Hunted lop-4

by James Alan Gardner

  Especially not Festina.

  Veresian finished with the simple stuff and went to his terminal to see what the mechanical sensors had found out While he scanned the readout, I tried not to scratch an itch that all of a sudden flared up on the soft inside of my elbow. I assumed nanites were at work there, sneaking under the skin and sipping blood from my veins — not so different from the eyeball nano that had burrowed into the queen’s venom sacs.

  All navy sick bays had nanotech squads floating in the air, like little labs for doing blood analysis, taking tissue samples, and that kind of stuff. The medical computers had probably sent microscopic sensors scrambling toward my internal organs, swimming down my throat to lungs or stomach, in search of more data. I wasn’t sure how much time they needed to do their jobs — it must take a fair while to find the spleen, let alone do a bunch of tests on it — but bit by bit they’d send reports to the main computers, telling how my innards measured up.

  "Well," said Veresian after only a few seconds, "well, well, well."

  "Well what?" Festina asked.

  The doctor glanced at her a moment, then back at the readouts. "There’s just… ahh… maybe it’s time to recalibrate." He thumbed a few dials on the control panel, then gave us a false smile. "Time to run diagnostics on the diagnostics. That happens sometimes."

  Festina gave him a look. "How often does it happen?"

  "Not often but sometimes."

  "This goddamned navy," Tobit muttered. He and Festina looked deeply suspicious, but said nothing. No one in the Outward Fleet was immune to machines going off kilter — not doctors, not Explorers, not admirals — so you had to give Veresian some benefit of the doubt. Tobit watched the doctor play with the control panel, while Festina glowered at no one in particular. Finally, she glanced at me and said, "You’re feeling all right?"

  "I’m fine."

  She gave a half smile. "You look fine." Then she turned away from my bare chest to watch Veresian tinker with his equipment.

  Five minutes later, the doctor finished recalibrating, realigning, reprogramming, reinitiating.

  Five minutes after that, Veresian swallowed, and said, "There you are, same results as last time. This patient is definitely not human."

  25

  GETTING DIAGNOSED

  For a split second, I felt like dashing out of the room. I didn’t; but I opened my mouth, intending to babble something, I don’t know what, some cowardly nonsense about it being Dad’s fault. Not a word came out — the spirit that sometimes possessed me had taken over, keeping me stone quiet.

  "What do you mean, not human?" Tobit demanded. He gave me a quick glance, as if he could verify my race just by looking.

  "Every tissue in Explorer York’s body has components not found in Homo sapiens. Hormones. Enzymes. Protein compounds I can’t even classify."

  "Do they match other species?" Festina asked. "Balrogs maybe?"

  I shuddered at that — both me and whatever was possessing my body. It would be very bad if the Balrog had planted a spore on me, and little Balrog brigades were already romping through my bloodstream.

  "Not Balrogs," Veresian said after checking his screen. We all breathed a sigh of relief. "But it’s hard to narrow it down much farther than that." He pointed to something on the readout. "This lipid, for example… it’s not found in humans, but it’s reasonably common in alien species. Matches twenty-three sentient races that we know of and billions of lesser creatures from the same worlds."

  "Are Mandasars on the list?" I asked calmly. (Not me — the spirit in control of my mouth.)

  "Why yes, yes they are," Veresian answered, scanning down his data.

  "If you check the other alien compounds," continued the thing inside me, "I think you’ll see they’re all found in Mandasars."

  "Hmm. Yes. Yes."

  "You think it’s the hive-queen venom?" Tobit asked.

  "No," I said. "When I was on Troyen, I came down with something they called Coughing Jaundice. Supposedly one of their local microbes. It hung on for a full year — nearly killed me dozens of times. A group of Mandasar doctors improvised a number of treatments… including tissue transplants, and filling me up with nano that would prevent the transplants from being rejected."

  Veresian’s eyes widened. "They transplanted alien tissue into a human? Without killing you? And the transplant can actually survive on human blood nutrients?’

  I wasn’t sure what-all treatments I’d got, but I figured the spirit could be telling the truth. Over that horrible year, there were so many operations and injections and "Just lie in this machine for a while, Edward," I must have had every medical procedure you could imagine. Of course, I didn’t say that to the doctor. I didn’t say anything. The spirit in my mouth said, "You know Mandasars. Put enough gentles on a problem, and they come up with brilliant solutions." The doctor looked at me as if he didn’t quite believe it… but he should have. Before the war, Troyen had developed the most advanced medical knowledge of any race known to humanity. It was the Mandasars’ big area of expertise: they didn’t build starships or robots or nanotech, they just specialized in doctoring. Any species, anytime. Which meant they’d invented practically everything in this sick bay, even if Veresian didn’t know it. He was too young — Troyen had been out of the picture for twenty years, way longer than this scrawny stethoscoped kid had been practicing medicine.

  "If they did that to you," Veresian said, "why isn’t there anything on your chart?" He pointed to his vidscreen… which I couldn’t see because doctors always sit you down at an angle so you can’t look over their shoulders. Heaven forbid a patient ever gets to see his own information.

  "I guess the records didn’t get transferred properly," the thing controlling my mouth replied. "When the war started, we were all so disorganized… important documentation might have got lost."

  "But if you had this jaundice a full year," Veresian said, "there was plenty of time to file a report. The moment any member of the navy contracts an alien disease, it’s mandatory to notify the Admiralty. Direct to HQ, no exceptions."

  "Yes," Festina added, "there are League issues involved."

  I knew that: the League expected our navy to keep a sharp eye on threats to human life. The High Council couldn’t let such things slip between the cracks, or the whole fleet would be accused of willful negligence toward each other’s safety.

  "Sorry," I said, "I wasn’t in any shape to submit a report… and I don’t know why the others didn’t. A breakdown in communications, I guess — everybody in the diplomatic mission must have thought someone else would do it."

  That’s what the spirit possessing me said. But in my heart I knew it was no accidental slip-up. Sam was in charge of the mission, and in charge of me. Filing the report was her job, and apparently, she hadn’t done it. Why? Because she didn’t want official navy doctors getting involved, checking me out, discovering my tailored DNA? Or…

  Something flickered in my brain, then disappeared.

  The doctor spent another hour puzzling over my anatomy, but didn’t make much progress. As far as he could tell, the two doses of venom hadn’t caused any obvious damage; but since he didn’t know what my normal chemical balance should be, he couldn’t say if my body had gone haywire or if I was flat on the bubble.

  "You’re almost three percent Mandasar now," he said in a voice full of wonder, "and frankly, frankly, I couldn’t begin to make a prognosis. The venom wasn’t as alien to you as it would be for a normal human. That could mean your body has a better chance of shrugging the poison off… but it could also mean the poison will have more long-term effects because your body is responsive to it. The purpose of venom is to change Mandasar metabolisms. Three percent of you could be mutating like crazy, and I wouldn’t know the difference."

  That wasn’t so very comforting.

  Veresian told me to come back the next day to see if anything had changed. I said all right, but was already going over excuses for getting out of it. (By then, it
was me doing my own talking again — the spirit possessing me must have got bored and taken off.)

  The doctor also asked if I’d submit to a complete physiological study for scientific purposes. I was an astounding case and should be written up in some journal. For that, he’d need my permission to go public… and I refused point-blank. If he did a full examination, he’d surely learn stuff about my genes that I’d rather keep secret.

  Finally, the doctor demanded Kaisho come down and certify me as sentient: I wasn’t human, I wasn’t Mandasar, and considering what happened to Willow, Veresian refused to take chances. Tobit grumbled, "Aww, Doc, York’s a sweetheart," but Festina said it couldn’t hurt to get me double-checked.

  "You don’t mind, do you, Edward?" she asked. "Better safe than sorry."

  "Sure," I said… as if it didn’t bother me that Festina trusted Kaisho more than me. Tobit and I had told all about the spores planted outside my room — but I guess Festina didn’t care if Kaisho tried to Balroggify dumb old Edward. Kaisho was sentient; maybe I wasn’t.

  Five minutes later, Kaisho stood in front of me, hair completely covering her eyes. It only took a moment before she said, "He looks fine." Then she laughed. "You don’t know how fine he is." Veresian didn’t seem all that reassured.

  Tobit walked me back to my cabin. He didn’t talk much, but he stayed to help me check for Balrog spores, inside the room and out. We got the ship-soul to drop the lights almost to nothing, making it easier to see any glowing red specks… which is why we were practically in pitch-blackness when Tobit began to speak, low and gruff, from the opposite side of the room. "I peeked over the doc’s shoulder as he checked your records," Tobit mumbled, as if he was talking to himself. "That note about NO MEDICAL EXAMINATIONS? It was tagged onto your file twenty-one years ago. Long after you first enlisted. Which makes me think your father had nothing to do with it."

  I stared stupidly at him in the darkness. "What do you mean?"

  "Twenty-one years ago," Tobit repeated. "Wasn’t that the same time you picked up the pox on Troyen?"

  I nodded. And swallowed hard.

  "So not only did your pals on Troyen fail to report you were sick," he said, "someone hacked your medical records to keep folks from learning what happened to you. Someone snaffled you with that NO CHECKUP crap so navy doctors wouldn’t find out you were three percent Mandasar. And whoever did it was either an admiral or someone who could fake Admiralty authorization." Tobit’s face was completely lost in shadows. "So what’s the story, York? Who jerked you around? Do you know?"

  "No," I answered — glad it was too dark for him to see my face, because one look would have showed I was lying.

  There was only one person who could have faked up everything: never filing the proper reports and using Dad’s backdoor access to tag my medical records.

  Why, Sam, why?

  26

  EATING AT THE CAPTAIN’S TABLE

  Since it was the first night of a new voyage, Captain Prope held a formal dinner in the lounge — the kind of dinner where people wear dress uniforms and try to act gracious. Everyone moves a bit more slowly; talks a bit more expressively; keeps conversation on "social" topics, instead of the usual, "What blazing idiot designed those damned fuel filters?"

  Me, I wasn’t so good at witty repartee. I’m not much of a talker at the best of times, and it didn’t help that Jacaranda’s onboard clock was way off my current day-night cycle. My brain was still synchronized with the shifts on Willow… so dinner at 8:00 P.M. Jacaranda time felt more like three in the morning for me.

  The problems of space travel that no one ever talks about.

  The VIPs had to eat at the captain’s table: Festina because she was an admiral, Kaisho because her legs were the most advanced species on the ship, and me because… well, maybe Prope wanted to keep me under close watch. Not so long ago, she’d been ready to dump me on some ice moon; and I was still a man who knew too much.

  The Mandasars had a table of their own right beside us. Naturally, it was lower than ours — only a few centimeters off the floor, with passable dining pallets laid all around. That had to be the work of Tobit and Benjamin: Explorers are always the ones stuck with figuring out how to make aliens comfortable. (Explorers spend a lot of time learning about alien customs; knowledge like that helps you survive on strange planets. You’d be surprised how many races will slit your throat over bad table manners.)

  As for Tobit and Benjamin themselves, they were stuck at the back someplace, rubbing elbows with the enlisted. Since Festina, Kaisho and I sat at the head table, Prope must have decided there were plenty of Explorers on display already.

  Festina sat on Prope’s right: the position of highest honor and the only possible place to seat a visiting admiral. For some reason I got the second best spot, on the captain’s immediate left. Next to me was that smarmy fellow Harque, who seemed to hold some privileged status aboard Jacaranda, even though he was only a lieutenant. Much-higher-ranking personnel — the chief engineer, the commander of Security, even the XO — all got shunted off to other tables. Maybe they had enough clout to ask for those seats; Harque was the one stuck under the steely gaze of both a captain and an admiral.

  For the first part of the meal, Prope aimed most of her attention at Festina, trying to wheedle juicy gossip about power struggles on the High Council. The captain was one of those people who went all oozy with charm when she wanted something. She had a pretty good touch with it too — all warm and winning, so you found yourself smiling even when you knew it was only an act. The secret was that Prope herself didn’t realize she was an awful hypocrite; she thought this was as genuine as anyone ever got. I’d seen the same thing in diplomats: honestly believing they were paragons of truth because they thought everybody else was a bigger liar than they were.

  Festina didn’t work nearly as hard on the social niceties as Prope. One word answers. No little stories about the time a Myriapod ambassador gave birth at the breakfast table. I got the feeling Festina had some grudge against Prope, one she’d been nursing a long time; she was making an effort not to be petty, but refused to go any farther than frostily polite.

  As for the actual content of the conversation — like which high admiral said what to whom during a recent summit on some race called the Peacocks — I sleepily let it pass by till Prope asked me, "So what did your father think of it all?"

  I jerked awake. Felt myself blushing. Prope knew who I was; and as I glanced around the table, Harque smirking, Festina looking grim, Kaisho hidden behind her hair but tilting her head to one side as if she was eager to hear my answer — I realized they all knew. Since I’d come aboard, they must have had time to look over my navy records.

  Dumb me: I should have expected they’d check. Smart people learn who they’re dealing with. I just wished… I don’t know. I wished I could have stayed Edward York instead of becoming Alexander York’s son. Especially with the way Festina felt about High Council admirals.

  "Um," I said. "Um. My father has never told me what he thinks about anything. Except maybe when he was talking to somebody else and didn’t notice I was in the room. I haven’t heard a word from him in the past twenty years; and even back then, he sent letters to my sister, not me. After Sam died…" I stopped, remembering Sam wasn’t dead. "My father and I aren’t close," I mumbled, hoping folks would leave it at that.

  Prope didn’t. "Frankly, I’m astounded," she said, "that you and your dad are… estranged." She gave me a sympathetic smile. Prope’s kind of sympathy anyway. "You look so much like him, you know. A chip off the old block. Only better — more handsome."

  She laughed lightly. I tried to laugh too, but didn’t do such a great job; no matter how stupid you are, you get good at spotting when someone is flirting with you. If you don’t flirt back, you’re being rude, or a prig. Except that I never think fast enough to toss off sexy banter, especially when I don’t feel sexy. (If you really want to snare me into bed, convince me you’re lonely, not coy.)
>
  So for a second, I just sat there with no idea what to say. I didn’t want to talk about my father, and I definitely didn’t want to talk about being handsome. Then I found myself replying, "Sorry, Captain, but the real chip off the old block was my twin sister Samantha. Another case of ‘my father’s looks only better’ — stupendously better, almost as beautiful as the lovely ladies here at this table — but Sam inherited Dad’s personality too. His force of will. Which I’m afraid led her to a bad end."

  "You have our sympathies, Your Majesty," Kaisho whispered. She stressed Your Majesty just a bit, not sarcastically but pointedly. As if she knew she was talking to more than boring old Edward York, Explorer Second Class.

  Yes. I’d been possessed again — a backseat passenger watching someone or something else take the wheel. Almost as beautiful as the lovely ladies here at this table… I’d never say something like that. I wondered why Festina didn’t demand, "What’s wrong with you?" Even if we’d only known each other a single day, she should have noticed the difference. But she just said, "Tell us about your sister, Edward. What really happened to the mission on Troyen?"

  The thing controlling me was only too happy to give its version of those long-ago days… a version filled with jokes and sly asides, many of them directed toward Prope. "Oh Captain, you should have seen…" "If only I could have shown you…" "Perhaps someday we can walk through the…" Nudging her on the good parts, making Troyen’s descent into war sound like a series of silly missteps and goofed-up blunders rather than a desperate fight to avoid a fight.

  As the spirit possessing me made Prope’s eyes gleam, smirking over tales of disintegration, I thought about what really happened. The truth.