by Jim Graham
Much of the medical research conducted over the past 200 years had focused on developing cures: to rehabilitate spinal cords, reverse the effects of Alzheimer’s disease, eradicate TB and so on. History had already judged the two-century period from 1950 to 2150 to be one of man’s finest eras. It truly had been the Golden Age of Medicine.
But there had been less enthusiasm for biotechnical developments of this sort: anything that improved competence, quickened reflexes, or enhanced physical strength was always going to be elective and hence expensive. That made them exclusive: the rich would get them, and the poor, well they would miss out—unless they were bootlegged or cloned, and possibly corrupted or impure.
That disturbed Scat—it offended his sense of fair play.
‘But we’re digressing, Scat,’ Petroff said leaning forward. ‘Let’s get back to business ... I took the time to review your record on the way over here ...’ He paused, politely, as though seeking Scat’s permission to explain what he had learned, but of course, he was not going to wait. ‘Sebastian Scatkiewicz, soon to be 29 ... born in Illinois to a drug dependent mother. ... Homeless and virtually feral until aged eight. … Picked up in an anti-TB drive … admitted to the Gates Foundation Youth Development Programme ...’
Petroff paused, again. He stopped focusing on the space just in front of his face, and looked at Scat. It was a clunky attempt to show he empathised with his rough early life.
Scat groaned, quietly, inwardly. He had tried hard for years to blank out the memory of his mother’s only visit to the foundation when he was, what, 10 years old, and here it was again, being dragged up by a doorstop with a hard-on for other people’s private lives. He recalled his mother pacing up and down the school corridor, trying her hardest to blend in with the other parents. When he approached her, she did not recognise him. Her eyes had told him one story: she was suffering from withdrawal symptoms. Her body had told another: her bootlegged neural improvements were throwing her system out of whack. It had been an emotional and disturbing afternoon, ending only when a medical team escorted her off the premises, still spitting and screaming.
As Petroff continued, Scat remembered being taunted by the other kids, and vaguely recalled his form master asking him if he ever wanted to see her again, following which someone must have completed the paperwork making him a ward of court because he never needed parental permission for anything after that. Then there were the two years without any contact with his mother, the formal notice of her death and the long drive to and from the funeral with his woodwork teacher in attendance.
‘You should never have let them bully you into not seeing her again, Scat,’ the man had said. ‘It wasn’t right. You shouldn’t have let them influence you the way they did. Don’t let that happen again. Be your own man.’
It was a hard lesson to learn for a 12 year old, and even though Scat knew his mother’s death was not by his hand, the guilt had followed him around for years.
Petroff continued, insensitive to the memories he was invoking:
‘… Attended Larkhill High School, Chicago ... military service during the Resource Wars … sniper unit ... 49 kills and 213 assists ... highly decorated ...’ Again, Petroff glanced at Scat before moving on.
Scat caught images of burning targets, flapping about until they dropped to the ground, eventually going still, but he pushed them aside. The military had provided him with much needed focus. It had helped to sever the link with his past. In the three years or so of constant conflict, he had gotten perspective and grown to realise that his mother’s death had not been his burden to carry alone. But a lot of people had died as he exorcised that ghost.
‘… graduated from NYU … Mineral Engineering degree … your first off-Earth assignment was on Mars as a junior minerals engineer in the Waverly mine. Prebos is your second Lynthax assignment, but your first outside of the Sol system. Along the way you obtained an accelerated Masters in Mineral Engineering and a secondary degree in AI. Your contract with Lynthax expires in just over 16 months.’
Petroff appeared to have finished.
‘You have a point?’ Scat asked with a harder edge to his voice. He wondered what else Petroff was able to find on that neuralnet he had been reading from. Just how much of his life was public record?
‘Well, Scat, the point is you’re not the agitating sort, are you? In fact, you’re quite the opposite. Since landing on your feet at the Foundation, you’ve proven to be hard working, independent and extremely self-reliant; you’re not the type to believe others owe you anything.’
Petroff was right, but it still needled Scat that someone he did not know could summarise his life, and then his character, in a few sentences. He already disliked him.
‘And?’
‘Your psych evaluation says you’re unwilling to commit to anything. The military says you resent authority. Your university professor says you don’t like travelling with the herd. He says you have a rebellious streak in you; that you sometimes back a contrarian view just to keep it alive ...’
Petroff went on for a little while longer, adding comments about Scat’s views on the Resource Wars—comments he must have also heard from his university professor. He then repeated Scat’s views on the widening technological gap between the haves and the have-nots—something he could have gotten from anyone who knew him.
Eventually he stopped, offering Scat a chance to interrupt. He didn’t: there was no point. Petroff was now talking about the “old” Scat in any case. Scat no longer committed to things he did not believe in just because others got caught up in the moment—even if he had volunteered to serve his country out of loyalty. His views on the technology-gap were widely held—they were hardly controversial. And rebellion did not pay if you wanted to get on in a corporate environment, so he had tried real hard to suppress that trait and fit in more.
That last was still working for him. Don’t make waves.
‘I’m not sure where you’re going with this, sir,’ Scat replied, realising Petroff had accessed much more than his publicly available records for this interview. ‘So, I have views,’
Petroff softened his approach.
‘Our point is this: you’re a practical, hard working young man who doesn’t expect a hand out or a leg up from anyone, and yet you maintain a soft spot in there,’ Petroff said, pointing at Scat’s chest, ‘for the downtrodden, the unfortunate. At heart, you’re an idealist with strong moral convictions. You’re also someone who believes in fair play and honest accounting.’
As Scat remembered the Asian Paymaster, and then Rose the Surveyor, Petroff leaned back in his chair, looking left and right at his two colleagues before coming to his final point:
‘On the face of it, Scat, it wouldn’t surprise us if you were to support the rebel cause—even join them.’
Scat flinched. The conversation was heading for dangerous ground.
Support the Rebel cause? He can’t possibly think I would!
Petroff watched Scat’s eyes widen in alarm. He drew comfort from that. It validated his choice. He smiled inwardly. The interview was going well. Despite Scat holding some strong personal beliefs, Lynthax’s psychoanalysis was correct: Scat was not the type who would want to get involved in sedition, political intrigue and the like. He was trying to keep his life simple while he made a better life for himself.
It was time to make his pitch.
‘And it would do your career a whole lot of good if you were to join them now.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Meaning you would be a natural fit within the rebel organisation—and a useful route in for us.’
10
Scat left the meeting breathing a huge sigh of relief. So Petroff had concluded he was not a rebel, merely made of rebel material and still of possible value to Earth. That was fortunate.
But still, he did not want to get tangled up in the politics of a rebellion – on either side. On reflection, this whole thing was not his problem, and it still need not be.
He was a contract worker, an employee, not a permanent resident. In a year or so, he would no longer be in this solar system. He had plans of his own.
All he cared about was his continued right to work, to be paid and to remain on-strength to qualify for his legitimate share of no-cost life support.
His finances depended on it.
But, as Scat returned to his bunk, it slowly dawned on him that if his employment contract was terminated—and if there was not an immediate ftl run to Trevon—he would be spending a fair chunk of what he had already earned on breathing air: Lynthax’s imported air.
He needed to think this through carefully. Perhaps talk to someone. But who? He had been on Prebos for six weeks, hardly enough time to remember people’s names, let alone make friends he could confide in. And, in any case, the place was a fractious hive of political intrigue.
Although ... perhaps there was a man he could speak to, someone who was keeping his sense of balance: Marvin Cade.
The agreement between the workers and Corporate had cancelled Scat’s R&D work, describing it as “non-essential”. Besides, mining everywhere had stopped, and the lab’s fire monitors were still offline. Scat was not sure about Marvin, though. Marvin supervised tasks that ranged from routine to critical. So, rather than walking all the way to Marvin’s bunk to find it empty, Scat logged onto the work schedule.
He was lucky. Marvin was not working. He was attending his end-of-contract medical.
Scat decided not to call him. Although security was keeping a low profile, he was sure they would be monitoring the station’s internal communications. Instead, he would catch him as he left the medical centre. In any case, while he waited for Marvin, he could speak to the ever helpful and chatty, though slightly paranoid, Patch about Pierce. It had completely slipped his mind.
When Scat arrived at the medical centre, Marvin lay on a gurney attached to several monitors, his head propped up on a pillow. He was reading out aloud from a screen at the foot of his bed. A doctor was making notes and adjusting his eye filters. On the other side of the gurney, a nurse fiddled with leads attached to his chest.
Even for a middle-aged man, Marvin looked rather pale. Perhaps he had been missing his UV treatments. Then again, it could have been the medical centre’s intensely bright and unforgiving lights. They were so much stronger in here than elsewhere in the station, presumably to make the point that it was fines-free.
Scat looked around for the ever-helpful and forever-talkative Patch. He found him in the rear store, between the long-stay ward and the newly established detention centre where Arnold was being held, under guard and hooked up to life support. He was counting out a bunch of prescriptions.
Scat waited in the doorway until it was clear Patch was never going to notice him. He coughed, politely. Patch jumped, lost count and turned around, ready to scold him. Instead, he saw it was Scat and beamed a smile.
‘Hi, Scat! Sick?’
‘Me? Never. Came to speak to Marvin but it can wait. Howzit with you? And how’s Arnold?’
Patch shook his head and frowned as he wiped pill dust from his hands onto the sides of a well-worn white coat. He turned back to the counter and started to count again.
‘Well, Arnold’s a “veggie” but I’m doing OK. Stay where you are, Scat. I won’t be long. You’re not allowed in here.’ He finished counting, poured the pills into a bottle and walked over. ‘Strange days, eh?’
‘Yeah. Sure has turned this place upside down.’
‘There’s more to come, Scat, much more. Have you seen what they’ve have brought down with them?’ Patch stuck his head through the door and inclined his head towards the end of the corridor.
Scat had already seen the stores piled up against the wall.
‘I know,’ he replied. ‘There’re tonnes of it. I saw it coming through.’
‘Yes, but that’s mostly field hospital stuff. What I’m talking about is the weird stuff—the stuff that not even Henry’s familiar with.’ He threw a thumb down the corridor in the other direction to where Henry, the station’s second most senior Medical Officer, was attending to Marvin. ‘We’re getting a briefing on it during the next watch. It’s for some neurological procedure, I think. Probably for some kind of mind-meld.’ He winked.
Scat dismissed it. It would be for the neuralnet, or whatever Petroff called it—perhaps for when they short-circuited. He did say they were recently developed gizmos. And as for Security bringing its own field hospital to a hot-spot such as Prebos, well, that was not to be entirely unexpected. Scat cut straight to his question.
‘Listen, Patch, why was I asked to keep a watch on Pierce during my last belt walk?’
‘A what? It sounded as though Patch hadn’t heard him.
‘A suicide watch.’
‘A suicide watch?’
‘Yep. Pierce.’
‘Is he?’
‘Suicidal?’
‘Yes.’
‘I don’t know, Patch. That’s why I’m asking you.’
‘Who gave you the assignment?’ Patch asked, as though that would help decide if Pierce was suicidal or not.
‘Geoffrey. Just before we suited up. He dragged me to one side and told me that Pierce had just been diagnosed. He said I would be doing everyone a favour if I brought him back “in one piece”. Corporate would reassign him to the command unit when we got back.’
Patch shook his head and wiped his hands on his coat again. He rubbed his nose and looked up and down the corridor a second time. Scat sensed that the temporary disorder in and around the medical centre was unsettling him.
‘He isn’t suicidal, Scat. At least I haven’t seen any notes, and we haven’t issued scrip for antidepressants for a couple of days. Come to think of it, I haven’t seen Pierce here for weeks.’
Patch walked Scat into to a single bedroom where he then logged onto a PC at the back wall. As he called up Pierce’s records, Scat sat up on the bed. Patched waved him off it. ‘Execs only, Scat,’ he said, as though Scat should show more respect for its special status.
‘He needs to be analysed by a doctor, right? Here?’ Scat asked, ignoring him.
Patch found Pierce’s e-file and turned the monitor away from Scat’s direct view.
‘Yes,’ he replied as he flicked through the doctor’s notes, ‘he does—unless he goes crazy somewhere else, in, say, one of the temporary shelters. Then a doctor assesses him on site. That’s what Clavell was trying to do before Briar vented himself from the airlock out at Pig 5.’
‘So, is Pierce normal?’
‘Yes, if you can call him normal. I’ve just looked through his notes. There’s nothing there to suggest otherwise. No flags, no nothing.’
Scat let that sink in. So that toad Geoffrey was shitting me.
‘But I haven’t said a thing, right, Scat? They’d have my arse if they knew we’d talked about it. I’ve still got three months to go.’
Marvin strolled out into reception, fiddling with his inner-suit. The gown was gone. Scat waited until Marvin had signed his record then went out to join him.
‘Morning, Marvin. Wasn’t your medical due next week?’
‘Hello Scat’ Marvin said, still preoccupied with a sticky zipper at his thickening waist. His thick fingers couldn’t get a grip of it. ‘What brings you to medical?’
‘You. Can we talk?’
Marvin gave up on the zipper, dipped his head and looked at him through bushy eyebrows. His grey eyes narrowed a little.
‘Well, yes, I’m sure we can. What about?’
‘Not here, if you don’t mind. It’s personal,’ Scat said, looking across at Patch and Henry who were wheeling a monitor around some unopened medical crates, probably left there by the security team.
Marvin nodded.
‘Kitchen?’ he suggested.
‘Sure. I’m hungry anyway.’
They crossed a hall crowded with crates; further evidence that the security team intended to stay long-term. Troopers were moving back
and forth between the medical station and the cargo bay. They were using airbeds and huskies. The corridors were too narrow for the cargo carts.
After grabbing some food, they settled down at a table away from the main door.
‘So, Scat—what’s the emergency?’
Scat fidgeted, wondering how to broach the subject of Petroff’s invitation.
‘Well, it may be a little unsafe to tell you—for me, that is. I need to know you’ll stay mum. I’m looking for wise counsel.’
Marvin ignored his food, and proceeded to fold his arms with a fist under each armpit. He dipped his head again and hunched his shoulders. His thick neck disappeared between muscular shoulders. It was his trademark, “I’m listening” pose.
‘OK. I can keep a secret,’ he said. ‘Spill!’
Scat ran his tongue along his lower lip before deciding to give it to him, straight.
‘I was interviewed by Petroff and his goons. They asked me to join the rebels.’
Marvin did not blink or change his expression. Scat had expected more of a reaction. Maybe he was still processing.
‘And Corporate asked me to keep an eye on Pierce during the last belt walk—he was on suicide watch. Yet he isn’t. Suicidal, I mean. Petroff then asked me about it. Asked what Pierce was up to.’
Marvin tilted his head slightly as if that was of genuine interest.
‘And what was he up to?’ he asked.
‘Nothing,’ Scat assured him. ‘As I told Petroff, he wasn’t suicidal. Medical has just confirmed it. But they still asked if he was acting oddly during the last walk.’
‘Was he?’
‘Again, no. He just took longer than usual with the communications console, and he rushed the walk back.’
Marvin nodded slowly, thoughtfully, before replying.
‘Well,’ he began, ‘I was going to ask him how he found out the independence thing, but I haven’t had the chance. Perhaps I don’t need to now: you’ve just confirmed what I suspected.’
This time Scat stared in silence. Marvin explained:
‘He must have hacked the central computer link from the Pig—it’s the only way he could have done it. If he’d accessed the central computer from inside the station, its bug control software would have “outed” him. He probably uploaded some screening software onto the Pig’s computer when it was last offline.’