Commander (The David Birkenhead Series)

by Phil Geusz

  I nodded. “Of course, sir.”

  “Excellent, then!” he agreed. Then he pulled out a card, scribbled on it, and added an imprint from his signet ring. “Take this to the Marcus Institute of Genetic Research,” he said, handing it to me. “And show it to Dr. Linda Cunningham. If she leaves a single question unanswered, then call me again and we’ll see what we can do about it. She can be a bit… well, difficult at times.”

  10

  “Difficult” was indeed a good word to describe Dr. Cunningham. Not only did the woman keep me waiting twenty minutes in her untidy anteroom, but she insisted on talking down to me as if I were a child. At first this enraged me so much that I nearly snapped back at her. Then I saw her do the same to a human and I realized that she perceived everyone around her as mentally deficient, not just us Rabbits. All in all the gengineer was one of the most unpleasant individuals I’d ever encountered.

  She was also, in a very real sense, my creator. For she’d designed not only me, but my father and mother as well.

  “Say ‘ah’ again,” she insisted for the third time, still peering down my throat. I didn’t at first understand why she insisted on starting our meeting with a complete medical evaluation—I offered to forward her the results of my last navy checkup, but she insisted on doing it all herself, employing her own nearly-antique instruments. I felt pretty awkward at disrobing in front of a female doctor—it was an unseemly profession for a woman, and I’d never met another. But I survived the ordeal somehow, including twice as much poking and prodding as I was used to. The process seemed to mollify Dr. Cunningham a bit, too—the longer it went on, the less abrasive she became. In fact, by the time she had me look at pictures and tell her stories about them she’d grown downright smug. “Very good, David!” she praised me as if I were a halfwitted kit. “Very good indeed!”

  Then she retired to her office, as imperious as His Majesty exiting the throne-room. I caught up with her a few short minutes later after putting my uniform back on. “You’re perfect, David!” she said with a smile as soon as I walked in. “Functioning exactly as planned. Except for the bad stomach, of course. I’m sorry about that! How could I foresee that you’d ever be stuck someplace without plenty of nice sweet hay to eat? You’ll recover, though. In fact, you’re well on your way already.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that. So instead I smiled and sat down. “Dr. Cunningham,” I began, trying to be diplomatic despite all I’d been through. “Uncle Robert tells me that you’re the finest gengineer in the universe.”

  Her face brightened. “I have to be,” she explained. “Because if one happens to be a female in our society, merely being very good at something isn’t enough to earn any respect.” Her head cocked to one side. “As a Free Rabbit, perhaps you understand?”

  “Perhaps,” I allowed. Then I changed the subject again, not being particularly comfortable with the current one. “I’ve been wondering. How in the world did you and the rest of the Marcus gengineers survive the Imperial occupation? I mean… This institution is a unique resource. No one else anywhere is half up to your level.”

  “We’re the economic and political heart of the House,” she agreed immodestly. “We designed the slaves, develop new medicines… You name it. That fire-lily you’re wearing on your tunic really ought to be a double-helix, you know.” She smiled. “It was easy, though things got a little hungry sometimes. We simply grabbed all the datacubes and vanished. The remaining House people formed an underground, and they helped us disappear.”

  I nodded back. Glassware and machinery could be replaced. Decades of data and highly-skilled human assets, not so much.

  “Anyway…” she continued, peering at me intently. “I’ve been instructed to answer every question you ask me, as completely and honestly as possible. If you want to know why your ears are bit on the short side compared to those of other Rabbits your size, it’s because the trait is hard-linked to some neuro-chemical processes and structures that amount to what might be loosely termed ‘moral courage’. I wanted for your eyes to be gray to match your fur. But I had to settle for blue because they’re linked in Rabbits to mathematical skills. You’re a whole series of compromises, David. It’s a lot of work to custom-design a being from scratch, I’ll have you know. In fact, it’s so difficult that I doubt we’ll ever attempt it on anything but a tiny handful of embryos. The cost-benefit ratio just isn’t there for gengineering anything but the most special of cases.”

  I gulped. Father’s eyes had been blue, too. So were Frieda’s. But my mother’s were gray, according to the pictures at least. This woman knew so much about me and who I was! I’d have to be careful indeed of what I asked—it’d probably be unhealthy for me to learn too much. “I… That’s not the issue,” I replied. “They told me long ago that I was designed to be a successful ship’s engineer, the first Rabbit to have humans serve under me.”

  “That’s right,” the doctor agreed, smiling again. “That’s why I made you exceptional. Because, as I just said a few moments ago, a merely very good Rabbit would never get any respect. It’s odd, isn’t it, how things work out? Everyone else in the universe is surprised, even shocked, at what you’ve accomplished. But I’m not.”

  I blinked. “Are… Are the rest of the Rabbits limited somehow? Intellectually, perhaps?”

  “They’re extremely easygoing, is all,” the doctor explained. “Dogs and Horses, too. They have practically no ambition. This isn’t an accident— it’s meant to help them accept their lot in life without putting up a fuss. It's far less damaging to a slave in an economic sense than, say, lowering his IQ. In some ways it can even be seen as a kindness. Plus, your brother and sister lapines are designed to make friends easily, and to be highly tolerant of each other. The group-bonds are tighter than in humans, in other words. In practice these social bonds extend to include their overseers and masters, so this also makes them forgiving by nature and willing to overlook abuse from them as well.” She sighed. “We’ve done a wretched thing to them, David. Mostly, that’s where you’re different than they are. Compared to most human males, your drive to Alphahood is still remarkably low. Yet for a Rabbit it’s much higher than average. This is what allows you to function as such an effective leader among your own kind—you’re sort of filling an unnatural vacuum. Of course, you’re also a noted if somewhat less than enthusiastic leader of humans. That’s because you’re likable, decisive, consistent, caring, ethical, and capable of making, articulating and executing good plans.”

  I blinked—this was all so important, and coming so fast! “I… I mean… I came about Frieda.”

  “I knew you would, eventually.” Her smile faded. “David… While I did most of the actual hands-on work on both you and her, the project manager who made all the key decisions was a certain Doctor Hadman. You probably never knew this, but he died in the same accident with your mother. It was a freak thing, really. They were riding in the same aircar when it crashed—he’d just performed a post-partum checkup on her, in fact.” Her face fell. “Things started going wrong for you very young, David. You were never meant to be raised by a single parent. I’ve always wanted to apologize for that, even though it was really no one’s fault. I was raised by my mother, you see. Alone. So I know how it was.”

  I nodded back. “Like you said, it wasn’t anyone’s fault.”

  “Anyway… Dr. Hadman and I had several rather energetic disputes about you, David. I took the position that it was wrong to mate-bond you genetically, or at least to mate-bond you to only one doe. I didn’t think it was ethical then, and I don’t think it’s ethical now. In my view the program should’ve either involved at least a dozen Rabbits of each sex or shouldn’t have been run at all. But the project was seen as too high-risk to expand—it’s still very illegal to create a slave with an urge to improve his situation!—and too important to cancel.” She sighed. “You were supposed to help free your kind, David. Each succeeding generation was to take a step in that direction. And I believ
e in that deeply, or I’d never have participated at all.”

  “It’s not your fault that I can’t be with Frieda,” I replied. “You tried to do the right thing. It just didn’t work out, was all.”

  She looked a bit relieved. “Thank you for that, David. Very, very much.” Her chair creaked as she shifted slightly in it. “Anyway… There are several options that might help you deal with your condition. I don’t think you’ll like any of them.”

  “Try me,” I suggested. “Something’s got to better than… This.”

  “We could give you drugs,” she explained. “To reduce your libido. But I’ll warn you—they’ll make you more passive as well. More accepting of the status-quo, like the other Rabbits. The two are inextricably linked in your kind.” Her brows knitted. “David… You’ve already done a lot both for the House and for bunnies everywhere. Most Rabbits are actually very happy creatures, deep down where it matters. For the first time, you’d truly be one of your own kind. It’d be quite a change for you, yes. A profound change, even. But—”

  “No,” I replied. “There’s too much at stake. If it were only about me, well… I might consider it. But… No.”

  “All right. Another option is to modify a doe for you. While Frieda was meant to appeal to you on many levels—her intelligence, personality, even her physical appearance—the prime factor involved is one of scent. If we can make a doe smell enough like Frieda, that just might do the trick.”

  I felt the corners of my mouth twist downwards into a scowl. “Are you telling me—“

  “Yes,” she interrupted. “I am. We’re all animals in a sense, David, including we humans. Scent is important to us. I know that this seems a bit demeaning, but—“

  “No,” I replied. “Even if it amounts to pretty much the same thing as… Well, just ‘no’.”

  “I wouldn’t either,” she admitted. “That’s probably why I’m a spinster, or at least part of it.” Her smile faded. “That leaves only one last alternative, David.”

  “And that is?”

  “Tough it out, kiddo. Get a counselor to help you deal with the emotional void, take long, cold showers to help with the physical need… Think of it as an incurable illness, and find ways to minimize your suffering. Because it is an illness in a sense, you see, and one that’s not likely to ever get any better. It won’t be easy, but you can do this if you really try. It won’t break you—I know it won’t!”

  I looked down at the floor. But I needed Frieda so much! “How do you know?” I asked. “Because you’re still single yourself? Or is it because you were the one who designed me?”

  “Neither,” she replied, crossing her arms. “It’s because I knew your father. Who had to deal with exactly the same situation after your mom’s accident, if you think about it. And you know what? If anything, he was the stronger for it.”

  11

  I spent the next few months wondering if Dr. Cunningham had spoken the magic words on purpose, or if it was merely fortuitous. “If your father could take it, so can you,” she’d as much as said. And that was that; she’d cited the highest authority possible. I didn’t respect anyone or anything like I did my father, and the highest praise anyone could offer was to compare me to him. After that, if anything I took pride in my suffering. It was one more thing I shared in common with the greatest Rabbit I’d ever known.

  The cold showers helped too.

  The psychiatrists of old had been obsessed with sexuality; they claimed that repressed urges always came out somewhere else. In my case I deliberately emulated Dad and threw myself into my work harder than ever. Perhaps the habit made me a bit dull socially, but it certainly got things done! My ground-facilities experts suggested that we take over one corner of a shipyard in Lord Hubert City, and I backed their decision wholeheartedly. Sure, the Imperials had wrecked the place. But then again they’d wrecked everything else on the planet as well, and in this case at least they’d made a less-than-thorough job of it. The drydock was of an obsolete design, but for small improvised warships of the sort we fencibles were interested in the facilities would be more than adequate, once repaired. There was also a hanger complex, three hardpoints and a well-designed taxiway network; even enough open space for us to set up barracks and classrooms for as many as a couple hundred trainees at a time. With luck someday we’d outgrow the facility, but for getting started it was just about perfect. The only drawback was the price—I winced as our purser wrote out the indent, but it was a good investment in the long-term. Land values on Marcus Prime would only rise as the recovery progressed. Uncle Robert suggested that perhaps the House might apply a little pressure on the owner to be more “reasonable”, but I vetoed that from the beginning. If the fencibles were to succeed, they needed the goodwill of the populace behind them. And nothing bred bad feelings more quickly than arm-twisting on financial matters.

  Good will was so important that I decided to go ahead and exploit my own celebrity status as well. While of course I’d already received dozens of offers to endorse products and appear in movies and such, I’d made it a point never to so much as acknowledge any of them. It was deeply wrong, I felt, to cash in on the trail of dead bodies I’d left in my wake. Even the Imperial ones. But here on Marcus, where I was legitimately a member of the ruling House as well as a hero, well… For the fencibles, I made exceptions. Soon I was wandering the planet, appearing at schools and festivals and such. I even gave speeches sometimes, though Uncle Robert was a bit vexed that I kept them short and never said much of substance. Mostly I told them that I considered them heroes for surviving the occupation, assured them that their leaders knew of their suffering and were doing all they could to alleviate it, and that the fencibles along with the regular army and navy were going to their best to prevent such a catastrophe from ever happening again. Furthermore, I added, they could help by supporting the fencibles. Humans and Rabbits alike found plenty to cheer about in these words, and once I found myself being carried about on the shoulders of a dozen mixed Rabbits and humans for half an hour as thousands chanted “David! David! David!” After that, however, I reluctantly accepted the navy’s offer to pay for a squad of Dogs to act as my personal security detachment, separate from the fencible budget and meant to last the rest of my life. Dogs were pleasant enough creatures, if a bit smelly—I had nothing against them. But it grated me deeply that they were necessary whenever I appeared in public. From then on events had to be scheduled and carefully planned; nothing could be spontaneous.

  Fortunately, in my private life things were better. Without even asking me, James and Uncle Robert had warned the local journalists that I was a very private Rabbit who needed a little space. Special favors, they implied, would be few and far between for any media outlet that pestered me in my home range. This worked surprisingly well at first; so long as I offered them a formal interview now and again the local Marcus reporters were wise enough to pretty much leave me alone. Since for a long time access to Marcus Prime was tightly restricted, this allowed me to settle in nicely. But once the travel bans were lifted, the paparazzi flowed in with a vengeance. They were fairly easy to outfox, however, especially since my fellow Rabbits understood perfectly well why I considered them so irritating. Soon I found myself walking to work every day in slave shorts with a shipping box containing my uniform hefted on my shoulder. Sometimes other Rabbits carrying similar containers and gardening tools walked with me, so that it appeared I was part of an ordinary work-gang. It was absolutely amazing how effective this disguise was, and I laughed myself silly every time an off-planet reporter asked the other bunnies about me and they all solemnly pointed in a dozen different directions—“Yes, sir! David was right over there just a few minutes ago!” Once a desperate-looking young man even asked me, and I practically giggled as I pointed. Eventually one of the professional nuisances would get smart enough to look past the fancy Sword and uniform and carefully examine what I really looked like. Among humans, however, the idea of adopting a lower-status identity
in public was so repugnant that I didn’t expect them to tumble to my trick anytime soon—even the open-minded Marcuses would never willingly do such a thing. In the meantime I was perfectly safe from annoyance and even having a lot of fun, so long as I was satisfied to enter and leave my office via the loading dock.

  Organizational work is essential to an establishment of any size, military ones more than most. Yet it’s dull, boring, and thankless. Therefore no one was more grateful to Nestor than I was when he, of all people, found us our first actual, honest-to-goodness ship. She was the mining-service vessel Richard, abandoned and placed in a cometary orbit by her crew when the Imperials came. My insatiable reader of a personal aide came across a story in the paper about how she’d still not been recovered, and brought it to my attention. While the fencibles as a rule wouldn’t outright own its own vessels, from the getgo we planned to buy a few. Eventually we’d need our own salvage tug, for example, and at least one full-time gunnery-training ship. Another void we needed filled was for a sort of flagship and general errand-runner, and Richard looked like the perfect vessel for us. Meant to shuttle relatively small cargoes of supplies and high-value ores between asteroids and Kuiper bodies and such, she was also fully capable of planetary landings. I spent hours poring over her specs—her engines were powerful and of modern design, and if her holds were modified a bit she could remain in space for months. Best of all, due to an oddity of the Marcus Prime system she was Field-equipped for hyperspace jumps. My home system, it so happened, had more jump-points than any other. However, for many years it was believed that only one of these led to another star-system—the rest connected only with each other. (The Imperials had proven that a second could somehow be made to lead elsewhere by invading us through it—we still hadn’t figured out how, why, or where.) Therefore, Richard had been equipped with a Field-type drive—jumping was far quicker than thrusting, when things were lined up just so. In short order I was practically drooling over her. Richard’s owners let her go for a song—chasing her down would cost a small fortune if you didn’t happen to have several destroyer captains at your beck and call, all of them eager for a worthwhile mission to break the tedium of garrison-work. I expected her home just about the same time that my freshly-repaired drydock would be ready to receive her, and my barracks-facilities prepared to train her crew.