The Star Mother

by J D Huffman

  She ran a few fingers through his hair, sniffling quietly. “Maybe the accident did something to your brain.”

  Maybe. “I’ll go to the doctor tomorrow. I’ll make an appointment. I’ll get a brain scan done or something, okay?”

  She nodded. “Okay. But you don’t have to leave.”

  “Then you stay here. I’ll sleep on the couch. And just… don’t bother me unless I ask you for something. And if I sound crazy, tell me I’m being crazy. Tell me to leave.”

  “Fine,” she assented unpleasantly.

  He took to the living room and put himself on their beige sofa with the wine spot that wouldn’t come out, where they used a burgundy throw pillow to conceal it.

  He closed his eyes and eventually fell asleep, but when he emerged from it he felt not the least bit rested. Meghan was gone, with a note on the wall display telling him she had an early shift that day. In large letters, it also said, “MAKE SURE YOU GO TO THE DOCTOR!” She had drawn a little heart next to it to signify her tone.

  He called the doctor, demanding the earliest appointment available. With a couple more hours to kill, he ate a bowl of cereal, wincing painfully through every movement, and caught up on the news. Tensions with China were up again, but then they always were, ever since the government crushed protests in Hong Kong and then took Taiwan by force. He tried to remember where the annexation of North Korea factored into that, if it was before or after or in between. It wasn’t mentioned in the news report he read, just “rising tensions,” because that was always the gist. Such “tensions” affected his job every so often as he was asked to code for various potential sanctions scenarios. “We need to be prepared to drop all traffic to and from China at the flip of a switch,” his boss told him once, which was one of those things that was easy to do in theory, but in practice could prove far more difficult. All network traffic was supposed to have its point of origin clearly identified, ostensibly for the purpose of efficient routing but also so “undesirable” traffic could be “filtered,” which in Devon’s world really just meant “thrown away.” His boss never understood the nuances, though. It was unlikely all traffic would need to be dropped, but perhaps taken through slower routes to irritate the Chinese, to prove that it could be done. Devon found such techniques petty and vindictive, but then “petty” and “vindictive” described international relations quite well, as far as he was concerned.

  The reports about China distracted him momentarily from the accident, which he supposed was a good thing once it came back to him. Too bad it didn’t distract me a while longer. Nothing appeared with regard to the accident itself, which he took to mean there was no new information about it. So, groggy, cranky, and in pain as he was, he showered, combed and shaved, and got dressed.

  Once he hobbled out the door, he made for the courtesy car provided by his insurance company. It sat in his usual spot, one of the newer models with all the bells and whistles he wasn’t willing to pay for in his own personal car. He pressed his thumb into the door sensor to confirm that it had already been encoded with his thumbprint. It allowed him access at once.

  “Good morning, Mr. Engels,” the computer greeted in a voice that sounded younger than the one in his previous car. She practically sounds like a teenager, he smirked to himself.

  “Just call me Devon. And age the voice about ten years.”

  The voice modulated as he’d requested. “As you wish, Devon,” came a voice that sounded closer to his own age. I swear, the default voices on these things get younger every year. Or I’m just getting older. “Where would you like to go?”

  “Doctor Mitra’s office.”

  “Please specify.”

  He sighed. Of course, it doesn’t know any of the places I go. I didn’t link it to my profile or anything. I don’t feel like doing it right now. Annoyedly, he had to look up the exact address on his PMD, then drove the car to the exit of the parking lot so it could take over the controls. He tried to relax, closing his eyes while he waited to arrive. The moment he closed them, though, they flipped back open with his heart racing and Devon himself trying to launch from his seat. He couldn’t rest, not while the car was driving itself, no matter how tired he was. He noticed a gray car in the rear view, one he’d never seen around his complex before, which followed him out of the parking lot and seemed to go with him the whole way to the doctor’s office. It perturbed him slightly, the way it hung back from his car enough to not look like it was following, yet matching every turn and keeping up the same pace. What is this, some kind of prank? Meghan having someone keep an eye on me? Somebody not happy about the research I’m doing into autodrive systems? He didn’t want to be too paranoid just yet—after all, it didn’t have to be any of those things. It could have just been a car going the same direction.

  The doctor’s office, at least, wasn’t far away. A ten minute drive had him in another parking lot, and the car he thought was following him simply kept going instead of turning into the lot. The tail disappeared out of sight as it went past a few more houses, and he tried to put it out of his mind. He got out of the car and stepped inside the modest brick building with the dark brown sign outside, white lettering listing the doctors who practiced there. He checked in with the receptionist who asked for his thumbprint on a small scanner she handed through the slot below the window. With a sigh, he placed his thumb on the scanner, wincing as the movement caused his aching ribs to twinge. “The doctor will be with you shortly,” she assured him in a flat tone, not even looking up from whatever she was working on.

  He took a seat in the waiting area and crossed his left leg over his right, folding his arms. Having forgotten about his bruised ribs, he quickly regretted the maneuver and moved his arms away, putting them back down at his sides. A collection of other patients of various ages filled the waiting room, though nowhere near to capacity. No one seemed to be supervising the kids, which annoyed him, as he always got the impression people were never watching their little brats. If Meghan and I ever have children, we’re not going to act like that, he promised himself. Ours will show some respect and we’ll always be around to make sure they behave instead of making everyone else deal with them. One of the children—a young boy—was busily bashing a small red truck against a green bucket. Another boy expressed an interest in the bucket, attempting to grab it, so the boy with the truck swung the little vehicle right at the other’s head. Devon’s own body braced as if he was the one about to be hit, closing his eyes and turning away. He failed to hear the impact due to instinctively focusing on his own safety, but he absolutely heard the scream that followed. One of the other men got up to deal with the boy who had the truck, and one of the women went to comfort her son who’d been hit. If either of you had been paying attention, this wouldn’t have happened, he silently judged.

  “Mr. Engels,” a medical aide called, standing just outside the open door to the clinical area. He hadn’t even noticed anyone had come out. He leapt to his feet, which turned out to be a mistake—the incision from his splenectomy pained him immediately, for once superseding the pain of his bruised ribs. He groaned and his pace slowed abruptly as he put a hand over the incision, through his clothes. He stepped past the aide who shut the door behind them and led him to an examination room. She had him stand on a gray plate on the floor near one of the walls, which recorded his height, weight, body temperature, body fat, and several other things he couldn’t remember just at that moment. The aide finished with, “The doctor will be with you soon.” She left before he could say much else.

  He waited (im)patiently for his physician to arrive. Niale Mitra had been his doctor for years, ever since he first moved to Mundelein. She wasn’t the type for small talk and she never wasted his time—qualities he appreciated in anyone he paid to do things for him. Of course, she always bothered him about the extra weight he carried around his waist, and his blood pressure which never seemed to come down to where she thought it should be
, and the fact that he didn’t exercise enough (which is to say, much at all), and she typically chastised him for eating meat, which he swore he didn’t eat as often as she always assumed. But her lectures were predictable and consistent in their timing and nature, as if they belonged to a scripted pattern of words and behaviors she had no choice but to repeat when she encountered a man of his circumstances. It comforted him, in its own way, because it made her seem more like a computer program than a person. He didn’t know anything about her, not really. If she was married or had children or was from the area, he had no idea.

  He wasn’t certain how to tell her about last night’s events.

  She arrived a short while later and placed her PMD on the counter. She glanced over it briefly before turning to him. “What brings you here today, Mr. Engels?” she asked as she began to scrutinize him. She approached, pressing on his cheeks and jaw and neck as she spoke. “You had a splenectomy a few days ago, is that right? Hemorrhaging due to blunt force trauma. Contusions and cuts. You had a bad day, to say the least.”

  “I was in that big car pileup . You must have heard about it.”

  “From what I heard, you were fortunate.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Is your incision bothering you? Is the pain severe? Do you need medication? What brings you here?” She always wanted to get to the point. He liked that.

  “I don’t feel right,” he explained, knowing how vague that was. “I’m not acting like myself. I’m irritable, I can’t sleep, I’m having obsessive thoughts. I was aggressive toward Meghan. I didn’t hit her or something, so don’t think that. But I snapped at her, and I never do that. I did it more than once yesterday. I can’t stop thinking about the accident, and the fact that I can’t remember anything about it, and that something like this isn’t supposed to be able to happen in the first place. I don’t know if there’s anything you can do for me, but that’s why I came here.”

  She nodded. “Mr. Engels, you’ve been through a traumatic experience. Problems sleeping, regulating your moods, controlling your thoughts, and interacting with others are all common symptoms of post-traumatic stress. It sounds as if your memory loss is causing you additional anxiety. What I can do is prescribe you a mild tranquilizer to help calm your thoughts and behavior, and refer you to a counselor who would be better able to talk you through these problems. The kind of medicine I deal in doesn’t fix the mind, only the body. As for the accident itself, I believe people are too quick to assume certain things are ‘impossible.’ Many things in life are improbable, yes, but certainly not impossible. When one of these highly improbable events happens, we reach for an explanation, some way for it to all make sense so we don’t have to worry about it happening again. But there isn’t always an explanation, and sometimes we must learn to live with that.”

  The prescription and counseling sounded reasonable enough, though he silently disagreed with the rest. There’s always an explanation. Always. Still, there was no point arguing with her—it wasn’t as if debating his doctor then and there would help him in any way. Instead, he thanked Dr. Mitra for her help and left the office with assurances that his prescription would be sent to the nearby pharmacy within a few minutes, where he would be around shortly to pick it up.

  As his courtesy car pulled out of the parking lot and went toward the pharmacy, he saw a gray vehicle momentarily appear in his rear view, and he was sure it looked just like the one from before. He turned around to see the car directly, but it was gone. He frowned, and started having second thoughts about those tranquilizers.

  Chapter 14

  Basic Training

  Sasha would have liked to be able to say they’d done everything they could to prepare, but they hadn’t—there simply wasn’t time. Their overall lack of organization also meant what they did have time to do was less than they could have accomplished with competent leadership. She wasn’t about to stand in front of everyone and tell them she considered herself a poor leader, as that would certainly not help morale nor get people to trust and follow her, but she knew in her own mind that she was not the best leader a rebellion like theirs could have. She gave a little thought to offering the role to Fred, but in addition to the fact that she was certain he would refuse, she had serious doubts a band of humans would follow a troll. She knew little about how much Avalonians were trusted by humans elsewhere, she just had a feeling that humans in most places were not quick to follow non-humans.

  By the time the cargo train arrived, they were at least prepared enough that the Totality wouldn’t find them out right away. The debris in the snow-covered courtyard had been cleared, much of the internal damage had been repaired or covered up, and a couple dozen of the male slaves saw their scars hidden with medical cosmetics (courtesy of Angel) and their bodies fitted with Totality uniforms. Procuring them in everyone’s sizes was difficult and a few of the slaves helped modify the uniforms to fit better. Sasha was grateful to see skills like that present in their uprising. It’s a good reminder that there’s no such thing as a useless skill or talent. We need all the abilities we can get—we never know what might be useful at a critical moment.

  Serim served as their quasi-official leader for the purposes of the deception. He would present himself as Outpost Manager Tandy, a name he plucked at random from the personnel files. If anyone on this cargo train knew Outpost Manager Driscoll, “Tandy” would explain that Driscoll had been rotated out recently to a better assignment. Serim and the other men who volunteered to pose as Totality had all been instructed on where to guide the cargo train personnel, what areas to avoid, and how to speak to them. Fred taught them enough of the Totality dialect to pass for the real thing as long as they didn’t have to say too much. He spent more time with Serim—multiple hours a day, each day until the train arrived. Sasha had wanted to sit in on their sessions, but then found herself trying to micromanage everything and everyone. She hated the idea that she had to stay out of sight because women were never Totality. She wished she knew why they were only men. It certainly raised the question of how they procreated. She recollected the interaction Demeter had with the Totality from one of the other mining outposts. “First body,” he’d said. Implying they can have more than one. She hadn’t yet put together what it meant, other than the notion that Totality could—somehow—have more than one body. And for some reason, those bodies never include women. She wished she had a reason for that, to find out if there was a scientific explanation, or if the Totality had a deeply prejudicial gender policy. The thought gave her a wry smile. If that’s what it is, I wonder how they’d feel to know one of their mining outposts had just been seized by a woman. Maybe they should’ve thought twice about that policy. When we capture the cargo train staff, I’ll question them. Maybe they’ll be able to tell me what I want to know.

  When Serim announced the arrival of the cargo train via the facility’s public address system, Sasha took that as her cue to retreat down to the powerplant, where Fred and Demeter had worked to reroute some of the command functions so she could monitor things. Serim had learned a fair amount about the workings of the general operations center, but not enough to do everything himself. Of course, the same could’ve been said of Sasha. Fred helped out where he could, and Demeter was a quick enough study to lend assistance, too. She advised Serim to keep the Totality away from the infirmary so they wouldn’t ask why Tau, William, and a few others were there. Janus, she kept in the powerplant with herself, Angel, and Fred. Angel had wanted to remain in the infirmary but, again, the Totality’s “no women” policy (or stigma, or whatever it was) meant they couldn’t take the risk. Much like Sasha, Angel had her own console on which to monitor the vital signs of her patients. That didn’t mean she could do anything about it if someone became tachycardic, it was just there so she wouldn’t feel completely blind.

  “First ship docking,” Serim announced. Sasha looked up, as if she could see the docking area through the ceiling. She t
raded glances with Angel and Fred. Demeter and a few others were supposed to be waiting in the docking area to greet—and then incapacitate—the workers who’d come to offload supplies and take on the ternium fulsenide crystals they’d mined and processed. An earlier check of the docking area showed dozens of cylinders of refined crystal, ready to be used as fuel. Sasha knew they’d need it for the cargo ships, once they’d been captured. We’ll have to sort through the supplies and determine if we should leave anything here. If they brought lubricants or factory parts and supplies, we don’t need that. We need food. We need medical supplies. We need weapons. We need fuel. Anything else, we’ll throw out.

  “Ship is docked,” Serim followed up. “Patching through the docking area’s communications circuit.”

  Sasha leaned over her console, listening in. She wished they had video, but evidently the Totality didn’t do that much video monitoring except down in the mines.

  “Greetings,” she heard Demeter say. “Welcome to Totality Mining Colony #992, Outpost #4, or C992-O4, as I like to call it.”

  Don’t be cute, Demeter, she thought, gritting her teeth. Just get them away from the docking area so their crewmates won’t sense anything is wrong when you knock them out. She found herself wishing she’d denied Demeter a place on this particular team, considering the mysterious message he’d beamed out to the Order. But when he requested to be part of that detail, she couldn’t rightly deny him without an explanation, and the other teams were already established, so she couldn’t have made a credible case for him to do something else. On top of that, she at least knew he was competent, and she needed competence. Whatever he might have to do with the Order, he’s done nothing but help us so far. If he ends up betraying us, I’ll deal with it then, just as I will with Janus if he does anything. There’s no way I can lead these people if I just start accusing and locking up individuals I’m supposed to trust.