by Scott Rhine
“Yes, but those were just the military applications of genetic manipulation. He was also decades ahead with the human genome.”
“Somehow, I don’t think that would be a good idea.”
“Herr Dr. Wannamaker designed Red’s Aunt Nena—she was a clone.” Toby stopped, clearly unwilling to share more information than he had to.
“Wow. I always thought her ass was a little too perfect for a forty-year-old. While that’s mind blowing, I still can’t give you access.”
“I think Wannamaker designed her to avoid the rejection problem.”
“Why?”
“His first clone attempt was a male, which took over a hundred attempts to succeed. You know him as Seth Wannamaker.”
The conversation paused while Lou pondered the implications. The patronizing bastard might be able to do it. “Didn’t he have serious weight problems, like nine chins and fatal stress on his heart?”
“A byproduct of Wannamaker trying to make his image immortal,” said Toby dismissively. “We can avoid that pitfall. Studying his mistakes and the corresponding changes he made in his breeding program, I think I can rebalance Mercy’s body chemistry enough for Stu to be born.”
That was the magic phrase. “And no one else finds out?” Lou asked. “You don’t take anything else from the double-aught files?”
“I swear.”
Why did this feel like handing Poland to Hitler? “Deal. I’ll have it on your desk by the end of the day. The password is CLAUDETTE, all capitals.”
Lou stepped out into the control room and signaled Zeiss to resume escort duty. He’d just closed the door to the dining area when he heard Yuki spit, “Hypocrite pricks.”
Lou almost had a heart attack. However, he hadn’t survived as a blatant womanizer for as long as he had without quick damage-control reflexes. He floated over to her and turned on the charm. “Let’s talk about this.”
“How dare he call me a useless, low talent? And you let him.”
“You’re not.” How did she overhear that? “I didn’t correct him because I need him.”
“And you don’t need me anymore,” Yuki pouted.
He felt her try to storm away, so he grabbed for her arm and missed.
“Not so easy with me, is it?” she snapped.
“Please, I’ll do anything you want. You can have my allotment.”
“Screw you.”
“You saved Mercy. It’s the least I can do. Step into my room, please. We’ll talk about it . . . like friends.” Opening the bedroom door behind her, he actually batted his eyelashes over his sad face.
“What? You’ve already been in bed with the Nazis, and now you’re going for the Japanese?”
The only time that term had been used was in a private conversation in a closed room. Of course, her job was espionage. She has to be using a bug, he decided. Before he could confront her, he heard Zeiss approaching.
“Shh!” Lou begged.
She ducked inside the bedroom without a word.
He followed her inside and asked, “What do you want from me?”
The woman was moments from weeping when she asked, “I want to know why you picked Mercy and not me.”
Lou sat down and opened a mason jar of beer from the cooler on his floor. This was going to be a long one. “You were fun, but I never kidded myself. It was always about advantage, prestige, and what you could gain.”
“I was a generous lover.”
He chuckled, remembering their showers together. “Oh yes, but Mercy supports me in ways I didn’t even know I needed. I turn around and it’s there—like having another, smarter me looking out for my interests.”
“So, smart is the new sexy?”
“Mercy always cares, always gives.”
“I know. So it’s all fireworks?”
“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but sex isn’t everything. Sex is like the postcard you buy after visiting Neuschwanstein, but a relationship is the real castle you have together. I scrub pots with her a few hours a day . . . and even that’s not bad.”
“So you didn’t drop me because of my arm?”
Silence. He looked down in shame because he had.
“Well you’re a cripple now, too,” Yuki accused. He could hear the hurt little girl in her tone. “You’re missing eyes. Pretty soon, you’ll get fat and bald, and maybe she’ll move on.”
God, I hope she doesn’t cry, because I cannot hold her. “I worried about that for a while, but she’s been with me through my lowest point. If I don’t screw it up, she’s here to stay.”
“How do you think you’ll screw it up?”
“Yuki, as a single man, I was a total asshole.”
“And putting on a ring cured you?”
“Ease up. I’m admitting that you—all of you women—deserved better. Every day, I dedicate myself to making her happy. Well, not true. I can’t make her anything. I pay attention. I choose to make her a priority. I tell her every way I can that I want to spend the rest of my life with her, and thank her.”
“What for?”
“Other than the ability to pilot again? I’m going to be a dad, Yuki.”
“I never pictured you being content with little Suzie homemaker.”
“She snuck up on me, too. Some of her ideas of marriage are a little unrealistic. She lays my clothes out every day because that’s what her mom did for her dad.”
“You had trouble coordinating colors before you lost your sight. She winces if people have clashing shades of green. Recognize it as a form of love. You’ll cope.”
“I do my best. Can you imagine me not swearing?” Lou shook his head. “She’s making me train to be an English and History teacher for crap’s sake—for the kids.”
“You’re a good talker. I could see that . . . as long as you steer clear of limericks.” To demonstrate her forgiveness, Yuki grabbed the beer out of his hand and took a swig. “Where does that leave me now that even Toby has dumped me?”
“Sojiro needs a new roommate,” he suggested, taking his last jar of the week out of the cooler.
“You do know he’s gay.”
“Yeah, but he cleans. You’re a freaking slob. You’d rather live in the women’s dorm? Yvette spends most of her time with my girl or crying.”
“Nightmares?”
“Yeah, I have them, too.”
“We could start a club.”
They had a long chat about his failings as a boyfriend and several epic breakups, one of which ended with a spray-paint job on his Ducati. Lou felt the need to sum up his experience. “There’s something good in every moment I spend with Mercy. I never understood that when I was reading Plato.”
“Sorry, I never studied Philosophy. Engineers don’t get credit for that.”
“Over drinks one day, Plato told the story of a man who came back from the dead. This guy jumped off his funeral pyre and scared the piss out of everyone. Then he described how the dead drink from the river Lethe to forget their old lives and draw lots for their next. Some would be kings and others peasants, but Fate guaranteed that there was enough good in every lot to be happy.”
“My lot in life,” Yuki mused.
“His point was not to let the bad stuff get in your way. A few years from now, kids are going to be studying our mission in school. Think about that—studying you. They’re already watching your tour of the ship on that tape we sent back. The history teacher will tell them how in spite of my blindness, Auckland’s damaged hemoglobin, and your hangnail, we represented our species and kicked ass. It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, Yuki; it’s the size of the fight in the dog. Speaking of which, you need to pick a hand-to-hand technique and get your proficiency. I’ll ask around for someone to work out with you.”
“You’d do that?”
“For a friend. I’m making the allotment donation, too. For winter, I already have a one-of-a-kind sweater that Mercy knitted for me. I don’t need anything else but her safe return . . . and your good will.”<
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Chapter 9 – Dog Days
The burst of agricultural work ended, and a lot of people competed to do the handful of odd jobs around the Hollow. Each weekend, Lou took two piloting shifts and two stand-bys. Mostly, the shift gave Red some time off. Park was still a novice at steering, requiring someone to be on-call at a moment’s notice. He could do the basics, but any emergency left him paralyzed. An engineer at heart, the Korean was too afraid of doing the wrong thing.
After a month of waiting, Lou intentionally bumped into the two doctors in the dining room. Auckland opened with, “How’s it hanging? How’s life in the Hollow?”
“The crops aren’t doing as well as they did when Sensei did everything automatically. We think the grapes aren’t getting enough water, but Rachael won’t authorize more. I guess we’ll just grow raisins this year. Nothing’s moving in that heat except our jaws,” Lou lamented. Rachael had even cracked down on the amount of beer produced as a waste of resources. “If you need to drain the lizard, I’ll watch the prisoner for you.”
“That would be great. I’d also like to read an e-mail from my wife without someone looking over my shoulder,” the Maori doctor said.
When they were alone, Lou said, “Yo, TB, what can you tell me?”
“Wannamaker is a god.”
“So is Robert Fripp on a guitar,” Lou quipped. “I meant progress.”
“Those files unlocked secrets of creation I never imagined.”
Lou grabbed the man by the uniform and lifted. “Focus. Facts, not raving. Drooling over the guy that had to be put down for atrocities will not earn you any love around here.”
“Yeah, Red said the same thing,” Toby admitted.
“You told her?” asked Lou.
“Yeah, she wasn’t happy with you, captain.”
“Why would you tell her?”
“She asked me why I was singing a couple days ago, and it slipped out.”
“Why were you singing?”
“I figured out the missing part of the blocker. Wannamaker had the core solution, but he didn’t have my talents. See, the final key is different for every woman. You have to custom code it. I had the ability to discriminate DNA before Yvette infected me, but with Empathy—a talent no one has ever wasted on a scientist like me before—I can tell what that DNA needs.”
“English.”
“We can navigate Mercy’s first trimester by suppressing their Active natures with drugs,” Toby explained. “This should eliminate unwanted reactions from both mother and child. For the third trimester, I would need to create a tailored virus to temporarily rewrite the cell structures of key organs not to react to the embryo. Between the two treatments, we can prevent Mercy from rejecting your spawn for long enough for her to deliver. If you get her preggers again, I’ll have to whip up a new batch. A condom would actually be most cost effective and appreciated by fellow crew members. I can make them very thin now.”
The pence took a moment to drop. Lou swept the despicable man up in a hug. “You actually did it!”
“Watch it. I said I can. I didn’t get permission yet,” Toby warned. “Human experimentation takes command authorization, and this will tie up the medical nanofabricator as well as the stasis unit for months plus testing time. The boss wants to talk to you about priorities.”
“Right, but you didn’t stop your development efforts?”
“Hell, no. This is science, man. I’m getting a Nobel Prize.”
“A kiss or a cigar, which do you want?”
“Cigars are illegal in space, not to mention carcinogenic.”
“Pucker up, you wonderful mad scientist.”
“On second thought, I could trade a cigar to Herk to get better treatment.”
“That’s thinking like an inmate!” Lou said, clapping him on the back.
When Auckland returned, he huffed from exertion and anger. “Lou, what did you do?”
“You’ll have to be more specific,” Lou replied.
“Yuki has been at the back of the queue for a couple months—it’s more efficient to do all one type of job at once,” Auckland explained. “Now that there’s a lull, she hit us with your little surprise.”
“Mercy and I donated our allotments. So? She has three times the points saved up,” Lou said with a shrug.
Toby fed the flames. “The wording of the bylaw is double what she contributes.”
Auckland paced. “That comes to about twenty-nine sensors worth. Are you trying to wreck our economy?”
“Ouch. I’m just trying to help an old friend,” Lou said. “She’ll pay it back later.”
“Technically, Mercy went absent without leave when she found you on that island. The disciplinary committee hasn’t met about that yet,” Auckland threatened.
“Whoa. Let’s keep this about people who are here to defend themselves. Yuki’s a team player. If Pratibha hadn’t ignored her earlier, this wouldn’t have happened.”
“If we allowed this loophole, she would monopolize the fabricator for a month!”
“I’m not going to be the one to tell her you’re trying to change the rules after the fact,” Lou said.
To twist the knife, Toby added, “Should people in stasis collect allotment at all? I didn’t. Red told me I didn’t get allotment because I was already benefiting from another scarce resource.”
“Sounds fair,” Auckland noted. “I’ll mention that during tonight’s meeting.”
“You can’t write laws that are retroactive, dipshit,” Lou said, raising his voice. “If you try, I will paint you like Fagin, stealing from orphans and the handicapped to line your wife’s pockets.”
“Careful, you’re making him turn purple,” Toby cackled.
“If you don’t want to do the right thing, I’ll vote for Red’s motion.”
“Whoa! What motion? I’m working tonight,” Lou objected.
“The agenda for the meeting is posted on the community bulletin board,” Auckland said.
“But nobody reads it to me when Mercy isn’t around. What does it say?”
After a moment of silence, Toby poured the salt in the wound. “Red put forth a set of standards for stasis. She proposes we kick hopeless cases out rather than prolonging the inevitable because we’re tying up resources we might need if someone we can help got seriously hurt. In this case, the rules will apply to Mercy.”
“But Mercy isn’t hopeless,” Lou objected.
“Her child is,” said Auckland gravely, “and it’s endangering both her life and the mission.”
“Our child, and Toby found a way to fix them. Tell him.”
“Sorry. He’s not cleared.”
Lou wanted to punch both men for different reasons. “Zeiss will stop this,” Lou asserted, fleeing the room. Soon, he hovered and strapped himself in front of the commander’s door. Oblivious to the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign taped to the top of the oval, he pounded.
Odd, he thought when he smelled something burning. Grilled cheese wasn’t on the menu for today. When he figured out the scent was coming from the now-open door, he blurted, “Red, sweetheart, I can explain.”
From the “kiyai,” he could sense the crotch kick coming and twisted to take the blow on his hip. Fortunately, in zero g, the equal and opposite reaction merely launched him to the end of his tether.
“You gave that pervert my medical information?” she shouted from a distance.
“Z!” Lou bellowed. “Red’s about to violate . . . uh . . . me.”
Zeiss said, “Dear, I thought we were going to do this together.”
“Fine, you hold him down in our room. I can get better traction there for my kicks.”
Desperate, Lou said, “Fine, you lunatic. I will let you break every bone in my body if you tell everyone why you stabbed Mercy in the back with tonight’s council motion. That girl let scientists stick her with needles her entire childhood so you could live a better life. It’s like she’s the royal whipping girl.”
“That’s not fair,” Red in
sisted.
Zeiss reeled the safety line in. “She proposed those rules a while back to make force-freezing a crime. Pratibha just brought it out of committee when it suited her.”
Lou wasn’t satisfied. “Why did you put a Hegelian measure like that on the ballot to begin with? Tell me that, and I’ll apologize.”
“Captain, let’s talk in our room,” Zeiss whispered. “We both have things to explain.”
When the door closed, Lou sat in the only chair. The other two stood nearby. The tactic was meant to be intimidating, but so many visual ploys are wasted on a blind man. He warned, “Red, turn on your media scrambler. We don’t want any record of this, however it falls out.”
He heard a click and the whir of white noise as Red propped a metallic gadget against the door.
“You should have come to us first about the Wannamaker files,” Zeiss said.
Lou smoothed his ruffled hair to give him time to consider. Friend or not, Zeiss was the commander. “I might have if I thought I could trust you. Since we diverted to Oblivion, I only hear from you when you need something, and Red’s sneakier than the Mossad in Gaza.”
“You trusted Toby?” asked Red.
“If that man needed to grind up my spleen to feed it to Mercy, I would have done it, but I didn’t have to. He might not have told you, but with a simple injection, he can cure rejection of the multiple-talent child, the bane of Active existence. That sociopath did it.”
“You had no right to make this decision alone,” Red said.
Lou folded his arms. “Tell me you wouldn’t have done the same to bring back your three siblings.”
“I . . . that’s different,” she said quietly. “Conrad, tell him why it’s wrong.”
“You’ve let a terrible genie out of the bottle,” Zeiss said.
“So use it!” Lou insisted.
“We won’t be able to control it for long. When people analyze our logs, they’ll know.”
“Who cares? My kids will be healed. Yours will be healed.”
“We decided to wait to have children until after the mission, up to a decade so we won’t be distracted.”
“Fine. I’m sure we’ll want those nonlethal vegetation defenses around the outpost on Oblivion. Imagine thornbush barriers like the ones on Sleeping Beauty. Hell, find a cure for Fortune syndrome. This is how the Magi meant us to use their technology.”
