Across a Star-Swept Sea

by Diana Peterfreund

  As usual, the effect was stunning. He hadn’t seen Persis with her hair down since the morning after they’d met, when he’d helped her off the bathroom floor after she’d tried to use her palmport too soon. She looked younger this way, more natural, despite the strange hair colors that were, after several days in Albion, not looking quite so strange anymore. As always, she smelled of frangipani, all sweetness and sunshine and soft, pampered skin. As always, she hugged him too tightly and too long, as if they truly were the blossoming lovers they portrayed. And, as always, Justen found he liked it just a tad too much.

  He gave her a perfunctory hug in return, then stepped back. “She has certainly put me to work. I appreciate your help in getting me this position. The last thing I’d want is to be a burden on Albian society.”

  Persis giggled. “Don’t worry—besides, you’re our guest at Scintillans. We can afford a dozen burdens like you.”

  He cleared his throat. “I have a lot of work to do, Persis. Is there something specific you wanted?”

  She blinked at him, an enigmatic smile playing about her mouth. “It depends,” she said coyly. “What are you offering?”

  His lips drew into a tight line. Oh, so it was to be playacting, then. But for whom? The patients here were not in a condition to spread the word about their ersatz romance.

  He saw Noemi emerge from the main building and head in their direction. All right, one witness. Madam Noemi Dorric was a skilled medic in her own right, but had taken a job as the head administrator of the sanitarium, rather than the chief medic, for reasons Justen found bizarre. These Albians might be fair to their regs, but they were quite prejudiced against their women. The chief medic was a man Justen had yet to see; and, despite the official roles, as far as Justen could tell, every employee in the place deferred to Madam Dorric.

  Justen had followed suit. He liked the woman enormously and was thankful that Persis had made the introduction. The aristo did seem to know enough to surround herself with clever people, even as she bragged about dropping out of school and not caring at all about anything that didn’t button or zip. But this was the privilege of wealth and position, Justen supposed. After all, with very little effort, she’d managed to add him to her entourage as well.

  Noemi, though, was one of the most no-nonsense people he’d met since landing on Albion. Even her clothes were simple, her hair natural. Her only concession to Albian fashion seemed to be her palmport. He had been surprised to find one installed on an older woman, not to mention a medic, as most he knew disapproved of the device and the way it leeched nutrients and minerals from its owners. But Noemi had explained that she found it very convenient and didn’t mind taking the required supplements to keep it operational. Though he’d yet to see her actually use the thing. She usually kept it locked away under one of the ubiquitous leather wristlocks all palmport users wore to protect the device.

  “You’re here,” she said when she reached them. Justen had learned in the last few days that the middle-aged woman was not much one for small talk. “Good. There’s something I need you to see.”

  “Need me to see?” Persis pressed a hand to her chest and laughed. “Goodness, no. I can’t imagine what sort of help I’d be to you in an awful place like this.”

  Noemi rolled her eyes. Justen could understand the sentiment. And he was surprised to see Persis acting so flippant about it, given the seriousness with which she’d addressed the subject when it came to her own mother. Maybe this was the way she’d compartmentalized things in her head. After all, Persis had explained that they were refusing to call Lady Heloise Blake’s illness what it was. Maybe Persis preferred to pretend that these people here were nothing like her mother. She took the usual aristo position: hide DAR victims away in sanitariums and never think about them again.

  Noemi tried again. “I was actually talking to my new recruit, Medic Helo.”

  “That’s better.” Persis looked relieved.

  “What can I do for you, Citizen—I mean, Madam Dorric?” He’d been catching himself like this ever since he’d been working at the sanitarium. The day he sailed away from Galatea, he thought he never wanted to hear the word again, but now, spending days in the sanitarium, surrounded by reg medics and the reg patients they served, he found the word sprouting unbidden from his mouth. Here he could forget what the revolution had done to him and to his country, how everything he’d ever wanted had been perverted, and recall instead what he’d once so loved about its principles.

  “I—” Noemi looked at him for a second, then turned to Persis, looking flummoxed and, as far as Justen knew her, uncharacteristically tongue-tied. Was Persis’s ribbon dress rendering her speechless as well? Finally, she sighed. “I really don’t have time for this.”

  “Sorry?” Justen said. Was she letting him go so soon? Did she doubt his commitment to his work given Persis’s unannounced arrival? “Madam Dorric, I was not aware that Lady Blake was coming here today—”

  But, as always, Noemi got right to the point. “I find you very skilled, medic, and seeing as you’re from Galatea, I think you might be able to provide us with some fresh insight.”

  “What?” Justen asked.

  “What?” Persis echoed.

  “There are a few patients on the lower level I’d like a consult for.”

  “The lower level?” said Persis, sounding skeptical. Her mouth made a perfect, rose-colored O. “Surely there can be no cause to drag my poor Justen out of all this glorious sunlight simply to look in on a few silly patients.”

  Noemi cast Persis a weary look and Persis glared at her.

  Justen laid a hand on her arm. “Persis, please. This is my job.” He looked at her face to find her eyes blazing with … was that anger? That he couldn’t run off and join her for a sail at the drop of a hat? The girl needed to find some sort of occupation. Her only commitments might be keeping up with her wardrobe and pretending to be in love with him, but Justen had serious work to do. The elder Blakes seemed like intelligent, hardworking people. It mystified him that they’d produced such a shallow daughter.

  “Lady Blake, I am sorry to disagree with you,” Noemi said, “but whatever your priorities are, I am a medic, and my highest duty is to my patients. I’ve come to the conclusion that Medic Helo here is in a unique position to help them, and so I’m going to ask for his help, whether you approve or not.”

  Justen wanted to laugh out loud as the medic scolded the aristo like a child. He wondered if anyone had ever been so strict with Persis in all her life. Of course, Persis had said that she and Noemi were old acquaintances. Maybe that’s why his new boss felt so free with the aristo.

  As he watched, Persis’s forehead smoothed out, and she slipped them both a dazzling smile. “Well, I guess we have no choice but to delay our outing.”

  Justen and Persis followed Noemi into the building and down a hall to a reinforced door she unlocked with her palmport. As she ushered them inside and down a long staircase punctuated by several other locked doors, she explained.

  “This is a very sensitive situation, Medic Helo, and I’m sure you understand why I require your absolute silence on what I’m about to show you.”

  Justen frowned. So much security. Was there some sort of unknown plague going on in Albion? What had he agreed to? And why was Noemi letting Persis tag along? Surely if something was supposed to be a secret, you didn’t take the biggest gossip at court to see it. Then again, he supposed Noemi knew how well Persis had kept the secret of her mother’s illness. She probably trusted the aristo to do the same here.

  Finally, they passed through the last door and into a large chamber. It had clearly been meant as storage when the sanitarium was first built, but Justen saw that someone had put an effort into making it comfortable. There were many cots in the room, and curtains had been erected to separate sleeping and living areas and to give the occupants more privacy. There were touches of decor, too, colorful cushions and vases of flowers, plants and geothermal lights to make up fo
r the lack of windows. There were more than a dozen patients, all ages, all sexes, some lying on their cots; some being entertained by therapeutic oblets or other games; and some stumbling around, talking to walls or swaying in place. That part was normal enough. DAR patients often passed through these phases. But why the young people? Why were there children in a sanitarium? It was impossible that they could be affected so young. And then, he took notice of something even stranger—every one of these people had natural hair. He hadn’t noted it at first, since he was used to seeing such things in Galatea.

  And then it struck him and he reeled back in horror as the full weight of his crimes smacked him in the face.

  These were Galateans. They didn’t have DAR.

  They were Reduced.

  PERSIS HAD BEEN TRYING to get Noemi’s attention for several minutes, but the medic was studiously ignoring her as she showed Justen around the facility and introduced him to the patients. The older woman must be getting desperate for assistance in solving the problems that plagued the Galatean refugees.

  That could be the only reason she’d brought Justen into the fold this quickly. Surely Noemi didn’t think this whole campaign Isla dreamed up meant that Persis trusted the Galatean revolutionary with all her secrets. He definitely disapproved of the revolutionaries’ tactics, but he had no love for the displaced aristos. That much Justen had made abundantly clear when he’d met the Seris.

  Still, he was a medic, and Persis supposed that, just like Noemi, he subscribed to all those old oaths by which medics swore to put aside all personal feelings and treat sick patients to the best of their abilities. Justen, thanks to his training, might be able to sew up the mortal wounds of his worst enemy.

  Persis, if she happened upon a bleeding Citizen Aldred, would be hard-pressed not to kick him around a bit more. Well, as long as she could make sure he wouldn’t survive to tell the tale and wreck her cover.

  “The problems with detoxification have been twofold,” Noemi was explaining as she activated an oblet on the nearest tabletop. It sparked to life, emitting a holographic replica of the human brain, colored to indicate areas of damage. “The first is that the younger aristo victims, especially those who were subjected to the drug for long periods of time, have been sluggish in their recovery.” She went on to describe the symptoms and difficulties that the children had been experiencing, and Justen listened, his expression somber and impassive. He nodded from time to time as she spoke, and asked Noemi for details about particular cases. But when Persis lowered her gaze to his broad, skilled medic’s hands,she saw the way he clenched and unclenched them into fists and the stiffness with which he held his arms slightly out from his sides, as if filled with a tension he dare not let loose.

  He looked like he wanted to punch something.

  “The bigger problem we have recently discovered lies with the reg victims.” She poked at the glowing controls floating before her, and the oblet’s display switched to a new brain model.

  The tension migrated up to Justen’s face. “What do you mean?” he asked softly.

  Persis moved closer as well. She was no scientist, but she’d accepted responsibility for the refugees long after the Poppy had seen them safely into Albion.

  “We’ve only recently received victims of reg origins,” Noemi explained. “While your government began by torturing only aristos, they’ve apparently expanded their reign of terror.”

  “Yes,” Justen whispered. “I heard rumors …”

  “And the regs—they aren’t recovering from the drug.”

  Persis’s jaw dropped. In the muffled, blurry distance, she saw Justen nod again, heard him ask indistinct questions of Noemi, heard the older medic’s equally indistinct answers. She barely realized she was backing up until she felt the warm, geoheated wall of the room against her bare spine.

  They weren’t recovering. They weren’t detoxing. She was saving them from Galatea, but it was too late—the damage had been done.

  “While there appears to be some increase in brain and motor function after a week of detox, they show no signs of regaining their language, motor control, or memories. It’s not just that they seem slower to recover, as the aristo children do. The detoxification is having no effect at all.”

  Those poor people. Those poor, poor regs who’d done nothing worse than speak out against the current regime’s cruel methods, only to have that very cruelty foisted upon them in an infinitely worse way. Brain damage. Permanent brain damage.

  As bad as Darkening.

  And the revolutionaries were doing it to everyone. Adults, children. For crimes and disagreements and even petty revenge plots. If any of her spies were captured, it’s what would happen to them. To her. Persis had thought the Poppy could save them. She was wrong.

  Persis took several deep breaths and schooled her features into her signature vapidity. Panicking wouldn’t help anything now. She joined Justen and Noemi as they discussed the lab results, keeping her mouth shut and her ears open.

  Noemi slid the first brain model up beside the second. “We’ve postulated that the Reduction drug hinders neural pathway functioning and development in the aristo brain, but if you look here”—she pointed at the other—“you can see that the response in the reg’s brain shows a marked difference. Here there is a chemical binding of nerve endings. It seals off neural pathways permanently.”

  Justen was simply nodding as if this all made perfect sense. Perhaps to a medic, it did. “What does that mean?” Persis asked. For once, she didn’t have to play stupid. She really did feel out of the loop.

  Noemi looked at her, and from the question in the older woman’s eyes, Persis could tell Noemi was wondering how much of Persis’s behavior was just for show. The medic had never had much patience with the subterfuge aspects of the Wild Poppy, but then again, Noemi knew from firsthand experience how difficult it could be for a woman to get things done on this island. Though she was obviously the most talented medic at the sanitarium, she was kept in the role of administrative official while a man was given the chief title. Noemi held a place of sympathy in her practical little heart for Isla and Persis and their conundrum.

  “It’s the biological equivalent of putting a bit of resin at the tip of a rope to keep it from unraveling,” she explained. “In an aristo brain, we’ve seen that recovery from the drug involves creating new pathways—basically rerouting neurons around the damaged parts. But when the Reduction drug enters the regs’ systems, it changes their brains’ ability to reroute those pathways—forever.”

  “And this is happening to all of them?” Justen asked.

  “We’ve genetested them for DAR, of course,” Noemi replied, “given the similarity of symptoms. None are susceptible.”

  “Are the patients lucid enough to give you a medical history?” he asked. “Do you know if they’re natural or Helo Cured?”

  “If they’re natural regs, they can’t Darken,” Persis broke in before she even realized what she was doing.

  Justen looked at her, his lips compressed into a tight line. He looked as stricken as she felt, as lost. There was no danger, in this moment, that he might see beneath her mask. Whatever he was thinking, his head was too full of it for anything else. “Yes. DAR only affects those regs whose ancestors took the Helo Cure. That’s why it’s called Dementia of Acquired Regularity. Not natural regularity.”

  “We haven’t tried to get that information out of them,” Noemi said. “But even if they aren’t capable of telling us, we can test for it. Do you think it might be relevant?”

  Justen jerked his head up and down. His jaw twitched as if he was clenching every muscle in his face. “Relevant, yes, but not helpful. We should test, just to make sure, but I think you’ll find that all your patients are descended from Helo Cured regs. If my hypothesis is correct, a natural reg wouldn’t have this problem.”

  “Why not?” Persis asked, honestly curious this time.

  Noemi looked grave as she put the pieces together. “He’s s
aying the problem is connected to how the cure works, Persis. The reason Reduction was so insidious for all those centuries is that it couldn’t be gengineered out of our genetic code. No matter what people tried, the genes would mutate right back into place in the developing embryo.”

  “Right, but Persistence did something different.” Everyone knew that.

  “Yes,” said Noemi. “The Helo Cure didn’t seek to fix the flawed code. It merely bypassed the architecture of Reduction, changing the way the brain developed in the womb. And that changes the way it functions. A natural reg, whose genetic code mutated the flaw of Reduction out, has a brain more like an aristo’s. But a Helo Cured reg has an—Well, I don’t want to call it an artificial boost. But it’s a different kind of brain from other humans.”

  Justen gave Persis a curious look. “Does this really interest you?”

  “How my brain might work?” Persis snapped. “A little.” Let him think she cared on behalf of her mother. That she was still thinking about DAR. He could allow Persis Blake to be serious about that, at least.

  “All right. Imagine a road that’s perpetually flooded,” Justen said. “That’s Reduction. The road exists, but it’s useless. With aristos and natural regs, the road’s built on higher ground. It doesn’t get flooded. With the Helo Cure, we built a bridge. However, the flooded road is still there. The flaw that causes Reduction still exists in the reg’s genetic code, but there’s a workaround now. That’s what Persistence Helo did. She gengineered an early end to the Reduction.”

  Before Persistence Helo and her cure, only one in twenty Reduced births resulted in a naturally reg offspring. If they waited around for generations, Reduction would have died out eventually. But Persistence Helo, like Persis, didn’t have that kind of patience. She fixed the entire population in one fell swoop.