Darkship Renegades

by Sarah A. Hoyt

  “They’re not inherently dangerous.” He took a deep breath.

  “That’s not what I asked.”

  Doc, holding the inhaler in one hand, looked up at me. Up, though I was a small woman, because he had shrunk with age. Not that he’d ever been very tall, but I’d seen holos. He’d probably been around five foot six or five foot seven. Now his body had collapsed in on itself, unable to bear gravity for the three hundred or so years he’d been alive, even if some parts of him were younger. Growing cloned parts was normal in Eden, but the structure itself knew its age, and showed it.

  His eyes showed it too, just now, shadowed with worry and looking very much like he’d rather do anything than tell me the truth. “You know nanocytes are old technology…”

  I nodded.

  “Well, these…these are just more specialized. Nanoscale assemblers. They go in and repair brain damage, and restore connections that are supposed to be there. They provide two key functions, leading to neural rehabilitation. First, they provide trophic and metabolic support, to promote stem cell proliferation and replacement of damaged neurons, glia and micro vascular components. But new cells aren’t enough, they don’t have the proper connections. So the second function is to rebuild those connections by inserting synapsin and receptor proteins to restore neural connection. Does that help?”

  “No,” I said. “Considering how little of your science I know, and how little I can understand, they’re just a sophisticated way of not answering my question.”

  He blinked at me, and something like a flash of amusement tinged his eyes. I suspected if he weren’t so worried about Kit and about what he was doing to Kit, he would have laughed. “You forgot to add you old fraud,” he said amiably, and the amusement in his eyes deepened, probably at my blushing. “Kit or Kath would have added it. Child, one of the few advantages of having practiced the medical profession since well before your great-grandmother was alive—”

  “I didn’t have a great-grandmother.”

  He fixed me with an unwavering look. “Athena Hera Sinistra, one of the advantages of having practiced the medical profession since well before the birth of the great-grandmother you should have had is that I can avoid answering questions without lying.”

  I stepped in front of him, on the path he would have taken to the room where Kit lay. “Kit is my husband and I have a right to know if anything you’re about to do to him is dangerous.” I was on shaky ground. Marriage in Eden is a private contract between two or more consenting adults, nothing else and nothing more. It didn’t necessarily give you the right to medical decisions. We’d signed a standard contract, Kit had said, with the modification that it was for life, but I couldn’t remember—suddenly—if it included right of mutual medical decisions or not.

  Doc Bartolomeu snorted. “Living is dangerous. We’ve all been served a death warrant the minute we drew our first breath.”

  I didn’t answer, just crossed my arms on my chest to let him know that was not even a sophisticated way to avoid answering.

  His gaze wavered and he sighed. He whispered something that sounded like “I’m too old for this.”

  “You have some reason to mistrust this treatment,” I said. “Even though, as you say, it is old news.”

  He shrugged. “A friend of mine trusted on a nanoscale assembler prophylactic…And it didn’t work at all or at least…” He frowned. “And Christopher…” He frowned. “Well. It’s probably safe, but…”

  “But…”

  Doc swallowed hard. “But,” he said, speaking very fast, suddenly, “Jarl Ingemar died of a neural degenerative disease known as Hampson’s disease. The NSE/NSA is useless against it and…”

  “Jarl died of suicide,” I protested.

  “Yes, but long after it had become obvious that his Hampson’s was irreversible and that the nanocytes could do nothing. It is a…No standard human on Earth would even have known about it, since it hits only at what is, for homo sapiens, an impossibly old age. But Jarl…”

  But Jarl had been impossibly old in standard human terms, over three hundred years old. “What does the disease do?” I asked. “And what can it possibly have to do with Kit who is still very young?”

  “Well…I said that nanocytes could not fix the damage, but…”

  “But?”

  “But in injecting these nanocytes into Christopher…”

  “Yes?”

  “Even though they’re of a very different kind from the ones we used on Jarl…”

  “Yes?”

  “They still need to know what the healthy configuration of connections for the neurons, the pattern of the healthy brain is. And I’ve never taken a pattern of Christopher’s. He’s young and, that I know, not prone to strokes, and besides…”

  “Besides?” I asked. I was trying not to think that there was this monster-disease in Kit’s genetics that would eventually hit him if we lived that long. In three hundred years, the chances of my darling still putting up with me were close to none. And besides…besides…Besides there were three hundred years, give or take, before we needed to think of this, and in three hundred years lots of things could happen.

  “And besides, I don’t like nanocytes. They feel too much like magic. So, I didn’t take a pattern of his brain while it was healthy. What the nanocytes do is—in communication with each other—spread out and recreate the pattern of the healthy brain.”

  “And the brain you imprinted was Jarl’s,” I said. I can read the writing on the wall when the print is ten feet tall and written in fire.

  It seemed like my words relieved Doc immensely. His body sagged with relief. Had he been so afraid of having to say it? “Yes. Yes. But…”

  “But?”

  “Even though the imprint was taken in the early stages of Hampson’s disease, I want to point out that none of this is relevant. Not really. Look…We’re not remaking all of Christopher’s brain in the model of Jarl’s.” His throat worked as he swallowed. “I wouldn’t. It would replace Christopher with Jarl. It wouldn’t be different at all from what your…what Alexander Sinistra wanted to do with you.”

  I supposed. Changing the recipient’s brain to resemble yours was probably less messy than a transplant, but the result was the same. The original brain would stop existing.

  “It’s a small, localized dosage, carefully programmed, and too limited to effect any serious change in Christopher’s brain.”

  “But you’re afraid.”

  “Only because Jarl was in the early stages of Hampson’s disease when the impression was taken,” he said. “I’m afraid it will trigger it in Christopher, and I want to say that it’s a superstitious fear, not at all real. But I…”

  “Is there some way we can avoid doing this at all?” I asked. Yeah, I’m not superstitious. But I would not willingly drop cold iron in the middle of a Gaian priestess’s dance. I would not loudly declare that a computer on which I depended had no personality. And I would not bet my husband’s life on a risky treatment, if I could help it.

  “Oh, sure. He’ll survive on his own. And in six months, with therapy with some micro-targeted surgery, he will be back to normal. But…”

  He didn’t say But we don’t have six months. He didn’t need to say it. Oh, Kit had six months on the purely biological level. The program the doctor had outlined was safe, secure and…deadly.

  People who would ambush us, coming out of the Hopper; people who would shoot an unarmed man in cold blood, would not shrink at trying other methods of getting rid of him.

  The longer we stayed in Eden, the longer they’d have to try to kill Kit. I couldn’t understand why they’d want to kill Kit, or why technologically sophisticated people with knowledge of biological science, would think that Kit had a special gift for understanding Jarl’s notes, but they clearly did. And they clearly wanted Kit dead so that they could control energy production and energy access in Eden. And through it, all of Eden, which couldn’t function without energy.

  And in six
months…They’d only have to be lucky once, while we, playing defense, had to be lucky every time. And they had all the power in the world, while Doc and I had only the sort of undertow, marginal power that obtains through family and friendship connections, through whispers in the dark, through messages passed in secret.

  So far we’d been able to outwit Castaneda and the board, but only because there had been very little time, and they hadn’t counted on us even attempting to defend ourselves. We’d had surprise and speed on our side. Not weapons you could deploy twice.

  I closed my eyes, feeling as though cold were radiating from somewhere near my stomach and spreading throughout my body. I would not tremble.

  Physical courage is easy, and yet each time, before I attack, each time before I jump in the face of great odds, I’m perfectly conscious of a micro-hesitation before I move, a hesitation that tells me that I know the danger, and I don’t like it more than anyone else would.

  It’s just that when faced with physical threats, as much as I hate the danger of attacking, I know there is also a danger in doing nothing. Adrenalin pumps through my veins and jumping to the attack is easier than sitting still.

  When the danger wasn’t physical, though, and when it threatened Kit rather than myself, courage was more difficult. Could I live without Kit? Sure I could. I’d lived most of my life without even knowing he existed. I could even live without love. For years, since my surrogate mother had disappeared in the night when I was six, I’d lived without love, my fists clenched against a world that didn’t even like me.

  Understand. I was my putative father’s clone, in almost every way possible except gender. Stuff had been tampered with, of course. I was female, and there were a lot of genes affected by that, all-important change. But that change was not enough to make my basic personality different from Daddy Dearest’s.

  The gifts I had—of speed, of reasoning, my sense of direction, my effortless and unthinking affinity for mechanics, even the very odd telepathy I shared with Kit—were Mule enhancements. And I’d seen enough of my own basic nature which was often cold, grasping, selfish, and paranoid, to know I wasn’t all that different from the late, unlamented Good Man Milton Alexander Sinistra who had been designed, long ago, by humans who should know better, to be a sort of super assassin: a human weapon that could be deployed with complete precision and utter ruthlessness.

  Without Kit, would I become like him? Who knew? I didn’t.

  But to keep this treatment from Kit meant to risk losing him, anyway, and maybe Eden as well and everything I held dear.

  What poet was it who had said something about, next to his lady love, considering the world well lost? Life never gives you the same kind of options that poetry gives you.

  Give me half a chance to trade this world—both worlds, Eden and Earth, with the Thules thrown in to make up the weight—for Kit’s life and happiness and I would do it without hesitation and without blinking.

  But no one was giving me that choice. I could risk Kit’s mind and life this way. Or I could risk it in a way that would be more dangerous and that might take the world with it.

  I felt my fists clenching and opened my eyes, realizing my inner turmoil hadn’t taken more than a few seconds. “Do it,” I said, stepping aside. “Give him the nanocytes.”

  Even as I said it, I knew that the doctor didn’t need my legal permission. I was Kit’s ward not the other way around, and though we were married, because of my lack of legal status, I probably couldn’t make decisions for him during his incapacitation. If anyone were legally responsible for Kit, it must be Jean and perhaps Tania.

  But the doctor hadn’t asked Jean. Or Tania. Or at least not in my hearing. He’d asked me. That was because what he needed wasn’t legal permission but something far more complex. He needed moral authority, to salve his own all-too-human conscience, in case it all went wrong.

  And while Jean and Tania loved the child they’d adopted while he was still in the biowomb as much as they loved their genetic daughters—if not more, as I’d sometimes suspected—their…being wasn’t intertwined with Kit’s, while mine was.

  They’d survive his death, if it came to that. Parents do survive the loss of their children, though it’s always a sad and terrible thing that by rights should violate some law of nature. I’d probably survive too, physically, at least. But some part of me was intertwined with what Kit was and that part would die forever with him.

  No, I’m not speaking of souls or spirits. Or perhaps I am. Yes, I know that Nikola Tesla, about whom Kit had made me read, claimed to weigh souls as they left the body. I’m also aware that no one else has been able to prove the existence of such a thing.

  But science or even philosophy, is very poor in words to describe what a marriage is. In fact, the human mind might be very poor in ways to explain it, which was why Eden did the right thing and treated marriage as a contract between two or more people and nothing more. Social norms should not trespass into the metaphysical.

  But if you think about it as Kit and me being joined on some non-metaphorical and deep level that couldn’t fully be talked about within the limits of words, you won’t be far off. And you’ll understand why Doc Bartolomeu asked my permission, not Jean’s.

  And if you say he didn’t ask my permission, you’re missing the point. He could have pushed past me, or refused to answer my questions. Jean, Bruno, possibly even Zen, would follow his orders and overpower me if needed.

  “You sure?” he said, looking up at me.

  I nodded. “Yes. Do it. For us, and…for Eden. Because these people shouldn’t get away with what they’re trying to do to Eden. Because…I want my children to have Eden as it was, not Eden as a fiefdom where only those in power count.”

  Kit? I said, a last attempt to reach him before this was done. There was no answer.

  “It has to be nasally administered,” Doc Bartolomeu said to no one in particular, walking past me, and kneeling beside Kit. “To circumvent the brain-blood barrier.” He put the inhaler at Kit’s nose and squeezed the bulb, to send the nanocytes into Kit’s brain. It was done. Now, whether it triggered Hampson’s disease, whether it gave Kit some of Jarl’s personality, there was no calling it back.

  I felt cold and numb in equal measures.

  “No point being scared,” the doctor said. “What’s done is done.”

  “I’m not,” I said. Partly because I was. I tried to smooth my hair back, but it was a mass of blood. Kit’s blood. “He’s not responding.” I was afraid this data point would tell Doc that which none of us wanted to know: that Kit was gone, that the brain damage had been such, even if small, that the essential personhood was gone, and all that remained of Kit were biological components. Who can call back the soul once it’s flown? I’m sure some twit of a poet had said that too, but it was true nonetheless. The hospital wards of Earth—at least the wards devoted to the richer patients—were full of patients who were physically well and whole, but who were in a deep coma from which they would never emerge.

  “Oh, it takes a while,” Doc said.

  “He’s not responding to my mind-touch!” I said.

  “Oh.” The exclamation came from Jean, who was hovering over the end of the sofa, near Kit’s head. “Don’t worry about that. He’s in shock. He lost too much blood. And then the doctor sedated him, before he measured the damage, to get an unbiased measurement.” He smiled at me. “Poor thing.” I wasn’t sure which of us he meant. “Thena, you should have asked instead of fretting yourself.”

  I behaved and refrained from telling him that no one had even let me near Kit, much less let me ask anything. For one, I didn’t feel like I had enough energy to explain it, and for another he was now looking at me, and his concerned expression resembled Kit’s too much for me to want to give him trouble. For someone who was no biological relation to my husband, he’d certainly served as the model that imprinted Kit’s gestures, expressions and behaviors. “Don’t let Doc Bartolomeu worry you,” Jean said. “
He can be stodgy on some things.”

  “Not stodgy,” he said. “I don’t like…no, I hate tampering with the brain. I don’t know where personhood lives, any more than any other scientist or priest for that matter, but the brain seems to be an important part of it.” He took a deep breath, and I could see him will what he said to be true, pushing his will power at the world and demanding the world obey. “Christopher will be fine. He has an iron constitution, as you know very well.”

  I knew. I remembered Kit climbing up the side of a ship while injured, not so long ago.

  “Let’s leave him alone a while, and then I’ll do some readings to see how things are progressing. Mind you, he is unlikely to recover consciousness before we depart. But he will recover shortly afterwards, and I can take the piloting till he does.” He hesitated.

  “Doc,” Jean said. “I think Thena needs to go home and wash and finish packing for herself and Kit.” He put a hand on my shoulder. “Come on.” He looked up. “Bruno?”

  Bruno shook his head, took a deep breath. “If it’s all the same to you, Jean…” He spoke slowly. “The ones who tried to kill Kit might very well try to do it again. The doctor will need to pack and sleep and…I’m armed.”

  Jean hesitated, then said. “Yes. We should probably also guard the Hopper. Yes, I know the compartment is locked, but any lock can be defeated.” He looked hesitant. “But Thena—”

  He didn’t say I needed an escort—and possibly a minder. He didn’t have to. I knew I did. I felt so tired that I doubted I could make it to the Denovo compound on my own. I’d probably mumble incoherent instructions to an automated cab, pass out, and be found, when the cab ran out of fuel, in two or three days in the bar levels or the vicinity of the half-g gardens.

  “I’ll take Thena home,” Zen said, very quietly. “I need to go by my home, and pack, also. I’m armed. Thena is armed. And I will call for help if needed.” I noted that she looked very pale, too. Like Kit, she turned the curdled milk variety of pale. She looked tired and as though she were awake only by the force of nerves. I didn’t protest her offering herself as an escort.