Aurora

by Mark W. Tiedemann

'Are you checking her comm togs to determine who else?'

  'That would be presumptive----~'

  "Show me where they are. I will presume."

  Thales regarded Bogard for a long, silent time. Finally, he nodded and walked away. After a moment, Bogard followed

  Masid wandered the streets of Nova City. No one stopped him from leaving after his examination, no one questioned his motives for wanting to explore. To his surprise, no one even suggested assigning him a guard or escort. He was given a palm reader with a map and a beacon dedicated to the compound and told not to try to leave the city. That was all.

  Originally, the city had been little more than a staging area for settlers to move away from the port into the vastness of the wilderness. That first collection of warehouses, hostelries, small factories, and merchants grew over time into a cocoon of urban sprawl around the still impressive port complex. If there had once been a plan for the city, it had been swallowed by the exigencies of opportunism and expediency, creating a maze of small streets, raised plazas, hulking self-contained arcological structures, and jagged boulevards.

  Close to the por~ things were easy to find- Nearly everything within a hundred and fifty meters of the port perimeter was commercial, and it quickly became clear to Masid that the blockade was stopping almost nothing. Contraband filled the shops, and at first it puzzled him from where the customers came. But he began to recognize offworlders, mainly Settlers from other colonies, and more than one mercenary unit patch. Weapons dealers outnumbered all the rest, but there seemed no shortage of the other commodities in which an open, unregulated market might traffic: transport~ clothing, drugs both recreational and medicinal, data systems, tools and machinery, agrotech, biotech, even one vendor offering nonpositronic robots. He heard the emerging dialects of at least five Settler colonies, identified the fashions and cosmetic trappings of three more, and in one area right against the port entrance he saw Spacers-Keresians, without their robots, an odd sight to be sure.

  No wonder they Let me wander freely, he thought. Nothing's hidden here, everything's out in the open ... Where would I go?

  He found a bar that overlooked the landing field. Nursing a glass of local beer, he watched the shuttles land and take off. Traffic was much slower than an open port, but Masid was surprised all the same--the blockade had a very large hole in it.

  He finished his beer and left the port area. He wandered for nearly -two hours before he found someone who could direct him to Dr. Shasma's clinic. He walked another hour before he found it, against the outer wall, in a cramped, nearly-deserted lane.

  The smell bothered him, a mix of fetid water and antiseptic rinse, with a heavy trace of ozone underlying everything. Masid sneezed three times rapidly, his eyes watering. He leaned against a wall across from the clinic entrance and waited to see who might come by.

  When after half an hour no one did, he crossed the broken pavement and stepped through the large main door.

  He was startled to find a robot at the front desk-an older model, a simple optical grid on its oval head, and four arms.

  "May I help you?' it asked in a flat, genderless voice.

  "I'd like to see Dr. Shasma," Masid said

  "Do you have a specific question?'

  "Tell her I have a question about her recent prescription for me. That 1---2'

  I have it, Casey."

  Masid looked to the left and saw Shasma standing in a doorway.

  "What can I do for you?' she asked

  "I'd like to ask you some questions," Masid said.

  'Anything you couldn't ask earlier?'

  "Well, I didn't know if we were being monitored."

  She gestured for him to follow.

  The door opened into a corridor lined with more doors, each one standing open on a basic examination room with biodiagnostic array. Masid counted six of them before Shasma led him through another door and into a private office.

  "Why would you be worried about eavesdropping?' she asked, dropping into a chair behind a small desk. "It's not practical to keep secrets here, not from people like Filoo."

  I don't know what people like Filoo are," Masid said

  "Do you think I can explain them to you?'

  I ran our talk back and forth in my head," he said, "and tried to figure if you'd said anything that could get me into trouble. You didn't So I assumed you had some sort of shielding, but not perfect. And just incase, you were careful."

  'Why would I have been careful?'

  "You didn't give me away."

  "I'm not required to report anyone who isn't a Spacer."

  'That's glib. You saw something in my scans and you didn't report it."

  She was very still. 'What did I see?'

  "You recognized that I'm not native."

  "Y-yes . . ."

  "You also recognized that I have antibodies signifying exposure to at least half a dozen different biospheres. I'm not just from one other colony."

  'Ex-military~~'

  "Would not explain it An awkward detail. You're right about the implant, by the way." He leaned forward- "The Spacers you've turned in. Were any of them spies?'

  "I don't know," she said

  "Probably not."

  "How would you know?'

  "Because I am." He sat back. "So, why didn't you turn me in?' "It doesn't affect my situation ... why should I cooperate further than necessary?'

  -11-la?'s facile. How come they trust you?'

  Shasma smiled coldly. "No secrets, remember? They know exactly what I think of them. Changes nothing. Filoo-and everyone else who works for Kynig Parapoyos-is a soulless shit who feeds on the helpless."

  'That's pretty much my assessment, too. So why work with them?'

  "Because, believe it or not, they aren't the worst." She raised a hand. "I'm not making excuses for them, just stating a fact-Filoo has a sense of discipline, he pays attention, he's careful to do what he must to preserve his clientele. Its a morbid and ugly way to be responsible, but it results in at least a semblance of concern. The worst are those who don't care that what they do may kill people-or themselves. Some of them even have a sense of remorse, guilt, something of a conscience--but they've abandoned all of it because they don't want the responsibility." She smiled again. "Give me a competent sociopath over an incompetent martyr every time. So my question is, which category do you fit?'

  "Neither How about you?'

  Tragmati.st. I was chief physician to the governor's civil service branch before Parapoyos turned the planet into his personal warehouse. Before that, I was with the Fifty Worlds Advisory Mission. My concern is saving lives. This is where I'm stuck, so I do what I have to in order to appease my conscience and serve my calling."

  She rattled the speech off as though she had given it a thousand times, but still Masid thought he detected a trace of genuine passion.

  "The alternative," he said, "would be to refuse to cooperate with Parapoyos. Then I suppose you'd lose the clinic and be barred from practicing medicine."

  She raised an eyebrow. "Not much of an alternative, is it?'

  'What would the death toll be?'

  'Thousands, hundreds of thousands. Does it matter? One would be too many." She sighed- 'What do you want, Mister ... ?'

  "Vorian. Masid Vorian. A number of things, really. But to start, how do you reconcile handing over spies to them? Do they kill them?'

  "No, they don't They infect them with mnemonic plague and drop them in the countryside somewhere."

  "Uh-huh. Like the former govemor?'

  She nodded.

  "You said I'll require a booster for your treatments to stay effective. Can't you just cure them?'

  Parapoyos maintains loyalty by maintaining a chronically infected population. People work for him to get relief from what would otherwise turn their lives into daily torment"

  "I repeat: Could it all be cured?'

  -What do you think? You worked as an independent dealer in Noresk."

  i(Yes ... Yr />
  'And what did you see?'

  Masid thought for a moment 'Tike I said before, an incredibly high mutation rate."

  'Almost unbelievably fast," she agreed. nothing like it since the retrovirus plagues a couple millennia ago. Do you think those are curable?'

  "Vaccines are possible."

  Shasma looked impressed. 'And you've been given a few. Not all, not the whole series. They have to leave you vulnerable to something. But the ones that will keep you from spreading the nastier infections here, in Nova City-those have been taken care of."

  "How many do I still have?' Masid asked, pulling a chair up to desk and sitting down.

  She frowned- "None. You're not a Spacer, but ... how did you get here? What do think you can do?'

  'Ah you're curious. That's good, I was worried that you'd become all cynic."

  Shasma scowled.

  Masid smiled. "I'll answer your questions if you answer mine. Fair?'

  'Why should P For all I know, you work for Parapoyos. Why would I want the trouble?'

  "Well, Anda Wilam said you were worth trusting."

  She stared at him blankly for several seconds. Then, quietly, she said, "You have thirty seconds to back that up with some

  thing that will convince me you didn't just do a very thorough piece of research."

  'Anda said to ask if you remember Calinas Ridge."

  Her eyes glistened, tears threatening to spill over. She sniffed loudly once and straightened- 'All right. What do you need?'

  Mia disconnected herself from the monitor and stood- She felt mildly feverish and tier legs trembled. She waited, propped against the edge of the bed, till she felt confident enough to cross the small room. She studied the readouts on the monitor. They made little sense; the unit was a Spacer design, and she could not be sure the numbers corresponded to Earth standards.

  Finally, she went to the bookshelf. She ran her fingers over the spines, feeling the embossing& and at random pulled a volume out JANE EYRE, the title read, BY CHARLOTTE BRONTE. She opened the cover The endpapers had been removed. She returned it and chose another. No endpapers. The third one--Kidnapped-still had its end papers, ornate filigrees in red and gold.

  Mia checked several more books and found that every third or fourth one lacked its endpapers.

  That's important, she thought. She closed her eyes and concentrated through the dull headache now growing behind them. Not every book has encoding ...

  But how to tell the difference?

  She searched the room until she found her clothes in a narrow closet They had been cleaned, she saw. She continued digging in the closet until she realized that she wasn't going to find her weapon or comm. She dressed, keeping watch on the door, wondering who if anyone was overseeing her monitor.

  She zipped up the tunic and opened the door.

  The hallways seemed deserted. She walked softly to the next room. Heart racing, she drew the door open a few centimeters and peered in. It was a room like the one she had just left, unoccupied- Mia continued on till she found one in use.

  The man lying in the isolation cocoon enveloping the bed looked as though he had been burned over his entire body. Blackened skin flaked off, revealing bloodied tissue beneath Mia retreated quickly.

  She found four more patients, each in various stages of different illnesses. At the end of the long hallway, she found a central monitoring station, unoccupied. The screens showed the many rooms. Almost half contained patients. A few did not appear very ill, but most clearly suffered from infections. Mia counted thirty-five monitors. The facility was larger than she expected, certainly large enough to warrant a sizable staff. But aside from the patients on the screens, she saw no sign of doctors or nurses.

  She sat down before a blank screen and studied the system, recognized it as a basic datum. Within a few minutes, she had pulled up a menu, then located a map of the clinic.

  It appeared to be divided into two parts: this section-the larger part-and a smaller one on the other side of a thick wall with only one access. She traced the corridors in the larger section to an exit.

  Which way do I want to go? she wondered. She drew a deep breath and her lungs twinged She coughed loudly, clapping a hand over her mouth~ and watched down the corridor. When no one appeared, she continued working on the datum.

  The barrier ... heavy wall, one access ...

  She typed instructions and the screen changed to show her a detail of the interior access to the smaller section of the clinic.

  Decontamination~ chamber ...

  She closed down the datum and stepped into the corridor. It took a moment for her to get her bearings, then she headed for the decontamination area.

  When she found it, she was surprised to see it standing open and inoperative. She hesitated, wondering if she would trip any alarms, then stepped through.

  Within the chamber, she saw signs of recent repairs. Perhaps, she decided, it was offline.

  But then wouldn't there be guards ... or something ... ?

  She passed into the next section. The hospital smelt seemed stronger, the walls a bit cleaner, although Mia did not remember seeing any dirt.

  Still no people.

  But she heard voices.

  Moving as quietly as she could manage--a feat she found oddly difficult for some reason-she followed the sound around a comer and down a row of closed doors.

  The door at the end of the hall stood open. The voices came from within. Mia pressed against the wall and edged closer.

  If-didn't happen all at once," someone said. The voice was familiar, female ... tired. Mia tried to will her pulse to quiet down so she could hear better.

  if-smuggling, nothing large at first, but there were some people here from the original Solarian colony."

  "When it was called Cassus Thole?' another voice cut in. Mate Mia did not recognize this one.

  '-fillafs right Most people have forgotten Nova Levis ever had a different name. Keresians, mostly, from the mining company that worked the ore fields around the poles. The company never lost its lease. It was complicated- When the first Settlers arrived-they were a religious group, did you know that? The Church of Organic Sapiens ... Anyway, they wanted to conduct agriculture almost exclusively. Well, you can't make a settlement on a new world work with just agriculture. Too much basic ecoengineering is required- Arrangements were made with the Keresians, an outside company was brought in to handle the terraforming, and everything looked like it would settle down into just another Settler colony."

  "But?'

  '-filiat smuggling. The company brought in to do the terraforming was a little more involved than anyone thought By the time anyone realized what was happening, Nova City had become a pirate port."

  "It wasn't that open, was it?'

  'Almost. The governor began an investigation. I lost track of what happened after that The next thing I knew, most of the resident Spacers had left, the governor was answering charges from Earth of colluding with the pirates, and suddenly I and every other doctor on the planet was busy dealing with emergent disease strains we'd never seen before. The governor shifted from trying to deal with the smuggling problem to confronting Ten-an-Spacer demands to allow ground forces onto the surface. The Settler were afraid that would lead to a permanent Terran presence, which is exactly what they didn't want The governor called for a meeting with the relevant representatives from Solaria, Keres, Aurora, and Earth to try to come to a settlement That's when the Tiberius was forcibly boarded- Then a pirate ship fired on a Ten-an patrol cruiser. All talks were suspended, Terran demands were renewed, and the governor-well, what could he do?'

  "What did he do?'

  "Nothing. He insisted on protocol. They insisted that protocol had already failed, and the blockade went up. Now Nova City is openly a pirate port."

  "What about these epidemics?'

  "Partly understandable, but. .

  "But?'

  "Well, we're under siege. Right now the only functional authority is
criminal. They run things just well enough to maintain a base, protect their own, and keep the goods flowing. Which means a lot of otherwise normal services are getting ignored. Like public health. So we've had systems break down, doctors recruited into service directly to the smugglers, and because of the disruptions in normal economic conditions, people are on the move, under stress, undernourished ... susceptible. All the programs and routines that ordinarily maintain the health of the community are starved of resources or have been abandoned because no one qualified to ran them is available anymore. But where some of these pathogens have come from ... I don't know."