Senescence (Jezebel's Ladder Book 5)

by Scott Rhine

  When they slid to a halt on the runway, they entire crew cheered the pilot.

  Stu was anxious to reach Monty, so unloading the mail for the base and navigating diplomatic channels seemed to take forever. He sat alone in a chilly Quonset hut for over an hour.

  “I apologize,” said the warden from Iceland. His crisp, blue uniform and parka with brass buttons would have been at home on a cruise ship. “Because of the weather and difficulties with satellite reception, we have to file all the paperwork on actual paper. This is very rare for a visitor to bring so many people. We don’t have lodgings except maybe a few tents.”

  “They’re here for the return flight to make sure no one escapes,” Stu assured the man. “Most of us will stay on the plane. We don’t plan on being here long.” Although, I’m not certain where we’re going after this.

  The warden nodded. “I will bring the volunteers into this hut one at a time.”

  Of course, Z is at the end of the alphabet. Monty’s official name, according to corporate records, was Zygote 17.

  Stu called the others on his Ballbusters comm unit.

  Oleander ran the interviews, and Mo provided extra protection. Hans videotaped while the Llewellyns paced the back of the room. The show’s director commented, “This is the cleanest, most polite prison imaginable.”

  As Oleander accepted each person, the chained individual would cross to the plane and board. The icy wind was howling as the snow fell, but Kaguya stood outside the plane, waiting to be the first person Monty would see as a free man. She wilted with disappointment as each new person turned out not to be her boy.

  The few workers Oleander rejected, two with rape convictions and one with obvious mental illness, went back out to their compound. After filling twenty-six slots, the warden thanked them and shook hands.

  “What about Zygote 17?” Stu asked.

  “Who?” The warden flipped through his records. “Ah. Yes. Mori Medical has right of first refusal. For special prisoners, the wronged party has the right to hire the person first.”

  Which means he would never get out from under the Mori thumb. Laura pulled Stu aside before he throttled the man.

  Oleander handled the problem smoothly. “But you see, Ms. Zeiss is a managing researcher for Mori Medical, and Mr. Llewellyn has board-level authorization from the parent company.”

  The warden made a great show of examining Stu and Laura’s credentials, some of which came from before the feud with her grandfather. Eventually, he licked his lips and admitted, “This is embarrassing. This prisoner used the excitement of your arrival to escape.”

  “What?” Laura asked. “Why didn’t you tell us earlier?”

  “He didn’t volunteer. It didn’t seem relevant,” the warden said, backpedaling. “Without the satellite, we won’t find him until spring, when the snow melts off the dogsled he stole, and we can see it from the air.”

  Laura wailed. The air smelled like burnt electronics.

  Stu caught her as she launched herself at the insensitive warden. Stu whispered in her ear. “Easy. Monty can’t have gone far. He knows the dogs. He’ll be fine. You can locate him before he freezes.”

  “Twenty-four hours,” said the warden, standing at the door. “That’s the record for a man alone in this weather. It’s the middle of winter in this godforsaken place. No sun for another month, and he has no tent.”

  “If we find him before then, can we recruit him?” Stu asked.

  “Sure. I’ll give you his papers now. Save me a burial.”

  Laura shrieked as the callous man left.

  Stu stroked the back of her coat. “Calm down. Your range is farther when you relax.”

  “Yeah. You’re right. I—How did you know?”

  “I have a lot of empath friends,” Stu evaded. “Sit. Breathe. Search. He’ll be the brightest light in this place. Oleander, work with the locals to see if they know what direction he might have gone or what other outposts he might be able to reach.”

  “Esperanza Base is probably closest,” Oleander said.

  ****

  Stu did his best to keep his wife calm. Eventually, Laura clenched her fists, sobbing. “I can’t find him. I don’t have enough range. After all this time, I missed my brother by minutes. He’s going to die because I went to a damn party instead of flying here!”

  “No. This is not your fault, and we’re not giving up,” Stu insisted.

  “I lost everything I owned. Grant and all those university people died. Not Monty, too.”

  “I have a plan. Be ready to travel in ten minutes.” Stu left her to commiserate with Evangeline. Kaguya followed him, stone-faced. If this doesn’t work, she’s going to collect heads.

  In the prison office, Stu spoke to the warden. “Zygote 17 is beyond our tracker’s range. Do you have any vehicles we could use?”

  “A few snowmobiles. They go a little faster than the dogs, but they have limited range before they need to refuel.”

  Asking a few questions, Stu planned a search spiral based on Laura’s maximum range. “No good. This pattern would take twenty times longer than we have.”

  The warden shrugged. “I told you.”

  Kaguya stepped forward. “I notice you have an old VTOL shuttle.”

  “We bought one retired from space duty because it gets so cold here and radiation penetrates the thinner ozone. That vehicle may only be used for medical emergencies and rescuing personnel.”

  Stu closed his eyes. He felt an urge to hit this man, probably because Kaguya really wanted to paste him. “I’ll rent it for a day for a million dollars.”

  “The search will still take seven times longer than you have.”

  “Let me worry about that. Ten million.”

  The man vacillated. “It’s worth a hundred million.”

  “Maybe new. I don’t want to own it. Just rent. My plane will be here as collateral.”

  “Eh. Flying in this weather is tricky. None of my people will do it.”

  “I have two pilots rated for this craft.”

  “It would mean my job,” complained the warden.

  Kaguya took off her glove and extended two fingers in a martial-arts pose.

  Stu raised his voice to forestall violence. “Ten million and the secret of generating electricity from gravity.”

  “But if you want to waste your time, who am I to stop you?”

  Stu used the office equipment to print a bank draft from his stock account and a technical paper on generating shipboard power from an Icarus generator, written by Park, a now-deceased Sanctuary crew member. Stu left the office with a set of keys and a deadline. He tossed the shuttle keys to his mother-in-law. “Now I need something from you.”

  “Anything.”

  “Laura said you’re the world’s leading authority on bonding.”

  “I was.”

  “Can you mix something using materials on the base that can guarantee pair-bonding?”

  “I have a cocktail that works in minutes, but it’s highly illegal and unethical,” Kaguya said, stopping in her tracks.

  “Sometimes there’s a higher law,” he replied.

  “Don’t quote Conrad to me. Why? I thought you were terrified of bonding. You won’t even take your underwear off in front of your wife.”

  Stu winced. “Yeah. When people bond deeply enough, they can exchange pictures, memories. There are things I don’t want to subject her to, and things I promised not to tell her.” They locked gazes. “I’m willing to take that risk to save Monty, for all our sakes.”

  Kaguya hugged him lightly. “Meet me at the medical shuttle with Laura.”

  ****

  Removing his coat, Stu closed the door to the shuttle cockpit and turned the cabin heaters on maximum. Laura was crying in the spacious cabin when her mother lifted off. The vehicle, patterned after the Ascension-class orbitals, could hold thirty. He downed a beaker of a vile concoction in one gulp and then handed the second container to his wife. She sloshed the contents and sniff
ed with disgust. “What is this?”

  “Your mom thought it might relax you. It will take several minutes to get to the start of the search grid. We’re heading toward the Chilean sector first.”

  She tipped her beaker back, a sip at a time, gagging repeatedly.

  He stripped off his flight suit while she was distracted. When she looked up, he was completely naked. “Your mom added a bonding agent to the drinks. If we’re together when the drug hits, your range should be over ten times your old maximum. You can have everything you wanted.”

  She shed her own coat. “No.”

  “What?”

  Laura slid out of her sweater. “What I wanted was for you to beg.”

  Glancing at her breasts, his breath quickened. “I can do that.”

  ****

  The first attempt went a little fast, for which Stu apologized.

  Laura said, “I feel a little dizzy and out of breath, but my empathy is no different.”

  “I don’t understand,” Stu said. “We should have … clicked.”

  Laura said, “Maybe we’re doing it wrong?”

  “No, it was pretty awesome,” Stu gasped, gazing at her adoringly. “I’m still buzzing, like I’m plugged into a wall socket.”

  “Maybe all the physical stuff is getting in the way for me. I’ve done this a lot. Maybe I need something more spiritual or emotional. How did your parents bond so fast?”

  He pulled one of her costume veils out of his flight-suit pocket and wrapped it around her head like a blindfold. “Don’t look with your eyes. Look at me with the sense that you need to sharpen.”

  “This is silly,” she protested. “My mother never bonded. Maybe I have that flaw, too.”

  Stu squeezed her close, warming her. “I know you can, if you just trust in us.”

  Her breath quickened, but she squirmed away. “We’re parked on the mountainside in a snow storm. We can’t stay here long before we’ll have to dig ourselves out.”

  “Shh. If you talk again, I’m going to bite you.”

  As if by suggestion, she chewed on a thumbnail.

  “Let me show you the stars,” he begged, kissing her.

  She giggled at the horrible pickup line.

  Each time he touched her in a new place, he whispered fresh encouragement such as, “I won’t leave you, not ever.”

  When he resorted to the physical again, he told her, “This is different from every other man because you know how much I love you.”

  Under his ministration, her face slowly changed from worry to pleasure and eventually to the wonder of discovery. “Yes. I see … Oh. Hold there.” Over the ear link, she told her mother, “Mom, fly! Fast.”

  Several turbulent minutes later, she cried out, “In the valley … oh … mmh … northeast … ah … ten kilometerrrrs.”

  “Easy, dear. I’ll find us a landing zone. You do what you need to.”

  Stu heard Laura speak the words clearly in his mind, I’ll never forget you for this. Then there were no more words, only an avalanche of her.

  Chapter 39 – Six Dog Night

  Kaguya landed near the dogsled with every external light blazing. The large, fur-clad man stood beside the sled with an ice pickaxe and a homemade spear. His beard and mustache covered the bottom half of the small opening in his hood. Frost due to his breathing whitened his facial hair. The dogs were huddled in a small cave behind him.

  “I’m not going back,” Monty shouted. Although he had found a sheltered niche, the wind keened through the rocks above them. His aspect was the same as Conrad’s, mounted on the body of a caveman. Monty was taller. His face and emotions were deeply scarred.

  “I’m not armed.” Kaguya demonstrated, holding up her good hand as she wandered forward. Five meters.

  “What about your friends inside the shuttle?” Monte demanded.

  She shrugged. “Go ahead. Probe their intentions. I know you can.”

  He looked toward the vehicle, and his eyes glazed over. While he swayed on his feet, she closed the distance between them. Kaguya knocked the spear away.

  “I’ve never seen so much potential,” he said, blinking. He stepped back, still clenching the pickaxe.

  “The woman is your older sister.”

  “I don’t have sisters, and my brothers are dead.”

  “She was Zygote 1. My father allowed me to raise her as my own.”

  “Prove it,” he sneered.

  She passed him her platinum-edged Mori company ID. On the back was the phrase, “If found, return to Tetsuo Mori for a reward.”

  Monty raised the point of the ax to her throat. “Give me one reason not to feed you to my dogs.”

  “I might deserve that, but Laura and her husband have made significant sacrifices to find you. You owe it to her to listen to her offer.”

  “I’d rather die than be a slave for a corporation,” he snarled.

  “I believe you would. No. We’ve come to take you to your father.”

  “If he cares so much about me, why isn’t he here?”

  “His starship is orbiting above us. His name is Conrad Zeiss, and he just returned from a twenty-year mission.”

  This surprised Monty, but he could tell she wasn’t lying.

  “Why would I care about Zeiss?”

  “Because Tetsuo Mori created you, in part, to use as leverage against him. You living happily ever after with Conrad would be the purest form of revenge against Mori Genetics I could imagine.”

  Monty looked embarrassed. “Maybe so, but I don’t do well trapped inside small buildings.”

  Kaguya tried to tap her sleeve link, but normal electronics wouldn’t work in this cold. “Come inside. Let me show you the videos. Sanctuary is a giant biosphere. You never have to stay inside.”

  “You have to realize how farfetched this sounds from my point of view. I mean, who the blazes are you, lady?”

  “The one who should have been your mother,” she said, risking the rejection. She handed him the work-release document. “Look, you don’t have to come with us. You get your freedom either way, but you could have so much more. You could be part of a family—exploring other worlds.”

  He stared down at the pickaxe and up at her earnest face. “Can I take the dogs?”

  “Not to the ship. The ecosystem is finely tuned. A large predator would unbalance it.”

  “I mean in the shuttle. I won’t leave them here to die.”

  Kaguya smiled. “Certainly. We’ll take them back to the prison when we pick up the others.”

  “I’m not setting foot there again,” Monty insisted grimly.

  “You don’t have to get out of the shuttle, and you can hold your rifle the whole time. We rented this vehicle for the whole day. Given the circumstances, I think we should make a trip to Sanctuary as soon as possible.”

  When she opened the shuttle airlock, the couple was discreetly covered by blankets. “Just load the dogs in. Then you can sit up front with me and tell me about your life.”

  Furrowing his brow, Monty pointed at the couple. “Are they okay?”

  “They’ll be fine. The dogs will just snuggle around them. Your sister has deep CU also.”

  “What?”

  She shook her head. “I have so much to tell you about who and what you are.”

  “No offense, lady, but I haven’t talked this much in the whole last year. My head is already hurting.”

  “Magnesium. I have it in my purse. When you start to see halos, take magnesium.” Rummaging around the pilot’s seat, she passed him a water bottle and the spare pills she kept for Laura.

  He stared at the medication, uncertain whether to trust her.

  ****

  On the flight back, Laura yipped when a dog nuzzled her. “Cold nose. Hello?”

  Stu refused to wake, becoming one with the dog pile.

  Laura dressed nervously beneath the blanket. While putting her jewelry back on, she fiddled with the locket, eager to see some of Stu’s baby pictures. Someone had been p
laying with the locket’s advanced functions: Slide Show, Select, Delete, Sort, Import, Export, Age, and Merge. When she clicked on Merge out of curiosity, the device prompted “Male or Female.” On a whim, she clicked Female, and the locket crunched data for a few moments with the wait message “Building Composite Child.”

  When the image of the girl appeared, she was dazzling. This is what our child could look like. Laura reached out to rotate the image.

  Kaguya’s laugh from the cockpit broke Laura’s reverie. There was someone else Laura needed to meet first. She threaded the mammal minefield up to the cockpit. “Hi,” she said with her brightest smile.

  “I’m afraid I’ve spent his word quota for the next year,” Kaguya said with no trace of remorse.

  Laura drank in the features on Monty’s face, especially the savage intelligence in his eyes. She extended a hand. “Pleased to finally make your acquaintance. I’m the first science experiment, Laura. Sorry we couldn’t spring you sooner. I just broke into the database a few weeks ago.”

  “You’re glowing,” he observed.

  She smiled. “My husband boosted my talent to find you. It was exhausting for us both but well worth the risk.”

  “Risk?”

  “He sort of lost the ability to speak,” Laura explained.

  Monty rumbled, “I like him already.”

  Hand on hip, Laura said, “Be as rude as you like to me, but be nice to the other members of our team when we reach the plane.”

  “I’ll stay up front until the spaceship,” Monty said, hugging his rifle.

  Laura raised an eyebrow.

  Kaguya explained, “I told him we were going to fly to Sanctuary while we have the window of opportunity. We could take all the essential people and send the plane back as a decoy.”

  “Even if Stu can arrange that, we still have to go back for the school girls. We’ll also need a medical team for Herk.” Laura glanced through the door at her sleeping husband.

  Waving the excuse away, Kaguya said, “You’re the ambassador’s wife. Just tell people what’s going to happen.”