by Rinelle Grey
It kept coming back to that, didn’t it? When it came down to it, he didn’t doubt that Amelie would invite him to live on her planet in an instant. Kerit, Tyris, Nerris, and many others probably would to.
But not everyone.
Could he live with that?
Amelie didn’t seem to consider it an issue. She just shrugged. “No one is ever liked by everyone. I bet I have my enemies as well. I think Talah hates me almost as much as he hates you. To expect everyone to like everyone is pretty naive.”
The very idea was foreign to Kugah, and he stared at her, his eyes wide. “Don’t the people on your planet all like each other?”
Amelie’s laugh was harsh. “If they did, do you think I’d be out here looking for a new home? There are billions of people in my home worlds. Of course they don’t all like each other. Does everyone on your planet like each other?” She raised an eyebrow, as if the idea was impossible.
Kugah began to type, “Of course they do,” then erased the words.
It was a lie.
The knowledge hit him square between the eyes. His grandmother hadn’t liked him when he’d returned to his village. No one else had either. They didn’t like any of the others. They might pretend they did, but it was all lies.
What else had they told him that was a lie?
He shook his head, struggling to cope with the fact that everything he’d known had just come crumbling down. How did one find a new reality when everything you thought was true turned out to be false?
“Amelie?” Tyris’s voice cut through the fog. “I’ve managed to convince another three couples to have the injection. Do you want to give it to them now?”
“Sure.” Amelie jumped up immediately.
Kugah struggled to rise. “Kugah gelp.”
He stopped when Amelie put a hand on his shoulder. “No, you can’t help right now Kugah,” she said gently. “You’re still recovering, and until your doctor releases you, you’re staying right there.”
“Besides,” Tyris added. “These people are already nervous enough about being healed by a product made from your blood. I don’t think your presence is going to make them any more comfortable.”
The fact that Amelie glared at Tyris didn’t ease the stab of pain Tyris’s words caused.
They just reminded Kugah that many of these people didn’t like him. It didn’t even matter that he’d given everything he could to help save him.
Amelie said that was normal, but it still felt wrong to him.
Would time change that? Could he ever fit in here when the way their society worked was so foreign to him?
Chapter 25
“Kugah already feels bad enough that people are afraid of him, you don’t need to keep bringing it up,” Amelie scolded gently as she and Tyris walked towards the nervous looking group waiting near Marlee’s bed. Marlee chatted away to them, but none of them responded.
They were all anxiously watching Amelie and Tyris approach.
“I don’t have time to worry about hurt feelings,” Tyris said curtly. “I have a ship full of dying people to save. I need to make sure my doctor is concentrating on her people, not an alien.
Amelie felt a stab of guilt. She’d been sitting talking to Kugah when she should have been working. Tyris was right. This problem wasn’t going to solve itself. Now wasn’t the time for heart to heart conversations, even though they made her feel human for a little while.
Then again, she wouldn’t have had to comfort Kugah if Tyris hadn’t been giving him warnings and upsetting him.
“If you want to know the truth, your warnings are what is getting in the way,” she said shortly. “How about you worry about your job, and leave Kugah and I alone. Kugah nearly killed himself to give us this treatment, I think he deserves a bit of compassion. We’re doing just fine, and accomplishing a lot, when you don’t interfere.”
Without waiting for a response, she strode towards the couples waiting for the treatment.
“Who’s first?” she asked.
A man stepped forwards. “Not so fast,” he said. “Tell us a bit more about this treatment.”
“Yeah,” one of the women said. “I don’t really see why I need anything. I feel completely fine. Maybe I’m immune and don’t need the treatment.”
Amelie looked at the group. They were all young, most only in their early twenties, and they’d only been through the wormhole once, meaning they’d only aged to the equivalent of forty or fifty. Of course they weren’t feeling the effects yet. “I tested everyone,” she said gently. “Everyone has traces of radiation in their blood, and everyone’s cells are ageing at an advanced rate. You just haven’t hit the point where your body is starting to feel the effects yet, but you will.”
That dissolved the mutinous look from the young woman’s face. She stayed silent, and the man spoke up again. “So what does this treatment do? Tyris said it had successfully healed someone?”
Amelie bit her lip. Healed was a bit of a stretch. As she had told Tyris earlier, this wasn’t a complete cure. But if she told them that, would they back away?
It didn’t matter. She wasn’t going to lie to them. They deserved to know the truth, so they could make their own decisions.
“Not healed, unfortunately,” she explained. “But the treatment has successfully reduced the amount of radiation in Imyne’s blood by more than fifty percent. I have hopes that it will have completely removed the radiation by this time tomorrow. This means you will return to ageing at a normal rate.”
The man’s forehead wrinkled. “But it won’t cure any of the illnesses we have? We could have this treatment and still die?”
Tyris stepped forwards. “That’s not what Amelie is saying,” he began.
Amelie held up a hand. “I think we owe these people the full truth,” she said quietly. “We’re all in this together, facing the same risks. The only thing I can guarantee is to tell the truth as I know it.”
Tyris was about to argue, but as his eyes swept the small group in front of him, he must have realised the same thing Amelie did.
These people were used to being lied to. Their government had for years. That was one of the reasons they had left. Right now though, some of the stress and fear left their faces at Amelie’s words.
They wanted the truth, even if it was hard. They needed it.
“Can we have this treatment and still die?” the man asked again.
Amelie nodded. “We’re all going to die eventually,” she said softly. “The radiation from the wormhole just advanced the rate at which we’re getting there. This will return it to normal, but not reverse it. But it will buy us time to figure out a way to reverse it.”
“You don’t know how to do that yet, do you?” the man asked.
Taking a deep breath, Amelie let it out again in a sigh. “No,” she admitted. “But I’m not going to stop trying until I do.”
The man nodded, accepting the facts. There wasn’t much else he could do with them. “Are there any risks with taking this treatment?”
“There are risks with any treatment, even ones that have been researched thoroughly. It’s just a case of ascertaining whether the risks outweigh the benefits. Imyne seems to have no serious side effects. And in this case, where the risks of the radiation remaining in your blood is so high, it seemed justified.”
“Surely injecting us with alien blood is just as risky?” the man asked. “We have no idea what that is going to do to us. It’s completely foreign.”
“This isn’t Kugah’s blood.” Amelie held up the syringe. The remaining serum, a clear liquid, certainly didn’t look like blood. “It’s a pure chemical that I removed from his blood. Imyne figured out the formula before I discovered it in Kugah’s blood. If I hadn’t found it there though, the formula wouldn’t have done us any good, because we don’t have the equipment to make it synthetically.”
The man nodded, and turned to those behind him. “What do you think?”
One of the other women put her
hand on her very pregnant belly, and said firmly, “I want any chance I have to live. My baby needs me.” She stepped forwards and held out her arm.
As though that signalled a change, the other’s quickly followed. Another six people treated.
Hopefully it made a difference.
Unfortunately, hope was something Amelie was struggling with right now.
Tyris followed her back to her terminal after she’d finished the injections, though Amelie really wasn’t in the mood to chat. She didn’t say anything, hoping he’d get the message.
Of course, he didn’t.
He did glance briefly at Kugah, who still sat on the stretcher near Amelie’s terminal, then ignored him. The slight annoyed Amelie, though she didn’t show it.
“So what is your plan for actually finding a cure?” he asked.
Amelie sighed. That was the million dollar question, wasn’t it?
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “There isn’t any cure for ageing. Every single thing scientists and doctors have ever tried has had disastrous side effects. Short of genetic engineering to lengthen the telomeres, everything’s risky.”
“Can you do that?” Tyris asked.
Amelie stared at him in disbelief. “Genetic engineering? Of course I can’t!”
Tyris’s expression went blank, as though he was struggling to grasp what she was saying. “You mean there is no cure?” he asked finally.
Finally, he was getting it.
Even though she knew it was true, Amelie didn’t want to admit it, as though saying it out loud would make it more real than it was in her head.
Her shoulders sagged, and she let out her breath in a defeated sigh. “No. There’s no cure that I can find. I don’t even know where to look.”
Tyris stood, frozen to the spot, as though this was news to him.
As though he’d been expecting her to just pull a cure out of her hat.
Amelie could hear Kugah typing on the tablet behind her. His armoured fingers making click-clack noises on the surface.
She hadn’t really let him in on the fact that she had no cure either. She hadn’t mentioned it to anyone. She’d been too busy hoping for a miracle.
Kugah’s blood, and its ability to remove the radiation, was a miracle of sorts. Just not enough of one.
Tyris ran his hands through his hair. “What are we going to do?” he asked.
As if she’d have an answer. “Hope we caught it in time. Treat those we can. I don’t know.”
“KaGeeGee?”
Amelie turned to Kugah. “Yes?”
He held out the tablet, with something written on it.
Quite a long speech.
Amelie held her breath, and started to read.
“I didn’t know whether to tell you or not, because I can’t use it, but there is a machine the Gokak call the Metamorphosis Device, on board my ship. The Gokak use it for what they call Enhanced Evolution. It is what made me what I am. Perhaps it would work on humans, and allow you to help everyone. It was undamaged in the crash, but the machine is locked by a passcode, and I have no idea what it is.”
I’m sorry, Amelie. I want to be able to help you, and help is just there, out of reach. It feels almost worse to offer a solution that isn’t a solution, but it doesn’t feel right not to tell you. So I’m telling you.”
Amelie looked up, and straight into Kugah’s expressionless eyes.
Except they weren’t expressionless. Was it her imagination, or did they look immeasurably sad?
She was having trouble taking in the fact that he’d just offered her a solution, and ripped it away, all in the same speech. Which must be exactly what he was feeling. To have an answer there, but just out of reach, must be as frustrating to him as it was to her.
“What is it?” Tyris demanded.
Amelie looked at Kugah and raised an eyebrow. When he nodded, she handed the tablet to Tyris.
While he read through the message, Amelie asked, “How do you have the equipment, but not the passcode? Is there any way we can find it?”
Kugah sighed. When Tyris returned the tablet, he typed rapidly for a few moments, then held it out to her.
“I stole the ship when I left my home planet. I didn’t know the machine was passcode protected, or I would have made more effort to find it before I left. As it is, it’s all but useless. The passcode, and anyone who knows it, is back on my home planet.”
Tyris read over her shoulder. “Is there any way we can get it?” he asked, looking up at Kugah.
Kugah stared at him, as though the possibility had never occurred to him. “Kugah go back?” He spoke the words as if they terrified him.
Amelie wasn’t surprised. After all that had been done to him, she felt bad even asking, but this was the first time, since realising the problem they were facing, that she’d felt any hope of a solution. “Maybe you don’t have to go, Kugah. If you could tell us where to get the code, we could go.”
“No,” Kugah growled. He typed furiously on the tablet. “Not safe.”
“There has to be a way,” Amelie said softly. She understood his reluctance, but she couldn’t just let this go. “I wouldn’t be even suggesting it if there was any other option, but if this machine really could reverse ageing…” she drew in her breath. “Do you have any idea what that could mean?”
Kugah pointed to his chest. “Kugah too.”
Of course. Realisation dawned. “You brought the machine because you hoped it could return you to who you were before the genetic manipulation.”
Kugah nodded. He opened his mouth to speak, then growled, and reached for the tablet.
“I would give anything to be able to change back to who I was before. But going back there is too dangerous. Do you think a human could just fly into the Gokak base and steal the code? They would know you were alien straight away, and want to capture you to study you. If you go, you will die, or worse,” he typed.
Amelie suppressed a shudder. She didn’t even want to contemplate the outcome he was suggesting. She couldn’t afford to. If she didn’t do something, then everyone here could die.
“There must be a way,” she insisted. “If we took your ship, they might think it was one of their own people,” she pointed out. “That would get us closer.”
“It’s broken,” Kugah typed back, his fingers forceful on the surface of the tablet.
“Nerris did say he thought he could fix it.” Tyris rubbed his chin thoughtfully. He stared at Kugah.
“My ship is only a little faster than yours. It took me months to get from my home world to here. We’d never make it in time.”
“We have the AWP, remember?” Amelie shot back.
Tyris frowned. “I’m not sure it’s that simple, Amelie. Taking the AWP opens us up to a lot of risks, the biggest being, if the ship is captured, then we’re stranded here. That’s a death sentence as surely as this ageing is. There are no habitable planets in range. We need that wormhole generator.”
“A habitable planet isn’t going to do us any good if we’re dead,” Amelie said flatly.
Tyris’s expression softened. “Maybe it would be worth the risk, if it was just about us. But if the AWP falls into alien hands, we could be leading the aliens straight to everyone in the Colonies. I’m guessing they aren’t all as friendly as Kugah, are they?” He turned to Kugah, an eyebrow raised.
Kugah shook his head. “Not want Gokak to ever find your people,” he typed simply.
“So we rig up a self-destruct,” Amelie insisted. “Time it even. If it takes too long, or if someone tries to disconnect the AWP, it blows. Nerris could set something up I’m sure. That way we’re only risking ourselves.”
This time, Tyris didn’t object straight away. In fact, he looked thoughtful. “That might be possible.” He let his breath out in a sigh. “But it’s still not foolproof. If whoever goes back is captured, the aliens could find a way around it somehow. I’m sorry, Amelie, it’s just too big a risk.”
He couldn’t jus
t give up. Not when this was their only option. “So we send two people. One to get the code, and one to remain in the ship and bring it back if possible, or destroy it if necessary,” she said desperately.
“If human goes through the wormhole, they will be hurt by the radiation,” Kugah typed.
“Your ship’s armour will protect them,” Amelie responded just as quickly. “Just like your armour protected me last time.”
“Even if that’s the case, who would we send?” Tyris asked, waving his hand around the room. “There’s only a couple of us who have any flight skills. Kerit only has the very basics, and he’s too sick anyway. I’m not going to send you, we need our doctor here. That only leaves me.”
Was that his real objection?
Amelie had to admit, the idea of sending their captain, the best pilot on board, wasn’t the best she’d ever heard. But they were out of other options.
“There isn’t anything else,” Amelie said simply. “I can’t fix this. Sure, I can patch some people up and get another five to ten years for most people, maybe even twenty for the younger ones. But there are a lot of people here who aren’t going to make it. Folly’s not going to make it a few more weeks. And Kerit and your mother are going to be dealing with this for the rest of their short lives. We need to do something.”
Tyris stared at her for a few minutes, and she could see the shift when his eyes slid away from her, towards Folly and Kerit, and then across to where Marlee sat up in her bed nursing Isala. When he turned back to her, his voice was softer. “Do you really think this will solve our problems? How do we know this machine Kugah has will be a real cure?”
The truth was, she didn’t. “I can’t guarantee it will be,” she agreed. “But if it changed Kugah into who he is, then it has to be pretty powerful. With Kugah to help us, there’s a good chance we can figure it out. More importantly, without it, we don’t have any chance.”
Tyris heaved a sigh. “I’ll talk to Nerris, and see if he thinks it’s possible.”
“If Nerris can fix my ship, I’ll go with Tyris. More chance of success that way,” Kugah typed.
Amelie tried not to get her hopes up. There was still so much that could go wrong.