by Diann Read
The temperature reading already showed a marginal drop. Weil stepped back, peeling off bloodied gloves, and said quietly, “Good.”
Waiting for temperature and pulse rate to drop further, he placed the youth’s battered left hand under the holoscanner and examined it for fractures. He found none, but he applied medication and braced the hand, then spread salve over the contusions on the boy’s face, arms, and chest.
“Maybe you should cut his nails so he don’t claw you again, sir,” said Gerik from near the door.
Weil touched the discoloration swelling on his cheekbone. “Get out of here, Sergeant!”
The boy’s pulse had dropped to fifty and his respirations came slow and shallow when Weil glanced at the monitors again. He reached for the electrocardio patches.
Peeling backing from the metallic discs, he adhered one over his patient’s heart, the second in the corresponding spot on his back. He checked wiring connections, then synchronized the computer’s weak impulse to the rhythm already sketched on the monitor. Opening the current, he watched the pulsemaker’s green line parallel the youth’s heartbeat; his body didn’t twitch at the mild shock.
Pressing his mouth tight, Weil keyed in the stasis program: twelve heartbeats and three respirations per minute, with body temperature maintained at 72o. Coordinating the data, the vital signs monitor and computer would gradually reduce the boy’s metabolism to the set level and support it there. Once established, stasis required only minimal IV nourishment and no anesthetic.
Weil watched the pulsemaker’s oscillating pattern shift into the primary rate decrease, the critical point of initiation. Might it trigger fibrillation or total arrest?
The first hesitant heartbeat faltered, then caught up, righted, on the second shock. Weil released a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding.
Assured that the transition would progress smoothly, he called the guards back in to help move his patient from the table into the capsule. Untangling monitor wires and rewrapping the hypothermic sheet, he avoided looking at the youth’s face.
An hour later he switched on the capsule’s repulsors. The military police maneuvered it through automated doors toward a freight hauler with terrain treads, and two more legionnaires eased it aboard.
Colonel Lansill glanced at the form beneath the transparent capsule cover as it slid past him, and thrust a strongbox at Weil. “Proof of the prisoner’s identity,” he said. “Give it only to Governor Renier.” He inspected his timepiece. “The crew of the Bonne Fortune is waiting. You’ll go with them as far as Adriat, where the Sector General’s personal voyager will make rendezvous. Questions, Captain?”
Weil set his jaw. “No, sir.”
“Very good. You’re dismissed.”
Weil clipped off the expected salute and mounted the freight hauler. He thought for a moment that he glimpsed amber eyes blinking up at him from between its treads and shook his head. Still, huddled with the soldiers under the hauler’s shell, he shuddered with the feeling that something in the shadows watched him, questioned him, assessed him.
He couldn’t shake it even in the shuttle; he kept thinking he’d felt something brush his leg as he helped maneuver the capsule aboard.
In another four hours he strapped the medical capsule into a berth in one of Bonne Fortune’s cabins. He tested the bands with a tug and looked around the cubicle before he snapped out the illuminant, half expecting to glimpse a ghost in a corner. Latching the door, he found that someone had attached a handmade placard that read AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. He left it there when he retired to the crew lounge for departure.
Thrusters bore the merchant ship clear of the orbital station where the shuttle still hung in dock. Real-space engines cut in, and Ganwold began gradually to shrink on the lounge viewscreen.
Three days until lightskip to Adriat, Weil thought. What am I doing here? He glanced about the compartment at twenty-six merchant spacers and three legionnaires and felt again that someone was watching him.
When a voice over the intercom gave clearance, he rose and returned to his own cabin, next to the one with the placard on the door.
He’d just stretched out in his berth and pulled the microreader with the anthropologists’ report from his front pocket when he heard the wail. He tried to ignore it at first, but he couldn’t help listening as it swelled to a mournful pitch and ebbed to a sigh at irregular intervals. It rose over the throb from the engine room belowdecks; it emanated from the bulkheads. Weil felt his scalp prickle.
After a few moments he rose and slid open the portal. Listening, he stepped into the passage.
The moan reached him clearly, coming from the compartment with the AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY sign. He’d known that had to be its source. He stood still, heart beating hard against his ribs—and in a distracted clinical way briefly wondered at its rate. Be sensible, he chided himself. There’s a logical explanation for this.
He seized the lever, flung the door open.
Amber eyes glowed at him out of darkness. The keening turned to a hiss. Weil substituted several jabs at the light button for a gasp, and missed three times before he connected.
Crouched in the lower berth beside the capsule, with clawed hands spread on its cover, the alien drew back bloodied lips from his teeth. A bottom canine had been broken. He raised one hand like a readied weapon.
Weil sank back from the doorframe, his heart still racing. But when the alien began groping at the capsule’s seals, he shook his head. “Don’t! Don’t! You’ll hurt him, understand? He’s not dead. He’s—he’s asleep. Don’t hurt him!”
The frantic hands paused. The striped face tilted and the eyes narrowed, questioning.
“That’s it,” Weil said, nodding. “That’s it.” He felt his tension ebbing, felt his heart rate beginning to calm. He drew a long breath and said, “He’s all right.” He kept his tone calm, soothing. “I won’t hurt him. I won’t hurt you. It’s going to be all right, understand?”
Hunched by the capsule, the gan eyed him for a long time before he gave a single acknowledging blink.
* *
Sitting alone in the spacers’ mess, Weil placed the meat portion of his meal in a paper towel, wrapped it carefully, and slipped it into his jacket pocket. Though synthetic, a protein concoction of some type rather than real meat, it would have to do. He rose, slid his utensils and tray into the collection bin, and made his way back to the prisoner’s cabin.
The alien peered down at him from the upper berth when he stepped inside. He pulled the soggy package from his pocket, unfolded the wrapping, spread it out in front of the gan. “This won’t taste like what you’re used to,” he said, “but it’s all there is.”
The gan sniffed at his offering, wary. Wrinkled his nose at it. But, plainly hungry, he hesitated only a moment before he picked it up, smelled it more carefully, then ventured a cautious bite. He cocked his head as if puzzled by its flavor but continued to eat.
Feeling oddly relieved, Weil returned to his own cabin.
The anthropology report still lay on the berth where he’d left it. He scooped it up, sank into the cabin’s single chair, and flicked it on.
As he read, questions began to curl up in his mind like wisps of smoke. What would the authorities do with the alien if he were discovered? Dispose of him through an airlock? What would they do with him if he made it all the way to Issel? Weil felt certain they wouldn’t return him to Ganwold. And how would the boy react when he learned what had happened to his friend? Remembering the way he’d fought in the guardhouse, appearing more animal than human, Weil set his teeth.
The questions kept him awake through the ship’s simulated night, kept him restless in his berth. They tangled themselves with portions of the anthropology report and ran through his memory again and again as if caught in a loop.
The anthropology report! That’s it! The scientists had emphasized the strength of the fraternal bond between gan males. Could he perhaps cl
aim a psychological link as well? That the companionship was as necessary for psychological stability as for physical safety in their primitive lifestyles? What he had witnessed in the cell would certainly tend to support that.
Weil shoved himself out of the berth, his heart racing. He fumbled through the stowage compartment, among his clothes, for the microreader containing the report. He had to create a medical record for the prisoner, documenting his instability and tendency toward violence when separated from his alien companion. Weil could even claim, after watching the alien try to tear open the capsule, that the instability went both ways. He’d have to embellish it some—but then, that would be nothing new. Every officer evaluation he’d ever written or received, he well knew, had been as much fiction as fact.
Half-way through tapping his conclusions and recommendations into his microwriter, another set of questions crossed his mind: Why are you doing this? What does it even matter to you?
He sat for several minutes trying to rationalize his actions, but there didn’t seem to be any reasonable answers. The authorities on Ganwold had accused the boy of criminal activities, after all. Weil could be court-martialed himself if his attempt to “obstruct justice” were discovered.
He didn’t believe the criminal story. Something else motivated this, something that left him uncomfortable. He felt as if he’d been made an unwitting accessory to an abduction.
* *
Waiting inside the hangar shell, out of the early winter sleet, Dylan Dartmuth scanned the roiling darkness for flashes of a shuttle’s approach lights.
Nothing yet. It left him with an odd sense of reprieve, a sense that there might still be a chance, if he could come up with a plan.
Better forget it, he counseled himself. He’s a prisoner being transferred. Most likely a dangerous prisoner, to be transferred in stasis. So there’s an uncanny resemblance, that’s all.
He narrowed his gaze on the outline of Bonne Fortune’s landing boat. Its skin shimmered with receding heat. Around it, the private landing area resembled a topographical map of icy lakes.
Dylan shivered and crossed his arms over the Academy flightline patches and tech sergeant rank on his field jacket. The Sector General’s private spaceport had no permanent staff; Dylan had been conscripted for duty here today much as he’d been conscripted into the Sector General’s service in the first place.
He felt a lot older than thirty-five. The Great War had ended his childhood before he reached the age of ten, in a single night of torture that had left him maimed and his twin brother dead. There had been no access to medical care then, to repair the damage done by his mother’s interrogators; he still limped. His gray eyes had hardened to steel, his mouth to a serious line beneath his dark mustache, and most of his hair had gone gray.
Leaning against the pressmetal siding, he couldn’t keep himself from glancing over his shoulder toward the center of the dome hangar. His cohorts ranged about in pairs and small knots, some leaning on grain drums stamped GANWOLD, which they had unloaded and stacked. They all kept a distance from the soldiers, the alien, and the medical capsule whose cover still bore beads of rainwater.
Helping to unload the capsule, Dylan had glimpsed its occupant’s face and found himself remembering a childhood hero, a combat pilot with a Topawan accent and a ready smile who had flown in the battle which bought Adriat’s short-lived liberation, and survived to marry Dylan’s older sister.
It had been years since Dylan had seen the man that young pilot had become: hero of all the Unified Worlds now, but very much alone despite his place in the public eye.
Held by the youth’s familiarity, Dylan had asked the medical officer, “Who is he, sir? What’s the matter here?”
He’d read wariness in the captain’s appraisal of him. Had half expected the younger man to disdain replying to an enlisted man’s question. But the doctor had said, “He’s a prisoner being transferred to Issel.”
Dylan had recoiled. “To Issel? He’s bloody young for a sentence like that! What’s he done, sir?”
The doctor flicked a glance backward and, noting how the legionnaires stood off, cradling their rifles, he said, “I don’t know. They wouldn’t tell me that.”
In another moment the soldiers began to saunter toward them, and the medical officer had given him a warning motion. “Dismissed, sergeant.”
Dylan had turned away, but not before he’d read the distress creasing the doctor’s face, and he knew the captain from Ganwold didn’t believe the boy was a criminal any more than he did himself.
Five
Tristan became aware first of being cold, of shivering, and then of voices, and hands massaging sensation into his limbs, and moving him, and wrapping him in something warm. The shivering didn’t begin to ease for a long time. He tried to open his eyes, tried to lift a hand to rub them, but the effort left him exhausted.
A hand slid under his head and neck, raising him slightly, and a voice above his head said, “Come on, kid, try to drink a little now.” Another hand put a drinking tube to his mouth.
Suddenly aware of his thirst, he took the water in gulps, so he almost choked on it.
The tube drew away. “Easy there!” the voice said. “You’ll upset your stomach. That’s enough!” The hand eased him down.
Without any warning discomfort, he retched. Hands supported his head until it ended, then wiped his mouth and nose and chin. The voice held an apology. “I was afraid of that. Your stomach’s been empty for too long. Go back to sleep now. We’ll try some more later.”
He remembered moments of rousing, vague memories of the drinking tube and vomiting, and hands, and a shadow leaning over him between stretches of sleep.
Tristan sensed that several more hours had passed by the time he woke enough to perceive his surroundings. Dim light from his left drew his attention; it filtered through a cover hung over a large opening. Turning over to face it, his hand slipped off the surface on which he lay. He jerked it back with a gasp.
Through eyes that wouldn’t focus he scanned ceiling and walls. He estimated the room at about four arm-lengths wide and maybe twice as long—half the size of the stone room in which he’d lost consciousness. And he was alone.
“Pulou!” he whispered.
He struggled the covers off, puzzled at the effort it required, and pushed himself to a sitting position. His vision spun—momentarily tunneled. Waiting for the dizziness to pass, he tried to shed the loose garment that hung from his shoulders, but it had twisted around his thighs. He untangled it enough to slide one leg over the edge and reach for the ground with his foot; the other leg followed. He stood up slowly and staggered, strengthless as a newborn peimu. Gaining a little balance, he stumbled toward the opening, pushed its cover away with one hand—
—and crashed into something as solid as the walls.
He crumpled, robbed of wind, weak, his nose and forehead throbbing. Drawing on the shred of strength he had left, he dragged himself to his knees, panting hard. He groped for a way out of the curtains but they clung like a spider’s web, and dizziness swallowed him. He reached out for something to steady himself. One hand found smooth solidity; he leaned against it.
As the giddiness ebbed he opened his eyes, and his breath snagged in his throat. He shrank back as if the wall might give way into the thin air it appeared to be.
Beyond it, open space dropped away to a depth he didn’t want to glimpse the bottom of and stretched across smoky daylight to a skyline of cylindrical towers. The scent of the wind burned his nostrils, making him wrinkle his nose. He saw movement against the skyscape, and glimpsed vehicles that careened between the towers like insects through tall grass. His stomach turned under his ribs.
He still sat there staring, not daring to move for fear of losing his balance and toppling out, when something clicked and rasped softly behind him. He turned slightly, in time to see part of the wall sliding closed behind a man in uniform.
&nb
sp; Shadows concealed his face but Tristan recognized him at once. He swallowed, mouth suddenly dry. Tried once more to push himself back from the edge, to gain his feet. He raised one hand like bared claws in a desperate attempt to warn the man back.
But the man set down the box he carried, crossed to him in two strides, and dropped to his heels beside him. “Good grief, kid!” he said. “I leave the room for two minutes and you get out of bed!” He caught Tristan by the shoulders when he swayed. “Are you all right?”
Tristan managed to hiss at the grip—a combat posture among the ganan—and tried to struggle.
The man didn’t let go. “I’m not going to hurt you,” he said. “Come on.” He steered Tristan back to the bed and settled him in. “You’re still groggy,” he said. “You shouldn’t be getting up unassisted like that. The oxygen level here is lower than you’re used to, and the grav is higher, and stasis always leaves a person weak and shaky for a few days anyway. . . . Now, how did you get that knot on your forehead?”
Tristan tried to touch the bruise but he could barely raise his hand. “That looks open,” he said with a random wave at the curtain, “but it’s hard—like stone.” His speech sounded garbled even to himself. His lips and tongue and mind all seemed thick, fuzzy, disconnected. And that increased his sense of urgency. “Have t’ find Pulou,” he said. “They hurt ‘im.” He tried to push himself up.
“Take it easy.” The man pressed him back down with a hand on his shoulder. “There’s no need to get upset. Your friend is fine; he’s asleep in my room. I’ll bring him in later. Let’s just take care of you right now, okay?” He reached for Tristan’s wrist.
Tristan twitched his hand away from the man, baring his teeth.
“Hey, relax!” the other said. “I just need to count your pulse!”