“I’d have to treat the patient. I couldn’t refuse treatment to someone based on something they might or might not do in the future.”
She made a soft sound of agreement. “Your turn.”
“Okay.” In her peripheral vision, she saw him chew on his lip as he thought. “I like the changing-the-past stuff. So let’s say you have the opportunity to go to the past and save a visionary scientist from an untimely death. Doing so would almost certainly mean a major change to the subsequent timeline because the scientist would make great leaps in his field that would not have otherwise occurred. Do you do it?”
She thought of Arbin Rinton, the father of cybernetics. If he’d had another ten years of life, he could have advanced the science tremendously. “No,” she said slowly, thinking as she spoke. “Time spins out at its own pace. It’s not up to me to decide what’s too slow. No way I’d change the universe that way.”
“Good answer. Me either,” he added.
Her turn to ask a question. “What if someone asked you to build a weapon? It would hurt a few people, but in return, a whole village would be cured of a plague.”
He grimaced. “Weighing lives against other lives? That’s low. I hate questions like these.”
So did she.
He let out a slow breath. “I suppose the net gain would be greater. More people would be helped by my action than hurt. If I refused, my inaction would allow far more people to be harmed.”
“So you’d do it? Build the weapon?”
His head moved slowly from side to side. “No. I couldn’t. People dying from a plague is something I didn’t cause. People dying from a bomb would be my fault. I couldn’t actively do something to hurt people. Maybe that’s the wrong choice, but I couldn’t do it.”
“What if you knew someone else would make the bomb if you didn’t?”
He groaned and covered his face. “Ugh, you’re out for blood today.” He ran his fingers through his hair, staring out of the starport as if the answer floated out there somewhere. “No. Still no. I couldn’t let someone else’s guilt prompt my own.”
“And the plague victims?” she prodded.
“Maybe I could help them some other way.”
She made a noncommittal sound, then they both fell silent. Was he too idealistic? Afraid to get his hands dirty for the greater good? If so, she was too. He echoed how she’d felt about creating a neural implant.
As she stared out at the stars, the logic loop she’d been repeating for the past day loosened and opened up. She was Brak, Honorable Eighth Daughter Brak of the House Grakaldi, though she only admitted it under duress. She’d fought her way to the top of her field, and that was her pride, not an opportunity for some admiral to blackmail her.
No one knew cybernetics like she did. No one knew the scientists capable of the work like she did. And she did have influence over them. She’d get word out among her colleagues that anyone participating in research of that type could look forward to never working with her again. In fact, she might even allege that if someone created the implant, she’d make it her duty to ensure they never worked in the cybernetics field again. It would be a heavy-handed threat, and might mean consequences for her. But it ought to make it much harder for Krazinski to get what he was after.
If he threatened her research funding, she’d remind him that she was neither a PAC officer nor obligated to provide PAC with the best cybernetics money could buy. She’d given them a number of invaluable devices for use in the intelligence division.
In fact, they were probably due for a price increase. Sure, they provided her with research money, but separate from that, she provided them custom devices they couldn’t have gotten anywhere else. And under deadlines that no one else could have managed.
It was a gamble, but she was willing to bet that PAC intelligence needed her more than she needed them. She really hoped so.
A weight eased off her and she relaxed into her seat. A cargo freighter slowly drifted across the view, all outdated technology and lumpy refits. Not a pretty ship. But the space and stars beyond it had delivered once again, helping her see beyond herself to something bigger.
Having a friend never hurt, either. She tilted her head to look at Trin. His muddy green eyes watched her, full of kindness and a hint of humor that never seemed to leave him.
“Sure you don’t want to talk?” he asked.
“No. I’m good,” she answered. “Actually, I’m starting to feel hungry. Want to join me for some lunch?”
“I think it’s almost dinnertime.”
“Whatever. Dinner, then.”
His nose wrinkled. “Are you going to have mandren?”
“Of course.”
He sighed theatrically. “Well, I’ll have dinner with you anyway. But you’ll owe me one.”
She pulled her lips into a smile. “Fair enough. Let’s go.”
A Word from Zen DiPietro
“An Implant and a Hard Place” takes place in the Dragonfire Station universe.
Zen DiPietro is a lifelong bookworm, dreamer, writer, and a mom of two. Perhaps most importantly, a Browncoat Trekkie Whovian.
Also red-haired, left-handed, and a vegetarian geek. Absolutely terrible at conforming. A recovering gamer, but we won’t talk about that. Particular loves include badass heroines, British accents, and the smell of Band-Aids.
Sign up for her newsletter at www.womenofbadassery.com, where you can find reviews, author interviews, and more.
Szcar’s Trial
by Harry Manners
THE DESERT RIPPLED, the sky a knot of blood-red ribbons under the setting sun. As the chill of night settled, Szcar and the rest of the pack raced across the sands. The nest was close, but they couldn't afford to rest yet. Until they reached Home Valley, death could come from anywhere.
Szcar’s leg throbbed, but she refused to let her limp show. If the others got wind, she would fall even further from grace. After her mistake today, a limp might seal her fate. At the heart of the hunting party Alpha broke into a sprint, and Szcar stifled a groan. She fell into step with Orr, who gave her a quick sideways glance and huffed, flexing his claws.
What can you do? his eyes said.
The evening chorus had started. Amongst the medley of roars and cries Szcar heard the big necks, the honkers and horners, and somewhere far away, the all-consuming bellow of a big death.
Anytime, anywhere, she thought. Until we see Home Valley, anytime, anywhere.
By the time they crested the last rise and streamed down towards their nests, the sunset ribbons had melted into the black above, and the twinklers had come out to shine. It had been close. They had the best eyes in the desert; in the gloom she easily picked out the thorny scrub, the dune ridges, the glowing green disks of the others’ eyes. But their sight wouldn’t save them if they got caught out after dark. They might have been hunters, but there were far bigger claws and teeth out there.
They killed with their smarts.
So why was I so stupid today? I almost got the whole pack killed.
In her mind’s eye, the day's hunt replayed: she had lain in wait while the others routed the lumbering duck-billed honkers into the gorge. A plan they had executed a hundred times. All she had to do was spring from her hiding place when the time was right, spook the honkers into a sharp right turn, and send them stomping over the edge of the cliff. They always went over.
Except this time. Her big-toe claw had become wedged in the rocks, bending at an odd angle and making her squeal. The honkers had seen her thrashing to get free, seen her far too soon. The stampeding honkers had curved off, most avoiding the gorge altogether and escaping back to the plains. The few that had already entered the gorge stopped, turned to face the rest of the pack nervously guarding the entrance, and charged.
Honkers were that stupid. If scared enough they ran even towards death.
The whole pack didn’t weigh as much as a youngling honker. They let the cliffs do their killing for them. They let the honkers escape. By the time Sz
car got free, Alpha had been standing over her, the yellows of his orb-like eyes thrumming with rage.
The gorge was so narrow that anything bigger than a dome-head had to move single file, and the walls so steep that only the pack and the most nimble prey could skitter out. For anything big enough to stomp—any slab of meat worth risking a hunt—there was nowhere to but forwards, blind to the sharp bend that ended in the cliff edge.
Today's hunt had been the first of the rainy season. Excitement threaded between them like spittle. Tongues had tasted the air in anticipation of honker blood soon to be spilled.
She had ruined a certain kill.
* * *
Back in Home Valley, the others refused to look at her. Alpha turned his back on her. She limped, badly. The others saw; their heads cocked in sequence to look on her ankle. Their stares pressed on her skin like ant stings.
Alpha swaggered to the big nest in the center of Home Valley, welcomed with a high-pitched squeal from Gia. She had stayed behind to guard their clutch, with Jeip and Kiiz as lookouts.
Before they had been old enough to hunt, Szcar and Gia had contended for Alpha. The competition had been playful, once. Then things had changed, and what had been friendly competition had become mutual, visceral hatred.
In truth, Szcar wouldn't have had a problem with that, if she had won. But she hadn't.
She fought the urge to whimper as she reached her nest. Orr passed by and nuzzled her. Szcar almost relaxed in his shadow, but he stiffened and snapped around to look at the others. Heads turned sharply away among the other nests.
Disapproval hung like a stink in the air.
Orr grunted and slunk away. He had courted her last season, even fought Rurgh for mating rights, but egg snatchers stole the whole clutch. He hadn't approached her yet this season. Maybe he never would again.
She padded around the desiccated brush that made up her bed and settled gingerly. The flesh around her toe claw was torn loose. Terror flashed through her at the thought of the claw falling out completely.
The others will make me go away into the desert. I would be bones in a day.
She had to make good with Alpha and the others. If she wanted to stay, she had to convince them she was worth her weight in honker meat.
But how?
The others were still staring, though not directly, not in any way that she could catch them staring.
A plan. A clever plan, like gorge-drop. To make them let me stay, I need to be smarter than Alpha.
Szcar endured the tense silence for a minute longer before slouching away along Home Valley and out of sight of the accusing green eyes.
* * *
Szcar limped in misery. Hatching a clutch last season had been her chance to leave the rank of runt behind. Now that hope lay as torn as her toe.
Fear throbbed under the sparse feathery down on her chest. When the pain went away, would the limp stay?
Home Valley had been a drinking hole before the rains went away, when Szcar had been but a chick, its path snaking for many days through the desert. She remained deep in its groove, so the sentries on the ridge top wouldn't notice her pass. It was foolish to keep walking—somewhere behind the pain tumbling past her tongue, she tried to make herself go back—but her body was numb.
Maybe I'm going away to become bones and skull this night, like Par when he grew old and thin.
Szcar stopped by a remnant pool of water and peered over the edge. A long, thin snout appeared, inset with dozens of needle-like teeth, dominated by two giant eyes set high on the head. Szcar slowly lifted her injured foot, angling it close to the water's edge.
A rip ran all along the bottom of the foot, surrounding the entire claw. She backed away from the pool, now seeing not her own face in the water, but bare white bone. She shook her head and stared into the black above, but still the inner image of bone remained.
Szcar was so preoccupied that, at first, she didn't notice one of the twinklers overhead depart from its brothers. She saw, but didn't see, not until the twinkler streaked halfway across the sky. There it flashed an orange so bright that Szcar flinched.
Far away, so far she was sure it had come from the plains, a rushing sound like pounding floodwaters reached her. She froze, cocked her head, searching the night.
Rains are far away.
Yet the rushing persisted, and soon she groaned, for the noise came not from the plains, but the black above—from the orange glow arcing away from the other twinklers. It left a tail longer than a big neck's, all the way to where the black above met the desert.
Szcar picked out flames licking its surface, just as flames had kissed the trees when the forest had gone away, after the rains left.
Not only that. It was coming down, down from the black above. Like a wing beak swooping in to steal an egg. But this was too big, far too big, to be a wing beak—and no wing beak was made of fire.
Szcar whined and crouched lower until her belly touched the sand, as the sound of rushing water faded to a high whistle. The flames winked out.
She kept still, cocking her head to listen, ready to dash for the nest. The silence strained, and the sounds of the desert returned, the unbroken dance of sand grains over the brush.
She was about to turn for the nest when thunder thrummed inside her head. She didn't have time to do anything but shriek. Night itself descended upon her when the twinklers winked out one by one. Something as dark as the black above, but not the black above, falling from the sky.
Wing beak, wing beak, giant wing beak. No! No wing beak is that big.
Do what? Run, run, run—too late!
With a muted whumpf a ball of darkness as tall as a honker alighted on the sand. Sand sprayed from its base and Szcar tumbled back, head over claws, coming to rest in a tangle of limbs.
By the time she regained her feet, all was silent. The orb of perfect night hung a foot above the desert, unmoving, unbreathing. It had no face, no eyes, and yet Szcar felt that it was looking at her.
Szcar stuck close to the ground. Every nerve in her body cried out for her to make a quick retreat, but the orb held her in place with its unmistakable stare. Inside her head, something crackled from ear to ear, boring in through her eyes.
The orb floated closer.
Szcar stared into unending darkness, one so perfect it looked like the water's surface on a hot, still day. She jerked her head, expecting to see a reflection moving with her. She saw nothing. Just black.
The desert now seemed far away. The buzzing continued between her ears, louder now, painful.
Still the orb came closer. Her feet had become one with the sand. She couldn't run.
The orb stopped. Then, light. Shafts like the sun rays cresting the dunes at dawn. They thrust from the top of the orb in a fan, shimmering, brilliant, but not like the sun at all. No, they were day-sky colored, only so bright it hurt to look at them. Before she could utter another squeak, the fan swept down over her body.
She felt nothing, except brief pain, as the brightness momentarily lanced into her eyes. She looked down, entranced by the fan’s course down her torso and legs, twinkling where it met her skin. The light reached her toes and vanished as quickly as it had appeared. Szcar blinked, half blinded.
Noise emanated from inside the orb. Szcar was reminded of the chirping critters on the plains, the ones that ate conifer branches the big necks dropped at their feet. Something like buum baarm.
A point-like green light winked on in the orb’s face. For a beat Szcar was sure it was about to do something—and more than ever, that it was looking at her—and then the sound of rushing claws in the sand struck up behind her. The orb trembled, gave another buum baarm, and with an effortless blast of sand, jumped into the sky. At once its black surface was lost in the black above. No sound, barring the rush of sand. It was simply gone.
Alpha and Gia raced around a kink in Home Valley, the others following close behind. All their eyes were fixed on her, wary. They must have heard her crying out.
Alpha stepped forward, claws at the ready. All around the sand was kicked up in strange spirals, flowing out from a central point. No winds made such shapes. He walked over it, glaring down as though daring it to attack.
Szcar realized she stood in the pattern's center. After a strained silence, Alpha met her eye, and she read his thoughts in his gaze.
Szcar. What is it?
She caught herself before her gaze could penetrate his. If she told, they would think it was her fault for sneaking away, risking the whole pack. She would be marked, again. She couldn’t afford that.
I know. They don’t know.
She had to find a way to stay. Maybe she could use this.
She dipped her head, feigning ignorance, and at last met his eye: The desert.
Alpha stared. She kept her head low and headed back towards the nests. She sensed the others following at a distance, but none questioned her.
She couldn't sleep, and by the rustling all around she knew the others couldn't either. Lying in the dark, she realized why they hadn't approached: they were afraid. They were afraid and she wasn’t. The orb had seemed like the plains eaters without claws. Maybe it had been playing.
But the others didn’t know that. All they knew was something was out there.
After that, even the pain in her toe claw seemed deadened, and she slept very well.
First light came with noise all around. The sky was the color of sand, and a maze of legs milled before her. Alpha roused the pack with nips and barks, and in short order they stood alert in the dawn chill.
Szcar's foot had stiffened in the night, and when taking her first step she almost fell. The pain was intense, accompanied by an uneven thud thud thud in her chest.
Alpha addressed them from the ridge top. Honkers. Gorge.
His gaze lingered on Szcar. The others looked pointedly away. They still wouldn't look at her after last night. Her place in the pack hung like a thread of gristle.
The Jurassic Chronicles (Future Chronicles Book 15) Page 9
