Pirate Stars

by Andrew van Aardvark

  The awe in the Doctor's voice was spooking the Pirate Chief out. "I thought you'd edited your ability to be awed by women out," he said in irritation. Normally he tried to be discreet about mentioning the psychological sacrifices they'd made to stay alive.

  "I truly suspect if I hadn't I'd be very attracted to her," the Doctor said calmly. "I'd be in genuine love. As it is my appreciation is intellectual, philosophic bordering on spiritual. Usually when men, I use the term gender inclusively, Beyonder gene techs are believed to be all female as best as Federation intelligence can determine, usually when men attempt to play god they perform rather poorly. Usually you get Frankenstein's monster."

  The Pirate Chief looked up to see the girl scowling at them. "So young Jeannie Chang here is really a modern day Frankenstein's monster?" he said. He grinned as her scowl deepened.

  "Albeit, sown together before birth not after death, and with far better aesthetics, yes," the Doctor said. "A dream from the dawn of the age of technology realized in the flesh."

  That earned him a softening of Jeannie's scowl that rapidly morphed into a look of deep suspicion.

  The Pirate Chief straightened up. "You know, I take it back. I'm glad we don't have control of her above the neck," he said. "It's just too damned amusing to watch her making faces knowing that's all she can do."

  He walked up to and around her, inspecting his prize with evident pride. "So with you watching your instruments carefully, we can put her through her paces without harming her?" he asked.

  "I believe so," the Doctor said.

  * * *

  Jeannie had never expected she'd welcome the Doctor's ministrations. Let alone feel grateful for them.

  Life was just chuck full of little surprises wasn't it?

  "Just insane to have two control systems that aren't co-ordinated for one organism," the Doctor muttered grimly.

  Jeannie's neck hurt like hell, but she had to choke back a laugh. She could do that much. "I appreciate your concern, Doctor," she said, "but your bedside manner leaves something to be desired."

  "You make jokes at my expense, young woman," the Doctor replied, "but your humor is as inappropriate as your perception of myself and the Pirate Chief as villains is unnuanced."

  "Unnuanced?" Jeannie replied to the of ceiling of her quarters. She couldn't turn her head to look directly at the Doctor. She didn't doubt her face showed her surprise and amusement. "Your boss treats me like a human meat puppet using illegal technology you installed and here you are fussing over my immobilized body like Doctor Frankenstein, constantly giggling and chuckling like a madman in a bad movie and it's 'unnuanced' of me to see you as the villain? Heavens around us, Doctor, you've got villain practically tattooed on your forehead."

  "Your neck is quite sore, isn't it?" the Doctor asked.

  "It is," Jeannie allowed.

  "That's because some of the muscles in that region were controlled by you, and other, lower ones, by the chip," the Doctor explained. "The Chief didn't make you do anything particularly unusual, and was careful and skillful in how went about it, wasn't he?"

  "Sure for the last hour or so out of the infinite kindness of his heart he went out of his way to not deliberately torture me," Jeannie admitted grudgingly.

  "Rational of you to recognize that," the Doctor said. "Also you yourself did not try to fight the movements he had you perform or attempt any of the athletics you've indulged in previously, correct?"

  "Yep, you've worn me down," Jeannie said. "I've decided to give it a rest for a while." It was going to take a certain amount of ingenious thought to figure out how to be rebellious with her body below her neck not under her own control.

  "And still your neck hurts," the Doctor said. "I'm not asking. My scanners are the very best and I can see the pain signals in your nervous system."

  "Bedside manner still stinks, Doc," Jeannie said.

  "Yes, well, that wasn't always true," the Doctor replied. "Be wasted on such an uncooperative patient anyways. Currently I have your best interests regards your mental and physical health in mind. You need to listen to me."

  "Consider me a captive audience," Jeannie said giggling. Did he have her on pain killers or something or was she just delirious with the constant stress? "Tell me about how you used to have a great bedside manner and how it comes to be that you have my best interests at heart, and I should listen to your fine advice. Tell me those things and maybe I'll heed that advice."

  "Your body could rip itself apart," the Doctor said. "You or the Chief could accidentally break your neck if you fail to co-ordinate your muscle movements around it. You need to not provoke him into using puppet master mode, and when he's doing so you need to actively work to conform to his direction."

  "Maybe breaking my neck would be the best outcome for me," Jeannie said. "Did you ever consider that?"

  Yes, indeed I have," the Doctor said. "The Chief and I weren't always what we are now. We were once captives too. If I could have ensured my own death I would have. The Chief tried to kill me and failed. We made the best we could of a bad situation."

  "Maybe you should have tried harder," Jeannie said. "Maybe I will."

  The Doctor gave Jeannie a long serious assessing gaze. She realized for the first time he was a rather handsome if older man. The intelligence she'd always realized he must possess was evident in the cast of his countenance. "I do not think you will," he replied. "I don't think the universe would be a better place without you. As for trying harder you weren't there."

  "So tell me about it," Jeannie said. Gathering more intelligence couldn't hurt. Who knew what the Doctor in a talkative mood might tell her?

  The Doctor gave her a lop sided smirk, as if he was reading her thoughts. "Both myself and the Chief were high ranking if obscure members of the Federation bureaucracy," he said. "The people running the Federation aren't stupid."

  Jeannie snorted.

  The Doctor grimaced. "Sometimes the whole is less, much less, than the sum of the parts," he said with an even persistence. "It has long been observed that often groups are stupider and more irrational than any of the individuals within them. It has been known since at least the middle of the 20th century that this is a particular issue with older larger bureaucracies."

  "Won't deny Federal bureaucracy is large, old, and irrationally stupid most of the time," Jeannie said. "Haven't been around it much but it's a cliche, Doc. Everybody knows this."

  "'Everybody' is not always right," the Doctor opined grumpily. "In any event, the top tier of the Federal Service is well aware it has reporting problems."

  "Sure, Doc, shit rolls down hill until everyone at the bottom is neck deep in the stuff," Jeannie said. "Reports back get cleaned up at each stage until the folks at the top hear that the happy peasants 'neck deep in crap' are actually 'amply provided with life promoting fully organic elixir'. It's why the clans run with a thin layer of family and a very flat hierarchy, to avoid just that sort of thing."

  "Hands on family operation doesn't work for everything," the Doctor replied. "I will refrain from giving a detailed history of the attempts in the 21st century to do without bureaucracy and how that turned out. Mostly classified anyways."

  "Thanks, Doc, but everyone knows how well the 21st century didn't turn out."

  "As it may be, the people at the top of the Federation Civil Service realize there's a need to directly gather information outside the normal channels. Particularly regards the Federation's distant fringes and the areas beyond its formal jurisdiction."

  "You and the Chief federal spies than?" Jeannie asked.

  "Spies gather information behind a cloak of deception," the Doctor replied. "We were low key but open in gathering information. Most of the time we were dealing with officials who knew who we were and what we were doing. We were explicitly a general audit team. We were explicitly not making any criminal investigations. We wanted co-operation from local authorities."

  "Something went wrong."

  "Yes, and to this
day we're not sure what," the Doctor said. "We were captured by pirates. It could have just been bad luck, but we think someone likely fingered us for them. Told them the Chief had valuable information, and I had useful skills."

  "Gave the pirates the exact course of the ship you were on and likely its manifest too," Jeannie surmised. "What information? What skills?"

  "The Chief was an auditor. Probably the best numbers guy you'll ever meet. Timid, socially awkward, highly rule bound, and risk adverse, but stubborn about doing what he thought was right. He was a lot more comfortable with numbers than people. He loved them. Used to say they didn't lie, not like people. That even when people tried to make them lie, they would usually hint at the truth to their friends. Give him a few days with the records and he'd know everything about a place."

  "Doesn't sound like the Chief I've grown to know and to sort of love despite myself. On the other hand you guys couldn't have been so naive that you didn't realize how scary that would be to crooks."

  "We tried to keep it all very low key. We didn't expect special accesses. These fact finding trips are infrequent but regular, so ours should have seemed routine. Also our exact itinerary was always kept under wraps and we varied it occasionally under various pretexts."

  "Got someone's wind up enough that they took the trouble to nail you despite all that," Jeannie said. "So what about these skills of yours. What did you bring to the party?"

  The Doctor frowned a little while he poked and peered at the fingers of her dominant hand. "Feedback a little off," he said. "This hand a bit sore?"

  "A bit, yes," Jeannie replied. "Your skills?"

  "I was an expert from the Department of Restricted Science," the Doctor replied. "I've studied the forbidden knowledge regards the human mind and biology that was banned back when the Federation was founded. I understand the technology the mad scientists of the 21st century developed to exploit it. There are at most a half dozen people in existence who know as much as I do about the workings of the human organism. More likely none. I've always had a talent for it and an genuine interest my peers didn't."

  "Modest too," Jeannie said. "If you're possessed of such dangerous knowledge how is it they ever let you leave a secure facility back on Earth?"

  "A 'Catch-22'," the Doctor said.

  "A what?"

  "Hmmm, maybe I'll explain later. My superiors were caught in a dilemma. As you pointed out they did not wish to risk me or the possible escape of the valuable information I possessed. On the other hand, over a period of centuries, with the colonies becoming ever more prosperous, the re-invention of much of what was discovered in the 21st century is all too possible. You yourself are evidence of that."

  "Me? I'm smart and physically fit, but I'm no mutant."

  "Yes, mutants are accidental, usually obviously different from baseline humans, usually not in a good way, usually as the result of a single genetic change, those changes not infrequently resulting in deformity. You are an attractive, but not freakishly so, young woman moderately different from baseline humans in many ways. You are manifestly not an accident."

  "Was there content to that statement?" Jeannie asked. "Because nobody's exactly normal. The average family with exactly 2.4 kids doesn't exist. As for being an accident, of course not, my mother was a meddling Beyonder Princess. So where's the woo-woo dangerous forbidden tech in all that?"

  "The Beyonders lie beyond the Federation's jurisdiction."

  "That's sort of the definition of 'Beyonder'."

  The Doctor graced Jeannie with a thin smile. "The Beyonders lie beyond Federation jurisdiction generally at some practical cost to themselves just because they don't wish to be subject to it, and some of them explicitly wish to breed a better variety of human being. Given their small initial populations they have to be careful about who has babies with who in any case."

  "So arranged marriages are forbidden technology now?" Jeannie knew she was being unfair but needling the Doctor was proving to be a surprising amount of fun. The single gleam of light in her rather gloomy situation.

  "The technique might be old and perfectly legal," the Doctor replied. "We would still like to keep track of the results. We also have some concern that given their goals and freedom from our normal methods of restraint that the Beyonders might dabble in more direct, more illegal methods with some success. Some investigation seemed in order. As did on the ground checks of our increasingly independent middle worlds."

  "So are we finally getting to the point?"

  "Yes, finally, no thanks to your efforts to draw me out," the Doctor said. "You illustrate the problem we faced perfectly. Without the intensive tests I've just done with this excellent laboratory equipment the Chief has found for me I would not have been certain that you were the product of advanced genetic engineering. Not knowing both your family history and not having seen you in action I'd not even have suspected it."

  "Advanced? I don't feel that advanced," Jeannie said. "Doesn't seem to have done me a lot of good."

  "Advanced genetics doesn't make you any less of a child," the Doctor said. "In fact it likely stretches out the process of full maturation. In any event we are both pawns in a game much larger than us. In my case I was sent in the way of danger exactly because any one with less knowledge of the old forbidden technology was not likely to recognize when it was being reinvented."

  "Congrads, Doc. You've answered one of my questions and raised many more. How did you end up the pet mad scientist of a pirate chief?"

  "It was a demonstration of my skills, a delaying tactic, and the the least worst of several bad options," the Doctor said.

  "No offense, Doc, but how hard could arranging to break your own neck have been?" Jeannie replied. "And I do think that would have been preferable to what you've done here."

  "I do wish I had the time to tell the whole story," the Doctor said. "It is quite interesting and I've longed to have an intelligent audience to tell it to, but we only have a short time."

  "Sure."

  "We weren't randomly taken captives. The pirates knew who we were and were at pains to keep us alive," the Doctor said. "Specifically in my case to keep me from managing to suicide. They were a lot more aggressive with the drugs and restraints in my case than we were with you."

  "Maybe they knew their business better."

  "They had a certain skill obtained through trial and error and someone had briefed them. Attempting suicide would have been risky at best. They warned us not to. They made it clear they mostly only wanted what was in our heads. A failed effort could have left us with all our limbs chopped off and the remnant under constant torture. It was too risky."

  "Okay, it was too risky and maybe you didn't let the prospect of being mutilated and tortured overly influence you."

  The Doctor grimaced but continued in a level tone, "Our captors had been well briefed but it was evident they didn't quite believe everything they'd been told. Particularly regards the possible utility of my skills in remolding people to their tastes. On the other hand they had some reservations about how well their existing methods would work on me. They weren't working very well on the Chief who was resisting heroically. I made a deal with the devil."

  "Trust you used a long spoon."

  "I wish I could have found a longer one," the Doctor said. "In any case I promised the pirates I would demonstrate my worth by not only convincing the Chief to talk, but by making him into the examplar of what a pirate should be. I told them I was afraid once I'd told them everything I knew that'd they'd have no further use for me and somehow got them to agree to let me work only for the Chief who I'd condition to treat me well. I got them to take us on as new recruits."

  "Sweet deal. How'd you spin that into taking charge of the whole lot?"

  "Not that sweet really, though I changed both myself and the Chief not to see that too acutely. Scrambling to the top of the slippery heap here is a long story. To make it as short as possible I really did make the Chief into the epitome of everything a s
uccessful pirate needs to be. With that and the leverage my abilities provided we managed it. So far from multiple prospectives it has been the superior solution."

  "Forgive me if I doubt that, Doc," Jeannie retorted. "Why didn't you escape once they'd started to trust you?"

  "Believe me given their necessary recruitment methods pirates have ways of guarding against that," the Doctor said. "As you noticed we make certain new recruits become complicit in or directly responsible for unpardonable crimes. We make it impossible for them to go back to their old lives."

  "So you saved yourselves at the price of becoming unpardonable insane monsters?"

  "If being insane is what works in a circumstance isn't it the sane thing to be?" the Doctor asked.

  "That's a twisted idea."

  "It's a 'Catch-22' and its something that happens in the real wider world."

  "You're going to have to explain this 'Catch-22' to me," Jeannie said.

  "No time now," the Doctor replied. Taking a deep breath he gave her a hard speculative look. "Promise me something," he said.

  "Tell me what it is first," Jeannie replied.

  "If you survive your current circumstances would you promise to familiarize yourself with classic literature?" the Doctor asked.

  "What does that even mean?" Jeannie said.

  "I will refrain from further altering your mind. You will agree to read at least 300,000 words each month from at least two different works written in or prior to the 20th century. Do you agree?"

  Jeannie could see little short term disadvantage to this and she'd be willing to do almost anything to have more than a short term to worry about. Seemed like a harmless if crazy out of left field request. "Okay," she said. "I'll swear that. All up side no down for me, but seriously seems extremely odd."

  "And yet you don't know what a 'Catch-22' is," the Doctor said. "I changed my nature to survive here leaving myself nothing but a compulsion to serve the Chief and strong curiosity as emotions. It has changed my thinking more than I would have thought. I once thought myself a bulwark against the horrors of the 21st century troubles, now I think I was dam holding forces likely to be all the more damaging for being pent up so long."