Jenna Starborn

by Sharon Shinn

  Eventually we made our way to a largish chamber deep in the heart of the ship. I cast one quick glance around, noting the low ceiling hovering close over the long, narrow room, and catching the antiseptic smell of medicinal chemicals. White-coated technicians moved methodically through the room, inspecting rows and rows of coffin-shaped black receptacles lined up in neat ranks across the floor.

  “Hey—Colyo—I’ve got a passenger for the last berth,” Barkow called out to one of these technicians. A middle-aged woman standing very near us immediately left her post, where she was bending over one of the caskets and checking an electronic readout. Her graying black hair was pulled back in a severe style and her face looked completely humorless, but there was a crispness to her movements that impressed me with a sense of her competence.

  “Good,” she said, looking me over thoroughly. I imagined she was judging my weight, health, and physical endurance, though I did not know how evident those would be upon cursory visual examination. “I prefer an even distribution. Has she been prepared?”

  “Not at all,” Barkow said cheerfully. “I just found her, looking for quick passage off.”

  Colyo’s brows arched, but she made no comment. “All right. I’ll finish everything. Thanks.”

  At that cool dismissal, Barkow smiled and handed me my own bag. “See you in a year or so,” he said. “Enjoy the trip.” And he exited.

  Colyo was surveying me again. “I’ll have to ask you a few questions and do a quick assessment of your condition,” she said. “I suppose you expected that?”

  “Yes. I don’t know—I know very little about suspended animation but I would guess you must adapt your IVs to the individual, and I assumed you would need to examine me,” I said. “I will be happy to cooperate with everything.”

  “Of course. We’ll leave your bag here at your berth while I take you back to the lab for tests,” she said, walking me forward through the rows of coffins and depositing my bag at the foot of one of them.

  I could not resist, as we strolled through this strange field of dormant life, trying to peer through the smoked-glass lids of the receptacles to get a glimpse of the sleepers inside. But the tops were too opaque; I could see nothing. All I could observe were the monitors attached to every repository, blinking with green and amber lights in mysterious combinations. Yet I could sense the life-forms lying so still, so patiently, beneath their protective caps. I felt as I once had, visiting a crypt whose central ornament was the sarcophagus of a mighty king. It had not taken the hushed words of the superstitious guide to convince me that a spirit walked in this mausoleum. I had stared at the molded form of the regent’s face, and I had known he was still alive, trapped in his bejeweled tomb, awaiting merely the most propitious moment to burst through stone and mortar and reclaim his existence. I felt the same implacable sense of waiting in the storage room on the Anniversary. This was a haunted place indeed.

  “Are you coming?” Colyo asked me, her tone of irritation jerking me back from speculation. “We don’t have much time.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m quite ready,” I said, and hurried after her as she threaded her way to the back of the room.

  Eventually we ended up in a small, sterile chamber with a PhysXam arm hovering over a narrow table. I disrobed and allowed Colyo to wrap the gauge around my wrist. Immediately, the PhysXam monitors began chirping with their incomprehensible comments. Colyo watched lines of type begin to scroll across a monitor, and occasionally fired out a quick question to me.

  “Your age? Your occupation? General health status? Any standard immune shots you’ve missed over the past five years? Any particular allergies that haven’t been eradicated? Other intolerances?”

  I answered as comprehensively as I could, though I knew the PhysXam could fill in most of those blanks for her. Then I added, “And, if it matters, I was gestated in a gen tank.”

  She looked up at that, obviously intrigued. “Really? On what planet?”

  “Baldus.”

  “I’ve done some work there. The facility closed recently, you know.”

  “No, I didn’t know that. Do you know why?”

  “Funding problems, political problems, a disagreement with the director. I was gone by then, so I just heard the rumors. I heard they were looking for their past crops, though. Trying to put together an alumni list of some sort. I can’t imagine why. I didn’t get the details.”

  I winced at the word “crop,” though she clearly spoke without intent to wound. I supposed the technicians who worked at such sites did see their projects as a sort of produce to be harvested, though the bales and bushels of human flesh and spirit might not view themselves in just such a vegetative light.

  “Will my origin affect my stay in cold storage?” I asked.

  She had returned her attention to the screen, and now she shook her head rather absently. “Shouldn’t. Might even be helpful. I’d think you would have been inoculated in the gen tank with every possible vaccine, and loaded with all the healthiest DNA.” She glanced back at me appraisingly. “Which does make me wonder why you’re so small. Most of the gen tank babies are bred like amazons. The adults are usually almost offensively strong and healthy.”

  I spoke in a rather constricted voice. Now I was not only dehumanized, I was inadequate. “The woman who commissioned me was small-boned herself, and she wished for a child who matched her description.”

  Colyo nodded. “Oh, yeah. Had that happen when I was working there too. Strange, because you’d think with all the advantages you could give your child . . .” She shook her head again. “Well, everything checks out. You’re in great shape physically. You should withstand the trip quite well. Come on, now we’ve got to get you cleaned up.”

  I had considered myself reasonably hygienic when I arrived in the spaceport, but I soon learned Colyo’s standards were fanatical. I supposed it only made sense that if you were to be unable to bathe again for an entire year, you would want to make your last ablutions thorough, but this bath was actually chemical. I was completely immersed in a cleansing tank for a period of about twenty seconds; I could feel the outer layer of flesh literally being eaten away from my body, exposing the uncontaminated second level of skin. When I burst up from the solution, I was red and gasping, and Colyo bundled me into a sanitized gown.

  “Quickly,” she said, and hustled me back into the main room and to my waiting bed.

  On her instructions, I climbed into the casket and sat there dumbly while she attached all manner of tubes and trackers to my body. A catheter, three IVs, an emergency oxygen tube, a blood monitor—I could not even guess at the uses of some of the equipment she patched into place.

  “All right. Now I want you to lie down and get comfortable,” she directed. “I’m going to activate the anesthesia, and after that has taken hold, I’ll begin the hypothermic sequences. People have found it less terrifying,” she added, “to already be sleeping before the cold is injected into their systems. We always tell people they can’t detect it, but in fact they can, and it’s not a pleasant sensation. This way seems simplest.”

  “One more request—if possible,” I stammered, for I was beginning to find a certain panic tightening my throat and constricting my breathing. How had the Great Goddess led me to this place—what fantastic confluence of events had brought me to this situation, at this hour, to be gambling away a year of my life in this bizarre and uncertain fashion? “If you could not lower the lid until I was actually anesthetized. I would feel better, I think.”

  Colyo nodded. “Many people make that request. Not a problem.”

  “And,” I added. “A question. What will happen when I wake up? Who will recover me? What will I remember? Will I know where I am and how I got here?”

  “You will be weak and disoriented at first. You should remember who you are soon enough—within a few minutes, an hour at most. We will wake you from suspension two weeks or so before planetfall so that you have some time to recover use of your limbs. You will be t
hinner. At first you will find it strange to speak. You might remember dreams of surprising detail and complexity. You might remember only an absolute emptiness. Your brain will recover more quickly than your body, but within a few weeks on-planet, you will feel exactly as you do now. If all goes as planned.”

  I did not remark on that caveat; what could I possibly say? “Thank you,” I said, and lay back in my yearlong bed.

  “I never did ask you,” she said. “And Barkow didn’t say. What is your name?”

  “Will it be registered anywhere?” I asked.

  “Not if you would prefer it was not. But I have found that, when they first are wakened, suspension patients recover more quickly when they are reminded of their names.”

  I nodded, for this made sense to me. “Jenna Starborn,” I said.

  Colyo clicked a switch and I heard the soft chugging sound of a motor engaging. “Well, Jenna Starborn,” she said, “sleep peacefully.”

  Again the panic welled up, more fiercely this time, but its duration was short. I could feel my body relaxing perforce with the injection of the anesthesia. I could feel my limbs disconnect from my conscious control and my mind’s bright perception grow dim. I had one last clear thought—From the gen tanks to the sleep tanks; surely my body must remember this—and then my eyes closed. It was a complete and utter dissolution; and for a year, I knew nothing at all.

  Chapter 16

  “Jenna Starborn. Miss Starborn. Jenna.”

  “You mean, she still hasn’t responded?”

  “Obviously not.”

  “Have you injected her with BioJazz?”

  “Yes, yesterday and today. No effect.”

  “But her heartbeat—her vitals—”

  “All good. Well, within the acceptable range. Actually, on the low side, but nothing to be concerned about.”

  “Muscle condition?”

  “We strapped her into the automatics yesterday and exercised her arms and legs. Everything reacted well enough, and we’ll do it again today. And we’re getting visual response—she can open her eyes, and blink, and look away from a bright source of illumination—but I can’t tell if she’s taking anything in. There seems to be no cognitive process going on.”

  “Have you done a neural scan?”

  “That’s next.”

  “Ten more days before planetfall. Do we have someone to contact if she arrives on Appalachia in this condition?”

  A long silence.

  “Do we? Have someone to contact for Miss Starborn?”

  “No.”

  “No one? No contact at all? What’s it say in her contract?”

  “She was a last-minute addition. Barkow brought her on right before takeoff. We didn’t learn anything about her. We didn’t get a contract. I don’t even know if this is her real name.”

  “Why is she going to Appalachia?”

  “I didn’t ask.”

  “Who brought her on board? Barkow? Maybe he’ll know something more about her. Let’s bring him in.”

  A silence of several hours. Perhaps days.

  “What did you say her name was? Jenna what?”

  “Starborn. You mean you didn’t ask her name when you picked her up on Fieldstar?”

  “I asked. She didn’t seem to want to share. I let it go.”

  “Did she tell you why she was going to Appalachia?”

  “I got the impression she just wanted to get off Fieldstar.”

  “Marvelous. Probably a criminal.”

  “Not the first one we’ve transported.”

  “Yes, but the first one in a catatonic state.”

  “Wonder what caused that. Everyone else has come out of cold freeze just fine, haven’t they? Why didn’t she?”

  “Colyo’s theory is that she had an emotional trauma and that her brain refuses to engage again because she doesn’t want to suffer more pain.”

  “You’d think she’d have worked through all that in a year.”

  “Barkow, you’re not helping.”

  “Well, what do you want me to do?”

  “Talk to her. See if you can get her to respond to you. She might remember your voice.”

  “Davis, I only knew her for a couple of hours! I don’t know a damn thing about her!”

  “Try, anyway. Otherwise, I don’t know what happens when we arrive on-planet. I’m not sure they have a social services program on Appalachia. You think we can just leave her in the spaceport—like this? I don’t think so. And since you’re the one who brought her onboard—”

  A soft laugh of complete exasperation. “I’ll do what I can. Somebody bring me a beer or something.”

  Scraping noises as if a piece of furniture was being dragged across the floor. “So. Your name is Jenna, they tell me. That’s pretty. Jenna. Well, Jenna, I guess you don’t remember much about your life. Let’s see, what did you tell me when we were on Fieldstar ... Oh, I know! You’re a technician! Specializing in—now what did you say—nuclear science applications, I think that was it. So that means you can—what does that mean you can do ... Service generators, sure, that would be one thing. I guess you could work on a ship, if you wanted, or at a utility company. Appalachia’s got two, three big power stations that supply most of the energy to the settled parts of the planet. Bet you could get a job there, if you wanted. I’m assuming you want a job. Got to take care of yourself somehow.

  “Let’s see—I guess you don’t know much about Appalachia, do you? Well, it’s nothing like Fieldstar. See, I know how much you wanted to leave Fieldstar, so you can just relax about that. Appalachia’s very different. Big planet, only a fraction of it colonized. Oh, and it’s got an oxygen atmosphere too, so you don’t need all those domes and forcefields like you did on Fieldstar. That’s good, right? Breathable air. You’ll like that. It’s mostly aggie-based, so the colonists are setting up these huge tracts of land and starting to farm. Trouble is, they haven’t quite figured out the best crops for the native earth, because the standard grains and legumes don’t do so well there. They’re still analyzing the soil makeup, trying to figure out what will grow. ’Course, some people are approaching the problem a different way and importing shiploads of premixed dirt with all the nitrogen and what all in it that your basic cash crop requires. I don’t know too much about it. If you were a biologist or agriculturist, now, you’d be in high demand here.

  “But, you know, I think you could get just about any kind of job. Just have to be willing to work hard. And—hey!—if you’re an engineetype tech, well, there’s all sorts of equipment here that needs constant maintenance. Somebody would snap you up right away if you could fix things. Got a whole mess of sophisticated machines out here, doing some of the farm work—and cyborgs too, if you know robotics—”

  A long wail of heartbreak and distress that seemed to go on for hours. The sounds of running feet, sharp questions, disclaimers, medical equipment beeping at a more urgent frequency—and behind all this, the endless forlorn sobbing. It seemed to creep closer, grow sharper, become more localized until at last—with great suddenness—it turned both internal and external and I realized not only who I was but that I was the one screaming.

  The next ten days passed in such a painful blur that more than once I wished that I had died during my yearlong voyage. The effort of walking from my bed in the monitoring room to the gym a few hundred yards away exhausted me so much that I could scarcely perform the exercises that Colyo and the other technicians demanded I attempt. Eating was a nightmare, for the scent of the meals prepared in the vast cafeteria made me want to vomit, and my stomach refused food the first three or four times I actually chewed and swallowed. The other passengers from the cold storage facility had been relocated to utilitarian but rather more inviting accommodations, but I returned every evening to my bunk in the observation unit so that I could be hooked up to medicine and nutrients. I had never felt so weak. I had never felt so ill. I could not imagine ever regaining my full strength of body and mental focus. Had I known how to do
it, I believe I would have locked my glass lid from the inside and curled up in my little coffin to die.

  But I was not allowed this luxury. Each morning, Colyo roused me, ruthlessly prodded me to the gym, strapped me aboard various exercising machines, and forced my muscles to perform. She also bombarded me with a series of questions about math, science, literature, current events, and spatial geography which caused my head to hurt as I attempted to answer. Yet I did answer—I dredged from some remote spot in a long-disused portion of my brain the information she required: calculations, definitions, politicians, historical sequences. With each successful response, I felt my synapses grow more energetic; I could almost sense the electric buildup like an aura around my head. When I closed my eyes now, I saw pictures of star charts and public edifices and powerful dignitaries, whereas for so many months now I had seen only a blank whiteness. Slowly, with infinite anguish, I was remembering what it felt like to be alive.

  I was having trouble communicating this anguish, as I was having trouble communicating anything. My speech was slow and scarcely coherent; my mouth had trouble forming the words that my brain remembered. At first, only Colyo could understand me, but gradually the other technicians, and a few of my fellow passengers, could catch the drift of my conversation. Not that any of these talks were extensive. I shunned the company of the others until Colyo forced me from my bed into the communal areas. I felt stupid, clumsy, embarrassed, alien and terrified. Although I remembered the events that had led me to this place, I still had trouble understanding why I was here and why I had suffered so greatly. I could not summon any of the courage or strength of will that I remembered I had once possessed. And so I cowered, and fretted, and very slowly improved.

  I was not nearly recovered by the time we fell into orbit around Appalachia ten days after I had come to my senses. This was a fresh terror, for Colyo had made it plain that I had no haven here on the Anniversary. I had signed up to be delivered to this planet, and this was where I would be left, no matter how ill-equipped I was to navigate a completely foreign environment.