The Vastalimi Gambit

by Steve Perry

  “One can tell by the way a being stands if he presents a real threat. He did not stand well. I am pleased to have made it this far without combat; I expected that I would have had at least one fight by now.”

  He raised an eyebrow at her.

  “Welcome to Vast, Wink Doctor. It is not like anyplace else you have ever been.”

  _ _ _ _ _ _

  At the lab in the bowels of the bolnica, Droc nodded at Luque, the Chief of Research, a wizened old Vastalimi of 160 or so who had been in charge of the place since before Droc had been born.

  There was no need to ask about progress. Had there been any, Luque would have informed him.

  “I have new blood samples,” he said.

  Luque nodded. “We will examine them in their turn.”

  Every kind of tissue that made up a Vastalimi had been harvested and examined with the finest observational machineries available. The tiniest of retroviruses would appear to be planet-sized when projected onto the screens.

  So far, nothing had been detected with them that offered a cause.

  That did not seem possible.

  The medical system on Vast was not as advanced as it was on some worlds; still, it was not primitive. If a Healer needed or wanted a device or medicines, and they were available commercially anywhere in the galaxy, they were free to buy and use them, including implants.

  It was true that augmentation among Vastalimi was extremely rare—in twenty-five years of practice, Droc had never actually seen a case of it himself though he knew some Healers who had. Vastalimi did not hold with such things, at least the sane ones did not. Not all were sane, however.

  Vastalimi were complex, but not particularly complicated creatures, and The People were, as a species, hardy. Many illnesses that affected other beings did not infect them. Cancer was rare, arterial diseases infrequent. Infections of the kidneys or liver or bowel happened, but the leading causes of death on Vast were old age, accidents, and combat, with everything else trailing.

  Yes, there were agents that afflicted The People. Brain fevers, lung infections, blood dyscrasias and poisonings, mental issues, a host of things; however, most were nonfatal, most of the time.

  Every test that Droc and the other Healers had run on the dying victims had come up negative for a causative organism. The agent did not chart as a known pathogen. Not a bacterium, fungus, or virus. Neither did it seem to be any kind of allergen, radioactive element, or detectable poison. Nothing to show it as a plasmid or episome. No evidence of genetic retroengineering had been detected.

  Healers were at a loss.

  People got sick, suffered a short and awful illness, and died. It did not seem to be militantly contagious, in that health workers exposed to the dying had not contracted it—as far as anybody could tell. Some family members and others in close proximity had been affected, including his own parents and some siblings. Of course, it might be like some retroviruses, with a very long and dormant incubation period. Perhaps the afflicted had been carrying the invisible seeds of it for decades.

  Or perhaps it was black magic or a plague sent by somebody’s malignant god, for all they had been able to determine.

  It was frustrating. Vastalimi did not fear enemies, but to fight them, you had to identify them. If you did not know the cause of an illness, how could you combat it?

  The body’s reaction was more or less the same: It broke down, there was a cascade of signs and symptoms that mimicked several known diseases or conditions. Systems failed; the direct causes of death varied, it was a matter of which organ or organs succumbed first. Droc had seen patients bleed from the eyes and ears and even the skin; fulminant fevers had cooked brains into seizures; hearts had raced into uncontrolled tachycardia or slowed to bradycardia and just stopped. Livers, kidneys, stomachs, bowels, lungs went septic and died.

  Many patients, once informed of the inevitable progress of the syndrome, opted for izvaditi utrobu. Suicide was quicker, less painful, and honorable. If he himself contracted the malady, Droc expected he would fight it to the end, to allow other Healers more time to study him. Yes, that would be a bad way to die, but it might serve some purpose.

  His sister was here, on-planet, and she would be arriving shortly. She had been among the best Healers on their world when she had practiced the arts. She’d had skill, of course, but more importantly, she had sometimes been preternaturally able to intuit things that most Healers could not. It seemed empathic, even telepathic, how she simply knew what was wrong with a patient, sometimes simply by walking into the same room, no examination, nothing. A talent he did not have.

  It had been a loss to Vastalimi medicine when she had left the planet. And a personal one.

  He knew the truth, and Kluth’s choices had been limited; he understood her decision. Exile had been, in some ways, harder than death. He did not think he could have done it that way. Whatever perceived dishonor there might have been, she had taken it with her and become a focus that drew attention away from her family. He understood why she’d done so.

  Droc wondered where Jak was these days. Not so much that he would bother to look, but as an idle curiosity. Jak, who had walked away clean because of Kluth’s sacrifice. Droc had despised him for that, then. Later, he had come to honor her decision, at least to the point where he could stomach being in the same hemisphere with Jak. Barely. He was not one to initiate duels, but he had considered doing so in Jak’s case. Such a pleasure it would be to kill him. What a scathead he was.

  Such a hard choice his sister had made. And one she should not have had to make.

  Not that he blamed her. She had been at the wrong place at the wrong time, and there had been nothing to be done for it. It had been years, the parties involved had moved on. Some were dead, some no longer in positions of power, some shunted into places where they were no threat; still, there was a risk. Vial was still around, the scum-spawn.

  Had he not asked it of her, Kluth would never have returned to Vast, and it could be the death of her, despite his current status.

  But if she could help him figure out what was killing The People? Her death, his, they were nothing compared to that. She would be the first to agree.

  Vastalimi did not fear death the same way that some other species did.

  “My sister is coming. She has brought a human medic with her.”

  “A human? Interesting. I hope she can keep him alive long enough to be useful. How is Kluth?”

  “Dutiful, else she would not be here.”

  “She is that. I’ll call if I find anything. Don’t hold your breath waiting.”

  “No. I won’t.”

  _ _ _ _ _ _

  A row of vehicles was parked at the curb outside the port, small-wheeled, enclosed carts that could carry perhaps four, if two of them were small and flexible. “That one,” Kay said, nodding at one of the carts.

  “How do you know which it is?”

  “One is as good as the next.”

  “What if it belongs to somebody?”

  “Then they will have to find another. They won’t mind. Such vessels are not prized among us. There are more than enough to go around. Were you not with me, I would simply lope. Why would I ride such a short distance if my legs are sound?”

  “How short a distance are we talking about?”

  “About nine kilometers.”

  “That all?” The air was dry, the temperature maybe twenty or so Celsius. Not hot, not cold. Still, it would probably make for a sweaty run, an activity for which he was not dressed.

  “But at your pace, it would take much longer than using the cart.”

  “You are too kind.”

  She whickered, that soft, chortlelike noise that passed for a laugh among her people. “You probably haven’t heard the expression ‘Slow as a human.’”

  “No, I have heard ‘Nasty as a V
astalimi,’” he said.

  She whickered again.

  They climbed into the cart. She rattled off an address. The cart’s motor came online, and the vehicle moved away from the curb. Apparently, the autopilot was sufficiently capable to operate the vehicle without Kay’s help; she didn’t offer it any.

  The ride was bumpy, the seat hard and uncomfortable. The city was very clean, with wide streets, and there were more pedestrians than passenger carts though there were larger vehicles carrying what he assumed were necessities, cargo too large or being moved over too long a distance to be managed by a Vastalimi on foot. Most of the cargo vehicles appeared to be automatically operated, no drivers visible.

  More than a few of those on foot were running, loping along at a good pace.

  The air felt, smelled, even tasted exotic to him. Every world had its own feel that way.

  It was all quite fascinating.

  _ _ _ _ _ _

  Cutter looked up from his desk. “Any problems?”

  “We lost three drones; other than that, nothing,” Jo said.

  “Three drones? Do you know how much those cost?”

  “Actually, I do, since I signed the purchase order for them. Hardware gets used up in a battle, that’s what it’s for.”

  “No, it’s there to be used if you need it.”

  “We needed it. We took out the attackers, including a couple of APCs that cost the other side way more than the drones cost us. They got some pawns, we got a bishop and a couple of knights. They’ll think twice about trying something that stupid next time.”

  He nodded. He bitched about money all the time, but the truth was, if he kept his people safe, he was willing to spend whatever it took. “Maybe that’s not to our advantage, helping our enemy evolve his smarts.”

  “More fun that way. Set ’em up, knock ’em down, that gets boring.”

  “You would get bored falling off a tall building.”

  “Depends on how long it took to get down.”

  “What’s next on your agenda?”

  “We have troops watching the trucks. We are thinking about taking a run to the farming community where they grow these purple rootnips, and seeing if we can figure out things from that end. What are you gonna do?”

  “I’m going to visit the manager of the TotalMart store and see what other intel his ops have developed.”

  “I could do that, and you could go talk to the farmers.”

  “Nah. Nice cool monster-mart with good restaurants and a couple of hundred shops sounds like more my kind of thing than stepping around the ruminant-ungulate pies steaming in the pastures.”

  “I’ll wear my old boots,” she said.

  “Wouldn’t it be easier just to avoid stepping in it?”

  “Never seems to work out that way. And funny, coming from you.”

  He laughed.

  _ _ _ _ _ _

  Kay nodded at her elder brother. They exchanged greetings, ritual face licks. She noted that he seemed happy to see her, and probably not just because he needed her help.

  Well. It had been years. And some major things had happened.

  “Our parents and siblings?”

  “They died well,” he said.

  She nodded. She had already grieved, but it was still a shock. Death came for all, and it was never a matter of “if,” only “when.”

  The way of it. Nothing to be done.

  She and Droc had been close when she had lived here. He had urged her to stay, offering his full support. Brave of him, and she had appreciated it.

  Kay introduced Wink Doctor.

  The two males gave each other nods of acknowledgment. Humans did not lick, they gripped and shook hands on such occasions; Vastalimi did not. The clasping of hands was supposed to show, according to what she had learned, that the humans were giving up a measure of lethality. It stemmed, so the story went, from the days when humans carried knives or swords, and demonstrated that the dominant hand—usually the right one—was empty. And with the dominant hands thus occupied, the ability to draw a weapon was also hindered.

  Vastalimi had killing claws on hands and feet, were generally ambidextrous, and there was no ritualistic greeting that would convince anybody they were unarmed or incapable of a killing response—because both assumptions were demonstrably false. If you knew somebody well enough for face-licks, you trusted them, and usually that meant family.

  Family was different. There was seldom danger from family.

  “My sibling speaks well of your abilities, Doctor Wink.” He spoke Basic.

  “Good of her to do so.”

  “Would you like to see some of our afflicted? We have several in various stages of the malady.”

  “Of course,” Kay said.

  “This way.”

  He turned and walked away. They followed.

  When they walked into the room, Kay had a visceral reaction to the feel of death in the air. It had been a while since she had been around dying Vastalimi, and the three strapped to the beds here were certainly close to expiration. There was the smell, of course, but something else, something . . . wrong about them she couldn’t quite pin down.

  She had been a skilled Healer, but it was intuicija that had set her apart from most other Healers; that sudden, unexplained, in-the-blink-of-an-eye knowledge, a certainty of what was wrong with a patient. Some Healers had it when they entered the profession; some achieved it along the way; some never had nor got it.

  It was, she had learned, both blessing and curse . . .

  She had never been able to control it, to summon it. It happened, and there seemed no reason in particular why it did or did not. Of a moment, when it occurred, she simply looked at a patient and knew what their problem was. Over the years, it had come to her hundreds of times.

  And when it happened, it had never been wrong.

  Her brother knew that, and he looked at her, waiting. Hoping.

  She shook her head. “Not for sure. But there is something . . . It seems . . . unnatural.”

  “How so?”

  “I cannot say for certain. Whatever the cause, it feels wrong. Not like any disease I know.”

  “Ah.”

  Wink said, “May I examine one of the patients?”

  “You are not worried about contracting the condition?”

  “Have you determined that it is contagious?”

  “No. We have no idea what it is. We haven’t seen a vector pattern.”

  “Well, even if it is contagious among Vastalimi, chances of interspecies jumping to humans are small.”

  “Small might still be fatal,” Droc said.

  “Everybody dies, Healer. A comet might fall on us tomorrow.”

  Droc glanced at Kay, and gave her the barest hint of a smile. I like this human, the expression said.

  Kay nodded and ghosted the smile back. They have their moments.

  Droc held one hand up to indicate the nearest patient.

  Kay followed Wink to where the ill male lay.

  Even if you knew little about Vastalimi physiology, it would have been easy to see that the male was distressed. Wink Doctor had experience with a number of aliens, including Kay herself. He would bring a fresh and objective viewpoint. Maybe that would help.

  Kay would examine the ill, too, but she suspected that the cause would not be found that way. Maybe something she had learned in her time among humans would help. And maybe Wink Doctor would have some ideas, for he was one of the best medics among them in her experience.

  THREE

  Jo and Gunny and Gramps went to see the head of the farm co-op that focused on the difrui crop. It wasn’t too far from where CFI had set up camp, a few minutes by hopper.

  They had PPS direction and sat imagery, so Jo wasn’t expecting to find an adobe hut at the end o
f a dirt road, but even so, it looked more impressive than the images had suggested.

  The place was probably four or five thousand square meters under a dura-tile roof, ferrofoam construction, with twenty-five-meter-tall evergreen trees, flowering shrubs with red and blue and purple blossoms, a reflecting pond, and neatly trimmed short-grass lawns.

  Hardly an animal pasture full of old turds, this.

  TotalMart had paved the way for CFI, too, so the people were all smiles and nice-to-see-you when they arrived.

  They were ushered into a conference room with a waxed, flame-grained hardwood table, deep reds and oranges, one wall of clear plastic looking out at the reflecting pool. Painting on the opposite wall, a meter-tall metal sculpture of a harvesting machine in one corner. Everything about the place said quality, and nothing looked cheap.

  “Must be good money in purple roots,” Gunny said.

  “Else we wouldn’t be here,” Gramps said.

  Before Jo could say anything, a tall man with short gray hair and teeth that practically glowed they were so white, arrived. He looked fit, wore a gray silk unitard that hung perfectly on his frame, with matching leather slippers that looked sprayed on. Maybe forty-five, and he seemed comfortable in his skin.

  “I’m Director Kreega,” he said, and flashed his perfect teeth at them. “Everybody calls me ‘Chet.’”

  Jo returned the smile. With a twitch that was almost reflexive, she lit her Stress Analyzer aug. “Chet. I’m Jo Sims, this is Megan Sayeed and Roy Demonde.”

  “Please, sit. How can I best help you, fem?”

  “I expect you have been briefed on the recent encounter with the, ah, bandits and the convoy?”

  “I have. Excellent work. TM Corporate assured us that Cutter Force Initiative was a first-rate organization, and I am happy to see that so quickly demonstrated.”

  Jo shrugged that off. Protecting some big trucks from some half-assed hijackers? No big deal.

  “The attack was only a symptom, sir, and while we can treat those, we are more interested in curing the cause of the disease.”

  “Of course. That would be Masbülc,” he said, his smile fading.