Deviation

by A. J. Maguire

  Hedric's body got mostly clear of the warpath. He felt the solid smack of the dragon's clawed foot trip against his own legs. Freeman's weapon sounded several more times before a thunderous crash rent through the jungle. It was followed by the mingled snap of bones and branches as the Dromodus slammed into Freeman. Creature and man fell through the brush, disappearing down a ravine.

  Hedric stared at the chaotic movement, immobile and in aching pain. A substantially sized twig had impaled the soft part of his elbow. Panting, he wished he'd put on his full combat suit before confronting Myron. At least then he wouldn't have broken anything. His right leg throbbed to sudden life as he rolled to his knees. An instant later Jellison was at his side. The soldier yanked him up, flung him bodily over his shoulder and began to retreat.

  "Freeman," Hedric wheezed.

  Jellison ignored him.

  It was just as well, he thought dimly. There wasn't a chance Freeman had survived. The Dromodus, on the other hand, would likely be wounded but not mortally harmed. Jellison was right to get them out of there. The only thing worse than a Dromodus, was a pissed off Dromodus.

  "What the hell?" Keats said as they reached the crash site.

  Jellison lowered Hedric onto the gang plank of the ship. He was breathing hard, but still capable of functioning. He jerked his head toward Keats as though to ask what should be done with the engineer and Hedric, battered and tired, squinted down at the scrawny man in question.

  "Dromodus," Hedric said.

  Keats' eyes widened in horror and he glanced at the jungle. "Where are the others?"

  "Freeman's dead."

  "What about Myron and Kate?"

  Hedric felt his eye twitch. "The hell if I know."

  He turned and started limping onto the ship. He glanced back at Keats, who stood gaping at the jungle. For once, the engineer did not argue. In fact, Alexander Keats seemed bereft of any sort of speech. The man had a sense of self-preservation after all.

  *

  "Scientists learned the hard way that men cannot undergo the same robotic and cybernetic surgeries that our Genetically Altered females can. Test subjects in Outpost 9 on Mars were overcome by dementia earlier today. Scientists believe the tragic results are attributed to the high levels of testosterone in the male genome." - A.P. July 17, 2297

  Chapter Twenty

  Reesa hated poker. She hated chess just as much. And now that she thought about it, she really hated all strategy games in existence. When push came to shove, Reesa was just a plain control freak. She enjoyed writing because she knew everything that all of her characters were doing and what they intended to do in the future. Somewhere in the back of her mind she knew that said something about her general character but she really didn't give a damn.

  Not now anyway.

  Not while walking through the highly militaristic corridors of the Novo Femina Citadel. Not while heading toward the largest gamble she'd ever made in her life.

  Matthew walked beside her, calm as ever, as though they weren't walking straight into the lion's den. Many robed women wandered through the place, all of them holding a weapon and all of them staring at her. That alone was surprising. While some women were permitted to learn defense for survival purposes, it wasn't normal for so many to be armed.

  Mesa had been trained by Hedric, a sort of relationship builder for the two of them when they had first married. And since they had opted to let Mesa stay on board it turned out to be for the best.

  There was no menace directed at her, not yet anyway, but the silent gazes were unsettling anyway. It was almost reverent, the way they watched her, which gave her a deep foreboding in the marrow of her bones.

  Matt seemed to sense her discomfort because he took her hand and tucked it into his elbow, debonair style, like they were in some Turner Classic Movie. It was such an unexpected, gallant move that Reesa smiled. He smiled back, gave her a roguish wink and led her into the central-most chamber of the Citadel.

  Reesa felt immediately swallowed up by the vacuous room. Its vaulted ceilings and sleekly curved walls resembled the main galley of a luxury cruise ship. Only instead of plush, comfortable decorations and appealing carpets there was only metal. Metal and the occasional tapestry baring the Novo Femina heraldry of a Phoenix.

  Matt stopped their progression just inside the chamber and leaned to her ear. "Everything is fine," he whispered.

  Reesa nodded.

  It was code.

  Her mind filtered through all of the instructions that Matthew had laid out for her before they docked with the Citadel. She was to go nowhere alone, even if the Priestess demanded it. Matt was to be in her line of sight at all times. They could only speak in code because several of the women had heightened audio from surgically implanted robotics, including Celeocia Prosser. If she felt an overwhelming amount of stress she was to signal to him and he would take her home.

  Home.

  Her mind was a little fuzzy, but the image that word brought to mind wasn't what she'd been expecting. She should have thought of her apartment, or her boat. Possibly the Barnes & Noble three blocks from her complex. But certainly not Scotland bay beach. Borden's beach. That, she thought, was too bizarre for words. She hardly knew the man. And at the same time, she intimately knew him. It was all so complicated that she forgot where she was for a moment.

  She'd stopped seeing Jake when she looked at him, which bothered her on some level. The lines between fiction and reality were blurred to the point that she kept forgetting she wasn't writing. This wasn't a daydream and she wasn't trying to build the plot of her next book, it was impossible and real at the same time. Matthew was solid under her fingers. The sound of his boots clicking against the metal floor matched her footsteps, with no echo or distortion.

  Confused, she finally remembered that 'everything is fine' meant that the Fomorri had infiltrated the Citadel and were hunting for Kate. And now it was her job to keep Celeocia occupied until her friend had been located and delivered to the Io. Reesa took a deep breath and focused on the woman in the middle of the room.

  Celeocia's deep brown eyes watched every move Reesa made. If she hadn't already been unsettled Reesa imagined that steady, calculating gaze would have done it. She tried hard to hide her fear because she knew Celeocia - or at least the robotic part of Celeocia - could read it.

  "Greetings," Celeocia bowed to her, much more humbly than Reesa had been expecting. "I beg forgiveness on account of my son. I underestimated the depth of his pain and had not predicted such a reaction."

  "Hedric has never been predictable," Reesa said after a moment.

  "I suppose not," Celeocia's said and glanced at where Matthew waited at the entrance. "You come with a powerful friend."

  "I come with a powerful husband."

  "You found it necessary to wed?"

  "There was little choice in the matter."

  Celeocia gave her a compassionate smile. "This will either be a hindrance or a help. Regardless," she turned and gestured toward the back of the room. "I imagine the experience has left something to be desired."

  Reesa began walking with the woman, glancing over at Matt, who merely watched. As a matter of fact, she thought, she sort of liked her newfound husband. But she couldn't say that to the Priestess. There was too much at stake here, so she grabbed hold of the one motivation that clearly defined Celeocia Prosser.

  "Such as freedom," she said.

  "To get to the heart of the matter, yes," Celeocia led them toward the outer wall. "Though it is not something we openly speak of. There are too many who misconstrue a genuine desire for peaceful, equal existence with treason."

  "It's more than treason, Priestess." Reesa shook her head. "The Makeem are religious zealots. Treason is more a term for overthrowing governments. The Makeem find everything about the female race offensive."

  "Yes, but why? Why do they hate us, Miss Zimmerman?"

  Reesa was taken aback by the earnestness of the question. The Priestess truly wanted to know
why they had been persecuted to the point of near slavery. Stammering, Reesa looked back toward Matt and tried to find an appropriate reply.

  "Well, um, I'm not quite sure." She flinched as she said it.

  The truth was, she knew exactly why she had written the female race into such a horrible position. But how could she explain to this woman that her persecution was a matter of Reesa's own self-loathing? How could she tell them that, ultimately, Reesa herself had done this to them?

  Distressed, she closed her eyes and rubbed her forehead.

  "Are you all right?" Celeocia asked.

  "I'm fine," Reesa whispered.

  "You look quite pale."

  "I was abducted from my home, abandoned on Oahu and married in the space of three days," she hooked onto her annoyance for the situation and managed to concentrate on the Priestess again. "Being pale is the least of my concerns."

  There seemed to be a flinch across Celeocia's features. It was infinitesimal at best and for a moment Reesa wondered if she'd imagined it. The hard, angular contours of the woman's face were difficult to read, and she knew the robotics spiking around the base of the woman's neck could control most muscle movement. Celeocia bowed her head, submissive, before speaking.

  "I apologize for the manner in which we were forced to acquire your aid ... "

  "You haven't acquired anything from me," Reesa snapped. "All you've done is piss me off. Which, by the way, brings me to the question of how you got me here in the first place? I never wrote time-travel into the books."

  Celeocia actually smiled, "You sent me."

  "I think I'd remember that."

  The Priestess turned to the side and waved her hand at the wall beside them. In response, the wall split and pushed a console out into the open. Several blue lights flashed and Reesa waited, watching the woman bring up several files for her review. When she was finished, Celeocia gestured to the screen, positively beaming.

  Uncertain, Reesa turned her attention to the screen and gasped.

  It was her work. It was fragmented, with only a few pages here and there from each of the books, but there was no denying the pieces on the screen. Those were her novels.

  "How did you find these?" she whispered, still staring in shock.

  "With difficulty," the Priestess admitted. "But you will find that I am a persistent woman, Miss Zimmerman. I found only three pages at first, but I recognized my son's name on them. After that, I searched everywhere. I put all the resources of the Temple behind it and this was all we could find."

  "It's not complete."

  "Oh, I know. That frustrated me to no end, but then I found something strange." Celeocia pulled her finger across the screen, highlighting a series of numbers in the lower right corner. They weren't the page numbers, they weren't even dates, they were just numbers sitting off to the side of the prose.

  "That's just formatting. The marketing department thought it gave things a more ... techie look."

  "Miss Zimmerman, for the greatest prophet this world has ever seen, you are remarkably unaware of your own talents." The Priestess folded her hands in the traditional, Novo Femina way and continued to smile. "Those numbers recur throughout your work no less than eighteen times."

  "So?"

  "So, they're pointing to something. Literally. You have longitude, latitude and depth."

  Fear crawled up Reesa's spine as she stared at the incriminating numbers. "That's absolutely insane."

  "Many people thought so at first," Celeocia admitted. "But Rebecca was adamant. She flew the first mission. She nearly died. Launching her antimatter discs was a defensive move."

  "But ... combining matter and antimatter like that ... wouldn't it have repercussions?" Reesa finally turned away from the screen. "Antimatter is dangerous."

  "Quite dangerous." Celeocia glanced at the console. "But then, so is the twenty-first century, since that's where she eventually died."

  "So you ... accidentally discovered time travel, is that what you're telling me?" Reesa frowned at the computer screen. She was fairly certain that what the woman was proposing was impossible.

  "I took a leap of faith. And it brought me to you." Celeocia turned to face her, an excited gleam in her eyes. "Miss Zimmerman, you must know why I have brought you here."

  Reesa looked up from the computer screen, suddenly remembering David's research. The original map of the Mavirus Carcinoma strain blinked in her mind and clear understanding hit her. The Mavirus had been created. It wasn't a fluke of nature and it hadn't just happened, it had been made.

  But who and why would someone make such a horrid thing?

  Gazing at Celeocia, Reesa realized that she already knew the answer to that question. After all, it was the Makeem who had managed to come up with a cure. It was the Makeem who continued to require the oppression of women.

  If the Scientific Community discovered that their religious icons had been the true downfall of the human race it would destroy the whole of their society. The Novo Femina and the Makeem would succumb to outright war. The human race would be forced to redefine itself again. Still, war seemed a cheap price for freedom. Women should never have been forced into such a lowly state, no matter Reesa's motivations for writing it that way. Just because she hated herself didn't mean these women needed to pay for it.

  But she could fix this. She could give the Novo Femina what they needed to fight the Makeem. And she could get Kate home. With a deep breath, Reesa looked the Priestess in the eyes.

  "I have what you need to fight the Makeem," she said at last. "But you have to release Kate first."

  "That is impossible," Celeocia said. "Kate has become the face of the female redemption."

  "You will not need her."

  Hope flared in the Priestess' face.

  "But first I want Kate." Reesa said.

  "Kate is safer with us."

  "Apparently I am not being clear," Reesa frowned at the woman. "Either I get Kate or I take this information elsewhere."

  "Reesa," Matt stepped into their conversation. She wasn't certain when he'd walked up, but she couldn't hide her relief that he had. He gripped her elbow and paused, and for a moment Reesa thought she saw his left eye twitch. Then he procured a handkerchief of sorts from his cargo pocket. "Your nose is bleeding," he murmured.

  For a confused moment Reesa tried to remember what code that was and then she felt wet on her lips and pressed the linen to her nose. Dark red tinged the pale cloth and she felt suddenly weak and dizzy. Matthew's grip on her elbow kept her upright as the great, rounded hall began to swim in her vision.

  "She's infected," Celeocia said with a gasp.

  "Compliments of your son, yes," Matt said. And then his head cocked to the side and Reesa knew he was listening to the Fomorri. An instant later he swooped her up and into his arms, fitting her securely against his chest. "We're done here."

  Now that was code. Either Kate was safely aboard the Io or they were aborting the mission. Reesa didn't care either way. It wasn't so much that she was in pain but more that she felt queer. Off, somehow. Something was very, very wrong with her body and she knew it.

  "Wait," Celeocia raised a hand to stop them. "Patient Zero."

  "No Kate, no patient zero. Those were the rules, Priestess." Matt walked past her without a second glance.

  Relieved and comforted by the sheer strength of his presence, Reesa let her head rest on his shoulder and closed her eyes. Her relief was short-lived. Matthew hadn't gotten five steps before she heard several weapons powering on. She'd know that sound anywhere, the sudden humming of an R413 preparing to chamber a round, and felt the pit of her stomach drop. She opened her eyes to find that they were surrounded, with Celeocia very calmly moving to stand before them.

  "I'm afraid we've misunderstood each other, Mr. Borden." Celeocia gave them an icy smile.

  *

  "Hedric Prosser and the crew of the Lothogy received commendations today from the Community. Their efforts to save Mars have made them a househo
ld name, but the Lothogy's Captain insisted that the matter should not be 'romanticized'. Hedric Prosser went on to say that he hoped the Community and Borden Company had learned that even science has its boundaries." - A.P. August 2, 2993

  Chapter Twenty-One

  "How long have you known you are infected?"

  The robotic twang to Celeocia's voice made Reesa's temple throb. She felt weak, like her bones might slip out of place at any moment, and an incessant pinch cramped in her gut. As much as she didn't want to, Reesa opened her eyes to face the Priestess. She stood directly at the foot of Reesa's gurney-like bed, hands folded in front and her trademark expression of passivity staring down at her. Were it not for the glitter of annoyance in the woman's eyes, Reesa might have suspected that the Priestess truly did not care.

  But the glitter was there and Reesa could see it.

  And the woman was holding them hostage now, so that had to mean that her presence was imperative. Or at least imperative to Celeocia, anyway.

  "Since just before we got here," Reesa said. "Thank your son for me, would you?"

  "I was afraid of that." Celeocia glanced at where Matthew lounged in the corner. "I appreciate the pains you have taken for her safety."

  "You can thank me by releasing us. There is nothing more for you to gain here." He said.

  "On the contrary, Reesa may hold powerful secrets to our future, Mr. Borden." Celeocia tilted her head just enough that the light winked off the metal in her neck. "You cannot tell me that you hadn't thought of that. If she foretold everything that we are living through today, how much more can she tell us about tomorrow? We can avoid wars, make fortuitous investments, and avoid ... "

  "You're forgetting something here," Reesa said. "If it worked like that, I would have known Hedric was coming for me and stopped it from happening."

  Celeocia turned a wide, almost frightening smile onto her and Reesa suppressed the desire to shudder. The Priestess wasn't right in the head, she decided. Scientists had mentioned that sometimes, when the surgical process was over and the robotics had been grafted into a female subject, there were some rare side-effects. Reesa just couldn't remember if one of them was insanity.