“I didn’t not save the day,” Casmir offered. “We kept Rache from flying to another system and handing the gate over to someone else.”
“There’s not going to be any proof of that, especially if the mercenaries ended up getting away.”
“If you get kicked out of the knights, you can come work for me. As a teacher’s assistant. The cafeteria food isn’t bad, and there’s a nice gym on campus. You can fall back on your bodybuilding career.”
“You aren’t going to be able to step foot back on Odin. If the Black Stars terrorists don’t get you, the king will have knights waiting to wring your neck until you share the location of the gate.” Asger shook his head. “You should talk to him, not some archaeologist.”
Casmir hesitated. He hadn’t considered that as an option. If it was possible, would it be worth it? He definitely wanted to talk to Kim’s mother, but… how better to gauge Jager’s plans and motivations than by speaking directly with him? If Jager would be honest with him. That was a big if, though. Who was he, in the eyes of the Kingdom, but a math teacher?
“Do you think you could get me a meeting with him?” Casmir asked.
“Probably.”
“Do you think he would actually speak to me instead of sending me down to some dungeon to be interrogated?” Casmir had never been inside the castle, but it supposedly dated back to the arrival of the original colony ships, and it had been quarried from the local limestone. He was positive an old stone castle had to have a dungeon.
“Probably… not,” Asger admitted.
“Given how my last encounter with truth drugs went, I’m not eager to volunteer for interrogation again.”
Asger sighed and reached into his cloak. He patted around before pulling his book out of some inner pocket, the corner burned off as if an energy bolt had blasted it. It probably had.
Casmir watched as he leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, and studied the book. Did that mean the conversation was over? Asger was looking at the cover, not opening it to read. Either/Or. Søren Kierkegaard.
Casmir tried to dredge the name from his memory. Some Old Earth philosopher? Kim would know, he was certain.
“You may not believe it,” Asger said, rubbing his thumb along the spine, “but I contemplate ethics and morality a lot, and how I can navigate between my loyalty to the crown and what’s the right thing to do as a human being. Sometimes they’re the same, and sometimes I’m not certain they are.”
“Of course.” Casmir nodded, encouraged by this thoughtfulness—and the fact that Asger wasn’t trying to strangle him. “Why wouldn’t I believe that?”
“Because I’m a bodybuilder on posters and cards and calendars. I think there’s even a puzzle.” Asger waved a dismissive hand. “I don’t pay that much attention. My agent just sends me my cut.”
“So pretty people with muscles can’t contemplate ethics?”
“Not according to most people.” He snorted. “Only the queen…” His gaze grew less focused as he trailed off.
Casmir raised his eyebrows, waiting.
After a moment, Asger looked at him. “If I could get you an audience with her, would you go? I think… I think she wouldn’t throw you in the dungeon.”
“Ah, so there is a dungeon. I knew it.”
“Of course. What kind of castle doesn’t have a dungeon?” Asger smiled but fleetingly. He kept watching Casmir, his eyes intent.
“I’m not sure about the logistics of getting in to see the queen without the king finding out and throwing me in that dungeon, but I will trust you if you’re willing to set it up.” Casmir admitted that there probably wasn’t anyone in the universe that he wanted to speak with more than the queen right now. She seemed to know who he was, and he wagered she knew more about him than Rache did. Would she tell him? That was the question. He would have to do his best to charm her.
“You have my word,” Asger said. “I’ll take you to see her, and I’ll do my best to keep you from getting captured prematurely by anyone else.”
“Will flex-cuffs be involved?”
“If that crusher wasn’t looming over there, you’d already be cuffed and locked in the lavatory.”
“That’s where I was thinking of locking you. I noticed the lack of a brig.”
Asger snorted softly. He was still watching and waiting for an answer. A confirmation.
Casmir had a feeling Asger hoped he would hand the location of the gate over to the queen once he met her, but he hadn’t made him promise to do so. That was a relief. Casmir wanted the queen to be someone good whom he could trust, and he even hoped to find that Jager hadn’t known about the crushers and wasn’t behind these encroachments by the Kingdom into other systems, but he didn’t want to walk into a meeting feeling obligated to hand over the gate, lest he learn something… unappealing.
He just hoped he wasn’t being naive in believing Asger could get him in to see the queen without castle security finding out and arresting him. Even if he was being naive, didn’t he have to take this chance? Not only to learn more about the king and queen and their motives, but to learn about himself? About who he really was and where he’d come from?
Casmir nodded. “Excellent, then it’s decided. We get all fixed up—I hope—on the Machu Picchu, and then it’s back to Odin to speak with the queen. While dodging terrorists who still want me dead for some reason. I wonder if I could get an audience with them. Then we could chat about our differences.”
Asger laughed. “You would do that, wouldn’t you?”
“My odds are generally better in a chat than in a gunfight.”
Asger looked to the robots. “I don’t know about that.”
“It does help if large hulking metal constructs are willing to stand in the way of the bullets.”
“Or knights?”
“You do hulk well.”
“I know. Two of the calendar photos involve that.”
Casmir thought about asking if nudity had been involved but decided he didn’t want to know.
The comm beeped, and Casmir maneuvered back to the pilot’s seat. His first feeling was dread, expecting it to be Captain Ishii. Even though they weren’t near the gate anymore, Rache’s shuttle lacked the slydar-covered hull of the Fedallah, so if the warships were looking for other ships in the system, it was feasible they would find it. Would they assume Rache’s men piloted it, rather than a rogue roboticist?
But the familiar Stellar Dragon identification popped up, so Casmir answered.
“This is Laser Lopez, hoping the robot whisperer is alive and aboard that shuttle, over.”
Casmir wondered how she had guessed that he was in charge instead of Rache’s people. Maybe it was a simple hope? He glanced at the collection of robots lined up in the passenger area.
“I think that term applies to taming animals, Captain Laser. The Robot Programmer would be more apt.”
“If you’ve ever had eight automated vacuums try to slurp up your socks as you’re putting them on, you would agree that robots are more akin to animals than computers.”
“It’s possible the vacuums need a calibration.”
“Possible? It’s a certainty. Are you coming back on board?”
Casmir brought up the scanner display, checking to see if the Dragon was nearby.
The answer was yes. They were also on their way to the Machu Picchu.
Casmir looked over his shoulder, but Asger had flopped back onto the seats, perhaps still feeling the effects of the tranquilizers—or the early effects of the illness.
“I’m without a pilot at the moment,” Casmir said, “so maybe we better meet at the Machu Picchu. Qin should see Kim, to have her blood checked.”
“So I understand,” Bonita said, grimness replacing the humor in her voice.
He regretted that. He much preferred humor. How many people had died or would die because of the gate? The radiation threat was another good reason to keep it hidden a while longer. Maybe Kim would be able to advise on a good way to prot
ect the next research crew from it.
“We’ll meet you there,” Bonita added. Then her tone turned dry again. “Though you’re going to have to dock that shuttle eventually. Unless you’re planning to spacewalk to the research ship.”
“I’m hoping my pilot will feel better by then. Otherwise, someone will have to put out a ball on a stick for me.”
“We’ll figure something out. Glad to hear you’re alive. Viggo was worried about you.”
“I appreciate the sentiment.”
19
Kim was exhausted by the time the Stellar Dragon and one of Rache’s shuttles docked. A shuttle that Casmir had stolen after somehow defeating Rache. Apparently, a squad of robots had been involved. She’d only shaken her head in bemusement when she’d read his version of events.
Rache was a wrecking ball who’d managed to smash into both their lives this week. Kim had a feeling she would have to use her favor, should he see fit to redeem it, to keep her best friend alive. She had no trouble imagining Rache’s icy rage, perhaps less over the loss of the shuttle and more over his defeat at Casmir’s hands. It was unfortunate that the Kingdom Fleet didn’t owe her any favors, because Casmir had to have irked that Captain Ishii too.
Whatever had truly happened out there, she was glad Casmir had survived. She had been as worried for him as she had been for herself, and she jogged out of her lab to greet him.
Casmir rounded a bend on the way to sickbay, grinning and waving enthusiastically when he spotted her. Zee strode around the bend right on his heels, which Kim expected by now, but the rest of the robots, each a hulking dark gray construct with a cannon-like left arm, startled her. She’d assumed he had left them behind on the other ship.
He broke into a run, arms spreading wide, but he paused before he pounced on her with a hug. “I know we’ve agreed that touching is wholly unnecessary in a platonic relationship, but since these are extenuating circumstances, will you—”
Kim stepped forward and hugged him. We’ve agreed, he’d said, but she knew he was a hugger and only abstained out of respect for her boundaries. Which she appreciated—more so than ever after enduring the handsy Dr. Angelico—but they’d both looked death in its ugly slavering maw this week. Hugs seemed appropriate.
“Excellent,” Casmir said, squeezing her and thumping her on the back. “I’m so glad you’re all right.” He stepped back while leaving a hand on her shoulder and squinting into her eyes. “You are all right… right?”
“I’m fine now.”
“Now?” His eyebrows rose.
Worried she had insinuated that Rache had been worse than he had been, she clarified. “Now that the bacteria have consumed the pseudo radiation in my body. The kidnapping itself was largely a non-event for me, other than getting me exposed to more of it more quickly. But I’ve undergone the cryogenic revival, and my cellular function is improving. With luck, I’ll be back to my biological age soon. Or even younger.”
Casmir grinned and released her, seeming relieved and also to accept her words at face value. “Don’t let it make you too young. You know how hard it is to be treated seriously in academia if you don’t have a few gray hairs.”
“True.” Kim waved him toward sickbay. “Let me take a blood sample and see if you’re immune or if you need treatment. And then, if you don’t mind—”
“I’ll look at your mother’s damage and see if I can repair it.”
She nodded with relief. “Thank you.”
“I actually want to talk to her and get her opinion on who should and shouldn’t be involved in researching the gate, so I’m crossing my fingers for more reasons than one. I have… Well, it’s a long story. But it won’t be safe for me to stay here for long. Captain Ishii will be back for his doctors soon, and I don’t want to be here when he arrives. Do you want to return to Odin with me? I’ve decided I must confront my enemies there—I’m hoping it’ll help that Asger was able to give me a name of the organization. He also says he can get me an audience with the queen, ideally one where I’m not thrown into the castle dungeon and interrogated at any point.”
“Confronting enemies and an audience with the queen. Oh good. I was worried our lives would get back to normal and how tedious that would be.”
“I sense sarcasm from you.”
“You do have that gift for reading people.” Kim eyed what had gone from one crusher to a total of eleven robots as his troop followed them into sickbay. “Are you keeping all of those?”
“Possibly for now. It’s good to have allies.”
“I imagine so.”
“My new human ally should be along soon—Asger—and I can introduce you. And Qin will be coming for treatment too. They probably won’t come together, since they tried to kill each other when they were on the same ship, but they were both exposed to the gate. Especially Asger. He was in the cargo hold, fighting Rache’s men with me, close enough to the gate to lick it.”
Kim pulled Casmir into the lab she’d claimed as her own and drew a blood sample. While she analyzed it, he poked his head into the other labs and also the now-empty quarantine chamber.
“The people who were in there were safe, you said?” Casmir asked. “Because of a magnetic field someone threw together?”
“It’s possible there’s another explanation, but that seems a plausible one. Glasnax alone wasn’t enough to protect anyone.”
“I’ll keep that in mind in case I find myself in the position to advise people on the gate.”
“Where is the gate?” she asked.
He’d been extremely vague on that.
“Safely hidden.” Casmir winked.
Kim checked the microscope and also the results that came up on the computer display, then turned around, folded her arms over her chest, and leaned against the counter. “You’re fine, Casmir.”
“Naturally.” He wriggled his eyebrows at her. “But am I immune?”
“Just like Rache, yes.”
His amused expression turned to one of distaste.
“I’m sorry. I know you don’t want to be compared to him, but in this case, it’s a good thing.” Kim waved toward the slide.
“Right. You implied that you figured out why we’re immune.”
“Well, I’ve come up with a hypothesis. To make gains at proving it, I’d have to test more people who weren’t genetically altered to grant immunity to the Great Plague, and I don’t even know where I’d look for qualifying subjects. That disease spread faster than the speed of light through the Twelve Systems, and those who weren’t altered died, so to find people alive who don’t now have that induced mutation in their mitochondria…” She spread a hand. “Regardless, I believe that, as you suggested, our pseudo radiation wasn’t naturally occurring but was man—or machine—made. And that it was employed as a defensive attack against anyone who tried to take the gate who wasn’t human. But humans today are a little different than they were thousands of years ago when that ship left Earth—assuming we learn the gates did indeed come from there.”
Casmir nodded. “We’re still without proof of alien intelligence in the galaxy, so that’s a reasonable assumption.”
“It’s not that humans have experienced that many generations or evolved significantly in a mere two thousand years, but we have adapted to our new environments, in some cases even drawing from them. There have been substantial changes of the types and amounts of bacteria within us, for example, but since you and Rache are immune, I suspect it was the change we chose to give to our mitochondria in order to survive the plague virus that altered our humanity, at least in the eyes of that ancient technology. My guess is that whoever—or whatever—programmed the security system realized it would be faster to read the DNA base pairs in our mitochondria than to sequence the entire human genome. How it does that without taking blood samples, I don’t know, but if they had the technology to build the gates, they were presumably more advanced across the board than we are now. And then, if the security system didn’t get the precise
match it wanted, it would assume a non-human being was trying to make off with the gate and attack. I don’t know how mutations would have been handled. Maybe a certain number of them were factored in, but the changes we made for the plague were simply too much.”
“The alteration didn’t intrinsically change anything about what it means to be human, though, right?”
“No. We actually have a lot of genes that you can tinker with without fundamentally changing how our brains work.” Kim thought of Qin and wondered if she would represent any challenges insofar as her bacteria were concerned. She would have to make sure to start her on the treatment right away so she could monitor her here in these state-of-the-art labs rather than on the Dragon or whatever craft Casmir planned to take back to Odin. “If this security system is something integrated into all of the gates, it’s a good thing that none of our ancestors ever tried to disassemble one and take it home.”
Casmir dropped his chin in his hand. “This is all interesting, and it makes me wonder if our Earth ancestors believed there is intelligent alien life somewhere in the galaxy, but being the self-absorbed person I am, I can’t help but wonder how Rache and I avoided having this alteration.”
Kim gazed at him, wondering if she should share her hypothesis on that, or if he would find the connotations disturbing. It wasn’t as if she could truly know, and she might distress him for no reason. Or he might take it in stride. For a Kingdom man, he was fairly enlightened. He’d never found the circumstances of her birth that alarming.
“You know?” Casmir was watching her face. “Do you think we were… made in a lab, or something?”
“From a DNA sample more than two hundred years old, yes. From before the Great Plague. Rache knows. He more or less confirmed that he’s from, ah, old stock, I guess you would say.”
“Who?” He stared at her, his brow furrowed. “Some old dead guy from Earth? One of the first colonists, or something?”
“Rache didn’t say.”
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