by Sayuri Ueda
“I’ll bear that in mind,” Tei said perfunctorily. “You are now in custody. You’ve failed your mission. Tell us about the substance you dispersed in the special district—its name, composition, and cure. You’ll only be helping yourself if you cooperate.”
“Why do you give a damn what happens to me?”
“The Round children are running high fevers, especially the newborns and two- to three-year-old children. Until we find out what’s making them sick, we can only treat their symptoms, and for how much longer, I don’t know.”
“As soon as I tell you, your friends are just going to kill me. In that case, I’d rather see you run yourselves ragged to find a cure before I die.”
Tei put out eir arm to stop Harding’s angry advance toward Karina. “You dispersed the agent even as you were inside the special district yourself,” Tei continued. “Were you prepared to die with the Rounds, or did you and the others inoculate yourselves with a vaccine? There has to be a reason. Or is it a substance that only affects Rounds?”
Tei could hear Shirosaki and the others in the room gasp.
“Affect only Rounds? Is that possible?” asked Shirosaki.
“It’s simple,” Tei answered. “The Rounds have many synthetic genes that Monaurals don’t. Unique among them is ‘double-I’—the sex chromosome carrying the genetic information to create the hermaphroditic physiology. If you can create a substance that latches on to double-I as if it were a marker chromosome, it would be possible to create a biological weapon that only affects Rounds. If Karina didn’t vaccinate herself beforehand, then that’s the only plausible explanation for why she is unaffected. That’s how she was able to disperse the agent. It would also explain why Barry Wolfren wasn’t in the special district. He may look male physically, but he still carries the double-I sex chromosome. If he’d gone inside the special district, he would have been affected. That must be why he was working outside the special district, apart from Karina.”
Harding pushed Tei aside and pulled Karina up by the collar. “Is what the doctor saying true?”
Karina looked Harding dead in the eye and sneered. Red-faced, Harding slapped her. Saying nothing, Karina looked away and spat blood on the floor, an imperceptible laugh escaping her twisted lips.
“Please stop,” Tei cut in.
“Look, she’s not going to talk unless you get rough with her.” Harding glared at Tei as if he might knock em down next. “We don’t have time to play games.”
“What if she dies?”
“I won’t let that happen. I won’t kill her, but she’ll damn well hope that she was dead.”
“Stop him, Commander Shirosaki, please,” Tei pleaded. Shirosaki could only shake his head. Tei could not hide eir disappointment. “Are you condoning this?”
“You forget that I’m a security officer.”
“You disappoint me, Commander.”
“Right now, our priority is to save the Rounds.”
Taking Tei by the arm, Shirosaki wrangled both the doctor and Kline out to the corridor. “Don’t come back until we’re done here. This won’t take long. She’s isolated and with one of her accomplices dead…it’s only a matter of time until she realizes it’s over.”
“I understand,” said Kline. “You do what you have to do to get us the information that we need.”
Bowing his head slightly, Shirosaki said, “Thank you,” and returned inside.
Tei put eir hands on the door, but the lock had already been activated. Tei slammed eir fist against the door.
“He’s right, Doctor. We should leave Karina to them and look after the Rounds.”
“I don’t believe you. Is this the way you Monaurals do things?”
“We’re prepared to do anything to save the lives of the Rounds. That’s our responsibility for having created you. Save your complaints until after we’ve saved the patients. You are a doctor, Lanterna.”
Tei stepped away from the door and fixed a hard look on Kline. “I’ll help them, yes. I don’t want to see any more people die needlessly.”
The children’s fevers persisted. Although the doctors were able to keep the fever from exceeding 40 degrees Celsius, there was no telling how much longer the medication would remain effective.
Many of the patients, including the adult Rounds, were presenting with fevers and fatigue usually associated with a common cold. To Tei the symptoms seemed similar to those of acute hepatitis. With the proper equipment ey could run diagnostic analyses, but that option wasn’t available.
The doctors, worrying about the possibility of Tei being infected, urged em to stay away from the makeshift treatment center, but Tei refused, insisting that eir suit would protect em.
Tei buried emself in caring for the patients in an effort to forget Shirosaki’s sudden shift in attitude. The doctor had assumed Shirosaki was a peaceful man for a security officer. Ey had sensed something gentle and polite about him—that he was far more understanding than Harding.
But Tei had overestimated him terribly. Shirosaki was a man capable of divorcing his emotions from his duties; Tei was no match for his cool sobriety.
Even as Tei was often called on to treat eir patients as “subjects” of sorts, ey felt as if ey were made to realize eir own shortcomings in that regard.
Perhaps that was the difference between emself, who knew nothing of the world outside Jupiter-I, and Monaurals, who, for better or worse, weathered the storm of Mars’ and Earth’s complex societies.
If the Monaurals were fish swimming the open waters, the Rounds were plankton inside a droplet from a syringe—a simple life-form compared to Monaurals.
Tei could somewhat understand why Wolfren wanted to find a way off the station, even if it meant cooperating with the Vessel of Life. Enjoying relatively high standing as a doctor, Tei had not felt the kind of desperation Wolfren had. Though Tei was sensitive to the friction existing among the Rounds, ey had no cause to reject Round society as a whole.
As the doctor switched out an empty intravenous bag for a new one, ey received a call from Shirosaki on eir wearable. “We need you to check on Karina’s condition.”
Tei pursed eir lips. “You people beat and torture her and now you’re demanding I treat her?”
“You must understand that if I wasn’t present, Harding would have done a lot worse.”
“Are you suggesting that you stayed behind so you could spare her?”
“That’s right.”
“That doesn’t change the fact that you approved her torture.”
“I felt that was the best course of action at the time, as hard as it may be for you to understand.”
“There are other doctors. You can ask one of them.”
“I trust you to give Karina the care she needs.”
“You must believe me a fool.”
“We can’t allow the Rounds to die, you know that. You have to make Karina talk to you.”
“How do you expect me to accomplish what you couldn’t?”
“I’m not asking you to interrogate her. She might let down her guard and reveal something. Karina seems to feel some sort of connection to you.”
“I wouldn’t have a clue what to do,” Tei said.
Tei fell silent for several moments, and after gathering the necessary first aid supplies onto a tray, left the special district.
Upon arriving at the residential district, Tei found a security guard stationed at the door to the room where Karina was being held. The guard prompted Tei to enter, saying, “I’ll be right outside if you need anything.”
“You’re not going in with me?”
“Do you require my presence?”
Tei opened the door.
The woman, who’d been sitting on a chair when Tei had left her, now lay on her back, her clothes in terrible disarray.
She lay barefoot and nearly lifeless, with her hands tied behind her back. The toes of both feet were smeared with blood. Blood oozed out of the bullet wound on her left leg. Her eyes were shut, a
nd only her chest heaved up and down.
Tei knelt down next to Karina, nearly sickened with anger, and opened eir medical pack.
Karina flinched as Tei began to wipe her face with a wet cloth. She was still conscious. Not surprising, Tei thought. It was hard to imagine she could lose consciousness given the excruciating pain she must be in.
Tei gingerly removed Karina’s clothes to examine her. Her body was battered with bruises. She let out a cry and squirmed when Tei gently pressed down around her ribs. Perhaps they were cracked, or worse, broken. A simple MRI would give Tei an exact diagnosis, but it was Karina who had destroyed the medical equipment.
“Do you think you can answer a few questions?” Tei asked.
Karina nodded slowly.
“Any pain in your head or nausea?”
“No.”
“Any pain when you breathe?”
“A little.”
“Hold on, I’ll get you a brace.”
Standing up, Tei rushed to the door and stuck eir head out at the security officer standing guard. “I need you to go to the infirmary and ask for a rib brace.”
“You’re asking me?”
“Help me out, would you?”
“I can’t leave this post. There’s no telling what the prisoner might do if you two are left alone.”
“Do you expect her to get up and flee after what you people did to her? She’s been brutalized and all of her toes broken.”
Without answering, the guard used his wearable to relay Tei’s request. After several minutes, one of the station staff delivered a brace from the warehouse.
Tei swore and returned to the room with the brace.
Karina lay on the floor, laughing, the wet cloth on her forehead where Tei had left it. Her lips twitched into a twisted shape, not so much because of the pain but as if to ridicule Tei and the guards.
“What’s so funny?”
“You’re so serious, Doctor. The members of Shirosaki’s team have been surprisingly kind. Shirosaki too. If he hadn’t been around to intervene, Harding would have beaten me to death.”
“How can you say that after you’ve been so badly beaten you can’t move?”
“I can’t move because they shocked me.”
“What? I didn’t notice any electrical burns.”
“They put the electrodes where you can’t see them. I have to admit, it packed quite a wallop.”
Tei froze momentarily, ashamed of her failure to properly diagnose Karina.
As the doctor leaned over to treat Karina with a topical solution, ey kicked something with the tip of eir shoe. Ey picked up a pendant off the floor. It was a medallion of a man holding a crucifix and what appeared to be a skull on the table next to him.
“Is this yours?” Tei asked, dangling the pendant in front of Karina.
Karina nodded slightly.
“The chain is broken.”
“Bastards ripped it off my neck. Must have thought there was something hidden inside, like a suicide pill or microchip. It’s nothing. Just a lucky charm.”
“What a peculiar design.”
“A St. Gerard medal, given to me when I was on Earth.”
“By whom?”
“Let’s just say by fellow child soldiers. They’re all dead now,” Karina said.
Tei wiped the blood off the medal with the hem of eir white coat and tried to slip it in Karina’s pocket.
Karina shook her head. “No.”
“Why?”
“It’s pointless for a dead woman to hold on to it, don’t you think?”
“But it belongs to you.”
“You take it, Doctor. St. Gerard is the patron saint of childbirth. Keep it as a lucky charm. Toss it after I’m gone if you don’t want it.”
After a moment’s hesitation, Tei slipped the medal in eir coat pocket. Karina’s eyes narrowed into a look of satisfaction.
“Interrogation will resume after I’ve treated you. Why don’t you tell me about the agent you dispersed.”
“What time is it?”
“Fourteen hundred. It’s been almost a full day since you attacked the special district.”
“Then you should be beginning to see the full effect of the agent.”
“What do you mean?” Tei said.
“Exactly what I said. Go back to your patients, Doctor. You’re no good to them here.”
“Why do you hate the Rounds so much?” Tei asked, the tone of eir voice growing tense. “All we’re doing is living here quietly on Jupiter without imposing any trouble on the people of Mars or Earth. Is that so wrong?”
“You don’t understand. Your very existence is a threat to the people on the planets. How much do you think it costs to keep the special district and this station running in the first place?” Karina asked. “The operating budget comes out of the pockets of the Monaurals. Kline seems to think the bigender subspecies was born out of cultural progress. But there are still people on Earth that die simply because they don’t have enough to eat—never mind cultural progress. How do you suppose those people regard the Rounds?”
“And that’s reason enough to annihilate us? You choose to kill us rather than to negotiate?”
“I’ve come here with a job to do, Doctor. Whether the Rounds die or live is none of my concern. Once I carry out my mission, I’m gone.”
Tei’s wearable bleeped. Tei moved away from Karina to the corner of the room and took the call. It was Wagi on the line. “There’s been a change in some of the serious infant cases.”
“Are they critical?”
“Five dead. Only a matter of the time with the other children.”
“Cause of death?”
“Blood poisoning, meningitis, uremic shock—there’s nothing we can do to save them. Has Karina revealed anything?”
“No.”
“Get us the information we need!” Wagi shouted, uncharacteristically. “I don’t want to see any more children die over here.”
Tei ended the transmission and returned to Karina’s side. “We’ve had five fatalities—all of them babies.”
For an instant, Karina’s eyes grew wide with shock. What Tei thought was a glimmer of compassion quickly dissipated and gave way to a stony look. “Oh. I guess they didn’t last as long because of their underdeveloped immune systems.”
“Tell me about the agent you dispersed. If you do, I might be able to talk the security unit into saving your life.”
“That won’t do me any good. If you and I reach some sort of agreement, they might spare my life. But that doesn’t mean they’ll let me go. They’ll take me back to Earth to be tried, and while I may be spared the death penalty, I’ll get life in prison for sure. If I’m going to get locked up for the rest of my life anyway, I’d rather take my secret to the grave.”
“Something else then. Isn’t there something you’d like in exchange?”
“You can let me go without alerting security. I can manage on my own once you help me off the station.”
“You know I can’t do that.”
“Then I guess I’m not talking.”
Karina watched Tei bite eir lip with an amused look. “Well? If you get me to an escape shuttle, I’ll hand over the data to you.”
“When will I get that data—before or after you’re on the shuttle?”
“Half before. I’ll transmit the other half from the shuttle once I’m safely away from the station.”
Tei shook eir head. “The decision isn’t up to me.”
“But you can save the Rounds.”
“What guarantee do I have that you’ll tell me the truth? If I help you escape and the data turns out to be fake, I’m left with nothing,” Tei said.
“You don’t trust me.”
“How can I? I hardly know anything about you.”
“You’re welcome to your feelings. But even as you and I are having this conversation, the Rounds are dying one after the next, starting with the children.”
For the first time, Tei felt something
resembling hatred toward Karina. Fighting back the impulse to strike her, ey said, “You have nowhere to go. Kline will never forgive you if the Rounds perish. That goes for the police too. Do you really want to kill us at the expense of your own life? Is our existence such a hindrance to you? As vast as the universe is, why are the Monaurals incapable of accepting new life-forms?”
“Because Monaurals are petty people.”
“But those same Monaurals were the ones to create us. It’s their intellect I want to believe in.”
“Including the Vessel of Life? They’re a dirtier bunch than I am,” Karina said. “I would have preferred to kill the whole lot of them before doing the Rounds.”
“Then why didn’t you refuse them?”
“I have my reasons.”
“Why don’t you tell me about them? I might be able to help in exchange for the data on the agent.”
A hint of a smile came cross Karina’s blood-caked lips. “Surely you must have a secret or two you don’t want to talk about, Doctor. Regardless of how reprehensible my employers are, I’ve given them my word, and you’re not going to get anything out of me.”
“I’ve no secrets to hide.”
“Oh really? Kline and I were for friends for ten years. Oftentimes, she came to me for advice. I acted as her psychological counselor. She used to talk about the special district. About you too.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I know why you became an intermediary,” Karina said.
“You’re lying. Kline would never tell anyone about my private life.”
“Well, she told me plenty. Down to every last detail. Your sexual organs are configured differently from those of normal Rounds. You felt a deep sense of alienation about that. Kline came to me for advice about how best to console you.”
“That’s all in the past now,” muttered Tei.
“Your name in the special district was Lanterna. Don’t tell me it was another Round with the same name. Your penis and vagina are configured on the wrong side—the penis on the left and the vagina on the right. You’re not able to engage in the act facing your partner because your configuration doesn’t allow you to insert your penis and have your partner’s penis be inserted into you at the same time. You have never felt the sensation of simultaneous ejaculation and insemination. You, Doctor, are a special case who can only do one or the other. At present, there are no other Rounds in the special district with your abnormality. You’re a misfit of Round society.” Then Karina said, in a contemptuously gentle tone, “You’re deformed, isn’t that right?”