Brain Ships

by Anne McCaffrey

  "We'll have to wait until that stimpad in her hand has been analyzed for drug traces," General Questar-Benn said mildly, "but I certainly don't think she was dispensing routine meds. Fortunately, she slapped the stimpad on my upper-arm prosthesis. I think I was supposed to be too drugged to notice her; one of those thugs she uses for aides dosed me with Blissto, or something like it, about an hour ago."

  Alpha slowly uncurled herself and stood up. If she was lost, she'd go with that much dignity. She was half a head taller than this Sev Bryley; it helped, a little, to look down on him.

  "So what are you," she demanded, "a robot? Nobody's immune to Seduc—Blissto," she caught herself. No reason to give away information.

  General Questar-Benn chuckled. "No, dear girl, I'm not quite as badly off as the Tin Woodman. The valves may be helped along by hyperchips, but I still have a heart—something that appears to have been left out of your makeup. But the liver and kidneys are replacements, and last year I had a new hyperchip-enhanced blood filtering function installed so that I could monitor my own internal prostheses. If you'd shown up right after your goon drugged me, I might have been in trouble. But an hour was more than enough time to filter the drug out of my bloodstream."

  Alpha glowered at her and Bryley impartially. "And what about you?" she demanded of Bryley. "You looked like a man, but I guess you're another fucking cyborg freak."

  "I am a man," Bryley said mildly. "I'm also fast—and I learned Capellan hand fighting in the war. Your big thug tripped over his own feet—with a little help—and slapped himself with the stimpad he was aiming at me. I don't know what was in it; perhaps you'd like to tell me whether he'll survive the experience? As for the little one, he collided with one of those big ceramic pots you've got decorating the waiting room. He'll have one hell of a headache when he wakes up, but he'll be in perfectly good shape to testify against you."

  "No, he won't," Alpha snapped. "You don't know as much as you think you do! The man's addicted to—something you won't be able to supply. Without his next fix, he'll die in agony before the week's out!"

  Bryley raised one eyebrow. "Then," he said cheerfully, "we'd better make sure to get his testimony on datahedron before he dies, hadn't we? Thanks for the warning."

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  "Hospitals!" General Questar-Benn made the word sound like an expletive. "No offense, Thalmark, but those damn gowns are just a plot to make patients helpless and submissive. Thanks for bringing my uniform, Bryley."

  "I have a feeling it would take more than that to make you submissive, General," Galena Thalmark said with a slight inclination of her head.

  Sev and Micaya had met in what used to be Alpha bint Hezra-Fong's office, now occupied by the administrative assistant who'd first alerted Central Worlds to the surprising death rate in Summerlands' charity wards. This morning Galena Thalmark looked ten years younger than the harried, overweight woman who'd greeted Micaya and smuggled her into the wards in the disguise of the alcoholic "Qualia Benton."

  "I can't express my thanks to you both," she said, pushing dark curly hair away from her round face, "so I won't try. General Questar-Benn, you have my sincerest apologies for the dangers you experienced."

  "Part of the job," said Micaya.

  "All the same, we should have been more alert. I should have had staff I could trust watching you at all times," said Galena.

  Micaya nodded without further comment. She was favorably impressed by Galena's quick command of the situation, even more impressed by the fact that the young woman had taken full responsibility for problems which were hardly of her making. It wasn't her fault that the aging director of Summerlands had left more and more power in the hands of Dr. Hezra-Fong, allowing the charity side to become disastrously understaffed and letting a deplorable lack of discipline infect the whole clinic.

  "Clinic's problems weren't your fault, Thalmark," Micaya said at last, "but they're about to be your problem. The director must have been senile to let all this go on under his nose. High Families, of course, politically unwise to fire him, but I've had one of my aides compose a nice letter of resignation for him. Want the spot? Can't guarantee it, you understand," she added, "but I've some influence at Central."

  Galena Thalmark flushed becomingly and murmured her thanks. "Meanwhile," she said, shuffling papers until she'd recovered her composure, "I'm glad to report that Mr. Hopkirk is responding quite well to treatment. Dr. Hezra-Fong has supplied us with full details of the drugs used to keep him sedated. We're steadily lowering the dosage and watching him for seizures, but so far there have been no complications. He should be quite lucid and competent to make a deposition on datahedron within the next forty-eight hours."

  "Good work!" Micaya exclaimed.

  Galena Thalmark nodded. "Whatever her other failings, Dr. Hezra-Fong is a brilliant biomedical researcher. I feel obliged to tell you that without her full cooperation and guidance, we would not have been able to reverse the effects of the treatment so rapidly." She looked up into Micaya's eyes. "She requested that this fact be formally noted on her dossier."

  "It will be," Micaya promised. "But I doubt that it'll bear much weight against the rest of the record."

  Galena bit her lip. "All those deaths," she murmured. "If only I'd seen what was going on from the first . . ." Micaya nodded in sympathy.

  "Don't torture yourself," she told the younger woman. "You weren't even at Summerlands when she began. You had every reason to trust your superiors; it's to your credit that you suspected something as soon as you did and called in the proper authorities to put a stop to it. Don't second-guess yourself!"

  The last words were barked out in a parade-ground intonation that made Galena's head snap up.

  "I mean it," Micaya told her more gently. "My dear, I've commanded soldiers in battle. I've seen brave men and women die because of orders I gave; and sometimes those orders were wrong. You mourn the deaths, you do the best you can, and—you go on. Otherwise, you cannot be of service."

  Galena Thalmark looked thoughtfully at the older woman, standing erect and composed in her plain green uniform. Some of her battle wounds were visible, the permalloy arm and leg. Others were buried in the surgical history that Galena had read: the internal replacements for kidneys and liver, the hyperchip implant in one heart valve and the blood-filtering function. And as a doctor, Galena could assess just how many hours of painful surgery and retraining had gone into reconstructing Micaya's body after she sustained each of the original wounds.

  "You go on," Micaya repeated softly, "and . . . you serve as best you can. I believe that you will make an excellent director for Summerlands, Dr. Thalmark. Don't let regrets and hindsight cripple you; we need you here and now, not reliving a past that cannot be changed."

  "I can see why you're a general," said Sev thoughtfully as they boarded the flyer that was to transport them from Summerlands. "If we'd had a commanding officer like you on Capella Four. . . ."

  General Questar-Benn's high cheekbones flushed a shade darker. "Don't delude yourself. Making persuasive speeches is only a small part of the art of war."

  "Oh? Seems to me I heard enough of them when I served on Capella. There may have been more going on in the staff rooms, but I never rose high enough in the army to see the whole picture. That's what I like about P.I. work," Sev added thoughtfully, "now I am the whole picture. Or was." He looked directly at Micaya. "I'll consider myself under your command for the rest of this operation."

  "The rest—but my assignment's over," protested Micaya.

  "Is it?"

  It has been a long time since a young man looked at her so intently—and back then, Micaya thought with an amusement that she did not allow her features to reflect, the last man to look at her like that had wanted something quite different. Ah, well. They always wanted something, didn't they?

  "Fassa del Parma and Alpha bint Hezra-Fong came out to the Nyota system on the same transport," Sev went on. "So did Darnell Overton-Glaxely. They've all been he
lping each other get rich by the quickest and dirtiest means they could arrange. There were two others on that transport—Blaize Armontillado-Perez y Medoc, and Polyon de Gras-Waldheim. Fassa's already implicated Blaize—the one who was posted to Angalia. Don't you see? You're holding one thread into this tangle; I'm holding another one."

  "You think that together we could unravel it?"

  Sev gave her a flashing grin that was all but wasted on his present purpose. "Or take Alexander's solution, and cut the Gordian knot. This corruption ought to be cut off," he argued. "Don't tell me it's just a small part of what 'everybody does.' I don't care. This is the part I can see, that I can do something about. I have to see this through!" He stopped, looking momentarily embarrassed by his own intensity. "And I had hoped," he went on in a somewhat quieter voice, "I had hoped that you would want to join us. Lead us."

  The flyer skated to a perfect landing just outside Nancia's opened entry bay.

  "Come with me?" Sev suggested.

  "I've got a scheduled transport to Kailas. Back to my desk job."

  "You can change that," he said confidently, and grinned at her as he would at a contemporary. "Come on, Mic! You don't really want to go back to shuffling papers on Kailas, do you?"

  Micaya rubbed the back of her neck. She felt generations older than this intense young man: tired, and dirty from the corruption of Summerlands, and not very interested in anything except a long bath and a massage. "Damn it," she said wearily. "You're not bad at persuasive speeches yourself, Bryley-Sorensen. I suppose you think I can get your brainship's orders changed so that we can go on to Angalia, instead of transporting del Parma straight back to Central?"

  "It makes sense, doesn't it?"

  "Sense," said Micaya, "has never been a compelling argument for any bureaucracy. All right. You win. I'll see what I can do towards persuading Central to reassign both Nancia and me. I must admit, I'd like to see the end of this case." Despite her weariness, she felt a smile beginning deep inside her. "Besides, your ship's brawn owes me a rematch at tri-chess."

  "Caleb?"

  "Forister," Micaya corrected him. "Nancia's been assigned a replacement brawn, remember? Forister Armontillado y Medoc. We were working together on this Summerlands business, until Central pulled him off the case to brawn Nancia back to Central." She stopped in the open landing bay. "Wait a minute. What did you say the other boy was called—the one who went to Angalia?"

  Sev didn't have time to answer; a second flyer pounced down on the landing strip, and a messenger in the white uniform of Summerlands came running toward them.

  "Tried to raise you in the air," he panted. "Your driver's comm unit must have been defective. Hopkirk's testified!"

  "The devil he has! Already?"

  "He seemed rather eager to do it. Dr. Thalmark thought it would do more harm to restrain him than to let him speak. His deposition's on datahedron—and there are a few honest men left on Bahati, Mr. Bryley; two of them are going to arrest Overton-Glaxely now. Since he'll likely be sent back to Central for trial, they'd like a representative of Central to accompany them now, just to make sure everything's in order."

  "You mean, to make sure there's somebody else to blame if his family goes out for revenge," Sev muttered.

  "I'll go," Micaya said. "No one will question my word."

  "I'll go," Sev corrected her. "I've already annoyed so many High Families, one more makes no difference. You go catch up on your tri-chess."

  "I always did like subordinates with plenty of initiative," Micaya said wryly. But she was tired, and worried about the possible connection between Blaize and Forister. Well, they'd have some privacy for a little while, with Sev Bryley off to collect his prisoner and Fassa del Parma locked in her cabin. She would have to ask Forister just how close the relationship might be—and whether he really wanted to brawn a ship headed for Angalia to arrest one of his relatives.

  * * *

  Forister was happily unpacking a special order from OG Glimware when Micaya Questar-Benn requested permission to board.

  "We've got company coming," Nancia warned him. "And isn't there something unethical about buying something from a firm while you work to arrest its owner?"

  "Can't think what," said Forister, whistling under his breath, "but if you find anything in CS regulations, be sure and let me know. Anyway, OG Glimware is the only company this side of Antares that does this particular specialty work." He peeled away the last opaque shrinkwrapping to display his purchase: a foot-high solido of a lovely young woman, every feature sharply delineated in the fragile prismatic carving. Her chin was lifted almost defiantly; she greeted the world with a smile whose reflection danced in her eyes; a short cap of curly hair, so finely carved it seemed the separate strands might lift in any passing breeze, crowned the uplifted head that gazed out at worlds beyond any human vision.

  "Ah—very nice," Nancia said slowly, as Forister seemed to be waiting for some reaction. "Relative of yours?" His records didn't say anything about a girlfriend, and isn't he rather old for this one?

  "A very distant connection, like most of the High Families scions. But she may become more than that—my friend, I hope. Perhaps my partner." Forister set the solido on the ledge above the pilot's control panel and turned to smile at Nancia's titanium column. "It's a genetic extrapolation, actually; shows what a certain young woman I know would have looked like if she'd grown up normally, without the one genetic anomaly that made her unable to survive outside a shell. Her name is . . . Nancia Perez y de Gras."

  Nancia didn't know how to respond to that revelation. She couldn't respond. Caleb never wondered what I would have looked like . . . never thought of me as a person. Even thinking that was disloyal . . . but what could she say to Forister?

  She was spared the necessity by the opening of the airlock. General Questar-Benn's somber face startled them both. "This part of the mission's completed," she announced. "Hezra-Fong's on her way here—under guard—and Bryley has gone off to arrest Overton-Glaxely. He's suggested that we should request a change in Nancia's orders, to investigate the other two passengers she brought to the Nyota system before returning to Central. Thought I should consult you first, Forister."

  Forister's face went gray. "I will accept any orders issued by Courier Service as long as I brawn this ship."

  "Know that," Micaya told him. "But I need to know more. Exactly what is the connection between you and this boy on Angalia? Distant relative? How much conflict of interest are we looking at?"

  "He's my nephew." Forister dropped into the pilot's seat.

  "Can I rely on you?"

  Nancia watched and listened without intruding into the conversation. She had liked General Questar-Benn on their previous meeting, but now she felt the general was pushing Forister too hard. For the first time since he'd come on board, he was looking his age; the bristly graying hair lay flat, the sparkle of mischief that had made his face so familiar to Nancia had disappeared. Of course, she realized with a shock of recognition, that was why she felt as though she knew Forister already. It wasn't just his previous trip to Charon. It was the sparkle in his eyes as he hummed and hacked his way into Summerlands' medical records. That redheaded boy Blaize had just the same expression when he was planning mischief.

  But Forister had the integrity so disastrously missing from Blaize's makeup. He hadn't tried to argue away Fassa's stories implicating his nephew, and now he would not evade the duty of confirming those stories.

  "You don't have to come with us," Micaya told him. "We can get another brawn assigned to this ship. You're due a real R & R tour after that undercover work at Summerlands—"

  Forister lifted his head and gazed at her with flat gray eyes. "You took all the risks at Summerlands," he said in a voice so drained of feeling that it made Nancia distinctly nervous. She increased the magnification of her local sensors until she could see the pulse throbbing in Forister's temple and hear the soft pounding of his heart. The man was under far too much strain.

/>   "I WAS USELESS," his amplified voice crashed upon her, and Nancia hastily retreated to a normal sensor level, nerve endings twitching from the grating sounds. "Couldn't even find computer records to back you up. If anyone deserves a term of rest, Mic, it's you. And if anyone must prove my nephew's dishonor," he finished wearily, "let it be me. We won't be able to keep it in the family—I know that—but I need to know exactly what he's done and how we can make reparation."

  "It's not good to be personally involved in your cases," General Micaya Questar-Benn murmured. "First rule of Academy."

  Forister's spine straightened. "No. The first rule is . . . to serve. That's all I ask of you. A chance to serve, to make some reparation if any can be made. Besides," he added with just a trace of the old snap in his voice, "you won't find another brawn this side of Bellatrix subspace."

  "Oh, come now," Micaya said. "You people with brawn training always overrate yourself. I'll wager there are half a dozen qualified brawns in Vega subspace alone."

  Forister straightened another infinitesimal fraction of an inch. "Not qualified for the new hyperchip-enhanced brainships. Our Nancia's got the enhancements, haven't you, my dear?" As always, he turned his head towards the titanium column when addressing her, just as if he were inviting another softshell—softperson, Nancia corrected herself—to join in the conversation.

  "My lower deck sensors and port side nav controls have the hyperchips," she told him, "and I'm using them in some of the processing banks. I'm on a waiting list for the rest."