by Ilsa J. Bick
“All right,” said Saad. He still knelt, still had her hands, but now there was uncertainty in his eyes. “Are you and he, are you…?”
“No. Just…we’re friends.”
His shoulders eased a bit. “Can you tell me where or how you got…?”
“No,” she said again. “But Julian’s why Nerrit’s coming, isn’t it?”
He nodded.
“And your contact?”
“Has a plan, a way to get us in by the footpath instead of the tram. It’s risky. And we’ve got to go now. Nerrit will be here in a few days, and it will take us that long just to get within striking distance of his convoy.”
“Saad,” said Mara. “Please. This isn’t wise.”
“Really?” he drawled. “I think you’ve made that abundantly clear.”
Lense saw the sudden hurt in Mara’s eyes. “Don’t dismiss her out of hand. She’s your second. She knows your capabilities probably better than you do because your mind’s already made up.” And why; why is he so persistent, and how does he know so much if…?
“I thought you didn’t know anything about the military,” he said, showing a thin sliver of a smile. “I admit, this isn’t exactly the smartest thing I’ve ever done in my life, but that doesn’t matter. If the Kornaks are right about this Bashir, then we’ve got to stop them. Even if they’re wrong, they will take whatever they want from his mind, and then the man you know, Elizabeth, just won’t exist anymore. He’ll simply be. And everything locked in your head that you will not say they will rip right out of his. So I’m not doing this for you, Elizabeth, or even for him. I’m doing it for all of us.”
She blurted it out. “No, you’re not.” She saw the edges of his eyes tighten but pushed on anyway. “Don’t kid yourself. You’re doing this for you.”
“I am?” Saad was very still. “Why?”
“Because,” said Lense. She was aware of Mara’s eyes on her as well, but she kept hers firmly on Saad. “You’ve got a grudge.”
“About what?”
“You’re the donor, Saad. You’re the one who walked away.” Now she looked over at Mara and saw the emotions chasing across the big woman’s scarred, ravaged face. “Or did you break him out?”
“Broke him out,” said Mara, hoarsely. “We were in the same unit. Saad was my CO. Then Nerrit…they tested us. Took Saad. I…we figured out what was happening, and then we got him out. We had help on the inside, a few of the scientists.”
“Your contacts?” asked Lense. Mara nodded. “What happened to them?”
“One we know for sure was killed. Janel was his name. The other two…like Saad said, we’ve not heard from them for a long time. Until now. But we got Saad out.”
“And I’ve never forgotten it, Mara,” said Saad. He’d been staring at Lense but now swiveled his head around to his second. “Your bravery and your loyalty.”
And maybe her love, too, Saad, though she’d never say it. “Then you need to listen to her now,” said Lense. “Mara’s right. You’re too emotionally involved.”
It was the wrong thing to say. Saad sat up a little straighter, and he withdrew his hands from Lense’s—not quickly. But he took them back. “And you’re not? You don’t care about this Bashir?”
“Yes, of course, I care,” she flared. “Don’t twist this around to make it my fault. I’m not in command. You are, and you can’t lead on emotion. You’ll make mistakes.”
“Listen to her, Saad,” Mara said. “She’s right. We were lucky once, but you go back and I feel it down deep, you’ll never get out.”
Saad’s jaw firmed. “And what if you can’t get Bashir out, Mara? Are you prepared to die for this man? Are you absolutely clear that if the time came, you could kill both Bashir and yourself?”
“Strangers are easy.” Mara’s face had gone as stony as Saad’s, though her cheeks glistened. “My friends, the people I care about, they’re hard.”
Lense was incensed. “What are you two thinking? You’re not going to kill anybody!”
“If we can’t get him out, we’ll have to,” said Mara, flatly. “Otherwise, the Kornaks will still have him.”
“Then we’d better be damn sure to get him out,” said Lense. “Because you try that, you’ll have to kill me, too.” She drilled Saad with a look. “We clear on that?”
“You’re not going, Elizabeth. I won’t allow it.”
“Try and stop me. You said I’m my own woman, so I get to choose, and I choose for Julian. You have to take me. Why should he trust you? He doesn’t know you. Besides, he might be hurt, and I’m a doctor; I’m the only one who can help him. So, like it or not, you need me, and even if you didn’t, I’m sure as hell not staying here. Because let me be crystal clear about this, Saad. I’m not doing this for you, either. I’m doing it for Julian, and I’m doing it for me because it’s the right thing to do. I don’t have any other choice.” She paused. “He’s my friend.”
Saad looked from her to Mara and then back. “All right then, I guess you’re coming. But I’m still going.”
“And how are you going to be sure that you don’t end up as a permanent guest again?” asked Mara.
“By sending them to hell,” he said.
Neither woman asked what that meant. They had a pretty good idea.
Chapter
8
The rain had started six hours ago: a persistent drumming that was primordial and remorseless. Blate liked the way it lashed his windows, trying to break through, break him. Well, come, let it try.
He was strapping on his sidearm when his vidcom chimed. Annoyed, he looked at his screen, noting the time on a desk chronometer with his left eye while scanning the incoming call with his right: Kahayn. He punched his vidcom to life. “Yes, Doctor, what do—Doctor, what’s happened?”
Her hair was disheveled; a blotchy purple and brown bruise spilled over her right cheek; her lower lip had swollen, and a dark chocolate rivulet of fresh blood oozed from her mouth. Her collar was torn open at the throat, and Blate saw a livid necklace of fresh bruises. “Bashir,” she said.
“Bashir did that?” A very interesting development. He was surprised by the prisoner’s ferocity. Ah, but then, four days ago, Kahayn had taken it on herself to give this Bashir what she called a tour. One smashed window and a microscope damaged beyond repair later, she’d conceded defeat. “He attacked you,” he said, without inflection. Inside, he was…cautious.
“About an hour ago. Stupid, I thought I could still persuade him to cooperate. Anyway, Bashir,” she looked away, struggled for control, “he broke free. Backhanded me across the face, then went for my throat. Screaming something about some woman. A lover, I presume, someone who jilted him. The guards pulled him off.”
“You’re lucky he didn’t kill you.”
“We’re just lucky the guards didn’t do him any damage. But there’s no question now.”
“I’d say not. Only a guilty man struggles.” Bashir’s outburst was interesting, even puzzling. Why now? Because the ax was about to fall? Probably. He supposed even a spaceman could panic. He’d always regarded the fMRI as his trump card against Kahayn, anyway.
Because she’d never have been able to refuse, not in front of Nerrit, because then she’d lose control over the project. That would kill her. Because I know your mind, Colonel, and I have eyes, and they don’t miss much.
Aloud, he said only, “So you wish to proceed with the operation instead?”
She gave a curt nod. “When is General Nerrit due?”
“Four, five hours, I believe.”
“Give me three.” Her lips peeled back in a smile. Her teeth were stained light mahogany with blood. “You and General Nerrit can have ringside seats.”
“Very well, Colonel. But I want Arin there, too.”
She seemed to hesitate. “I don’t need an assistant.”
“Arin has always assisted you in the past.” Blate fingered up a slim radio from his desk and slipped it into his left trouser pocket. “I should t
hink that past experience with Bashir would’ve sensitized you to just how…different he really is.”
“Good point,” she said. Her tone was neutral. “I’ll contact him.”
“No, no, I’ll do that. Oh, and Colonel…do wipe your mouth. You’re getting blood on your uniform.”
Well. Arin tilted back in his chair, listening to the electric fizzle of his vidcom fade and the lashing of the rain. The wet made his knee ache. This is a hell of a thing.
If Kahayn had second thoughts or harbored hopes that Bashir might fail, they had evaporated. Worse, he’d gotten roped in as assistant. And it changed everything.
So how to make this work now? I won’t be in place…
He debated for a moment, then pulled a bronze hinge affixed to the top drawer of his wooden desk—an antique with an ornately carved lip—and fished around until he found what he was looking for. The spectacles case was very plain and quite old. Some sort of extinct hardwood with a geometric inlay of diamond shapes lacquered purple. He thumbed open the lid. The specs were black-rimmed, a little square. He unfolded the eyepieces. They were quite delicate. He unhinged his steel-rimmed glasses from his ears, and then carefully slid on this second pair. His reflection, ghostly and surreal, stared back from his empty vidcom screen. He hadn’t worn these glasses in a long time, over a year. They made him look bookish. Even better, they didn’t slide down his nose.
Then he reached into the drawer again. He found the tiny nub he was looking for. A slight pressure and a small, rectangular panel slid noiselessly from the space between the overhanging lip and drawer.
The radio was very slim and a brushed pewter color, about the size of a largish calling card. It folded, and now he unhinged it, stabbed up the power and then took a moment to decide exactly what he would say.
Everything had changed.
The room was at the end of a far corridor in the research wing. The corridor was always in shadow, the lights on motion sensors that clicked on and off, so that she trailed darkness behind. The room was secured with a magnetic lock that was always armed. It was a corridor she had not shown Bashir. Indeed, few people knew of it. Arin didn’t. Neither did Blate, because as he’d pointed out, she commanded this hospital, not him. So there were nurses, always the same ones and one to a shift, three times a day. And there was her. She came every day whether she needed to or not.
The only sounds in the room were the hiss of a ventilator, the steady atonal blip-blip-blip of a cardiac monitor, and the tiny chug of an IV pump pushing a yellow nutrient solution through an indwelling catheter tunneled under the skin of the patient’s chest and into one of the large veins supplying the heart so he wouldn’t starve.
Kahayn sat on a tall stool alongside the bed. Her mouth still hurt. Bashir had hit her very hard. She hadn’t expected that. But she understood why.
And now there was Arin to worry about, too. She’d still perform the surgery in this wing, of course; had to. She counted on it. Because the OR was specially refitted, and the computer didn’t tie into the hospital’s database. Everything would be contained. So everything that happened would happen here and too quickly for anyone to do anything about it. But Arin was a problem because things had to stop, and Arin would not understand.
This far. And no further.
Things would only stop if every piece was gone: the technology, her records, the primates. Maybe even her, if she couldn’t get away. She wasn’t quite ready for death. Knew, though, that maybe it wasn’t so far distant after all.
And, of course, Julian would have to die. There was no question. Even he saw that. Hadn’t liked it. Who would? But he saw the logic and knew it was the only way out. The only recourse left.
Because there can’t be anything, absolutely nothing to work with. Nothing left.
She looked down at the bed. She’d managed to rebuild the skull from where the bullet had blasted away bone and brain. She’d even managed a nice scar. She stared at the seamless face—because a man in a coma does not dream and cannot think. He can only be, like an empty glass waiting for something to fill it. And the supreme irony: The machines, these rudimentary tools with no innards of any interest, kept him alive even as the machine hidden away in his brain would fill and transform him from the inside out and only waited for the key—the donor—to turn the lock once more.
This far. She bent and kissed him—the man he’d been—gently, thoroughly, and for the very last time because the man he was would be gone as soon as she flipped the switch. His lips were warm. But she didn’t cry. Couldn’t. Her tears were all gone, and there was still so much to do.
And no further. Because along every journey through adversity and darkness, a little bit of the self dies. Ego. Dreams. Hope. And love. Sometimes it’s right just to let go.
She flipped the switch and sat back to wait.
Bashir was freezing. His skin was prickly with goose-flesh, and he was shivering, like when he was little and came in from the cold. Only he didn’t talk very much or very well when he was little and so it always came out: I’m shibbering. His parents didn’t like it. But his aunt, the one on Earth who hugged him and told him his nose was cold as a brass button and his cheeks little bright apples, always laughed: Come in now, Jules; no need for shibbering anymore because Auntie loves you. Come now, warm up by the fire and have some nice hot cocoa and biscuits.
The hand he hit Kahayn with throbbed. Felt like a bomb going off in his hand, like all his bones shattered to dust. Still hurt.
His thoughts kept slewing right and left. Like trying to walk across an endless ice field with thin-soled slippers. His head was airy, too, like the inside of a big balloon, the kind with a thin string that Auntie tied around his wrist when he was very little so he didn’t lose it. When he walked, the balloon bobbed up and down and kept tugging to get free.
The cold, maybe, or the sedative. His right hip stung from the needle. How much had they given him? Enough.
The operating theater was very bright. Lights all around. He saw red inside his lids. The smell was sterile and icy, like the edge of a blade stuck in snow. He wanted to get warm. Couldn’t. Thin gown. Nothing underneath. Bare feet. The gown tied in back and his neck itched. Couldn’t move either. Thick bands around his wrists and upper arms. Legs. Restraints because he’d hit Kahayn and mustn’t get away.
Maybe he slept because then there was a buzzing, brrring sound. Not bees. Time to get up? Too early. Not time for duty yet. Wanted to sleep. Where was his pillow?
And then there were fingers on his temples, then a hand on his forehead, rolling him right. His head was very heavy. The hands had a sharp, chemical smell. Then, something itchy silting like grass around his ears. He tried to roll his head away, and he must’ve said something, too, or made a sound. Because the buzzing stopped and someone, a woman, said, “There, there. Just shaving your head. Doctor needs to see what she’s doing.”
“Buh…” His tongue wouldn’t work. He tried opening his eyes, but his lids were very heavy, and the light was too bright, and he gave it up. “Coal…coal…”
“That’s the cooling blanket.” The buzzing started up again. Something pulling at his scalp, and the hands nudged his head left. “Doctor said she wanted your temperature down. Don’t ask me why. She never uses the blanket for these things, but she says you’re different and it’s to protect you. Something about your system. But not to worry, you won’t feel cold in a few more minutes. You just relax and take a nice, long nap.”
“Buh…nooo,” he moaned. But he was starting to drift again. The string knotting the balloon to his wrist was coming undone. “Coal…”
“There, there, not to worry,” the someone said. “Doctor’s good. She’ll give you a nice, new scar.”
And at that, the string came loose, and there was nothing more he could do.
So Bashir let go.
Chapter
9
At first, the rain came hesitantly in big, fat, gray drops, and then picked up speed. Now Lense stood, soa
ked through to the bone and cold for once, and the rain was still coming, its sound a loud, continuous hiss. The desert was gushing with sudden streams sluicing through gullies.
Saad’s men worked fast. From beginning to end, the ambush took, perhaps, ninety seconds. She watched now as one of Saad’s men hauled the seventh and last Kornak soldier from the transport, splayed the body out and started stripping off protective, sand-colored armor.
Another soldier stomped up, rifle in hand, the hump of a radio at his left shoulder and now she saw that the mystery of just how anonymous Saad expected they could be was solved. Besides the armor, the soldier wore dark protective eyewear and a helmet with a low brow that flared around his ears. Thick ropes of sodden hair straggled over his shoulders, and water cascaded over the helmet.
“You’ll have to put your hair up.” She practically had to shout to hear herself over the rain. “Why the glasses? How can you see?”
“Polarized. I see fine,” said Saad. “They wear their glasses all the time, though. A good sniper can take out an eye, of course, but the glasses stop shrapnel.”
“Seven soldiers. Seven uniforms. But I make eight.”
“Change of plans,” he shouted over the rain as Mara splashed over, though Lense could only tell it was her because of the jaw. “Sorry. There’s no other way.”
Lense thought something was up. When they’d been crouched atop a flat mesa before the rain, Mara slithered over, a communications device in her hand. She’d whispered into Saad’s ear, and Lense watched the color drain from Saad’s face and his expression darken. When she asked what was wrong, Saad only shook his head. Then he and Mara moved back in a low crouch from the rim. She couldn’t hear what they said, but they were arguing.
Now she said, “But what am I supposed to do?”
At that, Mara palmed her rifle in her right hand and nudged Lense with the barrel. “Exactly what you’re told.”