He grinned at her, seeming truly amused. “I once made the mistake of not using the proper honorifics and procedures, and then paid the price with a three-hour ritual of contrition. I’m not about to repeat that mistake.”
Brak hissed out a sigh. “What can I do for you?” Since she was not an officer in the PAC fleet, she did not owe him the “sir” he was surely accustomed to. She got a small spike of pleasure from the omission. She felt fairly certain that he wasn’t calling to order standard cybernetics, and that put her on the defensive. His requests had gotten more and more outside of her comfort zone over the past year, and the most recent one had been purely objectionable.
The admiral twisted his face into the sort of smile she’d expect from a trader who knew he had stolen goods. Too wide, in an attempt to cover the underlying predatory intention. “I have good news. The head of PAC intelligence has diverted funds to better compensate you for developing the technology we discussed.”
Her scales itched with irritation. “I told you before that it wasn’t an issue of money. The creation of neural implants for the purpose of augmenting a person’s intelligence or memory is not ethical. The universe is already unfair enough, with the wealthy entitled to do whatever they want and others too poor to afford even the basics. Altering people’s brains would only put the poor at a greater disadvantage. And people in the middle would be forced to get implants just to hope to keep up and avoid falling into the bottom tier. It’s a technology that would harm more than help, and it shouldn’t be developed.”
“But it will be,” he countered, entirely unruffled. He spoke as if she were a reluctant child, only in need of some cajoling. “Others in your field are willing to work on it. But you could do it in far less time, and with far better results. You’re the top cyberneticist in the known universe, and your research is way ahead of anyone else’s when it comes to neural implants.”
He paused, affecting a regretful expression. “You’re the one we want, but if you aren’t willing to help us, we’ll be forced to talk to the other leaders in your field.”
“So you’re saying that since it’s inevitable anyway, I might as well be the one to do it and cash in?” She fought to keep the indignation out of her voice, but was not entirely successful. She smelled the pungent scent of her own frustration, like freshly cut onions.
“Well, that’s not the way I’d put it, but the basic idea is the same. Listen, I know how much you care about bringing cybernetics to people who can’t afford them. You and the others on that hospi-ship of yours barely make ends meet with all that charitable work. Such an oddity among Bennite hospi-ships, and I respect your altruism. But if you didn’t receive independent research funds, you couldn’t afford to be on that ship. I’d even wager that the Onari would have a tough time staying in business without you.”
Was he implying that her funding might be cut if she didn’t develop the implant? That would be disastrous for her as well as the Onari. Not to mention the planets that would otherwise be without adequate healthcare.
He paused to let his words sink in, then continued. “Like I said, this technology will be developed with or without you. But the money we’d give you would allow you to help a lot of people.” He named a sum of money twice what he’d offered before. Brak struggled to keep her posture neutral. He was right. For that amount of money she could provide cutting-edge cybernetics to thousands of people. Many thousands. If he was telling the truth about the other cyberneticists, she’d be turning down the money for no real purpose. Either way, the implants would exist. It was a no-win scenario.
He smiled, noticing her lack of response. He looked quite charming in that moment, except for the smug light in his eyes. “I can see you understand. But here’s the problem. PAC intelligence can’t just keep this money in a drawer, waiting for you to decide you want it. If you refuse, we’ll have to invest it elsewhere. So it’s up to you.”
He spread his hands. “It seems like an easy choice to me, and I hope you’ll do the right thing. You have forty-eight hours to decide.” He paused. “Oh,” he added, as if he’d almost forgotten something. “All standard non-disclosure and confidentiality protocols are in effect, in accordance with your classified clearance. Of course.”
Meaning if she spoke of this to anyone, she could face criminal charges. The kind where a person never sees the light of day again. But that was nothing new in dealing with PAC. They were a generally benevolent government, but one did not cross them lightly. Particularly the intelligence division. “Of course,” she agreed.
He executed another perfect Briveen bow, used her title again in the proper goodbye, and the screen went blank.
Brak muttered something about his ancestors. She hated that guy more every time she saw his face.
She felt like smashing something, but the Onari had no rec area for such an endeavor. Her state of the art lab was certainly no place for it. Maybe when they arrived in the Orestes cluster in a few days, where they were scheduled to administer routine vaccinations.
She indulged herself with a deep, menacing growl that rattled her chest and reverberated off the walls and hard surfaces. After the sound faded, she returned to the cybernetic leg. The limb did not need to be completed for another month, but she wanted to get it out of the way so she could pour her energies into her research on a new synapse-degradation treatment that looked promising. The admiral hadn’t been pandering to her when he’d said her research was light-years ahead of anyone else’s. She shuddered to think of the butchery that someone else might concoct in an attempt to create a memory-augmentation implant. Perhaps that alone was a reason to capitulate. At least if she did it, she’d know it would function as intended and not make chop hash out of someone’s brain.
She put those thoughts aside and focused on the work in front of her. The cybernetic leg was far less complicated than her own arms, which needed to perform a wide variety of tactile and fine-motor functions. The difficulty with the leg lay in its adjustability over a period of years. This limb needed to serve the child for as long as possible as he grew. He would not have an easy time getting a replacement. His planet was not yet part of the Planetary Alliance Cooperative and lacked its own cybernetics doctors. Even on PAC worlds, medical care was not always as accessible as it should be. That fundamental problem plagued her every day.
Once she made the leg as adaptable as she could, she would just need to create the neural implant that would allow the boy to use it. In a brief amount of time, he’d be using his new leg as unconsciously as anyone else used their biological limbs. She’d revolutionized neural implant technology with her synapse interface. Not only had the patient’s adjustment period lessened, the function of the cybernetics had significantly improved. When it came to motor function, nanometers mattered.
Brak had immersed herself in her work so fully that she felt a jolt of surprise when Kellis arrived. Checking her chronometer, Brak realized two hours had gone by.
“Hi, Brak!” Kellis breezed into the lab wearing a pair of coveralls and carrying a diagnostic toolkit. She smiled and Brak reciprocated with a bob of her head. Simian species did not have the scent glands that Briveen did, but they gave off their own, much fainter aromas. Kellis smelled as cheerful as she looked.
“Hello. Thanks for coming. It seems I just use this thing too much.” Brak gestured to the microtuner lying on the lab table.
Kellis laughed and Brak smelled the sweet musk of amusement. “Well, I’m happy to fix it up for you. Though maybe you should get a second one since you use it so often. You’d be in trouble if it needed serious repairs.”
“I did requisition one a month ago. Hopefully it will come through soon. It’s a particularly pricey piece of equipment.” The PAC research alliance usually came through with what Brak needed but sometimes it took a while. Bureaucracy. At least she knew that eventually she’d receive it, and without burdening the Onari’s captain with the cost. Brak couldn’t put more burden onto Jerin’s shoulders. The doctor
did an amazing job of keeping the Onari going, but cubics of money could only stretch so far. Besides, Brak owed a debt to Jerin. The doctor, who was the only one who knew the truth about Brak’s arms, had given her a place to belong. Just as she had done for every other member of the crew. Each of them was a misfit in some way. Together, they crewed this anomalous hospi-ship to help others, and they’d formed their own family in the process.
Kellis made a distracted humming sound as she focused on the microtuner. Brak returned to the prosthetic leg. An hour passed, and she’d nearly completed the leg’s circuitry when Kellis announced that the microtuner was perfectly aligned.
“There you go.” Kellis began packing up her toolkit. “If you’re free this evening, Trin, Endra, and I are meeting for dinner. About an hour after day shift ends. We’d love for you to join us.”
Brak liked the sound of that. She particularly liked Trin, the outgoing physical therapist who had been the first besides Jerin to make her feel welcome on the Onari. “I’ll try to make it. Can’t promise. I need to put in a call to my mother. It’s her hatch-day and she knows I’m within communications range.” Just thinking about it made her rub her hand against the scales of the back of her neck in agitation. She’d been dreading the call all day, and Krazinski’s ultimatum had only increased her unease. She knew exactly how the conversation with her mother would go, but there was no getting out of it.
Kellis tightened her lips into a pout that Brak interpreted as sympathy. “Ah. Good luck. If nothing else, you can join us for a stiff drink after dinner.” Kellis swung her toolkit over her shoulder.
“Thanks. For the offer, and for your help.”
Kellis waved off the thanks and strode out the door. Brak liked how simple the gratitude customs were away from her homeworld. On Briv, practically everything required a prolonged ritual of appreciation. It was exhausting, not to mention time intensive.
By the time Brak finished her work on the leg, her chronometer showed that she’d missed shift-end by over an hour. Kellis and the others would already be having dinner. Since Brak alone composed the ship’s entire cybernetics department, she rarely conformed to shift schedules. She tended to lose track of time when working. She regretted missing the chance to visit with her colleagues. Well, she had a lot on her mind, anyway. She probably wouldn’t be the best company.
She cleaned up the lab and packed several tools into a case so she could take them to her personal quarters. As she walked through the corridors, she decided to get the call over with right away. No sense in waiting and dreading.
Once she stepped into her room she went directly to the chair next to the voicecom and connected to her mother’s home. All too soon, her mother’s image showed on the display.
“Brak! You look tired.”
“Happy hatch-day, Mother.”
“I’m glad you called. Though I’d like it better if you were here. You work too much.”
“My work is important to me. I help people.”
Her mother’s teeth chattered and Brak was sure that if scent could travel over the voicecom she’d be smelling onion.
“I’d hoped your hatch-day present would be that you were finally coming home to settle down and have your first clutch of younglings.”
Brak held her head very still and even to avoid communicating her own frustration. “You know that’s not the life I want. Just because I was born into the breeding class doesn’t mean I want to spend my life producing the next generation of Briveen. Others can do that. I have a calling for cybernetics. I wish you could understand.”
Every scrapping time, they had this same conversation. Brak practically had it memorized. Any minute she’ll start in on my name, she predicted.
“I wish I could, too. It’s embarrassing that one of my own, a prime genetic breeder, isn’t fulfilling her duties. When I was your age, I was raising my third clutch. I dreamed of having a dozen genetically superior children to be selected into the breeding pool. And I did. I gave all of you girls beautiful, feminine names that would help you win the best mates. And for what? To have you run off and humiliate me.”
She felt such a disconnect between her mother’s concerns and her own life. The two seemed to exist in alternate realities. Brak’s mother lived the life of Briveen ideals, while Brak…well. She rubbed the prosthetic fingers of one arm against the forearm of the other. She was even more of a disgrace than her mother knew.
Time for the apology portion, Brak decided. “The pool is lucky to have one such as you to devote to the future of Briv. Surely I could never have measured up to you even if I’d tried.” She bowed her head in deep submission and reverence.
At least this conversation was happening via voicecom. If she were in the same room as her mother, she’d be required to complete an honored-ancestor ritual.
The left side of her mother’s jaw clenched and released, signaling acceptance of the homage.
“You could have been one of the great ones, my dear. If you’d tried. But there’s still time. I’ll continue to hope that you’ll eventually come to your senses and recognize your duty.”
Brak made another head bow of reverence and added a shoulder lift of contrition.
After a brief update on her family’s well-being (her younger sister had just had her fifth clutch!) Brak finally managed to turn off the voicecom and slump down in her chair.
After a few minutes of mentally decompressing, she shook her head and stood. Checking the chronometer, she decided that she could meet Kellis and the others for that drink after all. Her colleagues wouldn’t mind her joining them late. She could use something to warm her blood and make her scales tingle. Maybe a drink would loosen up the knots in her mind and help her think of what to do about Admiral Krazinski’s ultimatum.
* * *
When she returned to her room, Brak felt better. Her belly was full and her mood had lifted. She liked her colleagues. Every person on the Onari had a reason for being there, and Brak’s story was not the most tragic by far. She was a disgrace to her people, sure, but she’d moved on to a life she enjoyed. She could live with the fact that she’d be a true pariah if any Briveen ever found out about her prosthetic arms. She felt like an exile already, but she didn’t think she’d be able to bear the humiliation it would bring on her already embarrassed mother. Spending time with her colleagues had once again reminded Brak of how lucky she was to have found a place to belong.
The doors to her quarters hissed shut and auto-locked behind her. She carried the case she’d brought from the lab to the small table and set it down. With a sense of anticipation, she approached the cybernetic charger in her room, unlocked it, and removed two fully charged arms. She checked them over, ensuring that these limbs would be ready for use in the morning. The set was identical to what she already wore, with five fingers and general morphology similar to the arms of simian species. Both sets had been covered in blue-green, slightly iridescent scaly skin to match the rest of her body, but there was no mistaking them for biological limbs. They had the sleek look of technology rather than the fleshy, imperfect look of nature.
Once assured that her arms were in good shape for the next day, she put them away, then detached the mechanical limbs she currently wore.
She closed her eyes, savoring the feeling of lightness, not having those fake appendages hanging off her body. She stretched her true arms—the short, skinny, three-fingered limbs that every good Briveen was supposed to have amputated when he or she became an adult. With those “useless” limbs removed, cybernetic ones could be installed, giving better strength, range of motion, and dexterity.
Except Brak had never done that. She’d ducked the surgery and left her planet. Everyone, even her mother, thought she had cybernetic arms, when in fact she wore her own design of prosthetics, made to appear cybernetic. A brilliant bit of technology that she’d only ever shown to Jerin, who, as her doctor, needed to know. Everyone else thought she was a typical, cybernetically enhanced Briveen.
On
ly alone in her room could Brak be her true self—a Briveen with the “deformed” arms that nature had given her. When she’d turned eighteen, she’d been feted with all the pomp, circumstance, and ceremony of a full citizen of Briv, with the privilege of reporting to the hospital the next day to have her natural arms amputated and replaced with superior strong and agile ones made by science.
Instead, she’d run for the stars and never returned.
* * *
Brak tried to ease the tension from her shoulders. Standing in the Onari’s infirmary and watching other surgeons complete the attachment of one of the prosthetics she’d crafted always proved to be the hardest part of a procedure for her. Handing work off to others was not her strong suit, but this team approach was the required PAC protocol for complex surgery. If they wanted to maintain their qualifying status to practice medicine on PAC worlds, they had to administer to PAC citizens according to the prescribed protocol.
Brak watched as Jerin and a young intern made the necessary nerve connections, grafted the remaining piece of femur to the synthetic composite of the man’s new leg, then artfully connected the synthetic skin to the existing fascia.
“There,” Jerin said with approval, not taking her eyes off their handiwork. “Brak, test the nerve conduction?”
Brak ran her nimble fingers over the techbed controls, sending impulses, measuring their speed and strength. She made a snuffling sound of satisfaction. “All good. Ready for the implant?”
The touchiest part of the procedure was always the neural implant. Brain surgery could never be considered simple, and inserting a computer the size of a human child’s fingernail had upped the degree of difficulty.
Brak watched as the surgeons opened up the human’s skull, then prepped the area for implantation. When they nodded to her, she stepped in, and her entire existence shrank down to a one-centimeter-by-one-centimeter area as she focused on upgrading the man’s brain to allow it to function in tandem with his new leg. She prepared the synapses, implanted the device, and hooked it up to his tissue, creating a biological machine hybrid that never failed to awe her with its beauty. She rebooted the device, synced it with the leg, and ran through a series of activation tests.
The Jurassic Chronicles (Future Chronicles Book 15) Page 7
