Fearful Symmetry (The Robert Fenaday and Shasti Rainhell Chronicle Book 2) Page 8

  So far the alternate safe house set up by her cell had lived up to its name. Jenner suspected this was because the other members of her cell had been killed instead of captured. No one could have held out under interrogation this long. Still, the memory of the death of the rest of the team at the first safe house kept her from getting sloppy.

  She carefully avoided eye contact with the few people on the sidewalk. Odds of running into someone she knew were small. She’d lived in Marathon for a few years after graduation, before giving up and moving back to Manki. Jenner avoided the sections of town where her old apartment and job had been. These were the first places Denshi would search. Though she had many friends in the uplands, she had no close relations and none of her friends lived in the capital. Her conscience twinged as she thought of those friends facing Denshi interrogation. They didn’t know of her work against the Olympian Government, so they could not hurt her. She wanted to call and warn them, but Rainhell had vetoed it. Her icy-green eyes bored into Jenner when she protested, silently promising death if Jenner threatened their security.

  Jenner found herself longing for home, the quiet farming community of Helios outside of Manki. Opportunities for the Selected were hard to come by in the rural county of Pleonaisse. For the Unsanctioned like herself, it was worse. Not only did the Aristos treat the Unsanctioned like dirt; they made the Selected crueler to her kind. Perhaps the Selected needed something to look down on, to reassure themselves that they were not obsolete.

  She had been ripe for picking by Confed security when they contacted her. Jenner played the game, enjoying both the money and the small revenge it gave her on Olympia. Now, in the desperate straits they were in, Helios seemed like a warm, safe place.

  At least, she thought, I can get out of the house during the day. Shasti’s Engineered appearance was too great a danger. She grimaced as she remembered working on Shasti with all the cosmetic feminine arts, trying to make her look less like a high-level Aristo. Shasti found the process both distasteful and unusual, having never used such artifices before. Fortunately, Shasti’s face was not well known on Olympia. She’d never allowed her photo to be taken and had changed considerably since fleeing Olympia at age sixteen. Unlike most of the Enshar survivors, Shasti shunned publicity after the expedition, hiding out on the Fenaday estate till other news overtook the media.

  Now that they were actively sought, danger outweighed vanity. Jenner had dyed Shasti’s blue-black hair to an undistinguished brown; a foot of it went to the scissors. Contact lenses made her eyes an ordinary hazel. Nothing could be done about her height, but clothes disguised her perfect symmetry and hid her obvious strength.

  Jenner knew Shasti was still working on the mission. She haunted libraries, computer stores and public netways, tracking police movements and Denshi activities. The chaotic nature of the Olympian government prevailed even on the computer net. Olympians battled hackers constantly. Their privacy firewalls and viral protections were second to none. It had the benefit of making call or net tracing almost impossible.

  Their attempts to reach the embassy failed. The Confederation embassy was a secured point, ringed by Denshi and Navy troops. Even Shasti could find no discreet means of establishing contact or getting aid.

  Tomorrow night Shasti would again slip into the offport, the mix of bars, warehouses, dives and flophouses that surrounded every spaceport. They needed weapons, information, and a way offworld. Security in the offport was far easier to circumvent than it was at the port itself. So far her efforts had come to nothing.

  So they lived, hurt, alert, always afraid, for more than a month.

  Jenner finally reached the safety of the door. To her surprise, Daniel Rigg opened it. Deprived of proper medical care, he’d battled infections and complications that would be child’s play to a physician.

  “Hi honey, I’m home,” Jenner quipped. She liked the big ASAT, both for his sense of humor and his quiet strength.

  The big man smiled, lighting up his usually solemn face. “Good, dear, you’re just in time. Baby has been very sulky today.”

  Jenner laughed.

  From the other room, Shasti called out, “I heard that.”

  Jenner put the groceries on the kitchen table as Shasti walked into the room wearing a sports bra and stretch pants. Her skin glowed with fine perspiration. Smooth muscle flexed on her arms and stretched the thighs of the pants. Shasti practiced martial arts several hours a day. It took the edge off her nerves, restoring her good humor, to the extent she had one.

  The older woman looked at Shasti, admiring the perfection of face and figure, powerful, yet feminine. “Ah,” she sighed, “what I would have given to have had your genetics when I was young.”

  Shasti looked back at her grimly. “My genetics came with quite a price tag. More than you would be willing to pay.”

  “Yes, of course,” Jenner said. There seemed to be a pleasant upbeat mood in the room tonight that she didn’t want to dispel. Turning to Rigg, she said, “It’s so good to see you on your feet again. Don’t overdo it.”

  “Yeah. I feel more like my old self.”

  Shasti surprised them both by gently poking a finger in Rigg’s ribs. Physical intimacy was unusual with her. “There is a lot less of your old self. Maybe tonight you’ll have a bit more appetite.”

  “Who’s cooking?” Rigg asked hopefully. Shasti and Jenner shared cooking duties while Rigg was bedridden. Cooking proved not to be one of Shasti’s talents.

  Jenner laughed again. “I’ll cook for tonight. I think you might be up to a turn in the kitchen before long.” Rigg looked comically crestfallen, and even Shasti laughed this time. Jenner looked at her quizzically. She had never heard the big woman laugh before.

  The next hour was spent in an almost domestic fashion with Jenner preparing dinner. Despite the older woman’s protestations about not overtiring himself, Rigg insisted on helping her, considerably slowing the process. Shasti retired to the living room to watch the video monitor, as always scanning the news for useful information.

  Jenner looked at Rigg as he stirred the sauce. “She is quite beautiful, isn’t she?”

  “I suppose,” Rigg replied, his eyebrows rising in surprise.

  “Have you and her...?” Jenner asked, her feminine curiosity getting the better of her.

  “Good God, no,” Rigg said. “She’s a bit on the large, muscular size for my taste.”

  “Don’t you like fit women?” Jenner teased.

  “Of course,” Rigg returned, the bright grin again splitting his too thin face. “But, well, she seems just too perfect. Doesn’t need anyone. Sort of intimidating, I guess. Besides, she was pretty much involved with Robert Fenaday by the time I met her.”

  “Really,” Jenner said. “The reporters missed that. What a shame—a romance and an exciting adventure.”

  Rigg chopped the onions with a chef’s knife. “It was exciting enough, all right. As for Shasti and him, they kept it low key. They didn’t much care for being talked about.”

  *****

  Shasti, in the other room, listened to them with a curious mixture of sadness and amusement. Her hearing was enhanced far more than even Jenner suspected. Their conversation spoke volumes to her about a life she’d never had. About ways of being with people, a human subtext she shared in only a limited fashion. She’d wondered if returning to her homeworld would ease her isolation. It had not. Perhaps the growing gap between the Engineered and standard humans could not be bridged.

  Jenner was an example of selective breeding, even if she was unsanctioned, but she was not engineered. She lived on Daniel Rigg’s side of the gap. When the ASAT looked at her, he saw only a woman of exceptional looks and vitality for her age. When he looked at Shasti, he saw an alien. Pard’s movement in the Olympian government was based on the Engineered. While it had some general support, Pard drew the hard core of his power from the products of Dr. Hagen’s labs. Maybe it was this alienation, the fear they inspired, that bound the Engineered t
ogether.

  Pard, she thought, with a familiar reflexive chill. I’ll get you. She knew the others could think only of escape. But she hadn’t come so far to give up, at least not yet. Escape seemed no less impossible than destroying the monster haunting her dreams, dreams that came more frequently and vividly now. She no longer hoped for escape, just to put an end to the dreams. It seemed the wildest fantasy to believe any of them would survive. Denshi would close on them eventually. All she wished for was a clean shot at Pard before the end came. He must know she was here. He could not turn down the challenge of her presence on Olympia. She shared none of this with the others.

  “Shasti,” Jenner leaned into the room, “come to the table. Dinner is ready.”

  “Hey,” Rigg said, “it’s really good. I helped.”

  Shasti stood, looking at the two of them, appearing for all the world like impatient parents at the dinner table. “Thank you.” Then moved by a sudden impulse added, “Tonight, I’ll do the dishes.”

  *****

  The voyage out to jumpspace was a fast transit even by military standards. Fenaday pushed the star-frigate mercilessly. Sidhe needed to enter hyperspace from a particular point at the edge of New Eire for the fastest transit to Olympia. Any other entry point could add weeks, even months, to the journey. For many on Sidhe, only informed they were bound on a visit-of-state to repair failing relations with a member world, time seemed to fly. For others, knowing the true and desperate nature of the voyage, seconds dragged.

  Keyed up after their efforts, Telisan and Fenaday sometimes unwound by sparring in the ship’s small gymnasium. The younger Denlenn, with his fighter pilot reflexes, had come a long way quickly. Fenaday soon learned standard kagis were useless on the Denlenn, with his extra arm joints. It was like trying to tie up spaghetti. Though they battled each other, in their mind’s eyes, each saw a huge shadowy figure, an image of fear, with a face seen only in holos—Pard.

  Fenaday and Telisan plotted, planned and argued over every detail of the mission to come, drilling the ship’s crew constantly. In these sessions, with Mmok and Rask, tensions between Fenaday and the cyborg often flared. Mmok was bound to respect Fenaday’s authority as captain, but cold formality did not prevent his sarcastic wit from biting. The cyborg avoided the two subjects that would turn the strain between them violent, Lisa Fenaday and Shasti Rainhell. Otherwise, he needled where he could, despite Rask’s disapproval and Telisan’s yellow cat-eyed glare. It was not his job to make them happy, just to get the Confederacy’s business done.

  Mmok was provoked beyond his usual dyspepsia because they were bound for Olympia, the planet of perfect people. He could already see them looking down their perfect noses at him, the cobbled together remnants of something once human. Shasti Rainhell had looked at him that way. She would have died before living on as he had. The thought of her also disturbed him; beautiful, strong, unattainable for someone like him, unattemptable even. He hated her. He hated Fenaday even more for having her, for his wealth, privilege and for his damned Irish luck. Enshar did not make Mmok wealthy, as it had the spoiled landing family heir. He was regular military, worked for a paycheck, not a commission. No one called a press conference for him who fought as hard as any. Fenaday and Rainhell hadn’t even bothered to see if he survived his wounds.

  Fuck them, he thought, fuck them all, but Fenaday particularly. He and his kind, the separatists and ethnicists, would be swept away by the coming wave of Federalism. The playing field would be re-leveled. People would be judged on the content of their character, rather than from where their ancestors hailed.

  Mmok spent most of his time alone in his cabin when he was not forced to work with others. He found the company of the HCRs, with their literal machine minds, more palatable to him than people. There was one exception. Each day since the voyage started he spent several hours with Arpen. She improved his interfaces remarkably. His vision no longer troubled him, hearing was better, even the sense of “touch” he received through his prosthetics had improved. He walked less stiffly.

  Mmok had never had much use for aliens. They were rare in northern areas of what used to be Canada before the World Government took over. The Xenophobe war gave him little reason to change his opinion. He served reluctantly with Dua-Denlenn, regarding them with contempt. Enshari and Frokossi rarely fought outside of their respective systems. Their contributions to the Conchirri war had been limited. He tolerated Moroks as good fighters, though he did not care for the smell of them.

  He’d imagined Denlenn to be similar to their disreputable and mercenary cousins, the Dua-Denlenn. In this, he found himself wrong. He admired Telisan, but could not abide his friendship with Fenaday. Sharla proved to be as efficient a comp tech as anyone could want, but Arpen shaped his attitude the most. He began to look forward to his daily work-ups with the Denlenn doctor. This surprised him. After his initial rehab as a cyborg, he’d never wanted to see another doctor again. Still, cyborgs required maintenance. He tolerated only minimal levels of it beyond what he could do for himself. Now, he found himself counting the hours until he could see Arpen again. He assumed that since there were no casualties among the warship’s young and healthy crew, she was bored. Yet it did not come across that way. She seemed interested, amused by his stories, even enjoying his company.

  It took him back to a time before a Conchirri laser cannon sheared into his Greyhound light tank, severing him from limbs and a normal life. In a way, it hurt talking to her, so light and free. Sometimes, he felt the presence of the man he had been, a man he thought long gone.

  Too many deep thoughts, he said to himself, turning into the sickbay corridor. He resolved to keep today’s session more professional and detached.

  Arpen looked up from the desk, and her expression lit up space for at least several astronomical units. How does she do that? he wondered, even as he felt his own face muscles stretch into an unaccustomed smile. She isn’t of my species, not even good-looking; still, she has a face like sunrise.

  Mmok’s reticent promise to himself failed under Arpen’s cheerful assault. They spent more time talking today, though she did some work on his tactile sensation buffer. Feeling foolish but oddly lighter, he found himself blithering away on any subject she raised. All the while he fought the sensation he was giving himself away, unlocking things he wanted secret or buried. Around Arpen, he had no more chance of remaining frozen than did ice in spring.

  “So,” he asked, “when are you getting hitched?”

  “When we return to Denla,” Arpen replied absently, working on his cybernetic wrist joint.

  “You mean if,” he regretted the words instantly. “Sorry.”

  She shrugged. “The universe will go as it will go, not as I would have it. If I worried about such things, I would never have become engaged to a pilot and a warship comp-tech. Still, I will be glad when this is over. Telisan is so busy with the ship I hardly ever see him. Sharla is barely less so. You do me a favor by keeping a lonely Denlenn company.”

  “It’s me who’s lucky,” he surprised himself with his sincerity. “I don’t have much use for people, nor they for me.”

  Arpen stopped and stood. He was sitting on the examination table; even so she had to look up at him. “Many, if not all, are uncomfortable around a cyborg. Some in time get past the issue and see you are the same person you were before.”

  “Arpen,” he said quietly, “even I don’t see that person.”

  “I do.”

  “You didn’t even know me before,” he protested with a slight heat.

  “Nonetheless.” Her eyes drew him in. “I see him.”

  Mmok looked at Arpen and shivered. Like most humans, he anthropomorphized aliens. He could forget Arpen was anything but a doctor, even if she was the most compassionate he’d ever met. She did not look human now. Her face was all strange planes and angles, huge reflective cat’s eyes, leathery skin, lipless mouth. Alien. He felt as if she were pulling his soul out for them both to see.

 
; The moment passed. Arpen looked away, seeming a little saddened. “I would like to see you take the chance to find these people who can look beyond. You must start with yourself. If you cannot see that person, how can they?”

  Mmok was strangely bothered by her look of sadness, perhaps even of disappointment. Why do I care? he wondered, bewildered. I’ve known this alien three lousy weeks. Why do I care? But he did care.

  “I’ll try,” he blurted out. A second before, he’d no intention of speaking, now the words hung before his face, unrecallable.

  “Good,” Arpen smiled. It almost physically warmed up the room.

  “Well, I should get going,” Mmok said, suddenly tired. They’d talked for well over an hour. Arpen was nothing if not intense.

  “Same time tomorrow?” she asked brightly.

  Mmok felt the same foolish smile spread over his face. “Of course. After that, we hit jumpspace.”

  “We will have time on the inbound leg,” she said, as if the sessions were something she too did not want to see end.

  “Sure, Doc.”

  “Remember what you said to me,” she added.

  “I will,” Mmok replied, “I promise.”

  He exited Sickbay heading toward the galley. As he hit the ship’s “Broadway,” he saw Fenaday walking in the opposite direction. The Irishman’s eyes flicked over him without expression. As they passed, Mmok grunted out, “Morning.”

  Fenaday looked surprised for a second. “Morning, Mr. Mmok.”

  Now why the hell did I do that? Mmok wondered. I hate the son-of-a-bitch.

  Mmok entered the wardroom, grabbing a sandwich and some coffee. There were some people about. None spoke to him. He saw Rask sitting in front of a chessboard, methodically munching his food. His red eyes made the stare particularly vacant. Feeling almost as if his feet were moving of their own volition, Mmok walked over.