Jade Star (Tanager Book 1)

by Cedar Sanderson

  “When the changes started, and the deaths, it overwhelmed us. My staff...” He looked up at the ceiling abruptly and I could see his throat working as he swallowed his tears. “First vaccinations are always to medical.”

  “Which makes sense.” I didn’t want to stop the flow, but he was about to lose it. “You didn’t know, couldn’t have known. What you need to do now is figure out how to help them.”

  He pounded on the counter, making me jump a little. “I can’t! They won’t let me!”

  “What do you mean?” I was confused. Dayne had sent me in here to recruit Greff’s help, I thought.

  “The changed ones don’t want to go back.” He grimaced. “They like their new form, and their new strength. All of them, which is improbable, and I can’t bear to let them know how afraid I am.”

  “You didn’t change. Did everyone change?”

  He shook his head. “Not all, but the unchanged... started disappearing.”

  I shoved my mug across the counter toward him. “Not Dayne, and he’s the one that sent me in here to get you to come help.”

  “Dayne did change.” Greff took the mug automatically. “He’s one of them. He just wants me to come out so they can get me.”

  I opened my mouth, and then shut it again. I didn’t know. I didn’t know either of them, I didn’t know this station - I didn’t even know where I was. I had seen two living people, didn’t have the equipment or the know-how to check either one’s story... my skin crawled.

  “You think I’m paranoid and crazy, don’t you?” Greff must have been able to read my face while I was thinking all that.

  “I don’t know.” I answered him honestly, and then had a question of my own. “Where are we? What the name of the station, and the planet?”

  He blinked and looked surprised. “Termine station in orbit around End World. We’re the end of the trade route, out here. The only reason we’re even on the trade route is the Almeida’s Stones we can bring in, and those are... do you know what they are?”

  I nodded, thinking about what Dayne had told me. I wondered if I could trust that. “I’ve never heard of Termine, though.”

  He came around the counter and sat down, looking at me. “Who are you? Where did you come from?”

  “Is that relevant?” I asked.

  “No...” he sounded puzzled. “But how did you come here, when we’re under siege?”

  “Under siege?” I echoed. It was an interesting choice of words. I also noted with an internal amusement that I was losing my rockjock way with words, myself.

  “The embargo, the crisis...” He trailed off. “How did you get here?”

  “I am beginning to wonder that myself.” I paused to think. I didn’t want to tell him about my friends, or my own crisis. It seemed too deeply personal. “I was out prospecting. Our claim is in the Oort Cloud...”

  He interrupted me. “Which one?”

  “Old Sol.” I shrugged. “It’s an old claim, dates back to the early Asteroid Rush, I married into it.”

  He looked wide-eyed. “That’s... that’s...”

  “A long way from here? I guessed that. I don’t know how I got here, though. I blacked out, and when I woke up...” Now I shrugged. “I was adrift no more than an hour from Termine, although I didn’t know what it was. In a scooter.”

  “A scooter?”

  “Small craft, about three days range, not interstellar.” I told him. Stood to reason a medical man wouldn’t know what it was.”

  “Earth is a three-month trip. With warpspace between systems.” He mused, stroking his chin. “You were brought here for a reason.”

  “Eh?” I didn’t know how he’d come to that conclusion. I’d been thinking that my little friends had brought me to the furthest human settlement for a reason, but not any human reason.

  “It’s just too improbable otherwise.” He looked at me directly, studying me. I wondered what he saw. This new body, new person I was metamorphosing into, I didn’t know her yet myself. The only thing that was still me, still Jade, was my mind.

  He started to speak again, and I could hear in his voice that he’d gotten himself together. This was the crisp tone of a professional giving orders. “I need you to go to my clinic and get something from my desk. I can’t leave here, that would be walking right into their hands.”

  I blinked. “Won’t they attack me?”

  He shook his head. “They are attempting to hold to the rule of law, for now.”

  I gaped at him. There was something big I was missing, here. “This isn’t about a vaccination. This is...”

  “A revolution.” He broke in grimly. “One that started, probably generations ago, on the planet below us. I was on the brink of proving it and sending evidence to Earth when they took over the station.”

  I covered my face with my hands, my mind whirling. There was still too much I didn’t know, and I wasn’t sure I could trust this man, who seemed to think I was some sort of messenger from the Deity. Or something. I took a deep breath.

  “What do you need, and how do I get it?”

  A few moments later, armed only with a little more knowledge, I slipped quickly out of Greff’s hatch. It shut firmly behind me with a chirp as it latched. It could be broken into, but only by brute force and he was still clinging to the belief that his opponents were playing by rules. I stood in an empty corridor, looking around and wondering where Dayne had gone. Had he expected Greff to eliminate me, perhaps?

  Following the directions I had been given, I set off toward Greff’s office. It wasn’t far - rank hath its privileges, after all. The designers of Termine, at least, had been thinking. It’s not a big perk to let your people live near their workplace, but an easy one in this case. I’d been on few enough stations to judge layouts, but my youth had been spent on Earth, where planning was slipshod at best. I’d lived in Port, those last few years before my man scooped me out of the gutter, but that wasn’t convenience, it was desperation.

  There were signs. Bless those designers. I followed them to the medical offices, and then found Greff’s. I was still alone, in echoing corridors, although the back of my neck crawled as I knew I was being watched. They could watch me remotely, but something told me they weren’t far away. I could hear nothing, as much as I strained, even my footsteps muted in the anechoic tile flooring.

  The hatch to Greff’s office stood open, and I stopped short of it. I had been given the code, he’d told me it was left locked when he had fled at the end of a shift to his home. It should not be open...

  I stood there for a long time, barely breathing, and listening. Space in a scooter is not silent. Sure, space itself is silent death with the radio of the stars playing to no living audience all around you. But a scooter has creaks an’ moans as the metals in it react to stresses. And home, in the rock hab’ was never all quiet from the time the first young’uns came along.

  This much silence was a bit eerie. I think I’d have rather heard something, some rustle or cough or... but there was nothing. Finally, my legs starting to twitch from standing so long, I moved toward the office. I could see the desk through the opening. I paused again on the brink of stepping through the hatch, but there was still only silence. I stepped through and as my foot landed on the carpeting beyond the hatchrail, fireworks lit off in my head.

  I wasn’t fully unconscious for the fall, but I couldn’t even reach out my hands, falling full-length toward the geometric colored pattern which faded into gray sparkles in the fog.

  Chapter 5: The Ending of the End

  I awoke to the feeling of a broken nose, which told me that I’d gotten all the way to the floor after passing out. Pain radiated outward and through my head, and I was disinclined to open my eyes at first. Someone had been hiding behind the hatch and had hit me over the head. I hadn’t been able to hear them, but it was the only explanation. I swallowed blood and snot, then coughed reflexively. I wasn’t in full gravity any longer, which made me flail as I adjusted.

  So
meone caught my arms and brought me back down to the surface I’d been lying on. About half-grav, I’d guess. Considerable less than a grav.

  “Shhh.. shhh. ‘Sok.” A voice murmured by my ear. “S’ok. Drink?”

  I tried to open my eyes and couldn’t, which made me twitch again. They felt... taped. Probably medical tape, given where I’d been ambushed. I nodded and the unseen captor released my arms. I wasn’t bound, but I wasn’t going to make any sudden moves while I was blind. An arm around my shoulders helped me up just a little while the lip of a water bottle was pushed to my mouth.

  I drank. Lukewarm water, and I needed it. My mouth was crusty from the gunk that felt like it was dried all over my face, and it tasted nasty. I drank until I couldn’t any longer, and then turned my face sharply, feeling the rest of the water gush over my skin.

  “Oh, now.” My unseen caretaker clicked their tongue. A minute later a damp rag was washing my face, careful to avoid my hot and swollen nose. I flinched a little, couldn’t help it, that hurt. But I was grateful for the care.

  “Who...?” I croaked once they finished.

  I wondered how long I’d been lying there and if this was the same person who’d hit me. It wasn’t Dayne, the voice was wrong. I had no sense of sight, or smell, to test with. Feel, well, the arm around my shoulder was very warm, but I didn’t feel cold. Micro-gravity, so not in the medical offices any longer unless something catastrophic had happened.

  Hearing... Nothing. The person holding me wasn’t even breathing, that I could hear. I thrashed in a sudden panic. I’d wanted to die, not too long ago. And then I had wanted to live. Really live. Not the life of comfort as a pampered pet, idle and indulged. It hadn’t been a conscious decision, until this moment, when I realized that I was in the care of... something.

  “What are you?” I gasped, having rolled away from the too-warm grasp and finding myself half on the wall, half on the rubber flooring of the station. I could feel grit under my fingertips as I clung to the wall, trying to regain my feet on oddly rubbery legs.

  “Not human, I’m afraid.” The whispery voice sounded regretful. “I did not intend to hurt you. Securing your eyes was for your own safety.”

  I didn’t want to see it. I agreed with it on that point. “Are you one of the people who was... vaccinated?”

  “What?” I couldn’t read the tone of the voice. “Please explain.”

  I started talking, stopping only to cough and try to clear my throat of the drainage from my damaged nose and sinuses. A bottle was pushed into my hand gently, and I drank deeply, grateful that it seemed to bear me no harm. I kept talking, keeping back only my furry friends, telling the story as I had to Dayne, then what Dayne had said, and finally, some of what Greff told me.

  “I see.” The voice sounded further away, and was drawn out, slowly forming each word. “You lack the information you need to decide whether you are safe. Having been harmed, there is no reason for you to trust any of us.”

  “No, there isn’t. But I’ll be damned if I know how to get out of this, with armed men between me and any ship even if I cared to steal one.”

  “You have ethics.” The voice was very close, suddenly, and I felt a rush of air moving against my cheek, as though there were... something... coming near me. I tried not to flinch.

  “I try.” I admitted. “There’ve been times I couldn’t afford ethics, long ago.”

  “You do not appear to have a ‘long ago’ in terms I would accept.” The voice was chiding.

  I remembered my appearance, and that I hadn’t accounted for my changes. “I am not all that I seem.” I admitted.

  “No?” The voice was very quiet, and very near again. “Perhaps you can understand, then.”

  “Understand what?” I was hoping it wouldn’t ask me more about myself. I wasn’t sure I could explain that. I didn’t know all of it.

  “Changes. Decisions and the changes that come from them.”

  “May I take the tape off my eyes?” I’d changed my mind. Being blind was viscerally frightening. Nothing I could see, I was sure, would be as bad as not being able to see.

  “Allow me to explain, and then... yes.” The voice was in my ear, intimate as a lover’s whisper. I sat very still, propped against the wall, feeling the fitful movements of the being as it moved. A little motion in the air... I wondered suddenly if there was enough oxygen. The atmosphere having the wrong mix could explain this light-headed feeling.

  “It all began long ago. However long ago you understand it as... this long ago was before Man leapt from Earth into the stars. The Singularity, they called it, and some few longed for it, to mingle blood with the cold silicone of machine intelligence.”

  I must have made an incredulous noise, because the voice sounded amused, and more distant. “I know it’s a fairy tale. But it’s my story.”

  I nodded. I knew it could see me. It wasn’t that far away.

  “When mankind reached this outpost, and called it the living end, so too did a few scientists who were dedicated to prolonging life. Life is, as you know, a messy dangerous proposition. So many chances we take... and bodies wear out. A school arose, dedicated to pursuing life and longevity. With the fabulous wealth of the Almeida Stones, funding was never an issue. Until, finally, the answer was found.”

  The tone became pensive, and I wondered how much this being was telling by rote, and how much from memory. “It was not, as had been speculated long before, by uploading consciousness to machines. Machines wear out, in time, become obsolete. No, the answer must lie, they thought, in blending what the body already did so well, with more durable materials.”

  “The telomeres?” I asked, remembering a therapy that had promised much about the time I was released from Earth to see the stars with no barrier of atmosphere, only one of alumiglass.

  “In part. But through the creation of tiny machines, we have become ultimately self-repairing.”

  I shivered a little, finally beginning to understand what was speaking to me. “You’re machine and human?”

  “Such a prejudice exists against it, and why? Really, it’s not more than an enhancement. A change, yet...”

  “I have no problem with the idea.” I spoke after the voice was silent for a long moment. “But I’m guessin’ not all went accordin’ to plans.”

  “No. You are perceptive, even deprived of sight. The delivery system of the enhancement went awry. Something was corrupted, and the translation of the programming has been... insufficient.”

  “People died.” I filled in the gaps. “And those who lived, aren’t able to pretend to be human are they?”

  The voice was very near again. “Some can pass. We treasure those. You have met one, I believe.”

  “So why all the pretense?” I asked, touching my hot and throbbing nose gently with one hand. It had stopped bleeding but was very swollen. Broken, as I’d thought.

  “We didn’t know what you were, or where you’d come from. But the hope was that you would be able to carry a message.” The voice was traveling as it spoke, away from me. I could hear a faint echo in the last few words.

  I reached up and felt for the ends of the tape. It wasn’t, thank ghu, wrapped all the way around my head, so it only pulled a few hairs and tugged at my eyebrows as I pulled it off. I was almost grateful to whoever had put it on for using the low-adhesive medical tape. There were worse things. I rubbed my face, feeling the pain in my sinuses and the slightly sticky residue.

  Then I opened my eyes. I was alone, all alone, in a dim corridor. I realized this was a maintenance area, at the skin of the station. I could see the struts of the supports, the bones of this place, jutting out into the corridor. The far wall was smooth, the one I leaned against was slightly curved, and the struts were like tree trunks in a child’s drawing, flaring as they entered the floor of this corridor. Anything could be hiding behind them.

  I pushed myself to my feet, testing my balance and the gravity. Both were uncertain. I stood there for a long moment, o
ne hand on the strut. When I was sure I could move without a fall, I started to walk in the direction I’d last heard the voice. I didn’t know where I was, and I did want to see what I was dealing with.

  The thing is, all those years ago when I’d seen the stars for the first time, I’d thought I was in heaven. The stars meant freedom, a chance at a clean life with the scum of Earth wiped off my feet. Right now I was wondering if I'd been plunged into Hell. The station had been full of families. I'd lived a long time, and one thing I knew, swaying forward into the corridor and looking for an access hatch. You didn't get a large group of humans in one place and find a unanimous answer to a question. Any question.

  Even when the question was life? or death? There would always be someone who chose death. I was intimately acquainted with that choice. But not on Termine. Someone had taken all their choices away. I didn't think that someone was up here, they'd be safe on the planet below. I knew that I didn't know everything about this situation, there were missing pieces. But I had the big pieces. Enough to see that it had to stop here. The situation was bad, spreading it to other planets and stations would become...

  I was a rockjock. Folks think that's stupid, iggnerant, and dangerous. They get the last part right. But before they let me out into the stars I had to learn a lot of stuff. Before my children went out looking, I taught them. My man told me onc't, jokin' like, that on Earth I'd be worth a university professor or three. I might not know how to calc foldspace math - don't know anyone who can, in their head - but the formulas for exponential growth of a pathogen aren't that hard. I had tears on my cheeks by the time I found the hatch and stepped back into full grav.

  People would die. And what was left... I might have walked by the being that had been a human and was now only a voice, if I figgered right on what had happened. I wouldn’t see it unless it wanted me to, tape or not. I looked around, recognizing that I was in the lobby for the medical offices. They hadn't taken me far, whoever had tried to keep me from Geff's office. I headed for it again, knowing they were watching me. Had always been. No way to tell how many had survived transition. Could a child make that change without understanding what had happened? Maybe. A baby, though. I shook my head and saw the tears arc off my cheeks with the force of my movement.