Rogue Powers

by Roger MacBride Allen

  Mac, Pete, Joslyn, and Charlie could do little but try not to stare at their hosts. But safety, and a pressurized wagon where they could peel off their suits, lay ahead, and that added a spring to their step. Even so, it was near nightfall when they finally reached the Refiner's camp, and the humans were just barely able to do more than stagger into the wagon and collapse that night, Pete being half-carried by Mac and Charlie. C'astille and Lucy agreed it would be wise to wait until morning to meet with the Guidance.

  Lucy re-entered her old pressurized wagon with mixed feelings. She was glad to see C'astille, glad to be out of that suit, but—all that effort, simply to return to her mobile prison! Nothing had changed in the time she had been gone. One table, one oddly-shaped chair, the possessions she had left behind neatly stacked in a corner, the beacon whose signal they had followed so far carefully hung on the wall. At least she wasn't alone anymore.

  Pete was weakening, rapidly, his last burst of energy barely enough to get him to the wagon. The humans rushed him inside as quickly as possible. Pete fainted dead away in the airlock. They got him into the main room and stripped the pressure suit off.

  Inside it, Pete was a bloody mess, and the stink of blood and sweat filled the wagon the moment they got his helmet off. The bandages must have worked themselves loose, and Pete had bled for a long time before the wound finally had clotted up. He was pale and weak. They got his clothes off Lucy grabbed some washing sponges and soaked them at the wagon's water spigot. They washed him down as best they could and wrapped him in blankets to keep him warm, to try and ward off shock. Charlie peeled the old dressing off and took a look at the wound. Nasty, but not dangerous. "I think he'll be all right," Charlie said. "The wound seems to have just about closed, just oozing a little bit. His real problem now is loss of blood."

  Charlie was just about to put a new dressing on when the airlock thunked and an Outposter came in. He stood up. With five humans and one Outposter the size of a house in it, the wagon's interior suddenly seemed quite crowded. And Charlie was just a bit nervous about their hosts.

  Lucy recognized the newcomer. "You are sensed, L'awdasi," she said in O-l.

  "As are you, M'Calder. Welcome."

  "Who is this, Luce?" Joslyn asked.

  "Tins is L'awdasi. She helped to care for me, growing food, controlling the air, when I was here. I'm going to introduce you all. When I gesture toward you, bow." Lucy shifted to O-l. "L'awdasi, here are Terrance MacKenzie Larson, Joslyn Marie Cooper Larson, and Charles Sisulu. The one lying down is Peter Gesseti. He is unconscious. He was hurt by a beast in the forest, and we fear that he might not live. Another of our party was killed at the same time."

  "Yes, C'astille told me of this, and I came to see for myself." L'awdasi stepped forward to get a look at Pete, and Lucy noticed the Outposter had a satchel slung over her neck. L'awdasi pointed at Pete's arm. "This is the wound? This is the danger?"

  "Yes, though the wound itself should heal. But he has lost much—a word I do not know. You see the red fluid oozing from the cut? It is called blood. It carries oxygen through our bodies and does other important things.'

  "Ah." Lucy was unaware of it, but perhaps the best description of L'awdasi's occupation might be veterinarian. L'awdasi was keenly interested in the halfwalker's biology, and had even secured a few samples of Lucy's skin, hair, and waste products. She had gotten the samples without telling anyone or asking permission, as she had the feeling someone was bound to disapprove.

  But circulatory fluid was one thing she hadn't gotten. She had never seen a wound, never seen any part of the insides of a human. When she had heard of what had happened, she had scooped up her work satchel and come, not quite sure what she intended. She craned her neck down to get a better look at Pete's arm. The wound was still oozing . . . L'awdasi had to have a sample of that fluid—perhaps she could even do the halfwalkers some good. Hardly believing her own daring, she pulled a glass sample tube from her satchel, knelt, and filled the tube from the slow stream of red dribbling out of the wound.

  Lucy looked on, astonished. None of the other humans dared to move. L'awdasi stoppered the sample tube, slipped it back in her work satchel. She looked around at the alien faces, staring at her with great intensity. She decided it would be wisest to retreat, offer them no chance to demand an explanation. "Departure is now," she said to Lucy, careful formality in her voice and bearing. Without another word, she left.

  Charlie was dumbfounded. "What in the devil was that all about?"

  Lucy shook her head, as baffled as the rest. "I don't know. I wish I did." It took moments like that to remind her just how little she knew about the Z'ensam. "Come on, let's get Mr. Gesseti as comfortable as we can and then get some rest. We all need it."

  L'awdasi couldn't sleep that night. She was too excited.

  For the first time, she had living samples, functioning cells, from a human being, from an entirely new and novel field of biology. She lumbered around her laboratory, examining the blood under microscopes, through filters, in a gaseous emissions tester, in a dozen devices. Human biochemists wouldn't recognize most of the machinery. If Charlie Sisulu knew what L'awdasi could do in her lab, he would have gladly traded off his soul for the chance to do a day's work there.

  L'awdasi worked tirelessly. The clues she had gathered from Lucy's dead cells and waste-product bacteria were a great help. She understood everything she saw, almost before she saw it. She examined the various forms of white blood cells, and instantly realized these were the ancestors of some free-living form that had married itself to the bloodstream long, long ago, earning its keep by warding off less benign invaders. She admired the economy of the red blood cells. No nucleus, just the bare bones of hemoglobin transfer. But without a nucleus, the red cells could not reproduce themselves. Could they? She searched the red cells, and found no means by which they could breed themselves. But clearly the whites could and did reproduce themselves. She caught one in the very act of becoming two, and learned much. The gene structure was fantastic, clearly far more resistant to mutation than the Outposter equivalent of chromosomes. Then why was there such a great variation within the human population? L'awdasi had seen five humans with her own eyes, and pictures of many more—and none of them looked much alike. If the genes resisted mutation, everyone should look and be the same. Stranger still, there seemed to be no mechanism for transfer of acquired characteristic. The life of the human world must evolve with glacial slowness! But that same mutation resistance meant the human cell-stuff could be safely manipulated. And if the red cells were manufactured by some means external to themselves. . . . L'awdasi got what was a wild idea, even for her. The plasma would be trivial. But how to spawn the cells?

  She dove into the problem with manic enthusiasm.

  It was a long night, but perhaps the most exciting one of Lawdasi's life. The rain had stopped, and the sun was creeping up the eastern sky when she cantered back to the humans wagon. She cycled through the airlock as quietly as she could, restraining a sneeze when the chill-smelling, lifeless air the humans breathed tickled her blowhole. The air mix would sicken her if she stayed too long, but Lawdasi thought she could work fast. The four healthy ones slept, wrapped up in blankets on the floor. They must have been exhausted, for she managed to move her bulky self without waking them, carrying her gear carefully to keep it from clattering and clacking.

  The injured one, M'Gegetty Lucy had called him, lay still and pale on the floor, his skin cool, almost transparent. There was some sort of covering on the wound, no doubt to shield its ugliness from view for the humans.

  There was one last challenge, the most trivial, and yet one that almost stymied her. But she understood circulatory systems. Working by guess, luck, logic, intuition and analogy, she found a vein and gently inserted the needle. But men she was stuck holding the bottle aloft by hand.

  Thirteen hours after seeing human blood for the first time, L'awdasi had invented transfusion.

  Charlie awoke with a star
t to see Lawdasi's rather ample hindquarters taking up his entire field of vision. Cautiously, he got up to see what she was doing—and let out a shout that woke everyone else and almost spooked L'awdasi into stampeding through the wall.

  The damn fool Poster was doing sympathetic magic! Something red had come out, so it was putting something red in. Pete jerked his arm as he woke, his color better and his mind clear the moment he woke. He looked up into the face of a leather-skinned monster who was holding what looked like a three-liter bottle of blood in midair, and decided he was still hallucinating.

  Joslyn, Mac, and Lucy jumped to their feet and saw an alarmed L'awdasi backing away from a spluttering, horrified Charlie. The biologist wanted to rip out the needle, but God knew what damage that could do. He reached in and pinched the feedline, cutting off the flow of blood, careful to stay as far from the Outposter as possible.

  "Lieutenant Calder! Tell it to stop! Tell it to get that needle out of his arm!" The poor son of a bitch was probably as good as dead already, with red paint coursing through his veins, but there might still be hope if they stopped it in time.

  "L'awdasi!" Lucy shouted in O-l. "What action is this? Do you seek M'Gesetti's death? That needle must come out at once!"

  L'awdasi looked from one human to another, shocked, terrified. Her mad enthusiasm for the experiment vanished in a moment. These were not animals, these were thinking being! And she had dared to practice medicine on them. The enormity of the insult to them was beyond exaggeration.

  Without a word, she pulled the needle, handed the transfusion bottle to Charlie, and left, leaving all her equipment behind.

  There would a terrible reckoning for this. She had to speak with the Guidance, confess what she had done, before the damage was made worse.

  If it could be made worse.

  Charlie wasted not a moment. If he could identify the stuff L'awdasi had been pumping into Pete, maybe there was something in his portable field lab or the first-aid kit to counteract it. There was a sophisticated miniature automated analyzer in the lab. He got it out, gave it a sample from the 'Poster's bottle full of fluid, and set it running. He pulled his rugged field microscope from the lab kit, got a sample of the stuff onto a slide, and took a look at it.

  And took another look. He squirted a little of the red liquid onto his fingertip and sniffed it. He hesitated a moment, then tasted it. That same salty flavor he got from a cut lip. The analyzer pinged and ejected a hard copy of its report. It had matched the sample with some substance stored in its memory. Charlie didn't really have to look at the read-out, but he examined it with great care anyway. It eased the shock, somehow, to see it in print like that.

  "It's blood," he said, dumbfounded. "Perfectly normal whole human blood. Red cells, all the white cells, plasma, clotting factors, everything. Type A positive. The Outposter matched it from the sample she took last night."

  Pete remembered that was his blood type, looked at the puncture mark where the needle had been, realized that this was no fever dream, and fainted dead away.

  Lucy was the first of them to regain her wits. She ate a quick breakfast and hurried out in search of C'astille. She was gone a few hours, during which time the rest of the humans were left completely alone, and elected not to venture outside the wagon. When Pete awakened, looking much recovered and alert, all of them had a field-ration breakfast.

  When Lucy returned, she seemed more baffled then when she left. "I had to wait on C'astille until after a meeting of the Guidance and all the other grand poohbahs," she said. "C'astille suggested that both sides agree that nothing ever happened," she said. "It sounded like the best idea to me. Apparently, L'awdasi went straight to the Guidance and confessed her terrible crime, and the whole controlling group nearly went bouncing off the wall that she would dare perform medicine on a thinking species. The way she put it, trying to save Pete's life was a deadly insult, a breach of a strong tabu like incest or cannibalism. They think that's why we got upset, not because L'awdasi blundered in here and treated him within explaining what she was doing. They were quite relieved that we weren't insulted enough to call in an air strike. I seriously think they were expecting us to react that harshly."

  Lucy took a cup of tea and went on. "C'astille was always a little cool toward L'awdasi when I was here before, and I think I've found out why. She's the camp veterinarian, more or less, and she was in charge of taking care of me. Veterinary medicine, I guess, is just barely socially acceptable. Don't ask me why being fed and cared for by the vet isn't an insult."

  Charlie stared at her. "Wait a minute. Medicine is tabu? But these guys are the greatest bio-engineers anyone has ever seen!"

  "Only with animals and plants. Not on themselves. Now that I come to think of it, I've never seen any Outposter treated for any illness, but on the other hand I never really noticed anyone who was taken sick, and their hides are tough enough to protect them against most natural enemies."

  "But it doesn't make sense," Charlie insisted. "A really good strong tabu like incest or cannibalism always has some good strong practical reason behind it, even if people aren't aware of them. Commit incest and you get inbred, sickly babies. Commit cannibalism and you're liable to catch whatever killed the other guy—besides getting the diner's family very mad at you. What could drive a medicine tabu?"

  Lucy shook her head. "I don't know."

  Mac looked worried, and he had every good reason to be. "Lucy, I think we've got to think about the bug-out option."

  "Already?" Lucy said. She thought for a moment, and sighed. "I suppose you're right. If we're into this much of a mess before breakfast, what could happen by dinner?"

  Pete spoke. "Hold it. What's the bug-out option?"

  Man started gathering up the litter of breakfast. "Lucy and I worked it out before we left the Eagle. We thought it might be possible that we would have to get the hell out of here before the League was in a position to come get us." He hesitated. "And if the League loses, God forbid, we still want a way out of here. We've got the beacon. The Guards, so far as we know, don't monitor that frequency—which is why Lucy and Gustav picked it. But Cynthia Wu aboard Ariadne is watching it. It's just sending a steady tone now—but we can hook a mike into it, tell Wu to send to us on another frequency we've got the gear to listen on, and talk."

  "And we tell Ariadne to send us a pick-up ship, something we can run like hell in if we have to. Some ship that can reach the barycenter or the League, and tell them what we have learned about the Outposters."

  Pete was astonished. "Mac, we came down here knowing we were risking our lives. If we're going to cut and run the moment we're in danger, we shouldn't have bothered coming. And this Gustav character sounds like a valuable asset. Our side can't risk him just for our sakes."

  Joslyn knew her husband, understood what he was thinking. "It's not us dying, it's the knowledge dying, or the knowledge going straight to the Guards and not to our people," she said. "With what we've found out today, already, we are the best-informed League personnel. It happens that the knowledge we've gained makes our hosts think they've insulted us. Suppose that runs the other way? Suppose some innocent bit of knowledge about us is a deadly insult to them? Suppose they kill us, and sign up with the Nihilists? We have to be ready to warn our side."

  Lucy wanted to protest Joslyn's hypothetical case, but there was too much truth in it. She had lived among these people for months, and still was shocked by what she learned. "A little knowledge," she said, "is a dangerous thing."

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE Aboard Ariadne

  "You're certain the signals were authentic?" Gustav asked.

  "Absolutely," Cynthia Wu replied. "It was Lucille Calder, and she handed the mike to both Mac and Joslyn Larson. I recognized all three voices."

  Gustav allowed himself to close his eyes and breathe a sigh of relief. So far, she was still alive. But there were other considerations. He thought carefully, and stared up at the ceiling. He looked tired, drawn. "Okay. Two reports. One, Cynth
ia Wu shot trying to escape. Tonight. You vanish now. Two, loss of a ballistic lander two days from now. That's still putting the incidents too close together, but I don't know what else to do. I'll tell them a fusion system malfunction on the lander forced us to cut it loose and dump it into the planet's oceans by remote control before it blew. You stow away in the lander tonight— and don't touch the controls until the remote system is cut off. In the report, I try and distract them from my incompetence by complaining that this is the third fusion malf in two months, and that we were just lucky to get the first two under control. I ignore the fact that the previous complaints were phonies I sent in myself for verisimilitude in case I needed a lander to vanish. I assume your people found the unaccounted for C2 generator that wound up in the quartermaster's shop last week? It wasn't easy to arrange."

  "Spotted it the day it arrived. The crate's already filled with scrap instead, and we have the C2 unit hidden. Schiller will smuggle it aboard the lander tonight, and I can wait to do the actual installation once I'm on the planet."

  "Good. Any questions?" Still, Gustav stared at the featureless ceiling. His fingers fussed anxiously with the buttons of his tunic.

  "Two. First off, how sure can you be that they won't catch on?"

  "They'll be too busy. In a few days' time the Guardians launch their counter-offensive. I don't know exactly when. No one in the fleet will have time to investigate a penny-ante engineering malf, and who ever cares about a CI to start with? I hope. And once that battle is over, no matter who wins, this little scheme won't really affect me one way or the other. If the Guards win, and have the leisure to investigate what's been going on around here—they can only shoot me once. If the League wins, I don't know and never have known what happens to me. What was the other question?"