reader and watcher of Old Earth books and vids when I didn’t have chores.

  Almost everything ever written and filmed was preserved in digital format. Fortunately for me, that included even bad vids: some of those were a kick to watch, particularly the old science fiction flicks predicting the future I now inhabited. I laughed at the Fourth-of July sparkler spaceships of Flash Gordon, the ubiquitous and clunky robots, the inevitably big-headed aliens. I marveled at the predictions of the writings of Verne, Wells, Clarke, and Gibson. I shed tears at Simmons’s portrait of a father watching his daughter aging backwards in Hyperion.

  I remained a loner and, in some ways, looked forward to the isolation of space travel, though the thought of Reb Levi as my companion made my heart pound all the way to Jerusalem City.

  ***

  Levi lectured me on my assignment in his office at his headquarters. I had never been in Government House. The Palmach storm troopers in every hallway sent shivers through me, but at least it was not the Inquisition prison. Levi’s office was less intimidating than the interrogation room. It even included a generic landscape painting and a potted plant—no torture instruments, thankfully. He sat in a chair in front of a window, a black silhouette against the light.

  “You will pursue your clinical duties and recruit students for the Academy on each world that we visit. I will tell you where to go. Our ship is well-equipped, so I expect you to impress the worlds we visit with veterinary medicine on Dovid’s World. I will set the fees for these services, after all, we must pay for our travels.

  “I will be your veterinary assistant, but remember I am in charge. You will obey my orders without question. You are responsible for what happens to your parents. Is that clear, Berger?”

  I could only nod. The man had no clue as to what a veterinary assistant’s job entailed. I looked forward to his ed
ucation: how to collect urine and fecal samples and how to express infected anal sacs, among other grisly tasks.

  My hospital ship—a converted space yacht from a time when private citizens could have space yachts—looked a bit like a giant, inverted "T," with the engines at the bottom of the cross-bar. It had been fitted with the latest antigravity drive for use within planetary atmospheres, an anti-matter drive for interplanetary travel, and an interstellar hyperspace jumpdrive. This voyage was obviously important to the Test-Lits. No way would we ever pay off the cost of this thing with veterinary services and new students. I puzzled over that quite a bit, especially since I assumed most human-settled worlds would already have veterinarians.

  A wheeled land drone chassis with a rear compartment fitted as a combined examination room, surgery suite, and laboratory would give me mobility on planets. On the side of the spaceship and on the side of the land drone cabin was the symbol of veterinary medicine: the letter V super-imposed on the staff of Aesculapius. It overlaid a picture of a spiral galaxy and blood red letters surrounded this: Galactic Circle Veterinary Service.

  The name seemed a bit presumptuous, but I liked it nonetheless. I thought of the ship as the GCVS. If not for the specter of Levi and the Inquisition, I would have been ecstatic. As it was, I felt like an ancient cartoon character I had seen: a man with a permanent thundercloud over his head who was the earth’s greatest jinx.

  ***

  As I nursed a drink in my favorite tavern, Furoletto Cohen asked to join me. I had not seen him since my arrest.

  After some small talk, he said, “I worried about you after the night we met.”

  I told him about my opportunity. I did not mention the Inquisition, of course.

  “That’s remarkable. It says something about your abilities that they will speed up graduation and send you off on a mission of such importance. Congratulations.” He looked at me with a furrowed brow. “But I’m confused. That night in the tavern, a member of the Rebbinical Council tore into you for your heresy. Why the change in heart?”