by Ben Bova
His head clearing, he turned to study the array of monitoring equipment behind him, the various winking lights corresponding to the data collected by the medimonitor on his wrist. Standard stuff, mostly, he decided. But among the readouts he recognized one that explained the cottonmouth feeling as well as his dizziness and disorientation—he was on medication.
There was another readout, this one a simple red panel with the words CALL INITIATED. Whatever program was monitoring him had obviously included a subroutine to alert—whom?—that he had awakened.
The door opened abruptly and Rice turned, squinting anew at the bright light flooding into the room from the corridor. He released his grip on the rail long enough to shield his eyes, and saw a figure silhouetted in the doorway.
“Hello … ?”
“Ah, Dr. Rice,” he said pleasantly, entering. “I’m glad you’re back among the living. Watch your eyes … .” He paused, looking ceilingward. “System, bring lights to normal level at the rate of ten percent per minute.” The lights rose gradually, revealing a strong, handsomely groomed man in a white medical technician’s jacket. “How are you feeling?”
“I feel … well, to be perfectly honest, I feel like hell.” He sagged back into the bed and leaned against the upright mattress, the movements setting his head to spinning again. “But I don’t know where I am, or how I got here.”
“I’m not surprised. You took quite a ride in that evac pod.” The man sat on the edge of the bed and loosely took Rice’s wrist in the age-old gesture all doctors used to check a patient’s pulse.
But the touch of the man’s fingers on his wrist seemed wrong. He couldn’t really be reading his pulse, unless—Rice felt suddenly foolish, realizing that the man was not taking his pulse at all, but rather must have been checking the medimonitor on his arm. But if he was doing that, Rice wondered, why wasn’t he comparing the bracelet with the readouts on the headboard?
“You’re at the medical facility on the orbital habitat Curtis,” he went on, interrupting Rice’s thoughts, “midway between Mercury and Venus. Your evac pod was picked up two days ago by a short-haul passenger shuttle from the Venusian reclamation colony and towed here—we’re the best-equipped medical facility this far out from cislunar space. You drifted just over three weeks before they found you crossing into a transit lane; by accident, as it turns out, since no one was looking for you there. After you escaped the mutiny at the sunstation. You must have—”
“Oidar!” The mention of the sunstation snapped Rice’s mind to crystal clarity. “Oidar, where is he?”
The doctor paused uneasily, his eyes not meeting his. “I’m sorry, Dr. Rice.” He glanced into the darkened room and exhaled heavily, puffing his cheeks. “Well … how do I tell you this? The evac pod you used to escape was programmed with different survival modes to react to both short- and long-term situations. After a preset number of hours or days, the life-support system introduces stasis-inducing gases into the atmosphere to assure the survival of the occupants until they can be picked up. I’m sorry, but the alien’s biology was incompatible with the stasis. After three weeks … Well, there wasn’t anything we could. do.” He turned to the darkened room again, and Rice now comprehended what was in the other bed.
“But that’s not right!” Rice tried to get out of the bed and get a closer view of the next room, but the doctor’s gentle, yet firm, hand on his shoulder prevented him. At the doctor’s urging, he remained sitting up in the bed, collecting himself. “That can’t be right. As soon as we were safely in the evac pod I sent out a distress call; for that matter, an emergency locator signal activated automatically the moment the pod fired. We should have been found almost immediately.”
The doctor shrugged somberly. “I’m not sure how those things work, but there was a general alarm and search ordered right after you escaped. There were military personnel at the station, right?”
Rice nodded, still trying to figure out what had gone wrong.
“I heard that your escape created enough of a diversion for them to regain control of the station, putting down the mutiny. They immediately contacted Imperial forces, but your pod wasn’t on the trajectory it should have been. Maybe in all the shooting, could something have been hit?”
Rice stared at him blankly. “There wasn’t any shooting in the pod bay.”
He shrugged again, smiling. “As I said, evac pods aren’t in my area of expertise. What I do know is that after your pod’s trajectory took you out of Mercury orbit, you weren’t even close to where they were looking. You’re lucky you crossed a commuter lane when you did. Stasis is a tricky thing; you probably would have been all right until you were found, but there’s no telling just when that might have been. How long did you drift before long-term survival mode put you to sleep? Was the alien all right until then?” There was a tiny, high-pitched beeping that caused him to glance at the timepiece on his wrist before silencing the sound with a fingertip.
Rice hesitated. “I … I don’t know. We made it to the pod bay, and I distinctly remember getting us both in—Oidar was still groggy from cryosleep and had a hard time negotiating the hatch. I remember that. I secured the hatch … . I remember checking through the hatch window before rotating the pod for ejection to see if they’d caught up, but the pod bay was still empty … .” His voice trailed off and he eased back into the pillow.
“And then you hit the autosequencer to eject the pod, right?”
Rice concentrated, gnawing absently at his lower lip, but he just couldn’t place his actions after securing the hatch. Frustrated, he turned on his side to gaze into the darkened room, but the lighting on his side was now at full brightness, and he saw only his reflection; the clear wall must have been glass after all. “I guess I did, but … why can’t I remember?”
The man turned to Rice, speaking in a low, reassuring voice. “You hit the autosequencer right after you secured the hatch. You lifted off smoothly, but the pod was damaged and carried you out of orbit and nobody heard your Mayday. After several hours of drifting, the stasis kicked in.” The doctor smiled then, rising from the edge of the bed. “I wouldn’t worry too much about it. It’ll all come back to you soon enough, I’m sure.” He glanced at his watch again. “I imagine you’re hungry. You’ve been sleeping off the stasis for nearly forty-eight hours now.”
At the suggestion, Rice felt an insistent gnawing at his stomach he hadn’t noticed before, but he still didn’t feel like eating. Was Oidar’s lifeless body lying in the darkened room behind the shield?
“Maybe later.”
“I think you’d feel better if you ate something solid.” Again, his voice was low, his words measured.
The persistent growling in Rice’s stomach increased, and the thought of a hot meal began to sound appealing.
“Yeah,” he replied. “On second thought, I guess I am pretty hungry.”
“I thought so.” The smile was back as he headed for the door. “I’ll have an orderly bring you something.” He touched the door plate, then turned back to Rice, his face serious but compassionate. “Again, I’m sorry about your friend.” He nodded to the darkened room, his lips a tight line of remorse. “You did a brave thing trying to get him out of there. I just wish there was something I could have—”
“No,” Rice interrupted. “It’s all right. You did what you could, I’m sure. Thank you, Doctor … ?”
“Rapson.”
“Thank you, Dr. Rapson.”
Rapson smiled again as he left, the door sliding shut behind him.
Alone once more, Rice turned and stared into the darkened room at his right, trying desperately to penetrate the gloom that lay ominously beyond his troubled reflection.
Rapson waited but a split second after the door slid firmly closed before turning sharply to another door just a few meters down the corridor. He barely slowed his stride as he thumbed it open.
“Well?” he asked, entering the dimly lighted room. There were several chairs here lined up in a double
row facing a long plastiglass wall. Other than the chairs, the room was bare. “You watched that whole charade; what do you think?”
Rihana Valtane stood before the glass, arms folded in front of her, and stared at Rice. The man lay on his side in the bed, still gazing unknowingly into what he thought was a clear window. “What kind of game were you playing there at the end?” she demanded. “‘I think you’ll feel better if you eat something.’” Rihana snorted. “You asked me what I think; all right, I think you let playing doctor go to your head.”
If Rapson was put off by her affront, the sly smile on his face didn’t show it. “Just call it ‘bedside manner.’” He approached the clear wall and stood next to her, observing Rice in the next room. The scientist had turned away from the window and now lay back in the bed. The door in Rice’s room opened, admitting Poser, wearing a white medic’s coat and carrying a tray.
“Dr. Rice,” Poser began, his words easily heard in the observation room. “I’m sorry to have kept you waiting. I hope you find the food to your liking.” Rice nodded gratefully for the meal and allowed the “orderly” to set the tray on a support table extending over the bed, then thanked him. There was a bit more mundane banter as Poser made a show of examining the readings over the bed. Instructing Rice to press the call button should he require anything, Poser turned politely and left.
“I needed to see for myself if he was buying it,” Rapson said finally, watching Rice dig hungrily into his dinner. “If I could make him feel three weeks’ worth of hunger less than twelve hours after he left the sunstation, then I’m sure I could convince him of the other things I was feeding him as well. But let me ask again: What do you think?”
Rihana nodded agreement. “Yes, then. I think he believes the story you just gave him, just as he believes he was looking through a window at his dead friend a few moments ago and not at a one-way projection.” She paused, raising an eyebrow. “But what happens when he starts asking questions? He’s not just going to languish in that bed forever.”
“But you forget, dear Rihana,” Rapson replied smugly, “that I don’t need him forever.” With that, he turned away and crossed for the door.
“What now?”
Rapson stopped, his hand paused over the opening plate, and regarded her. “I was notified a few minutes ago,” he said, tapping the face of his watch, “that Jephthah’s address about the discovery at Tsing, the one Imperial forces blocked earlier this afternoon, has been rebroadcast—unimpeded, this time.” He thumbed the door open and exited the room, then headed in the direction of the lift that would take them out of the detention area of Rihana’s disguised yacht. He left the door open for her to follow.
“Damn him!” Rihana spat under her breath, not caring if he heard or not, then—checking her anger as best she could—hastened after him.
As she came up beside him, he continued as if nothing had happened. “I’ve gotten all the recordings of the alien I need for now, and will have them edited and reassembled for Jephthah’s next broadcast the same way I did the Drew Hatton interview. In the meantime, keep them both healthy at least until you hear back from me.”
“Until you—” She stopped dead in the corridor, shouting at his back, “And just where in hell do you think you’re going?”
“Well,” he called back over his shoulder as he reached the lift door and pressed the call button. “I wouldn’t exactly call it ‘Hell,’ but right now I think I can be much more effective at Tsing 479 than I would be sitting here with you, waiting for something to happen.”
“Now wait just a minute! What am I supposed to do while you run off to Tsing? If you think I’m going to just stay here and play baby-sitter for these two—”
The lift doors parted, cutting Rihana off, and he stepped inside. “But my dear Rihana,” he said, turning to face her, his hands clasped almost casually behind his back. “I have more important things to attend to.” There was just enough time, before the doors slid shut again, for him to flash her one last condescending smile.
Rihana could barely hold her fury back and stomped her foot so hard on the deck plate that the sound echoed throughout the now-empty corridor.
“Damn him!”
PART FOUR
THE GATHERING STORM
All your strength is
in your union, all your danger
is in discord.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
14
TRANSIT
“What do you think she’ll be like?”
Commander Lewis Wood turned to face the newcomer on the empty bridge of the Imperial flagship and felt, as he often did, that he was looking in a mirror. Although the other man was smaller, more wiry than he, his sandy blond hair, fair complexion and high cheekbones were a near match. Only the expression behind the deep blue eyes was different; where his own radiated an intensity and power common to those who aspire to command, the other’s shone with the eager curiosity of a man of science.
“Good morning, Academician,” he said genially, and removed his uniform jacket from the first officer’s seat at his immediate right. Tossing it over the back of a swivel chair at one of the nearby display stations, he indicated the empty seat with a wave of his hand, then, noting the other man’s drooping eyelids, added, “Can’t sleep either, Brendan?” The tone of his voice indicated that he already knew the answer.
In spite of his small frame, Brendan fell heavily into the cushioned seat and wordlessly surveyed the deceptively small control center of the powerful starship. Most vital ship’s operations were carried out elsewhere, with the bridge reserved for command functions only. As such, the absence of lower-ranking Imperial officers made the room feel truly deserted. The ship was in “night cycle,” and the bridge lights had been dimmed to give the psychological effect that it was actually night. Their jump completed, duty cycles on board had been matched to a normal day length on Tsing IV. In the two weeks it would take to reach the Tsing 479 system, crew and passengers would be acclimatized to the day/night cycle of their destination.
“How can you stand it down here?” Brendan asked finally, still looking around in awe at the myriad display screens. “I’d think that if you wanted to be alone, you’d be considerably more comfortable in your quarters, among familiar surroundings.”
Lewis smiled at his younger brother. “These are my familiar surroundings, Bren. I’m as comfortable here as you would be squirreled away in some research lab back at the Academy.”
“Yes. I suppose you’re right,” Brendan agreed, conceding the point. Just as the two men shared many physical features, so, too, did they share certain personality traits. Chief among them was the fact that each was most at ease when encompassed by the trappings of his chosen profession. Lewis, as Supreme Commander of the Imperial Military Forces, felt most at home here on the command deck of the Scartaris, the flagship he had helped design. The lateness of the hour and the ever-present level of anxiety caused by the upcoming mission notwithstanding, he was honestly relaxed and contented here. Brendan, on the other hand, was loath to even pull himself away from the Academy of Sciences, and felt distinctly out of place no matter where he was on board the imposing vessel.
“So, what do you think she’ll be like?” Brendan asked again. “Are you as nervous about this whole thing as I am?”
Lewis nodded. “Ironic, isn’t it?” A frustrated smile softened his expression somewhat. “A madman has half the Empire whipped up into xenophobic frenzy, the discovery of another intelligent race threatens to give legitimacy to ‘Lord’ Jephthah’s rantings, and nearly every available Imperial ship is converging on some tiny world in an unexplored sector only recently connected to the Hundred Worlds by wormhole. And what am I sitting up half the night worrying about? Our grandmother. What is she like? I haven’t the slightest idea.”
Lewis stretched cramped arms and legs out before him, then stood. Had they both been on their feet, the commander would have been several centimeters taller than the young Academician
. He paced the bridge aimlessly as he went on.
“Speaking to her over the tachyon link gives about as much insight to a person’s character as a holo recording does. I don’t know about you, but I can never get the full measure of someone until I see them face-to-face, and look into their eyes.” He stopped pacing, his body neatly silhouetted in the dim lighting in front of one of the display screens. “But Bren, I’ll tell you this: I think I like her. There’s so much of Father in her; and she reminds me so much of Cathay.”
“What about Juliana?” The question was spoken softly, cautiously.
Lewis turned to face his brother, his features unreadable in the dim light. “I was only eleven years old when she was killed,” he said soberly. “You and Cathay were, what? Seven and three? Do you really think I remember any more about her than you do?” He dug his hands into his pockets and turned away again, making a show of studying one of the displays. “I’ve seen recordings of Mother, too, and frankly … I think we have more in common with Adela de Montgarde than we do with her.”
Brendan considered this for several long, silent moments. “There’s one thing I do know,” he said tiredly, sinking deeper into the first officer’s chair. He let his arms hang loosely over the armrests, and leaned his head, eyes momentarily closed, against the backrest. “I agree with Father: With everything that’s happening right now, I think there’s a good chance her life would be in danger anywhere else but here. I’m glad she’s coming, and I’m looking forward to meeting her.”
The older brother was quiet for almost a full minute, then said finally, “Me too, Bren.”