The Genius Asylum: Sic Transit Terra Book 1

by Arlene F. Marks

On the other side of the filing cabinets, Drew could sense Lydia, hovering just out of sight.

  “All I can say is that you’re lucky Gavin Holchuk wasn’t there to see you torture that child,” declared the Doc.

  “I tortured her?” Drew returned. “You’re the one who brought up pathogens.”

  “Nonetheless,” she continued with a dismissive wave of her hand, “Gavin feels very protective of her.”

  “Would he have let her leave the station with O’Malley’s rat?”

  “Yoko isn’t mine,” O’Malley corrected him.

  “Then whose is she?” Drew wanted to know. “Who brought her aboard?”

  Ktumba hesitated before replying, “Nayo Naguchi did.”

  “Rats live two standard years at most, and Naguchi arrived on the Hub at least fifteen years ago,” Drew pointed out. “Are you saying you’ve been cloning Naguchi’s pet?”

  She gave him a faint smile. “Not necessary. This is the original rat. And although Nayo named her, Yoko was never his pet.”

  Suddenly, Drew was feeling a little light-headed. “So we have aboard this station a rat that has lived for more than twenty Earth years?”

  “A very intelligent rat that has lived in excellent health for more than twenty-five years, and counting,” she confirmed with a nod. “Her DNA is gumbo. My guess is that she was in the final generation of a genetics experiment and Nayo… relocated her. He left detailed instructions for her care and monitoring. Robert gives her companionship and mental stimulation. And every three intervals I biotest her and record my findings. She’s already lived the equivalent of eight rat lifetimes, and shows no signs of slowing down. Theoretically, she could be immortal.”

  And the longer she lived, the more she would learn, becoming more and more intelligent. It was the perfect gift from a great teacher: Yoko, the role model.

  “Who else knows the truth about her?” Drew asked, trying to sound casual.

  “Not many on the Hub. Robert, of course, and Ruby and Lydia. Most of the crew think, as you did, that I’ve been cloning Nayo’s pet for sentimental reasons.”

  “What about Khaloub?” Drew wanted to know.

  She shook her head in response.

  “Jovanovich?” Drew persisted.

  “Not a chance!” blurted O’Malley. “He ordered me to space her.”

  “You’re the first station manager since Nayo Naguchi who’s expressed any interest in keeping Yoko on the Hub,” the Doc explained, “so you’re the first I’ve told. At my request, none of the others reported her presence to the Earth authorities; and up until now, we’ve managed to keep her a secret from the Rangers as well.”

  “And yet, you allowed Alison Morgan to play with her?”

  “Gavin’s idea,” O’Malley piped up.

  “He has a soft spot for kids in trouble,” said the Doc.

  Yes, he had, Drew thought disgustedly — it was in his head. And the Doc clearly had a soft spot for Gavin Holchuk, in the same location.

  He completed his thought aloud: “So now Alison, who knows about Yoko, will be leaving the Hub in four days, and that could be a problem, especially since we’ve had the breathtaking audacity to deny her something she wants. Okay, let’s assume that she’s vindictive as well as spoiled, and that she makes a complaint to the authorities that the crew of Daisy Hub are breaking the rules and keeping a live animal on the station. Considering who and where we are, is anyone on Earth going to give a damn?”

  “Of course, they will,” replied the Doc tartly. “And I suggest that we hedge our bets by ensuring that the child leaves here as happy as possible. We could start by removing her from Isolation, since she really hasn’t done anything serious enough to warrant four whole days of solitary confinement.”

  She was right, of course. Never argue with the Doc.

  A beat, then, “Agreed,” said Drew. “But I don’t want her roaming the station. We’ll need to keep her busy until her transportation arrives. Ms. Garfield,” he called over the partition, “have you got any SPA programs that’ll wear out a teenager?”

  A moment later, Lydia appeared with a smile and a trio of datawafers. “I’ve got a few that wear out Orvy Hagman: rock climbing, white water rafting, and extreme skateboarding.”

  Drew paused, mouth open. Skateboarding? He would have to try that one himself some time. Then he recomposed his face and sighed dramatically, “All right, Doctor. Go release the prisoner. And hope she stays out of my way.”

  “I don’t think you have to worry about that, Mr. Townsend,” she said sweetly as she got to her feet. “She’ll probably avoid you like the plague.”

  Drew gestured to O’Malley to remain seated.

  When Doc Ktumba had left AdComm, Drew leaned forward across his desk. “Lydia says you and I ought to have a talk.”

  O’Malley was a slight man with swarthy coloring, an up-tilted nose, and a mop of unruly dark hair. He widened his eyes ingenuously and wondered, “Oh? About what?”

  “You know about what,” Lydia scolded him from across the deck.

  O’Malley gazed thoughtfully at Drew for a few seconds, then seemed to reach a decision. “All right, Mr. Townsend. What do you want to know?”

  “First of all, how did my original biofile come to be on the Hub’s intranet?”

  A slow grin spread across O’Malley’s face. This was a story he would clearly relish telling. “We don’t have an intranet anymore,” he said after a pause. “Shortly after I arrived here, I figured out how to hack into the database on Zulu.”

  His nonchalance was astonishing. On Earth, hacking had been a capital offence for some time.

  “You stole the Rangers’ database?”

  “Copied it,” O’Malley corrected him.

  “How did you get past their system watchdogs?”

  “I knew they had to be the same as ours. I practiced for a while.”

  That simple statement left so much unsaid that it boggled the imagination. “You practiced?” he echoed.

  “Lydia set up a sim for me using the SPA system.”

  Of course. How could he have forgotten O’Malley’s accomplice?

  “Wait a minute — are you saying my original biofile was in the Rangers’ Net when you copied it over?” There was a sudden icy prickling across Drew’s shoulders. Had his mission been compromised from the outset?

  “Not exactly. See, once I knew the Zoo was receiving regular updates from Earth’s InfoCommNet, I put us in the loop. Each time the Rangers sent data, I made sure a data request from the Hub was piggybacked onto it. Each time Earth sent an update, it came through us first. So far, I’ve copied just over sixty percent of the InfoCommNet’s data bank into our on-board system. Including your original biofile.” The grin broadened. “And I’ve begun copying the Galactic Database as well, in case the aliens ever decide to freeze us out,” O’Malley concluded.

  “And all these databases are kept current?”

  O’Malley nodded.

  “And you’re sure the Rangers haven’t twigged to this?” Drew persisted.

  “Absolutely, boss.”

  Drew blew out an admiring breath. “That’s impressive,” he commented, nodding. “But you’re talking about an enormous amount of data. Where have you been storing it?”

  “Here and there.” A shrug. “Primarily here for now, but we have storage over there as well, if we need it.”

  Over there? Suddenly Drew’s thoughts were racing. There was only one ‘there’ in the vicinity — Platform Zulu. Lydia had installed a SPA system on the Zoo, Ruby had told him. What if—?

  “The SPA room?”

  “It can hold nearly twelve terasecs of data,” Lydia supplied, wandering over to join the discussion, “with capacity left over for a doubles tennis match or a golfing foursome.”

  Of course. Space for four programs to be running sim
ultaneously, but no more than four. That would rule out team sports, wouldn’t it? So Khaloub could pitch nine innings, but not with his own people backing him up. It was a shame, Drew mused. Sports would have been such a natural way to pull this crew together. At the very least, it would have made mission planning a lot easier.

  “Was Karim in on your little secret?” Drew asked, in a sharper voice than he’d intended.

  Lydia and O’Malley exchanged a startled look.

  “We weren’t sure he would approve,” she explained. “I was going to tell him, right after we returned from installing the SPA on the Zoo, but—”

  “Lydia became ill,” O’Malley cut in.

  “Rob, it’s okay,” she assured him. “He knows.”

  The pieces were coming together, and Drew didn’t like the picture they were making. Worse, Bonelli’s voice had begun to repeat on him, like onions: Cripes, what did she tell you? They got excited, they crossed the line. But she shouldn’t have—

  No, she shouldn’t have, Drew realized. Not on the Zoo. Not unless she’d had no other choice.

  “You went with her to the Zoo, didn’t you, O’Malley? Whose idea was that?”

  He shifted uneasily in his seat. “It was Lydia’s. She told Karim she wanted me along to protect her in case the Rangers made trouble.”

  “So as far as Karim knew, you were there to fend off Bonelli’s boys while she installed the SPA. In reality, the two of you were there to co-opt the SPA as storage space for your stolen databases. Hey, I’m just keeping the facts straight,” Drew told them pleasantly. “It’s what I do.”

  Staring narrowly at him, Lydia leaned back in her chair.

  “So, let me guess,” Drew continued chattily. “You’d practiced slipping past the watchdogs, so you knew they wouldn’t be a problem. But Bonelli didn’t trust you, did he? He assigned a couple of guards to watch you. You knew this was your only chance to link the two SPAs together, and you couldn’t do it unless the guards were distracted. So you sent Lydia out to flirt with them for a few minutes. Was that how it went down?”

  “Actually,” said O’Malley, “the flirting was Lydia’s idea too.”

  “Really?” Drew crossed his arms over his chest and swiveled his chair so that he was facing her. “And was it also your idea to be assaulted? I’ll bet that made one hell of a distraction for Bonelli’s boys. How much extra time did it buy him, Lydia?”

  She drew herself up, her eyes flashing.

  “Hey, don’t go blaming the victim,” O’Malley protested angrily, rising out of his seat. “She was attacked by three guys. Doc saw the bruises—”

  “Sit down, Rob,” she told him.

  He sat, instantly silenced. Inwardly Drew smiled, glad to know that his street instincts were still sharp. Whatever else Lydia Garfield might be, she clearly was not, nor ever would be, a helpless victim. Good for her. And good for the EIS.

  “Twenty minutes,” she finally replied.

  Drew nodded thoughtfully. “And how badly hurt were you?”

  A shadow passed quickly over her face. “Let’s just say I’ve been hurt worse, in less worthy causes.”

  Drew didn’t pursue the matter. According to her biofile, she’d grown up in Atlantica, an area rife with juvenile gangs. They tended to draw Eligible teens like magnets, pulling them out of the Enclaves and into the Zones for a little weekend ‘fun’.

  “You do the wounded bird thing very well,” he remarked.

  She accepted the compliment with a nod and returned, “And you do the cop thing very well, Mr. Townsend.”

  Lydia turned I-told-you-so eyes on her partner.

  “Does Doc Ktumba know what really happened?” Drew asked.

  “No,” said Lydia, frowning. “Nobody does except Rob and now you. And the Rangers, of course, but who around here is going to believe them?”

  “Then why didn’t she send you away for treatment once Khaloub’s body had been discovered and Bonelli’s men began investigating?”

  “She tried to,” said Lydia.

  “But…?”

  The smugness of O’Malley’s expression gave Drew his answer. The ratkeeper and Lydia were a matched pair, between them having complete control over the Hub’s data and communications systems. If they didn’t want to be split up, nothing and nobody aboard the Hub could make it happen.

  “All right,” Drew decided, “here’s the deal. The two of you are going to be my intelligence team. My eyes and ears. You,” he said, pointing a finger at Lydia, “are going to make a full and rapid recovery from your ordeal and put it behind you. A miracle cure. Doc Ktumba may even want to write a paper about it — let her. And you,” he added, shifting the finger to point at O’Malley, “are going to continue stockpiling data. I’m giving you both clean slates, from this day forward, on one condition: from now on, you’re to be absolutely straight with me and your crewmates — no more lying, and no more cons unless I’m running them.”

  “How come you get to run them?” O’Malley challenged.

  Drew leaned across his desk on carefully placed knuckles and said in a lowered voice, “Because I’ve been doing it a whole lot longer and am a whole lot better at it than either of you. Now, do we have an arrangement?”

  The other man grinned up at him. “Whatever you say, boss.”

  Lydia said nothing. On her way out of his office space, however, she turned and gave him an appraising look. Drew almost didn’t recognize what he saw on her face. It had been a long time since anyone had shown him that kind of respect.

  And speaking of respect…

  “O’Malley, before you go, there’s something I need you to do for me.”

  Cocking his head curiously, the ratkeeper resumed his seat.

  “A good friend of mine was killed the day before I shipped out, and I want to follow the murder investigation. Can you request information about a specific open case file from Security Data Management?”

  “Not without tipping our hand to the Rangers. They generally request larger packages of data — all the crimes of a certain type committed during a specified period or in a particular location, that sort of thing. When and where did this murder take place, boss?”

  “New Chicago, about two intervals ago. The victim’s name was Bruni Patel. When I left, all they had was snaps from the body dump scene. The file should be a lot fatter by now.”

  O’Malley nodded thoughtfully. “Okay, I’ll see what I can do. Meanwhile, we may already have something in our system about Bruni Patel, so I’ll search our on-board databases and let you know what I find.”

  Chapter 22

  Gavin Holchuk had found his ‘inner warrior’, and it was hartoon.

  The grieving husband and outraged father that the Relocation Authority had summarily boxed up and shipped out to Daisy Hub thirteen standard years earlier had finally broken free. Holchuk’s senses were drowning in remembered pain. Every dream was a nightmare of blood and smoke, filled with Risa’s screams and ending with her blackened, agony-contorted face in the morgue.

  Holchuk couldn’t sleep, couldn’t rest, couldn’t even sit. For three days now, he had prowled his quarters like a caged animal. On the second day, Jensen’s assistant had taken one look at his face, dropped a food tray onto the desk and run out of the room. By the third, the need for vengeance was like a roaring furnace in Holchuk’s brain.

  Then, just when he thought he could no longer control the berserker raging inside him, he heard over the intercomm the voice he had been waiting for.

  “Gavin Holchuk, son of Samuel,” said Nagor, “the House of Trokerk has arrived. Prepare to join with us.”

  An honor guard of warriors from Holchuk’s own House had to escort him to Nagor’s ship. Fortunately, Gavin had thought to leave instructions with Ruby before going into seclusion. When his cabin door slid aside, there they were: Jason Smith, wearing the dress un
iform of a Fleet officer; Lucas Soaring Hawk, dressed in buckskin breeches and a bone breastplate, his face painted in red and black stripes; Lu Xensiu, covered to his eyes in ninja attire, complete with nunchucks; and Orvy Hagman, who had apparently reached back into a previous life and come up with a black leather jacket with matching trousers and peaked cap, all bristling with metal studs and bearing the insignia of The Devil’s Henchmen.

  Despite their motley appearance, the four men were all stern-faced and deathly serious. Human warriors, ceremonially garbed.

  As prescribed by Nandrian tradition, the honor guard marched him in silent formation to the tube stop, two behind him, two in front. They held formation inside the tube car, and walked him right up to the docking hatch of the Nandrian ship, where Nagor and three others stood in similar formation, waiting. The four aliens were also ceremonially garbed. Their upper bodies were encased in jointed armor, under long black tabards bearing the symbol of Trokerk worked in metallic thread.

  “Welcome, Gavin Holchuk,” announced Nagor. “Are you prepared to join us?”

  Holchuk was sucking in long, steadying breaths, willing his mind to focus on the ritual. “I am ready, Nagor ban Nagoram,” he declared hoarsely.

  Nagor bared his lower fangs in approval. “A warrior burns within you.”

  “He thirsts for the blood of our enemies,” Holchuk replied, following the script.

  “He defends the honor of the House of Americas?”

  “He does.” A guerrilla memory triggered a surge of adrenaline; suddenly his skin was clammy and it was all Holchuk could do to stand still and upright.

  “And he defends the honor of Daisy Hub?”

  “He does.”

  “And he would defend the honor of the House of Trokerk?”

  Through gritted teeth, Holchuk replied, “He would die if necessary in the cause of honor.”

  The big alien nodded. “Then enter.”

  With that, the Nandrian guardsmen strode forward and surrounded Holchuk. Then, in formation, all five boarded the Hak’kor’s ship.

  The Pet’silliar was not like any of the Nandrian ships Holchuk had visited in the past. Those had been cargo vessels, rigged out for years-long trading voyages. Consequently, most of their on-board areas had been devoted to storage of one kind or another. The air inside them had been cool and dry. And both ship and crew were armed, of course, in case the opportunity arose for a tekl’hananni match. This ship was different.