by neetha Napew
My husband was equally unenthusiastic. “I will not be able to help you if you do this, Waenara.”
“I know.” I pretended not to see the ice crystals forming in his eyes. “I know you trust me, and you won’t give me a hard time about it, and you’ll take our kid back to the Sunlace, where she’ll be safe.”
“Please reconsider,” the female Omorr said. “These creatures may not adhere to the terms of your trade agreement.”
“Oh, if it’s one thing I know about the Bartermen, it’s that they stick to their deals.”
The Bartermen checked out the data with someone, then came to the compartment en masse. “Bartermen accept your terms. Cherijo Torin will provide the experimental data, in return for the release of husband, daughter, and Omorr female.”
I nodded. “Agreed.”
“There is a Jorenian vessel in orbit above Oenrall. The male and females will be released to this vessel.”
Which was exactly what I wanted. “Nice doing business with you.”
Duncan couldn’t let it go at that.
“I am not leaving you,” he said as the Bartermen docked with the CloudWalk. “Garphawayn can take Marel over. I will stay with you.”
“I need you to protect our daughter first and worry about me later.” Please, Duncan. Don’t make this more difficult than it already is. Trust me.
He kissed me. “I trust you. I would do anything for you.”
“Great. When this is over, put me down for a long vacation.” I lifted my daughter and held her between us before handing her over to Duncan. “Just you, me, and the kid.”
From the one viewport in my compartment, I watched the transfer take place, then was taken to a terminal to receive confirmation from the Jado ClanLeader, Teulon.
“Your kin have arrived, and we will keep them safe, Council representative.” He looked ready to use claws on someone. “Allow my kin the honor of being of further assistance to you.”
I took it that further assistance would arrive in the form of enraged warriors to take the shuttle by force and eviscerate every Barterman in sight. Also, Teulon had to get moving if he wanted to negotiate peace between the Taercal and Oenrall, who would soon be arriving on Jxinok.
“Thank you for the offer, ClanLeader, but I will take it from here. Please continue on your assignment, and may the Mother watch over you all.”
Since the Bartermen didn’t have the kind of medical database on board their vessel I would need to handle all of the C.H.E.R.I.J.O. experimental data, they took me down to the planet, where they had plenty.
Their headquarters had been established on, fittingly enough, Bankers Row, where most of the goods they had bilked out of the natives were being prepped for final shipment. I was taken to a huge room of medical diagnostic and database equipment, and shown to one of the largest and most sophisticated computer consoles on the planet.
“Bartermen want the experimental data now.”
I pulled up a chair. “I’ll get right to work.”
Figuring they’d be monitoring me closely at first, I began to enter formulas from the experiment that Joseph had used to create me.
“Oh, Joe.” Stringing together fragments of alteration procedures and formulas which would never actually work was boring, and I yawned frequently. “If you could see me now.”
It would take weeks to finish entering the bogus data-if I went slowly enough-and even more time for whoever bought the data to find out it wouldn’t do anything but mess up a lot of lab equipment.
The Bartermen brought me food twice, and I was allowed a short rest period of several hours. I didn’t sleep, though-thoughts of what had happened on Jxi-nok, and Maggie’s improbable revelations kept me staring at the ceiling.
How much of it was true?
I sensed a lot of truth in what she’d told me. Truth that had been ripped apart and strung back together, like the phony formulas I was creating for the Barter-men.
The Jxin-certainly a superior life-form, but if Maggie exemplified them, they weren’t exactly perfect. I didn’t believe for a moment they’d lived on Jxinok in crystal cities, or had invited raiders to enslave them, but I suspected some elements of both had happened. Perhaps they’d stopped there, and had been captured.
Why would they need humanoids to do anything for them?
Maggie’s epic tale of galactic genesis might have worked, if the Jxin had stayed around to play God to the mortals they’d messed with. But why create their “special children” and then wink out of our dimension, never to return? No man or woman would have a child, knowing they would have to abandon it before it grew to adulthood.
What was it she said? There must be something... cohesion... order...
That scared me more than anything else. A species who could cross dimensions wanting to create order wherever they went would go to great lengths to get rid of anything that threatened that goal.
Had Maggie created me not to be a guardian, but an enforcer? And how many other “special kids” like me had she created, and where were they now?
I fell into a light doze, and dreamed of watching my homeworld swirl into being.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Last Rounds
Hands shaking me woke me up abruptly, and I opened my eyes to see Dhreen, Hawk, and Ilona hovering over me. I blinked a couple of times, but they didn’t go away.
“What are you doing here?” I asked the weaver, struggling with the sheet draped over me. “Why are these two out of Medical?”
“We took a launch from the Sunlace as soon as the CloudWalk arrived at Jxinok,” Ilona said. “We were able to get in by trading with the Bartermen. Dhreen, give her the disc.”
The Oenrallian handed me a disc. “The Omorr wanted you to have this. I said you’d want a good bottle of spicewine, but he wouldn’t listen to me.” Dhreen chuckled and then wandered away, fiddling here and there with the medical equipment.
“He isn’t any better, is he?” I asked the Terran girl, who shook her head. “Why did Squilyp send them to me here?”
“He said only you would know how to cure them.”
Great to know my boss had so much faith in me. As I got up, Hawk backed away and began restlessly pacing around my pallet. “The yei are everywhere,” I heard him mutter.
“How much tranquilizer did he give them?” I asked Ilona.
“Enough to keep them manageable for several hours,” she said. “I have more, if we need it.”
“Squilyp, you really owe me big-time now.” I got up and went over to the diagnostic console. “Let’s see what we’ve got here.”
The disc contained Hawk’s and Dhreen’s medical files, as well as the results of tests performed on water samples from both worlds. The lab had found no micro-organic contaminants. My environmental theory instantly and irrevocably collapsed.
“This is zero help.” I could have screamed. “Okay, so there’s nothing in the water, and only trace readings in the bloodstreams and-“ Something Squilyp had noted in the summary paragraph below each test made me sit up and stare at the screen.
Unidentified mineral-based compound is present in both samples.
Now, the universe is made up of a certain number of minerals, and certainly there were plenty of the same to be found on any two worlds, in various compounds. However, mineral-based meant it was something more than rock or metal, and the only thing I’d seen in that category was the black tul crystal/ships on Taerca. I’d seen tul under a scope, back on Catopsa, and whatever this compound was, it wasn’t killer black crystal.
However, it contained traces of it.
I looked down at the floor, at the beautiful stark patterns of black against the white. “Dhreen?” I got up from my chair and knelt on the smooth surface as he wandered over. “Dhreen, what’s this black stuff in the floor covering?”
“Rock.”
“I know that. What kind of rock?”
He shrugged. “Black rock from the craters.”
“What craters?”
“Real convenient.” I grabbed a scanner. “Come here.”
“No poking now,” he said as he submitted to the scan. “You want to go out? I could use some chill-juice. The sound of that hummer is starting to bug me.”
“Ilona, I need more tranquilizer.” After recalibrating my scanner twice, I found moderate levels of the mineral-based compound in Dhreen’s bloodstream and, after dosing the Oenrallian, compared them to an early scan from his data, taken prior to our sojourn to his homeworld.
No compound had been present until we had landed on this planet. Nor had Hawk shown any signs of psychosis prior to his visit to Taerca.
There were too many coincidences for this to be two separate disorders. I raised my head. “I need Hawk over here.”
“I don’t think he’s going to help you, patcher.” Ilona directed my attention to the hataali, who was hovering by the entrance panel. “Not without more drugs.”
I grabbed a syrinpress and walked slowly over to the panel. “Hey, pal. How are you feeling?”
He only rocked back and forth on his heels and watched me, like his namesake.
“Tell you what, why don’t you come over here and see what I found on the console?” I edged to one side, hoping to get a clean shot before he came at me. “You’re not going to believe this, but I think you and Dhreen may be suffering from different mutations of the same infection, and-“
The door panel opened, and a group of Bartermen walked in. Hawk went berserk.
I tried to pull him off before they used their jolt-sticks, but both Hawk and I were sent flying back through the air and hit one of the tables. Somehow I landed on top of him, my hands trapped beneath. I felt blood pulsing against my hands, lifted off him, and rolled him over.
Then I saw what the alloy frame had done. “No!”
His belly was ripped wide open, and blood poured down the front of his legs like a wide curtain.
I made a makeshift pressure bandage, and had Ilona hold it in place as I went to prep the surgical table. The Bartermen got in my way. “You’ve done enough. Leave.”
“Bartermen give you one hour to finish.”
“Fine. Go.”
I had everything I needed to operate on Hawk except one thing-blood. There were no perishable supplies in this warehouse, and without blood, he was going to die.
“I can’t transfuse him with mine,” I said to Ilona as I took a blood sample from her for analysis. “My immunities make it poisonous.” I ran the chem analysis and swore. “And you’re incompatible. Goddamn it.”
Dhreen ambled over and stuck out an arm. “Take some of mine.”
“Knock it off, you’re not even half the same species.” I pushed his hand away, froze, then grabbed it again. “Hold still.”
I drew the sample and shoved it in the analyzer. As the data scrolled up, I forgot to blink. I groped for the sample I had taken from Hawk, and ran a comparison.
“Can you use Dhreen’s blood?”
“Yeah. They’re almost identical in composition and the type matches perfectly.”
“But how can that be?”
“I don’t know.” I faced one of my worst nightmares, all over again. I looked up at the ceiling. “If this is your idea of a joke,” I told God, who I was pretty sure hadn’t been my surrogate mother, “I don’t think it’s funny.”
Giving Hawk a transfusion of Dhreen’s blood went against every single thing I’d learned as a physician and from killing Kao with my own blood. Yet as I hooked the two men up, I also knew I was out of options.
“Start praying, Ilona.” I initiated the transfusion, and began working on suturing the wound in Hawk’s belly.
Not only did the transfusion work, it saved Hawk’s life. I had his wound repaired and him resting comfortably when the Bartermen returned.
“Your hour is up-“
“I need another one.”
“You do not have trade for another one.”
“Here.” Ilona took off the white quill collar she wore around her neck and tossed it to them. “Indigenous body ornament, Terran, North American Navajo.”
The Barterman who caught it fingered the collar. “Bartermen give you one more hour.” The group withdrew.
I looked across the table at Ilona. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
Hawk’s eyes fluttered open as I removed the infuser line. “Cherijo?” His voice was hoarse, but otherwise normal. “What happened?”
“You tried to give yourself a new navel.” I bent over to check his vitals, which were stabilizing at normal levels. “Still worried about the yei?”
He frowned. “Why would I be worried about some children’s fairy tales?”
With a few more questions, I confirmed that Hawk’s psychosis had abruptly disappeared. An even more radical idea occurred to me as I drew a sample of blood and turned to Dhreen.
“Ilona, hold his arm still one more time.”
When I transfused Dhreen with Hawk’s blood, the Oenrallian’s hyperactivity also quickly disappeared.
The Terran girl sighed with relief as a rather bewildered Dhreen asked why we were sticking him with needles. “It worked, patcher.”
“That’s the problem-it shouldn’t have. They both have the same contaminant in their blood, so cross-transfusing doesn’t remove it.” I drew two more tubes of blood and went to the analyzer. “It’s something else I’m not seeing.”
I set the unit to run a complete spectrum analysis on Dhreen and Hawk’s samples, then returned to the medical database.
“Identical hematological profiles means the Taerca and the Oenrallians are cross-fertile.” I pulled up a full physiological reference file on Dhreen’s species, then downloaded both men’s medical files into the database. “Let’s see if it means something else.”
As I ran comparison baselines, Dhreen and Ilona flanked me. “You can’t compare me to Hawk that way, Doc. We’re different species.”
“Yes, you’re supposed to be.” I watched the results scroll up on the display. “Different species who have identical blood cells, bone cells, tissue cells, nerve cells, and brain compositions.”
“But he has an independent heart,” Dhreen said, tapping the screen. “I don’t.”
“He got the heart from his Terran mother.” I asked the computer to extrapolate a conclusion I’d already reached. Ten seconds later, it printed its response on the screen.
Oenrallian and Taercal life-forms are genetically mutated variations of the same progenitor species.
Dhreen glanced back at Hawk. “We can’t be the same. He has feathers, and wings.”
“His race probably developed them in response to the change in environment when they left the planet. Yours didn’t have to, because they stayed behind.”
He frowned. “The Taercal lived on Oenrall?”
“A long time ago.” I pointed to his horns/ears. “Long enough to change your people into a legend that they chiseled above the doorways.”
Dhreen still wasn’t convinced. “It doesn’t seem likely.”
“Look at the two worlds-Taercal has barely one percent of the population of Oenrall, yet both populations have equal technological development. Or did, before Hawk’s people abandoned theirs. They’re not indigenous to Taerca. I’m betting they colonized it.”
“There’s a legend my mother told me when I was a boy, about a group of separatists who called themselves The Purists.” Dhreen went on to repeat the story, in which radical Oenrallians had deserted the planet in search of the perfect world to go along with their rather demanding religion. “No one ever heard from them again, and those left behind assumed they’d been lost during the journey.”
“They called you a defiler and a blood polluter when we were captured, remember?” I started running a new series
of comparisons, this time on matching internal organs. “Maybe they were persecuted or driven off Oenrall for their beliefs-that happens in a lot of societies. Or maybe they left voluntarily. However it happened, over time they might have villainized your people, just to keep future generations from returning here.”
“We don’t share the same sickness, though.”
“No, you seem to be complete opposites in that.” I thought for a moment. “No one dies on Oenrall, and no one lives very long on Taerca.”
Ilona drew in a startled breath. “That is opposite, too.”
I glanced at her. “I beg your pardon?”
“How they die. Dhreen’s people live forever. Hawk’s people die too soon.” She turned to me. “Why?”
“Aging is a natural process, dependent on a number of factors. In some species, like ours, genetics govern aging. The programmed senescence-the rate at which we grow old-determines how long our cells function and when they die. In others, the toxins produced and accumulated by cells during a lifetime cause the aging process. Disease and environment are also major factors, as is evident in the Taercal.”
“But if they come from the same planet, why are they not dying at the same time?”
“They evolved differently.” Or had they? I pulled up the geriatric files on Dhreen’s people. “Okay. Under normal conditions, Dhreen’s people age as a result of cellular deterioration, governed by two hormones released by the iydroth gland, located at the base of the brain.” I split the screen and accessed Hawk’s neuro-anatomy file. “Which the Taercal also have, only Hawk’s is a lot smaller.”
I got up and went back to the blood analyzer.
“Hawk and Dhreen should both have iydrothpin and trioiydrothyrnine in their bloodstreams.” I checked lab stats on both prior to the transfusion. “What? That can’t be right.” I ran the blood series again
Dhreen came over to the analyzer. “What’s wrong?”
“Before you swapped blood with Hawk, you didn’t have any iydrothpin in your system.” I waited for the scan to finish, then reread the results. “And he didn’t have any trioiydrothyrnine.”
“What does it mean?”
“Wait for it.” I went over to Hawk, and performed a systemic sweep. Sure enough, the mysterious signs of deterioration in his organs had halted, and in some cases, had reversed. Then I scanned Dhreen, and found a tiny decrease in his organ output.