by Dave Duncan
He reeked of crimple like an unwashed locker room. Why did women go for the scent? He would drive Maeve insane if she came near him now.
Stillness oppressed him as he hobbled up the wide steps to the terrace. The pool shone unrippled silver in the morning light, and the ornamental shrubs had a disconsolate droop to them, although that was likely only his imagination. Maintenance robots must still be tending the gardens, even if he could not see any. He had seen no signs of Security, either, which was hopeful. No sims, even. A dog barked monotonously from the paddocks around the back.
The absence of people was eerie. Always he had known Forhil teeming with people, boys and girls laughing and sporting on the wide lawns, in the pool, among the trees—the lucky ones of the world: politicians, aristocrats, industrailists, royalty, famous entertainers…and spacers, of course. Now the only guests were a couple of unwanted gate-crashers: Death and Admiral Vaun. Was Death inspecting the wine cellar? Trying a few idle strokes on the putting green? He wasn’t visible at the moment, but Vaun sensed the implacable presence more strongly than he ever had in his life.
Tham had had everything to live for, and all the resources of human science to help him do so. But Death was the most persistent of old friends—one who had refused to stay behind on Earth, or let mankind travel the spaceways alone. He could be delayed, but never denied.
Forhil’s main house faced squarely to the rising sun, and Vaun followed his shadow over archaic flagstones toward it, puzzled by the lack of challenge—no robots, no trained carnivores, no energy beams smoking through the shrubbery. Tham had been bluffing, maybe? And if the defense was so weak that it must use guile against a lone man, then the perfect ambush was right here, at the front door.
The entrance itself was set well back in a lofty breezeway, which had been built large enough to shelter a coach and four. Now the flat, yellow light of dawn poured in through the eastern arch, but the arch was narrower than the cobbled interior, and its sides were shadowed.
Vaun decided he didn’t like being an ambushee, even when he had volunteered for the job. He faced straight ahead when he limped through, but the corner of his eye disliked something vague in the darkness to his left. He was allowed another four paces.
“Stop right there!” a girl’s voice cried behind him.
He stopped. It was nice to be right as usual, even if he were dead right this time.
“Put your hands up. All the way.”
He stretched his arms overhead, and turned slowly, squinting into the rising sun.
She really was holding a gun on him. She was wearing a long, dark gown, and he still couldn’t see her clearly, except for a glint of light from the weapon. She could certainly see him.
“I’m Admiral Vaun. I’m a friend of Commodore Tham.” The words sounded very stupid, somehow. “I am unarmed,” he added, as that was probably what she was looking for.
“Turn around.”
“I’d rather be shot on this side, please.”
“Turn around!”
He obeyed reluctantly.
“Now drop your pants.”
“What!”
“You heard! Do it or I shoot.”
He did not like that sudden squeak of hysteria. Slowly he lowered his hands and undipped his belt, wondering if this was some obscure execution ritual or merely a horrible joke. His shorts fell to his ankles.
“Lift your shirt.”
This was bizarre!
“All right,” the girl said, and her tone had changed. “You’re really Vaun. I had to be sure.”
“Zozo?” Vaun crouched to retrieve his pants, wondering why he had not recognized her voice. He also wondered how many people knew of the toothmarks on his buttocks. They were a hunting accident, tolerated and retained because they amused girls, and sometimes inspired them to be innovative. If the brethren were to send one of themselves to impersonate him, they would surely be efficient enough to research his scars first.
Respectable again, he turned to meet the shadow coming to meet his shadow, wondering if she’d let him kiss her. She never normally did, unless Tham was present.
His greeting died in a croak of horror. It was Zozo. It was not Zozo. Unsteady, sagged, and too smalll She stooped as if gripped by an awful sickness. Something unthinkable had shriveled her face. Fried it. He mouthed her name and barely resisted the urge to step back.
A bitter smile twisted loose skin around her mouth as she registered his reaction. This cruel caricature of a beautiful girl…Someone had taken a wax doll and started to destroy it, and then stopped halfway. There were dozens of tiny, shallow grooves scored around her eyes. Her neck was crooked on her shoulders and the skin of her hands was blotchy. He had heard of this, but never seen it, not even in pictures. It was appalling. His gut knotted in revulsion.
“You don’t need to kiss me today, Vaun.”
That was a challenge, and Admiral Vaun never refused a challenge. He’d known many dares he’d approached with more enthusiasm, but he overcame his horror and tried to embrace her. She backed away. “Forget it!” she snapped. “The good times are over.”
He found his voice. “Oh, Zozo! You, too?”
She nodded, and her neck puckered horribly. He wondered about arms in the long sleeves, about breasts and belly and thighs, what horrors might be hidden under the voluminous gown. That wondrous fair body…Yes, there had been some good times.
Very good times. He had spiked the punch himself more than once to get Zozo. The last time, at least, she had guessed who’d been responsible. She disliked him because of it, and put up with him for Tham’s sake.
If Vaun had a gun as she did, and was dying as she was, he would certainly want to settle all his old scores before he went.
“Yes,” she said bitterly. “Now you’ve seen, Vaun. It’s true. Go away, Vaun.”
There was a shine of white at the roots of her hair that he did not understand. It repelled him as much as the crêpe skin and spidery veins…But Admiral Vaun’s poker face had lured many boys to bankruptcy, and he had never been more glad of it than he was now. “I have to speak with Tham.”
She shook her head fiercely. “My God, boy! You don’t have any human feelings at all, do you? No compassion. No understanding. You never did. If Tham had wanted to see you…if he’d wanted you to see him…Just be merciful—go away.” Her eyes glistened. Zozo had always been very controlled, an intensely private person—except when nobbled with unexpected chemicals, of course—and it was a shock to see the fear in her, the wavering, and the doubts. The hopelessness. Tham’s obscure religion wasn’t much good when the big bills came in, obviously.
“Listen, Zozo. I’m not doing this out of some misguided sense of pity or sympathy. I’m here on business, serious bus—”
The gun jerked up again, and she backed away. “Swine!” she said. The muzzle quivered.
“You don’t understand!” he shouted. His voice echoed coldly inside the great porch.
“Roker sent you!” Her knuckles on her gun hand whitened. He could see real hatred in her eyes. He would not have expected so much of it.
“No! No! Roker did this to you, Zozo!”
At least she did not fire. “What?” she said.
“Both of you?” he yelled, and continued to yell over the echoes. “Don’t you see that it’s too much of a coincidence for both of you to go at the same time? And so suddenly? Damnation, Zozo, you were both all right last week…”
She lowered the gun again. She shook her head sadly. “Roker didn’t send you?”
“I swear he didn’t,” Vaun said—more quietly, now that he was no longer a target, forcing a calm suitable for a famous hero. “It was all my own idea. I’m pretty sure the bastard is up to something. Or someone is.” He decided not to complicate things with talk of the Brotherhood. “Obviously someone has been tampering with your booster, Zozo, but if we get proper medical…”
She was shaking her head again.
And almost smiling, which looked awful.
“Tham’s known for two years, Vaun.”
Two years? He stared dumbly at her smug contempt.
“Medical advised him it was having to raise the dosage.”
“But he’s not that old!” Vaun protested. Then he realized that he had absolutely no idea how old Tham was. Older than him, yes—and he would have to work it out to know how old that was—but a boy’s age didn’t matter. Or a girl’s. It wasn’t something anyone ever worried about. A girl didn’t ask a boy how old he was before she bedded him. Lots had spread their knees for their great-grandfathers, and not always by mistake, either.
But apparently his statement had been true, for Zozo was nodding. “Some people just go sooner, Admiral. The body starts resisting the drugs. You know that! The Lord grants some of us one century; others He honors with two. Blessed is the Lord!” Her voice sounded sincere, but her sagging face was bitter. “Sooner or later the Lord sends for all of us, and for Tham it was sooner.”
“Two years?” Vaun knew the chill that death gave off when it was very close. He knew he could face it without wetting his pants, but he didn’t know if he could control his bladder that way for two years. Yet Tham had never as much as dropped a hint.
Of course, if Vaun did have a weakness, it was picking up hints.
Zozo was driving away the silence with nervous words. “When the dosage becomes too high, there’s a sudden rejection. A catastrophic rejection. It happened a week ago.”
“But you? That can’t be coincidence.”
She looked down so he could not see her eyes. “We’ve been together a long time. We’re going to go together.”
He wondered if Tham knew of her decision, and what their precious church said about suicide. He also felt unusually lost. Absurdly, he was mostly aware that his knee was throbbing painfully, and he was enormously weary and hungry, as well as disappointed that his long journey probably wasn’t going to do him any good.
It was morning now and he hadn’t had his booster.
“I understand,” he said. “I admire you for that, Zozo.”
Two outright lies back to back, but she gave him a hard stare, and then said, “Thank you, Vaun.” She looked comforted, as if anyone would believe words spoken in such circumstances. “I probably didn’t have a great deal of time left myself, as I seem to be going fairly quickly. You miss it horribly at first. Every hour it shows more. I feel so tired…”
He could never remember hearing her complain before, ever. He would have expected more heroics from Zozo. When she ran out of convenient, empty words, he said, “What sort of shape is he in?”
“Tham? Hellish!” A trace of the old strength emerged briefly from the ruins as she became protective. “You don’t want to see, and he doesn’t want you to see. Withdrawal is everyone’s right, Vaun. A boy wants his friends to remember him the way he was. A girl certainly does, and you had no damn business bursting in here like this.”
Business…he forced his mind back to business, and why he had come. If Tham had been failing for two years, then Vaun’s suspicions were unfounded. The ComCom’s withdrawal at this time was just a horrible, ironic coincidence. But the rest of the world had a right to life.
“I need to talk to Tham, Zozo. There’s a Q ship on impact trajectory. It’s not just him and you that are going to die. It’s everyone. The whole planet.”
He saw the suspicion leap up again in her eyes. She remembered her gun, and raised it slightly.
“Why did you think that Roker had sent me?” he demanded sharply. And why the insane missile defenses, if they were real and not just a bluff?
The folds of skin tightened around her eyes. “It’s Tham. He’s having…not delusions…but he has a crazy notion that Roker may come here to get him.”
Get him? Why would anyone go after a dying boy? Then Vaun understood, even as Zozo put it into words.
“He says Roker’s threatening to do a mind bleed on him.”
EVEN AT DOGGOTH, Vaun has rarely ever seen a human medic before, but this one is undoubtedly human—unusually dark skin, but quite human. Her snowy-white coat bulges over hip and breast. The whites of her eyes are tinged with yellow, her head and hands coal black. So is her thick, woolly hair. Recalling anthropology classes, he decides she must be an almost-pure example of one of the rarer Elgith stocks. He supposes the other boys would find her attractive. Not a machine, for sure.
He has no clothes on, but he stands at attention because of those metal tags on her shiny white shoulders. She is taller than he is.
She is studying a handcom she holds, and ignoring his nudity. That sort of thing never worries him anyway. All he can think about is that he is leaving Doggoth. The austere little room is damned chilly for bare ass, though.
“Interesting,” she says. Then she turns her black-on-yellow gaze on him. “You are a very remarkable specimen, Crewboy. Medically remarkable, I mean.”
With that complexion she couldn’t blush, and he wasn’t going to. If that was what she meant, she was wasting her time. It wasn’t too likely she meant it that way, anyway.
“Ma’am.”
She shrugs. “You are scheduled to participate in a mind bleed. Do you understand what is involved?”
“Yes, ma’am.” He means he has a rough idea, and he suspects it’s nasty, but he will do anything to leave Doggoth. Anything.
“I am required to certify that you are acting from free choice, that you understand that this procedure is not within standing orders, and that you may refuse to proceed without any prejudice to your record.”
When an admiral wants it? Ha!
“I understand, ma’am.”
She looks him over doubtfully, and her fleshy lips move into a hint of a smile. “I think you’re lying your head off, Crewboy, but you’re on record now.”
“Ma’am,” he says automatically, and wishes they would get on with whatever it is.
“It won’t hurt, but it will be unpleasant. We shave your head, you understand? And we drill holes in your skull.”
Vaun says, “Ma’am!” a little less certainly.
Now she is certainly amused. “Very small holes. Hair size. They’ll heal in a couple of days, and no harm done. Seven or eight of them. There will be another boy involved, and what happens to him is a great deal more unpleasant, but you will not be damaged.”
She pauses, so he repeats his mantra again, “Ma’am!”
She glances down at her handcom again, and rolls her eyes. “You are a cool one! All right, you can put your pants on.”
She doesn’t move, so he doesn’t. She regards him again, hesitantly. “Crewboy…The worst part of this is what happens to the donor. You have to be close, so you’ll have to watch. It’s not nice at all. Just remember that nothing like that is happening to you.”
This time he merely nods.
She shrugs and turns as if about to go, then stops. She thumbs something on her handcom.
“Crewboy…You know about booster, of course?”
This big black girl is starting to irk him, leaving him dangling in a cold room like this. He is under an admiral’s orders now, well out of reach of any pry-finger medico’s powers, so for the first time in his whole life he can afford to be a little bit uppity. “‘Booster is the common name for the dietary supplement necessary for human metabolism on an alien planet, containing essential amino acids, vitamins, and trace elements, plus various therapeutic or preventative medications including antihistamine antidegrad—’”
“Quite!” she snaps, shutting him off. The jet eyes flash. “You may need a few more shots, Crewboy, and I can really lean on a needle.”
“Ma’am!” he says apprehensively.
She chuckles. “You are about to receive your commission, I believe?”
“Ma’am.” And leave Doggoth!
“One of the privileges of being a spacer officer is that you get to adjust your own mix, you know. Except when on duty.”
“Ma’am.”
She nods thoughtfully, studying the in
formation he cannot see, and he is suddenly curious. She holds all of him there, in that coal-black hand of hers. Everything human science can know about him is right there on her palm, and he wonders what it says that she finds so interesting.
“You likely won’t ever need mood adjusters. Off the record, Crewboy…this is a very personal question, and you needn’t answer if you don’t want to. Have you ever had a woman?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Now he thinks he is blushing. Krantz!
“But not often? Not often for a healthy boy of twenty-two? An unusually powerful, intelligent, and reasonably good-looking boy?”
“Maybe not, ma’am.” Did it once, ma’am. On a bet, ma’am. The others said I couldn’t, ma’am. Showed them I could, ma’am. Fuck your own minding business, ma’am.
She looks down at her com and says, “Boys, ever? Voluntarily, I mean—I know what happens to recruits in Doggoth.”
“No, ma’am.” That would be even more disgusting.
She nods to the machine, and he is surprised to realize that she is embarrassed, and doesn’t want this conversation any more than he does.
“That’s what the numbers say. That you’re physically capable if it, but your id…your drive is almost non…is low. You know about ‘stiffener’?”
“Yes, ma’am.” After lights-out, the talk is almost all about what the recruits will do with stiffener when they get back to the real world. The girls’ version is called “loosener.” He’s heard of little else for five years.
“I’m going to give you some advice, Crewboy,” she tells her hands, “as I don’t suppose anyone else ever will, and a machine medic won’t volunteer information. Most spacers add about three units a day to their booster. The machines know what you want if you ask for stiffener. Four or even five units for parties—maybe. Despite any stories you may have heard, almost no one takes more than that. Six or seven make a boy a human goat—he’ll go after everyone and everything, including the canary. Someone usually shoots him in self-defense. Understand?”