by Scott Rhine
“It’s fair. Yvette made a deal: my fun for Lou’s life. I let him live, so I get—ouch,” said Toby as Red twisted the arm behind him and slammed him into the wall.
“Shut. Up. If you say anything, we’ll assume you’re trying to control Snowflake again. You could’ve killed us all and ruined any chance of rescuing the Earth.”
“Red, he deserves a trial,” Zeiss said from above.
His wife answered, “The only advocate we have is frozen in that box. What do you say we make a deal: if she’s dead, so is he?”
Mercy ignored the byplay. “I talked to Dr. Auckland. Our new theory is that whenever an Active is exposed to the radiation entering subspace, it triggers symptoms similar to page reading. Z, Auckland said you could tell us what everyone’s side-effects were without violating any oaths. What was Toby’s reaction to his first page?”
“Paranoia, delusions, and erotomania. He’s so introverted, no one else noticed. Yvette caught it and treated him off the record for about ten weeks. Red didn’t want anything in the file—to prevent him from getting scrubbed from the mission.”
“Thanks for that reminder. I’m willing to open the issue to a vote this time. Do you really think Yvette’s going to want to see him again?” asked Red. “If she survived?”
Herk said, “Her mouth is taped. You don’t bother with that if the person is dead or even unconscious.” Risa pulled back from her husband. “What? I’m not the monster here. I’ve just studied criminals.”
Yvette had probably been awake through the whole thing—weeks worth. Out of breath, Mercy crouched on the floor, cradling her injured hand.
“Ask Toby how she is,” Yuki said. “He can’t lie anymore.”
“Please, it hurts,” Toby begged. “Like a drill bit in my brain every time someone asks.”
“He’s infected with Ethics—of course,” Zeiss realized.
Red said, “Because he rejected Collective Unconscious so much, the reformatting may have been slowed, but that doesn’t explain why he hasn’t confessed already.”
“He has . . . in a way,” Yuki admitted. “I think he carved the letter R—for rapist—in his side like that Dimsdale freak Mercy told me about.”
Red pulled up the man’s shirt to reveal the ink-soaked injury. He had been making his own tattoo, and the wound was inflamed from constant scratching.
Yuki opened up a little more, lowering her voice. “He may have confessed some . . . smaller things to me, but I just didn’t pay attention. He’s been coming down here regularly to ask her forgiveness ever since he started reformatting. I thought it was grief.”
“Auckland cross-trained in psychiatry, but he won’t be as effective as Yvette,” Zeiss said.
Red’s face was frightening as she suggested, “I think I should question him about everything that’s happened since the mission started, in detail.”
The biologist squirmed and whimpered.
“A complete confession will actually help him,” Zeiss said. “He has to make amends or the poison will only build inside him. However, I don’t approve of torture.”
Yuki offered, “Maybe we freeze him until Yvette recovers enough to help him, or until someone can build a replacement arm for me.”
“He blinded the man you love,” Red said to Mercy. “You have a say in this, too.”
With all eyes on Mercy, she said meekly, “Lou will decide about the crime against Lou. Toby roofied me to cover his lies and abused Snowflake. I’ll take away all his computer access to be safe, but Toby isn’t beyond repair. I have to believe that. Despite what he’s done, the doctor saved Auckland and Yuki. We need him if we’re ever going to see Earth again.” Tears rolled down her face. After a long silence, she added, “The charter provides all of us with the opportunity for a second chance. If we want one with Sensei, we have to give Toby one.”
Looking down, Mercy noticed the cut in the back of her hand. He’d connected with her after all. The blade had been so sharp and the pain from her fingers so distracting that she hadn’t felt the cut until salt from her tears stung the wound. “Oh, that’s going to need stitches.” She fainted soon after. Fortunately, she was already close to the floor.
Chapter 35 – Canon Law
Lou could sense when Mercy was on her way back to the camp, even from kilometers away. He decided to surprise her. First, he gathered some flowers from the arrangements in the cafeteria to scatter petals on the floor of her bedroom. Then, he discovered beeswax candles. He couldn’t find a way to light them, but decided he’d receive credit for just having the props there. Now, he just needed music. When Mercy brushed aside her fabric door, he whipped away the sheet to reveal himself in the Speedo. Belting out his best Rod Stewart impression, he sang, “If you want my body . . .”
Mercy was speechless, but the two people with her applauded.
Oleander said, “If I still carried euro bills, I’d stuff a few in there for you.”
“I can loan you some paper cut to the right size,” Sojiro offered. “He won’t be able to tell the difference.”
Lou found the sheet again in a hurry.
“I’ve never seen him blush before,” Oleander noted.
“I’ve heard that homophobic men are secretly afraid that gays will treat them the way they treat women,” Sojiro explained.
Lou shuddered, sitting down from queasiness.
Whispering, Mercy asked, “Guys, could I have some time alone to talk with my husband?”
Sojiro objected, “But you were telling me all about Oprah’s mansion.”
“Later,” she sang.
Oleander led the artist away, and Lou heard the door flap flump into place again.
“Hi,” Mercy said, and she brightened the room for him.
He patted the mattress beside him.
She sat and found a place under his arm, but pulled away when he tried for more. “Not for a few days, maybe a week.”
“Still sore?”
“That’s part of it, but mainly I can’t stop thinking about what happened to Yvette. I don’t want to associate those images with you—ever.” Mercy proceeded to tell him everything they knew about Toby.
Lou took the news about the cause of his sight loss calmly. “I guess I shouldn’t have pushed the guy so hard.”
“What? He burned out your sight, your dream, what you studied your whole life to be.”
“Look, I’m not saying he was right, just that I understand. He viewed you as his prize, and I moved in to steal his pretty young thing.” Of course, he’d jumped out bedroom windows for women and climbed over rooftops more times than he could count. A certain base commander’s daughter, in particular, came to mind. “If some Lothario started making love to you in front of me, I’d react violently, too. I’m grateful he left my testicles. I was out long enough that he could’ve done anything.”
“Pretty young thing, huh?” she demanded. This earned him a brief kiss, as sweet as new wine. Under influence of this Beaujolais, his hand drifted down to her behind, but she blocked it.
“You truly have only one track,” she observed. “If our relationship is going to last, we have to find something else to do the other twenty-three hours of the day.”
“Twenty-two,” he insisted, his pride stung. “Minus eight for sleep. I’ll help you with the chickens, and we can both be together in the kitchen.” He nuzzled her gently. “If we take hour-long meals, that leaves only five hours.”
“Mmph. I asked . . . um . . . Pratibha if you could take over pottery, and she approved. But there’s not much demand—only about an hour a day to handle our cups and storage vessels, at least till the olive harvest.”
“That leaves four for fun. I like when you read to me. You tell me how much you love me without sex.”
She kissed him again, longer. This time was a more mature wine—a Cabernet. A man can get drunk on kisses. Who knew?
“Okay,” she agreed. “An hour a day, but we have to share some time with others.”
“Two hours
, and you can read after dinner as group entertainment. I know Sojiro will come to hear you do all the parts.” When she resisted, he said, “It’ll be practice for our children.”
“I suppose I could start with a theme like Little House on the Prairie.”
“And Swiss Family Robinson,” he suggested.
Mercy kissed him a third time—champagne. He felt the burn all the way down. “Only two hours left,” he gasped.
“What?” she mumbled in confusion.
“The math homework you’ve been making me do.”
“Oh. I’ll finish that before class tomorrow. You’ll get an A. Hold me.”
Feeling the warm place behind her ear and not devouring it was one of the hardest things he’d ever done. Knowing the sweetness that would follow when she eventually initiated the act made it possible to wait. The idea that she knew so much about him and still chose to lie here at his side made anything worth bearing.
She liked to put her forehead to his, feeling a connection almost as deep as when they were joined below. After an hour of this touching, Mercy said, “We sent a message back to Earth, just in case. I signed forms to make my name change official.”
Lou grinned. She kept finding new ways to say she loved him, and it felt incredible. He’d have to find some different ways to tell her. This was all strange to him. Red would know what to do—she was a girl. That would be awkward. Maybe Zeiss could give him some pointers. Mercy was still talking about something; he had to pay attention.
“I also gave permission to allow your parents a seat on my foundation’s board.”
“Foundation?”
“A little charity I have in Brazil,” she mumbled.
“How little?”
“Um . . . not all of it is mine, but Red estimates the potential assets at close to a billion.”
Lou was having trouble breathing. His bank account at home had three thousand British pounds in it only because he’d sold his favorite Ducati racing motorcycle to pay off a few loans and bills before the launch. He always paid his debts. All his numbed brain could ask was, “How close?”
“Maybe as much as 1.2 billion.”
Mercy had to find a fanny pack for him to breathe into before he hyperventilated.
When he was calmer, he offered, “Do you want me to sign a prenuptial?”
“A little late for that.”
“I will.”
“Just promise me that before you . . . move on to another woman, you’ll have the courtesy to tell me first. Tell me if you ever feel that I’m not enough.”
“I’d have to be an idiot. I insist on putting that in writing. If I ever cheat on you, I will give back every dollar and wear a sign that says I am an ass.”
“Just like Much Ado about Nothing.”
“What your voice does to British literature is wonderful. Every boy would be an English major with you as a teacher.”
He could hear her blush as she answered, “Maybe we could cross-train as teachers, for our own children as well as others.”
“It’s not like pilots actually spend much time on duty. I’d like running a school with you. I’d learn a lot.”
“Speaking of which . . . Red wants you to try the interface again now that you have senses again. I told her not to push because the last session under the helmet hurt you so badly.”
He laughed. “If your computer pad burned your hand, would you give up reading?”
“No.”
“I love flying almost as much as I love you.”
“You talk too much,” she said, kissing him like Everclear.
****
Lou didn’t shave the next day, but Mercy trimmed his hair and beard with instruction from Oleander—a skill from high-school vocational training. The scout offered to do the haircut properly, but Mercy refused. “It’s too intimate to let another woman do.”
His hair probably looked like hell, but he felt like a million dollars . . . or a billion. He couldn’t even comprehend economies on that scale, not even for planes—forty fighter jets. He’d married a bloody aircraft carrier. No, the whole assault fleet. If he screwed this up, his friends and family would kill him. Not having to worry about other women in bikinis distracting him helped—that’s why he always had to wear sunglasses on dates. Having Mercy at his side was even better; she calmed him.
He didn’t notice the journey until they reached Zeppelin Point.
Mercy whispered, “I made a third domino setting for you and heavy cargo—an elevator. Hold onto me, and don’t wander off.”
“Not a chance, angel face.”
In spite of his easy claims, the return to the command center made him nervous. His stomach flopped, because the last time he was certain that his mistake had nearly ended the mission. Whispering to Mercy, he said, “Stay close. I don’t want any mistakes, especially when I can’t see the choices Snowflake offers.”
“Oh, Yuki helped us on that one. It turns out there’s a sound option. You just have to ask for it.”
When they reached the top and strolled onto the patio, the air smelled like Sirius Academy after the daily deluge—relief and eagerness to fly. “Red?” he asked, knowing that she had broadcast her emotions. He’d never sensed them like this before.
The other pilot ran forward and greeted him with a hug. “Lou! I’m so glad you could come up here. You don’t have to rush into this.”
“On a day like today, it would be a sin not to fly,” he replied.
She laughed and hugged him again. For the first time, he felt her soft side. He caught the barest glimpse of her true identity. “Mira,” he said. “It wasn’t your fault. Thank you for bringing me on this . . . adventure.”
“Don’t thank me yet.” No one seemed ready to go inside to the zero-g area, and what that may reveal. Until they performed the test, both outcomes were still possible.
Changing the subject, Mercy asked, “How’s Yvette?”
“Weren’t you there for her thaw?” Lou asked.
Red answered, “We wouldn’t let Mercy stay because the risk to her pregnancy was too high. Z didn’t want to add more pressure in case Yvette had something wrong. Mercy had already fainted and needed stitches.”
He turned to his wife. “You didn’t mention that part.”
Mercy asked, “Did Yvette have anything wrong?”
“Nothing . . . permanent,” Red said diplomatically. “Maybe a scar or two from the straps. Her first questions were about you, Mercy. She wanted to make sure you were safe from Toby’s predations. When we explained about the baby, Yvette was happy for you. I think shepherding your pregnancy will help her to heal. We did tell her one lie, though. She left several clues around Olympus, certain you’d find one of them and free her. We didn’t tell her we banned you from the place almost immediately. Feeling that the clues had led to her release made Yvette feel stronger, empowered.”
“Of course,” Mercy said. “I’ll talk to Yuki and get more details. Where’s Yvette?”
“With Auckland. She can’t stand the sight of Olympus right now—too many bad memories.”
“Where’s Toby?”
Lou heard Zeiss from the doorway. “In the freezer, at least till we talk to Sensei.”
Sighing deeply, Lou said, “Hey, boss. I guess it’s time I stopped goldbricking and get back to work.”
“You always were a little too fond of that hammock.”
“Yeah, well the wife beats me with the ropes if I get too uppity.”
“That never happens to anyone else,” Zeiss said wryly. When Lou heard someone punch Zeiss for the comment, he knew his coworker had made the transition from Mira back to Red again.
Lou pushed through the door and let Mercy float him to the gel couch. She offered to strap him in, but he waved her off. “I’m blind, not incompetent.” He felt her light dim, so he added, “But I do need a kiss for luck.” Ah, a cocktail of crème de menthe, flavorful but with the promise of a buzz later. She was his favorite bartender.
Fortified, h
e slid under the helmet again. “Hello, Snowflake. Sound on.”
“Hello, Pilot, Mercy’s Mate.” The synthetic voice sounded like a child’s.
The interface really had bonded to his wife like the chicks had. “Call me Lou, please. Show me a view of the nearby planet Alcantara and Sanctuary—gravity map.”
The image appeared in his mind in exquisite detail, including the gradients, the easiest way from point A to B. Instead of hours or days, he could plot a course by the seat of his pants. “Thank you,” he said, but the response couldn’t express the depths of his gratitude.
Snowflake interrupted his musings. “Lou, the rules you all gave on entering the airlock are now my rules. Will you answer some questions?”
Were they training their expert system or was it the ethics enforcer?
“Certainly,” he replied.
“You were wronged by Watcher, Mercy’s Helper Three.”
“Yes. Designate him Toby.”
“Affirmative. What punishment do you request for his offense?”
Lou considered this. A few weeks ago, he would’ve crushed the bug-loving freak. Now, he wanted the mission to succeed more. He considered how he might explain this to a child, not a stupid one—the way his child would need to hear one day. “Toby is unbalanced.”
“He still violated his oath. Is he a virus?”
“No. He did hurt me, but in a way, he did it for my own good.”
“Explain.”
“He knew that I had a problem—I relied too much on my eyes. This incident helped me to find other ways of seeing. Without his intervention, I never would have . . . bonded with Mercy. In the end, I can still do my job, and my quality of life is vastly improved.” He felt Mercy holding his hand supportively.
“No punishment, then?”
“None, other than the Ethics page reformatting that he’s already received.”
“Would you recommend this eyesight treatment for all pilots?”
“No!” Lou snapped. “As I said, Toby was imbalanced.”
“May I speak to Mercy friend two? The female who was held against her will?”
“Please refer to her as Yvette. She’s fragile right now, and the interface might harm her.”
