Grounded!

by Claremont, Chris

  “We could have shared so much more.”

  She relaxed against him, couldn’t help herself, there was something about Manuel Cobri’s natural strength that reduced her own to putty. He touched her neck with his lips, right at the junction where it joined the shoulder, tension creating the smallest of hollows for the kiss that sent tingles all the way to her toes.

  “Is that why you wear their necklace?” he asked.

  “I found it out, I thought it was your desire.”

  He shook his head. “The clone is a limited variant on your template, Nicole,” he said, “configured along attributes that specifically appeal to my son.” The way he said the word “son,” he might as well have been referring to the family pet, one that was affectionally tolerated but which ultimately had proved a lasting disappointment. “But by the same token, much the same happens to all of us in so-called ‘real life.’ You are not the woman you thought you’d be, in part because of your association with me.”

  “That was my free choice. You manipulated the clone’s genetic structure to make her the way she is.”

  “She’s happy, she’ll always be happy. She’s doing what she was born to do.”

  “And I walked away from what I was.”

  “To twist an old phrase, my dear—better to rule in Heaven than slave in Hell.”

  “Easy to say when you’re the boss.”

  “Nothing lasts forever,” he said with a chuckle. And she looked suddenly from father to daughter, struck by the same ever-assessing gaze, the turn to the mouth as though they were party to the ultimate cosmic joke that no one else would ever set, and she found herself tumbling back through the scrap file of her memory, one image in particular flying up into her face, ghostly winds keeping it enticingly, infuriatingly out of reach as she grabbed for it, the night of the Halyan’t’a reception, her conversation with Manuel.

  “Son of a bitch,” she breathed, amazed that it had taken her so long to make the connection when the evidence was going down on Alex on the sofa, the poor sales rep looking around anxiously for someone to give her leave to go, desperately afraid she’d be called on to join in.

  “A perfect description for my brother,” said Amelia, offering Nicole the same look of command she found so irresistible in Manuel. And, to the older woman’s surprise, striking a similar chord.

  She turned away, clutching arms about herself, taking some big strides, stopping in her tracks, as much without a clue of where to go, what to do, as the sales rep on the level below. Lost and trapped. Her head was pounding and she put the heels of her hands to her eyes, wondering why she was bothering, better by far to let it explode, embrace oblivion and be done with this. And she laughed, more cackle really, spiced with an edge of hysteria, because Manuel could simply use the cell samples he had on file to build himself a newer, more amenable version. As he himself had told her, so long, long ago: “Keep trying ’til you get it right.”

  The air around her seemed to be changing, colors growing brighter, the differentiation between them—and lights and shadows as well—growing sharper. The very sunlight seemed alive, full of glittery sparkles. She tucked her hands into the sleeves of her robe, absently scratching at skin that was becoming unbearably itchy, gasping in surprise at the sharp touch of her nails, and then disbelief when she pulled them free and found them looking more like claws. The hair on her forearms was growing thicker before her eyes, a sleek, rich pelt of russet fur—slightly thicker but much finer to the touch than its human counterpart, covering her from head to toe—streaked with dramatic indigo patterns. She could tell from the weight on her scalp that her hair had grown longer, thickening into a noble mane. Humanoid still, human—in any Terrestrial sense of the term—no longer. Hal in form, as she’d seen herself during the chn’chywa ceremony with Matai. And more so in mind than she could remember being.

  A cry caught her attention, the sight of her teenage self her eye, and blind fury sent her hurling across the room, landing on the back of the couch and stiff-arming the clone off Alex’s idiot-grinning body. The girl yiped as she bounced on her backside, upset rather than afraid, not even aware she was in danger as Nicole’s claws swept back and forth across her face, turning it into a bloody ruin in the same instant she claimed the clone’s life. Casting the body aside, the taste of blood making her insatiable for more, she rounded on Alex—to find him sitting with open arms and open pants, the grin on his face a pale reflection of what she’d seen in Manuel and Amelia, everything about him no more than a flawed copy of those two originals. And deep within his eyes, belying the dumb-show facade he put on for the world and most especially his family, the awareness of what he was and how he’d been shortchanged, a sick despair that yearned for nothing so much as release. Her hand twitched, eager to grant his wish, Hal emotions pushing her to him even as her mind—the part of her that too late was grabbing desperate hold of her humanity—tried to hold herself back, and she sprang...

  ...crashing to her knees, baring teeth as fiery bands cinched tight around her breast, barely able to pull in a breath, letting it out almost immediately as a hoarse animal cry that toppled her forehead to the dirt, as though she was prostrating herself in prayer. She panted, exhaustion leaving her on the edge of consciousness, wanting more than anything to collapse, something inside her refusing to allow it. She’d never known such pain in her head, couldn’t help the tears or the whimpers that complemented them; this was agony that made even the act of thinking unendurable, much less the slightest move. She had nothing in memory to equate it to, and precious little in imagination, this was all-encompasing, all-devouring, eagerly consuming every facet of her being.

  Gingerly, she pushed herself up, to take stock of her surroundings. She was on dirt, in the midst of a vast flatness that stretched to darkness on each side of her, with a strangely forlorn splash of lights up ahead. The air was bitter, but her jacket offered some protection. Fumbling a little, she zipped it closed, brushing fingertips lightly across the raised silver badge emblazoned on its left breast. She was wearing her Marshal’s uniform. She hazarded a glance over her shoulder and way off in the distance saw the sprawling, fun-fair light show of the North Field ramp. There seemed to be a lot of activity, scarlet strobe flashes marking the speedy progress of security vehicles through the still and silent base. They were clearly looking for someone and the thought struck her idly, Is it me?

  The pain was easing, allowing her slightly fuller breaths, so that she no longer felt quite like she was suffocating. She figured she’d try for her feet, but when she placed her right hand down as a brace, she realized to her amazement that she was holding a gun. Standard side arm, a Beretta 9mm automatic, and she could tell from the weight—even though she broke open the clip for confirmation—that it was fully loaded. A round had been chambered. It was double-action, so all she needed do to fire was snap off the safety and pull the trigger.

  She couldn’t remember how she got here, but that was hardly surprising since her head seemed jumble-crammed with images and memories that made not the slightest lick of sense. A dogfight between a Stiletto and herself in a Mustang-Deuce? The Stiletto was Alex’s pet project, the combat drone that nearly knocked her down the day she arrived at Edwards, and the Mustang-Deuce had been the first and brightest triumph of Charles Russell’s first term, when the President won his spurs—at least with the professional flying officers—by coming down to Edwards and talking to the test pilots directly about this much-touted weapons system, hearing firsthand their complaints and then acting on them by canceling the project.

  And the rest? Layer upon layer, a porous sandwich of memory whose bits all leaked together, one running into another, blurring and losing precise definition even as they seemed to fix themselves permanently onto her psychic landscape, like weeds in the somewhat rambly garden of her Self.

  “Were they real?” she asked herself aloud, just to hear the sound of her voice, a sensation that took her out of mind and thoughts.

  And she th
rilled at the sensation of Manuel Cobri’s arms, only the face that went with the gesture was Amelia’s, and Nicole’s features sagged as though she’d been punched at both the feelings born of those memories and their intensity. But if dreams, something imposed on her, was this an extension of them, another fantasy? And she looked down at her hand, pulling up the sleeve to bare the arm, making sure her own skin was underneath and not Halyan’t’a fur. If illusion—“Has to be,” she raged, “has to be!”—it was the best she’d ever experienced, bar none, a seamless imposition of the “what if” reality on an order she suspected surpassed that of the Halyan’t’a holography system she’d experienced on Range Guide. And if that was the case, she couldn’t trust anything—not the environment around her, not her instincts, not her very thoughts. Everything was subject to manipulation, even the fact that she was sitting here, in the middle of the desert, analyzing the mess.

  She stood swaying at the crest of an infinitely self-perpetuating Moebius Loop, about to send herself ’round and ’round the roller-coaster course forever, trying in vain to find a way loose from this logic trap. For all she knew, that was what was intended of her. Better, regardless of risk, to take physical action.

  Standing was an adventure that paled beside the taking of her first step. Actually, the step was an outgrowth of the stand, since she started toppling the moment she went fully vertical and automatically thrust out a leg to catch herself, then the other leg to keep on going. Her muscles were weak and ropy, doing their work mostly out of habit and that under vehement protest. She did a sloppy pivot, throwing a glance towards her street—way off in the distance, eyes too tired, head too achy to focus the details—before continuing on to the South Field Complex. The only answer that made sense was that she’d run the whole way. Until, in fact, she’d dropped.

  Most of her voluntary bodily systems weren’t operating anywhere near par, she wasn’t even aware of the taxi light until she ran into it, hammering her left hip into the stanchion and pitching full length on the concrete, losing her gun as she fell. Injury added to insult, since she came up with a bloody nose and lip, but at least—paradoxically—the fall slightly cleared her muzzy-headedness.

  The only reason for her being here was Alex. It wasn’t simply where he worked; he spent more time here than at home. But what did that mean, her rushing over? Did she mean to offer help or do him harm? And if help, against what?

  Too many questions, no way to get her answers on the ramp.

  The hangar was darker inside than the night without, impossibly huge yet filled nonetheless with the sleek, powerful shapes of the Hal and NASA shuttles. Nicole made her way through the door and flattened against the wall, thankful for the black uniform that helped make her a shadow within shadows. All seemed peaceful, just as it should be. That only made her all the more nervous.

  Alex’s labs were out the far exit, but she knew she couldn’t cross the floor without making noise. There was too much equipment, too little illumination, she was sure to run into something. She had no real choice but to take the long way ’round, and use the corridors where the security lamps would light her way.

  But as she turned to go, the decision was made for her by a sharp cry—echoing in memory with the shrieks she’d heard outside the bar—and she cast caution to the winds. Now, her fatigue actually worked in her favor, limiting her speed and allowing her a few split seconds to evade any obstacle. It wasn’t pretty but she managed to make the crossing with only a couple of collisions, and those only minor sideswipes, bulling her way through the door, shoulder as battering ram, gun held ready in a two-handed shooter’s grip. The hall was empty, but sounds of a fierce struggle came from around a corner—as she’d feared, Cobri’s lab.

  “Alex,” she bellowed, surprising herself with the force of her cry, bursting through his door ready to shoot, praying it wouldn’t have to be at him, only to have the quandary taken out of her hands along with the gun as a muscular shape slammed into her, bouncing her hard off the wall. She lost her footing, which fortunately dropped her beneath the follow-up blow, and kicked clumsily forward in a tackle to try to bring her assailant down. She might as well have been trying to wrestle a tank; the muscles beneath her grasp were like corded iron, their speed and power defied description. A forearm like a sledgehammer came down on her back, breaking her grip, and this time there was no evading the knee that added a black eye to her bloody nose and left her sprawled and logy in a corner.

  Another shape reared up from the chaos, a baseball bat connecting with Nicole’s foe. It had to have hurt, had to have done damage, Nicole herself couldn’t help wincing in sympathetic pain of a blow that certainly would have shattered her own bones. But the smaller, blockier shape simply rolled with the impact, sides wiping a fist that had much the same effect on the figure with the bat. Nicole caught a glimpse of him as he was spun away, Alex Cobri, looking a lot better than he had any right to given the ferocity and raw strength of his assailant.

  That attacker went after him, and Nicole attempted a flying tackle, only to be plucked off the other’s back and body-slammed down onto a table, an elbow punching into her solar plexus to drive every pascal of air from her lungs and leave her diaphragm momentarily paralyzed, terrified that she would never again draw another breath.

  In all the confusion, someone came up with her gun and its muzzle flash blinded her, the raw sound of its discharge bursting in her ears as the trigger was pulled again and again, bullets spraying through the room, until the fifteen-shell clip was empty. She thought she heard a cry but she was hanging on to the rags and tatters of an awareness that was shredding in her grasp, so much so she had no idea whether or not the cry was even hers. All she wanted was to breathe, nothing else mattered, nothing else was possible. There was an eerie unreality to the silence as the echo of the shots faded, in no small measure because she was mostly deaf, every sound coming from the bottom of some infinite well. She tried to call out, but her voice remained locked in her head, her mouth working like a fish’s yanked into the air, wondering where the life-sustaining water had gone.

  Oxygen starvation was painting violent smears of red across her vision, events around her happening in a sort of strobo-scopic stop motion. She registered Alex—recognition that it was Alex with the gun, thankful to see him okay—looming like a Brobdingnagian giant over her, only to have him somehow instantaneously transport himself to the far side of the room. Belatedly, it dawned on her that he was leaving. The shock had begun to wear off, the tightness easing around her belly, and she used her first breath to tell him to stop, not to go—such a wasted effort, considering she barely heard the words herself, hadn’t a hope of reaching him—tried as well to catch him, rolling herself off the edge of the table, letting loose a heartfelt “OW” as she crashed to the floor. She pushed as hard as she could, pitted the full force of her will—all her stubborn strength—against a body that simply wasn’t up to the demands. And could only watch in helpless frustration as the door closed behind him.

  * * *

  eleven

  Kymri’s Face Swam hazily into view.

  “Haejmin cas’c!tai!” she cried in Hal, the words flowing in a fast cascade, “Miserable, lying, deceitful bastard!”

  “Lieutenant,” Sallinger now, backed by Arsenio Rachiim, in no mood to put up with the slightest back-flare from anyone.

  She shoved herself to her feet, fury allowing her to ignore her body’s myriad, insistent complaints, facing off against the Hal Commander, who returned her outrage with an almost preternatural calm.

  “I had my orders, Shavrin’s-Child,” he explained quietly in his own language.

  “Is that an explanation,” she snapped, “or an excuse?”

  “Lieutenant!”

  She looked to Sallinger, eyes focusing ever so slightly, as though seeing him for the first time.

  “I believe, Colonel,” she said in English, and had to work some saliva into her mouth and then swallow, to ease the rawness left in her throat by
her Hal outburst. “We may have been deliberately misled.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Kymri was identified as the Hal Speaker among his team. I think it was someone else, their cyber tech, Matai.”

  “Kymri?”

  “Regrettably, Sallinger-Commander... ”

  “God damn it!” And Sallinger rounded on the Provost Marshal. “Rachiim, I want the room cleared.”

  “Colonel, my people—!”

  “Your investigation can wait. You stay, the rest out, now!”

  And when the order had been obeyed—leaving only Nicole, Kymri, Sallinger, and Rachiim in the moderate ruin of Alex Cobri’s lab—he fixed Nicole with a look she’d never seen from him before. That reminded her of what he’d been before turning to the Flight Test Center, an ace pilot who was equally at home dog-fighting in the highest reaches of the stratosphere or killing tanks down on the deck, with combat commands in both fields. A man who’d spent the first ten years of his Air Force career pretty much constantly at war.

  “You have the floor, Lieutenant.”

  “To be honest, Colonel, I haven’t the faintest idea of how I know. I’m not altogether sure what I’m doing here. It was day, I was in my quarters—the living room, I think—and then it was the middle of the night and I’m flap-doodling across the ramp out there, packing my side arm.”

  “You and Matai sat on your couch for the better part of seven hours,” Arsenio Rachiim said. “Asleep. Your orders, Ms. Shea, were that we wait and watch what develops. You were under constant remote scan; at the slightest hint of trouble, we were ready to go in and get you. Our assessment was, there was minimal risk.

  “Along around sunset, you crossed into your bedroom and picked up a necklace from your dresser, which you then proceeded to put on.” Her hand went to her throat and, sure enough, found the familiar shape of the fireheart choker. She hadn’t realized it was there. “Then you lay on the bed.”