Keshona Far Freedom Part 1

by Warren Merkey

the war," Horss explained. "She had to start over, the Academy, everything. She was treated like a hero."

  "I read her public record," Pan said. "Isn't it unusual that casualties of a starship are revived?"

  "Between deceleration effects and vacuum," Horss said, "most die quickly and permanently."

  "She probably did die permanently," Pan said. He was saddened by the loss, by his loss. She would not remember who she had been, and he was very sure she had been someone else. The voice was unique, so unique that it was plucking at the loose threads of his life, threatening to unravel all that he knew of himself and of his past. "She lost her memories and thus her previous life," Pan said, voicing his thoughts in distraction and desperation. "But why -"

  /

  "Ah!" Mai interjected. The news practically gave her goose bumps, it was so unexpected. "I just got a message from the Clinic. We can't find the boy's genetic code on file!"

  "This is unusual?" Horss asked.

  "Within a statistically insignificant margin of error," Mai lectured impatiently, "the Mnro Clinics have enough genetic signatures that we should be able to extrapolate or interpolate the identity or family relationships of every human being now living: Earthians, Essiin, and Rhyan. We are essentially the Census Bureau for the Union. We also have genetic records for several billion deceased and every human fetus now in gestation. That the boy isn't related to anyone in our records is extremely unusual. It is impossible, I would think!"

  "I'm not surprised," Horss said.

  Pan hesitated just long enough that Mai asked Horss what he would have asked. "You know something important about the boy and you are keeping it from us?"

  "What I know," Horss said very calmly, "is that I don't know a damn thing about him. I thought he was a child android. I thought he was part of some unbelievably strange game the admiral was playing with me."

  "But you won't tell us how he was injured!" Mai nearly shouted at him.

  "You would make a great Navy captain," Horss said, smiling slightly then becoming serious. "No, what I could tell you about what happened would seem like I was asking you to believe in ghosts and monsters."

  "It's better than nothing," Pan remarked. "What ghost? What monster?"

  "Someone named Milly was the ghost. We never saw her or heard her, but we heard Samson's side of a conversation while we followed him. She was probably the one who caused his injury, not that we all didn't have a share of the blame. The monster was the one who saved Samson. You wanted to know how his amputation was treated. I saw what remained of his lower leg. The admiral almost puked. What you saw of the end of Samson's leg was not what I saw on the severed part. It was a terrible and ragged amputation."

  Horss stopped. Pan watched the man's jaw muscles work against something his brain didn't want to swallow. He thought the captain did care very strongly about the child. "A monster," Pan said, gently prompting the upset man.

  "It was black," Horss said. "Amorphous. It sparkled. It spoke Twenglish."

  "Twenglish?" Mai queried, incredulous.

  They waited for Horss to continue about the monster but he would say nothing more.

  In the silence Pan's internal disintegration resumed and he was barely able to think of one more thing to ask. "If I can get a sample," Pan said to Mai, "would you check the admiral's identity for me?"

  "Why," Mai spoke almost desperately, "is it so important for you to know if this admiral was the singer you used to know? You're risking your life to know!"

  Pan grimaced at Mai, cast a glance at Horss, and made a decision. "Perhaps you've noticed a change in my character lately."

  "I have!" Mai declared. "The evidence is sitting too close to me. You worry me!"

  /

  Horss moved his chair a small distance farther away from Sugai Mai. He wondered how old she was. She had to be young, to blush so easily.

  "I wish I could tell you what's wrong," Pan said. "Whatever it is, it accelerated when I met the admiral." He stared at Horss. "I don't suppose you can tell me much else about her, Captain?"

  "Nope," Horss answered.

  "I don't understand, Pan," Mai said, frowning at Horss. "You're not physically ill, are you?"

  "It's in my mind," Pan answered. "Do the Mnro Clinics have occasional malfunctions, where the patient starts to remember things that could not be part of his life?"

  "It wouldn't be the result of malfunction or negligence. It would need to be intentional. As you should know, even an intentional insertion of a foreign memory would not fit the unique pattern of memory storage each of us has, and would eventually be rejected, like a transplant of a foreign organ. I know of no such cases. You should come to the Clinic and let me begin a diagnosis."

  "I don't have time for that," Pan said. "It doesn't feel like...It isn't foreign but... It's too... sharp to be a normal memory, yet it's so hard to keep seeing it. I can't explain it! How can I be who I was, when I know she's Ruby Reed? I must have known her very well, and that was over a century ago! I'm falling apart, as though I was never meant to exist, and someone else is stepping into my shoes!"

  Pan abruptly stood up. He walked away without saying anything else.

  /

  "This is too much," Horss commented. He remembered a similar complaint from the admiral. It was strange, but he was still enjoying his situation, free from any responsibility not of his choosing. Only Samson was his responsibility. Planet Earth, the mystery, and the lovely physician sitting next to him made the underlying unpleasantness go away.

  "Eat your breakfast," Mai said sharply.

  Horss looked innocently at Mai and shrugged as he put fruit slices in his mouth. "I'm eating. Do you think I can find work around here?"

  "Don't speak with your mouth full."

  He swallowed. "Where are the admiral and the boy?"

  "Not far from here. Protected."

  "If he isn't who he thinks he is, then he ain't the law. We can do whatever you want. I can be your muscle."

  "If you're offering to escort me to Rafael's home," Mai said, favoring him with a not-too-unfavorable squint, "thank you, but we can't get into it except by Pan's transmat."

  /

  [You know how to get into Rafael's home, don't you, Fred?]

  [Why do you ask unnecessary questions?]

  [Shall we wrestle?]

  /

  "I heard you say something about him not letting you visit Rafael," Horss said.

  "He once said I was harassing Rafael," Sugai Mai said.

  "Were you?"

  "Rafael is old."

  "So am I."

  "You're less than sixty, Captain! Rafael is one hundred twelve. He's had only minimal age treatments."

  "And you're a priestess of the church of immortality. I understand. Rafael doesn't believe in living forever."

  "Yes, but Rafael is Rafael de LaGuardia!"

  1-11 A Reunion of Strangers

  She rippled. Smooth brown skin rose and fell as the muscles beneath rapidly bunched and flattened in a cascade of motion across the visible portions of her arms and legs. The rippling built to a peak of amplitude and frequency then tapered down to nothing. Breathing deeply and perspiring, the admiral slowly flexed her limbs and twisted her torso while pacing through the sun-dappled shade around the massive trunk of an oak tree. She didn't wish to perform her physical conditioning function in this heat and humidity but it was a process demanded of her by her augments. The dress Rafael gave her to wear was not self-cleaning and she hated to soil it.

  /

  "What was that?" Samson asked, having observed the rigorous ritual. The admiral was a thing of wonder to Samson. This was in addition to everything else she meant to him: a complex set of needs, desires, and other emotions he couldn't sort out, didn't want to sort out.

  "Exercise," she answered.

  /

  He was full of questions. Fidelity - Rafael called her by her given name and it pleased her - Fidelity wondered at Samson's state of mind. The child had spent a restless ni
ght in bed beside her. Now he seemed much better. He hardly complained of his terrible injury. He knew it was possible to regenerate his limb, to make it whole again. That would help his emotional recovery. She still worried that she was missing some symptom that would warn of a further problem with his well-being. How could the child not have serious consequences from his trauma, from his abandonment, and from his amnesia? It horrified her to even attempt to imagine how he had suffered during his ordeals.

  She had slept little in the night. If Samson's nightmares didn't wake her, then her own inner turmoil would boil to the surface and wake her. She was changing and it frightened her. She reacted in a different way to almost everything. There was another person within her who saw from another perspective. This other inner person had quickly dismissed the resentment for the burden Samson placed on her and embraced the rewards and responsibilities Samson offered. Still, she could see each side of the matter and feel the tension it produced.

  "How do you do that?" Samson asked. "Can you teach me?"

  "You need certain modifications to your body."

  "Are you very strong? You look like you are."

  Stronger than she ever imagined! "Yes, I'm strong. It's necessary."

  "Why?"

  "I'm a Navy officer."

  "But you're an admiral. Everyone has to do what you say. You don't have to be strong."

  "A pleasantly incorrect assumption."

  "Where are you going? Can Gator and I come with you?"

  "If you wish. I'm exploring."

  "Do you know how you'll get back to your ship?"

  "It will come to me when I call it. Right now it can't hear me."

  The brown-and-black-striped dog bounded ahead of them.