[Where should I begin?] Keldor asked.
[How about telling me where the women are and why you took them. Karsh has been rather cryptic so far.]
[Yes, well, I am not surprised.] I sensed amusement from Keldor.
[The women?] I prompted.
[Hmm? Oh, yes. Of course. Come this way.]
We swam down a short corridor and then down a vertical passageway. I assumed it was their equivalent of a spiral staircase. We emerged into a relatively large, though low, chamber. At one end sat more than two dozen transparent sausage links. Or at least that’s how they looked, connected together as they were, three links end-to-end and stacked three high per row. Inside each link lay a body—a young, female human body. Each was as still and pale as anything I had ever seen on the coroner’s slab. They were fully dressed, which I took to be a good sign.
Considering the Azarti physique, I hadn’t expected rape to be an issue, but who knows what gets an alien’s rocks off?
Peering in one link, my heart clenched and my mouth went dry. The girl bore a striking resemblance to my Jeannie. The moment passed. Clearly it wasn’t her. I had buried Jeannie long before these Azarti had arrived on Earth, and it had been a car bomb that had taken her from me, not some diminutive alien.
Then I found Sara Scarpacci, looking as lifeless as the others. That was an unwelcome sight. Until then I’d held out hope that she was on a bender with a boyfriend somewhere. I wasn’t looking forward to telling Daddy Scarpacci that his beloved Sara was sleeping with the fishes. Something about shooting the messenger.
Now what? I’d located the missing girls. So what next?
[Are they dead?] I had to ask, dreading the answer.
So many young girls… I held my breath.
[Dead? Certainly not! They are merely in stasis.]
Whew! I closed my eyes in relief and let out my breath. That was a big load off my mind. Maybe I’d be able to return Sara to Scar after all. Maybe he’d be appreciative and gracious.
Maybe pigs would learn to hover.
[What happened to them?] I asked.
Keldor answered. [I understand Karsh has already told you that we needed their blood.]
I nodded. [Yes, but not why. Why only women? Why these women? What did you do to them?]
A brief pause. [This gets complicated. The short answer is that we are sick. In fact, we are dying—all of us.]
I had braced myself for any number of answers, but not that one.
[Dying? From what? And what does that have to do with the women?]
[As I said, this gets complicated. We are dying from radiation sickness.]
[Radiation? But your ship’s drive isn’t nuclear, right?]
I knew I wasn’t giving Keldor much of a chance to answer, but I was impatient and he was taking forever to get to the point.
[No, our drive is not nuclear. We were fired upon and forced to fly too close to your sun.]
I interrupted, surprised once again. [Fired upon? Why? By who?]
Keldor hesitated for an instant before responding. [By our government.]
[Your government? Why would they be trying to kill you?]
Keldor hesitated noticeably longer this time, first looking to Karsh. Apparently getting a mental equivalent of a nod, he continued. [We are escaped prisoners. Condemned prisoners.]
My eyebrows rose even higher. Now I really wondered what I had stepped in.
Then Karsh cut in. [We escaped in this ship. We were chased by government ships. One of them caught up to us near this system. They fired on us and missed. A direct hit could have destroyed the ship, but the near miss damaged our ship. We had to slingshot around your sun—too close, unfortunately. Then we managed to hide inside the atmosphere of one of your gas giants. When it was safe to leave, we limped back here to make repairs.]
Keldor resumed his narration. [Four days after we arrived, we began falling ill. Our blood’s ability to process oxygen was compromised by the radiation. Within a week, two of our people died. Within two weeks, we lost another four. All of us would have been dead within a month without a treatment we didn’t have. With the ship damaged, we could not reach another star system to get treated.]
[We were aware of humans, of course,] Karsh interrupted. [How could we not be? Your broadcasts blanket your solar system. From our brief study of your people since arriving, we did not think we could trust you to help us and not feel threatened. We also saw no evidence that your medical technology was advanced enough to help us. So we continued to pursue solutions on our own. Then Keldor had a brilliant insight.]
Keldor waved off the compliment. [There was nothing brilliant about it. I am only sorry I did not see the connection sooner.]
My head had been swiveling back and forth between the two as if watching a tennis match. Now it was my turn to break in.
[Connection?]
[Keldor realized that because your people and ours both breathe oxygen, there might be a biochemical agent in your blood that we could use to help us.]
Finally, I saw the first faint glimmer of an answer. [Ah. I see. So you needed transfusions to cure you?]
I received a negative thought from Keldor. [Nothing quite so simple, unfortunately. Your biochemistry and ours are too dissimilar.]
I shook my head, now thoroughly confused. [You lost me. I thought you said you needed our blood.]
[We do; however, not directly. Your red blood cells contain a protein called hemoglobin that conveys oxygen. We devised a way to break down your hemoglobin and convert it into the substance in our blood that serves the same purpose. You have no word for this substance. Call it exoglobin.]
[Okay. So...what? You harvested some of the women’s red blood cells to help cure your illness?] The thought of them stealing blood from innocent victims made me queasy.
[I wish it were that simple. We do not have the means to cure our condition. The best we can do is replace some of the exoglobin in our blood. But the effect is temporary until the exoglobin breaks down and is reabsorbed into our systems. Without the ability to create more ourselves, we require a constant infusion of exoglobin. Each of us needs only a little every few days, but there are seventeen of us. Each of your females has only so much hemoglobin, and they cannot replace the hemoglobin we harvest fast enough to maintain us all. This means we have to keep finding new donors to keep us going, or we will die—every one of us.]
I was still confused. [But why only women and not men, and why not just take a little blood and let them go and then find another “donor.” Why take the women and keep them here?]
Karsh and Keldor turned toward one another for a moment, before Keldor spoke.
[You must understand, we had no intention of hurting anyone.]
Uh-oh. I didn’t like the way that sounded.
[Keldor only did what he did on my orders. The responsibility is mine.]
It was sounding worse by the moment.
Keldor projected a strong negative. [No! I could have refused. I should have. But, to my shame, I did not. At first, I told myself that humans were not Azarti, and therefore somehow lesser. I convinced myself that as long as we did not hurt them, it was justifiable. But I was wrong.]
His focus turned to me. [You are a sentient people and therefore we had no right to do what we did.]
I cut him off, sharply. [You’re damn well right you didn’t! How would you like it if we went to your planet, snatched your citizens, and drained their blood?]
Then I softened. [On the other hand, our people have done worse in dire circumstances. Some have turned to cannibalism rather than starve. Others have pitched people out of a lifeboat so the remainder would have enough fresh water to survive.]
I shrugged. [On a scale of atrocities, I don’t think borrowing a renewable resource like blood ranks up there with cutting organs out of a living body. But how did the girls end up like this?]
[I was just coming to that,] Keldor replied. [We selected the females we did simply because of their size. As you can see
, we are much smaller and lighter than you. Most males of your species and even many females are too large even for two of us to carry. We were forced by necessity to select the smallest healthy mature humans we could find. We did not choose your young, or the elderly, or the infirm. They would be more at risk, and would not meet our requirements, regardless.]
When he paused, I nodded. [Okay.] At least they put some thought into minimizing the risk.
Keldor continued. [You were a new species to us. I did not know how much hemoglobin it was safe to remove without injuring the donor. When Karsh brought the first donor, I began slowly, taking only a little at a time. But our people were dying. We could not acquire many donors at once without risking exposure, so I was forced to take a bit more hemoglobin, and then a bit more. I convinced myself that it was safe. Then, the first two donors lapsed into a coma.]
Coma? I felt sick. Visions of dozens of brain-dead vegetables stacked in deep-freeze—like so many packages of peas—whirled through my mind’s eye. That was one more thing I didn’t want to have to tell Scarpacci. Somehow, I didn’t think he’d take kindly to my returning Sara to him minus a functioning brain pan. And from what I knew of her, she seemed like a decent person—unlike her father. I didn’t like the idea of her and the others being reduced to taking up permanent residence in a healthcare facility.
Keldor continued. [I was forced to keep them in stasis until I could devise a way to heal them. But we needed more hemoglobin. Karsh and others had to keep locating and acquiring donors. We kept them unconscious, and therefore we were able to release most of them unharmed and unaware of what had transpired. Each was returned not far from where she was taken.
I broke in again. [So you’ve taken more women than the ones that were reported missing?]
I sensed an affirmative. [Many more. However, for reasons still unknown to me, some of the donors continue to fall into comas, even though we have reduced the amount of hemoglobin we harvest from the donors. Clearly the minimum threshold varies widely from female to female, and due to our extreme need we must be aggressive in how much we take from each female. Still, our percentage of success is improving. We now release four to five females for each one that falls comatose.
[We have twenty-six females in stasis pods at present. We cannot release them without endangering them, due to their severely weakened state, and we have not the means to treat them here. But we have only two stasis pods left. We cannot continue to accumulate comatose females. On the other hand, we cannot simply reduce the percentage of hemoglobin we harvest from each female and compensate by increasing the number of donors we acquire and release. There are not enough of us to do so, and by increasing the excursions we also increase the risk of discovery. Yet if we do neither, we will soon fall victim to our radiation sickness. It appears we have run out of options.]
I was at a loss for words. What do you say in a situation like that? Damned if they do and damned if they don’t. Either they let themselves die, or they risk killing the girls. I certainly don’t condone kidnapping, and if any of the girls died, the Azarti would be guilty of murder. On the other hand, I couldn’t just let the Azarti die, either. There had to be a way to save both the girls and the Azarti. If it meant taking a little blood from some innocent girls, was that so bad?
Yeah, I know I was rationalizing, but sometimes there are no cut-and-dried answers. In this case, it seemed like a matter of the greater good. Getting the girls home safely was my number-one priority, but saving the Azarti ran a close second. They may have been aliens, but as far as I could tell, they weren’t monsters—just people stuck in an untenable situation.
Karsh spoke up. [We should be able to receive treatment for our condition once we leave your planet and reach a safe haven, but until then we must keep ourselves alive by whatever means possible. However, our beliefs will not let us take innocent lives to save our own. Should we do that, we would be deserving of the very death penalty our government has decreed we deserve.]
That reminded me… [What did you do to receive those sentences, anyway?]
That was a stupid question. Ask any condemned prisoner and he’ll protest his innocence.
I received a mental blast of ire from Karsh. [Nothing! We are pacifists. We peacefully protested the militaristic incursions of our government. For that alone, we were declared traitors and noncitizens. We and our families were arrested and sent to penal colonies without trial. Simply aiding us was deemed treasonous. Still, others who shared our views helped us escape, some giving their lives in the attempt. It was they who delivered to us this ship: Galla. We have been fleeing for months. Twenty-nine of us escaped confinement. Only twenty-one reached this ship. Seventeen remain alive. All will die unless we do something.]
As cynical as I’d become over the years, I believed him. I was perfectly willing to accept that Karsh and Keldor might be silver-tongued criminals, able to talk their way out of anything. But I had a harder time believing that of Allara. Although I’d only conversed with Karsh’s daughter for a minute, her thoughts “felt” childlike. I didn’t know her chronological or mental age, but she struck me as too young, too innocent, to be a Ten Most Wanted criminal with a death sentence on her head. Besides, their story sounded uncomfortably like so many in human history.
I no longer feared for my immediate safety. Hell, I was more worried about running into Tiny and Weasel in a dark alley somewhere. But I still didn’t know why I was on this alien craft.
[Okay, gentlemen, count me in. You haven’t said why I’m here, but I presume you want something from me. How can I help?]
Chapter Five
So that’s how I got into the vampire business. Just by nodding my head, I went from being Donatello Sunrise, Private Investigator to Donatello Sunrise, Private Vampire.
Okay, so I wasn’t drinking blood, and neither were the Azarti, but I’d agreed to help them acquire hemoglobin donors—after volunteering to donate some of my own to the cause. They couldn’t take much from me, not and keep me strong enough to help them; but it was enough to synthesize a treatment for two Azarti, to keep them going for a few more days.
I knew I was taking a big risk. Kidnapping was still a capital offense in these parts, after all. But someone had to help the Azarti and it appeared it was up to me. Yes, I know, I’d taken leave of my senses. But it seemed to make perfect sense at the time. What can I say? Insanity has deep roots in my family tree.
[There is one proviso, however,] I told them. [The only way I’ll agree to help is if I can take the comatose girls ashore to get immediate medical help.]
Keldor and Karsh agreed. Aside from their claim that they had no desire to harm anyone, they were just about out of “storage” space, anyway.
I also informed them that Sara Scarpacci would be the first one I returned, and pointed her out to them. I had to look out for myself, after all. I figured the sooner I brought Sara back to Scar, the better it would go for me.
Keldor disagreed. [The first few donors are much weaker than the one you call Sara. The stasis pods can maintain them, but not indefinitely. The longer they remain in stasis, the greater the risk of death or permanent injury. They must be treated first. Once they are safe, you are welcome to return Sara.]
I wasn’t happy with this. I wanted to help the girls, but I also wanted to get Scar off my back. On the other hand, a few hours didn’t seem like too much of a delay. As soon as I returned Sara to her father, I’d begin helping the Azarti “acquire” new donors. This was the part of the deal I wasn’t happy about. I knew the girls wouldn’t be hurt, at least not intentionally, but there was always a risk and the girls hadn’t done anything to deserve being snatched, even if temporarily.
Still, that was a moral dilemma for another time. At the moment, I had more pressing concerns.
[By the way,] I asked, remembering an unanswered question, [you haven’t told me why you revived me after you brought me aboard. You could have simply kept me unconscious and taken my hemoglobin, like you did with th
e girls.]
Karsh responded. [We considered that. Your larger body does have considerably more hemoglobin than do the females. However, we were at our wits’ end. We could not continue operating as we were. There had to be a way to increase the number of donors we acquired so we could reduce the amount of hemoglobin we harvested from each. That was the only way to eliminate the risk of coma. With our size and limited numbers, there was no way we could accomplish this on our own. Also, we cannot mingle inconspicuously among your populace. We hoped that perhaps we could persuade you to help us. If you refused, we knew we could always use you as a donor after all.]
The coldness of his words chilled my blood. But I understood the stark logic behind his thinking. He didn’t have a lot of options. I probably would have done the same in his shoes. If he wore shoes, that is.
The Azarti had the means to get the girls and me ashore, but not to get us to a nearby hospital. I was going to have to work that out on my own. I couldn’t just drive up to a hospital, carry a girl into the waiting room and dump her there. There were too many witnesses and holocams around. The last thing I wanted to do was get fingered for the kidnappings myself.
After raising Galla to just below the surface, Karsh extruded a tube from the side of the ship. I wasn’t sure how deep I’d been under the bay, or for how long, but I was concerned about decompression sickness when I finally reached the surface. Fortunately my fears were unfounded. Maybe the threl filtered out the nitrogen that causes the bends, or maybe it did something else, but either way it wasn’t a problem.
We exited and swam to shore. I suddenly realized that I had no idea how to remove the threl. My earlier attempt to yank it off had been spectacularly unsuccessful. I knew, however, that I couldn’t just walk around on the street with it on my face and head. Besides, out of water, my vision and hearing were distorted. I asked Karsh what the secret was to removing it.
[Merely focus on that thought.]
Sunrise Destiny Page 7
