by Jim Rudnick
Moving the work of that separation to twins had been an idea the previous Master Adept had come up with, and she thanked her predecessor for that initiative. It had worked out that twins, both with the needed Master abilities, could do what a single Master could not. Add in the new advances that now allowed this all to be done still in utero, and the chances for success increased exponentially.
They now had more than a dozen of the new ultra-twins living and growing up as Issians.
They had no idea what they were. They had no idea what they were going to be able to accomplish once puberty, and the realizations of who they could be, set in. In just another ten years, she thought, the first of them would be asked to join the Inner Circle, and that would become a self-fulfilling process for the next thousand years.
“Least that is how I see it,” she said to herself, as she sat on the small couch near the far wall, faced the doorway, and waited.
A minute later, the door opened and in came an aide, who bowed once to her and stood in front of her.
“Master, you wanted to know more about three things, and I have the information for you,” she said and closed her mouth. There was no more need to talk.
The Master nodded, then peered into her aide’s mind, and saw what she wanted to know.
Captain Tanner Scott was ensconced into the academy facilities and had already made some real efforts in getting things squared away. That was a sidebar that she was happy to note. She knew he’d been called to Eons, but it was not for any academy work at all. The admiral seemed happy too, which was another extra that she almost grinned at.
Our deal with the Barony to accept their whole naval academy and stitch it into our own—including the enormous payments that went along with that move was a bonus too.
Scott wouldn’t know why he was here for quite a while, and yet, it was so nice to see he actually was helping out.
Point two was the recent MedWard twinning, and she had received the full report on her console about that yesterday, but it was also nice to get a direct set of thoughts from the doctor too. Zara and Ella had done well; embryos were both viable, and it would be weeks until testing could tell if the one twin was going to be superior.
Like the rest, she thought and smiled.
And lastly, the third thing she had asked for information about was Kendal Steyn and her group of protesters. She continued, it appeared, to attract new converts—if you could call a handful of them important to even measure. She too, but thirty years back, had been one of the earliest twinning tests, back when things were done manually. Her twin, however, had not succumbed and been stillborn—hence, her being held up at the Secure MedWards for all these years. Taking the chance to bring Kendal into the Inner Circle had been a major discussion, and finally it was voted down. They could not risk having an Inner Circle member have a twin—even a twin like Mariam who drooled and needed to be fed with a tube—alive. No one knew what that might cause, so the chance was not taken.
Hence, Kendal’s pre-occupation with the Twins Cooperative and her attempts at publicizing something. She had no inside knowledge of what was being done—but she still had a few followers.
The Master Adept shook her head. She now had the names and information about the newest members, and she knew that it would be apropos for them to be contacted in the near future with a small warning about the Twins Cooperative. Something negative but not forceful, perhaps just something about their plans might work.
As she noodled around the thinking on that, she dismissed her aide who bowed one more time and left the living area of the tower. A plan was needed to start to derail the Twins Cooperatives small success in growth.
#####
As she lay in her bed, tossing first one way and then the other, Kendal knew it was coming once again.
The restlessness that she felt was the one thing that always heralded an upcoming session with Miriam, and she propped up an extra pillow behind her head. From here, she couldn’t see outside to the garden at the back of the house—that untended and sadly neglected garden. From here, she could see the small alley that ran beside her little bungalow and the total lack of traffic at this late night hour. Sometimes, there were walkers who strode by, in an attempt to walk to healthiness, while other times those small electric trikes cruised by, carrying folks home from a night out over in the main dome of Aporia. Above her, the planet itself was almost hidden, but she could still see a section of the planet’s ring, shining in the moonlight like a tiara over Eons.
Living here in the far west dome was a pleasure if you wanted privacy, something Kendal wished she could have right now, as her left leg cramped up and she gasped as the muscles contracted suddenly.
Miriam was there, in her mind, screaming at her. The twin that somehow had not been stillborn, but those thirty-some odd years ago been birthed alive, screamed at Kendal, and the words were full of hate.
She writhed on her bed in the MedWard secure wing; her left foot and its long toenails scrabbled at the sheet and even tore it somewhat. Her arms were pinned—restrained they called it—so that she couldn’t move her torso very much, but it was still arched up and lifted right off the bed. Her neck was twisted up to support her head, and from her mouth, the almost inhuman cries were coming out as loud as she could yell.
One fingernail on her right hand had not been very closely trimmed, and she sunk that nail into the palm of her hand and drew blood. The nail dug deeper and deeper, and blood now dripped onto the floor, notifying the AI that there was an issue in the room with the patient. She even had a couple of inches of free movement as she whipped that arm back and forth all the time.
She screamed even louder, her eyes shut as tightly as possible.
“I want them dead! I want them to die! I want them to be tied to this bed for thirty years … I want them dead!” she screamed over and over.
Kendal reached over for the other pillow and jammed it over her head, but it was impossible to drown out her twin’s screams. Whatever Miriam yelled, she heard full volume in her own head. Whatever Miriam felt body-wise, she too felt and knew that when they added extra sedation to Miriam’s IV, the cramps would go away and her own body would relax in sync with Miriam’s body.
She could not speak back to Miriam—she could only receive these unholy rants from her twin, and she only wished that she could do that.
Kendal twisted as the cramp in her side deepened and her breathing grew shallower until that cramp went away.
In the MedWard secure administration center, a nurse looked at the chart of the patient she’d just been notified about and noted the huge red border around the NO CONTACT orders. But there was blood on the floor, and that meant that the patient would need, even at a minimum, some kind of cleaning and bandaging. So she ignored the standing orders and clicked through to the AI that she wanted access to the patient’s room. Walking down the corridor all the way to the end, she stopped only to grab a cart with first aid equipment. At the door to the patient’s room, she palmed the security plate to allow herself access and went in to see the patient.
Inside she was shocked even more at the appearance of the patient; the vids back in administration hadn’t captured just how bad off this woman looked, as she moved over to the right-hand side of the bed and down at the floor.
The patient’s mouth was wide open, but in a silent scream, the nurse thought, as she stooped to wipe up the few drops of blood. As she rose, the patient’s right hand grabbed at her neck, seizing it in a grasp that was like a vise.
The nurse almost choked as the fingers tightened severely around her windpipe, and it was only with both hands that she was able to unlock those fingers from her throat.
She stepped back and shook her head; this was truly a patient from hell. As she made a large change in the IV sedative dosages, the patient quickly lay back down at rest instead of fighting it all.
Looking at the palm of the patient’s right hand was easy. After she cinched up the restraints as tight as t
hey could be, she quickly daubed the deep cut with water to wash it and then an antiseptic spray, and finally she pressed a self-adhesive bandage over the whole palm.
She took note of the time for her report and then left the patient’s room, towing the cart behind her.
Kendal, of course, had seen all of this, and as Miriam began to quiet, the link with her twin lessened.
She sent her love and told her for the millionth time that she’d see her twin freed somehow … someday …
CHAPTER FIVE
Twisting the flyer into a shallow dive, Tanner dropped her down, as if he was a pilot with thousands of hours of stick-time, in the landing port at Tower Number Two. “Not that there even was a stick,” he said to himself, “but still, the flyer was fun.“ Too bad the job ahead looked so daunting.
He nodded once more to the Provost guard at the edge of the landing tarmac and walked toward the massive wide-open doors of the Tower. After reading the reports that had flooded his console over at his office at the Eons landing port, he knew this one was supposedly the worst off when it came to occupancy permits. Everything was behind, everything had been short-shipped, and from what he’d been able to determine off the monitor reports, everyone was blaming everyone else.
He nodded to a couple of cadets, who were slugging cartons up the stairs to the front deck off the doors and loading dollies at the same time. Cases already stacked said that they held classroom desks, ready to be assembled, made he noted over on Amasis, the big Barony manufacturing world. Good to know, he thought, and he walked by the long lineup of dollies.
At least, goods were being delivered—though why it’d be such a big thing in his earlier read reports that they weren’t. That needed a look-see too, he thought, and he wandered into the enormous lobby rotunda.
Here, as this was such a major student area, there would be—well, there was in fact, a large greeting reception area with a round circular table that must have been fifty feet across, supported by what would eventually be receptionists helping cadets find their way. Or visitors. Or tourists maybe, and at that he smiled, but he pushed away any thoughts of wide-eyed tourists at a naval academy.
He went over to a sergeant in the Provost guards and said, “Excuse me, Sergeant?”
“Don’t wanna hear it, I’ve no bloody idea, Cadet, where anything goes!” he barked before he turned around, but once he saw a full captain behind him, he snapped to attention.
“Sir, apologies—didn’t know it was you, Sir. Just that the cadets all seem to not know—”
“Yes, Sergeant, I got it. Not a problem. I just wanted to know where the admin for this tower would be located?” Tanner asked nicely. The guard was obviously fed up with questions about things he had no idea about, hence the quick reply, but that didn’t matter to him.
The guard nodded and then pointed to the far glass wall that peeked from behind the rows of boxes lined up against it.
“Behind that glass doorway, Sir—down to the second door to starboard, Sir,” he replied.
Tanner nodded and smiled. “Remember, Sergeant, most of these cadets are new to life—let alone new to Tower Number Two … do cut them a bit of slack—as a personal favor to me, Sergeant?” he asked nicely.
And he received a nod, a salute, and a snappy “Yes, Captain” in return.
He walked by the bank of elevators, noting that here due to the huge influx of student cadets that would occur daily, someone had put in twelve elevators, which was a good thing. He also noted there wasn’t single piece of that yellow tape that showed an elevator was closed, and that too was a good thing—and that did get a smile from him, the elevator whisperer indeed!
He looked again at the cases that were stacked up. Several of them were labeled as classroom desks, again from Amasis, and after a quick count, he realized there were at least a thousand of same here in the lobby. That did seem odd, but then he really had no idea as to the total number needed above, so he filed that away for later double-checking.
Finding the edge of the glass wall was easy, as it jutted out from tall boxes stacked horizontally that claimed to be white boards. He went in through the opening in the glass wall. Doors to come later, he theorized and went down the hallway to the second door to the right and through the opening there too.
What was ahead of him was perhaps typical of what one might find on a job site, but Tanner still stopped cold.
A series of doors, many doors, were stacked up to form makeshift desks on which lay reams and reams of blueprints and wide paper architectural design layouts. Some were being held down by cans of paint so that they didn’t roll up while others had hard hats doing the holding. Few of the tables didn’t have someone staring down at them, but the big central table made from double doors had a group of five construction workers, all staring and talking. No one paid any attention to him at all, as he walked in to stand opposite the big central table.
“Can’t be. Can’t be out by two feet on the bias, Bill. Best thing is to re-check the Add-On checklist and see—as I remember about four months ago, we got an Add-On to change those dimensions all across floor thirteen,” one said as he pointed at something on the blueprints.
“Oh, it’s two feet all right—two goddamn bloody feet that means that the whole lecture theater will be minus one hundred and twenty feet lengthwise, so that means, what, ten less students? Theaters to all be the same, student total—and this one is out,” another said.
“Which means we steal two feet from the other side, then two from the next three theaters all the way to the east side services corridor, and that’ll do that,” Bill, the one wearing the pressed shirt, said as an answer.
They all stopped talking and started pointing. They seemed to lean back a bit to digest this idea, and in doing so, a couple of them looked up at Tanner.
“Uh—Sir? Can we help you?” one of them said.
Tanner just stared at them all and then focused on the head man who’d spoken.
“Is this solution pretty normal?” he asked, which got a frown on just about every face.
One of the men laid a hand out to stop anyone else from talking.
“And you, Sir are …?” he asked, his tone not quite insulting but definitely superior. He was about fifty years old with a clean-shaven face and balding head with little gray wisps of hair and a nice clean pressed shirt. No nametag or rank showed on the man—he was a civilian for sure, and Tanner suspected he was the head of the construction crew here at Tower Number Two.
He smiled but made sure to wipe it off his face almost immediately.
“I am Captain Tanner Scott—2IC here on Eons for the new academy build. So you report to me, I’d think. And again, my question is—does this kind of workaround for construction problems happen often—and is the answer I just heard the one you’re going to go with?” he said, his voice flat and hard.
The man didn’t flinch. Didn’t react at all. He stood there for about a half a minute, processing what he’d just heard, Tanner imagined, and then spoke up.
“Doubt you’re my boss, Captain. But yes, this kind of thing does happen—building four brand new towers each with over seven hundred thousand square feet of space to design, build, then equip is a lengthy job. Add to that, that the designs you see here,” he said as he tapped the wad of blueprints on the makeshift table in front of them, “get changed almost weekly—Add-Ons, we call them. Move that wall on foot east to now meet with bulkhead J-34GT6 kind of thingy. And then they get changed again and again. It’s like trying to hit a moving target … all invisible when the building is up and occupied, Captain. So yes, what we are now considering is to not affect the size of a lecture theater—to keep its student population size what was asked for—demanded in fact—by making changes in a side corridor. Do you follow me, Captain?” he said, and he crossed his arms on his chest.
Defensive body language, Tanner thought, but still he had to agree when he heard the truth.
“My apologies if I sounded adversarial, but I am y
our boss. And yes, I know what you just said was both pragmatic and truthful at the same time. Carry on—and I’d sign off on the change you just made too, if you’d care to know,” he added.
The man looked happy and held out his hand as a token of respect. “Captain Scott—I’m Superintendent Bill Chapman—glad to meet you. And thanks!” he added as they shook hands.
Tanner nodded to them all and then went out of the administration area and to the elevators.
He hitched a ride up to floor thirteen and noted as he got off that he could hear power tools being used in many locations on this floor. Moving to his far left, he went down a corridor that ran parallel to the tower wall and slowly moved its full length. From what he could see, the eight-foot-wide corridor on the east side of the tower was fine. If this was the corridor that would end up being only six feet wide—to accommodate the full lecture theaters—then that change was fine. Small rooms were off the corridor, most likely he thought for janitorial, IT, and quartermaster stores, and that didn’t need a full eight feet of clearance in the corridor.
Least, I hope not, he reasoned, as he turned back to the elevator area and then picked a lecture theater to enter.
Moving through the doorway that actually had doors, which was a surprise, he entered and then stopped at the top of the aisle ahead that moved down almost thirty feet via landings. Each landing level had an arc of desks, already assembled and placed in a long row pointing down to the stage area below. There were ten of those rows and desks, and he didn’t bother to count, but he saw that a two-foot section, cut off one whole side wall, would decrease the number of students by ten students.
“Good workaround,” he said to himself, and in his book, that Chapman fellow went up a notch…