Fearful Symmetry (The Robert Fenaday and Shasti Rainhell Chronicle Book 2) Page 9

  Rask looked up. His blue-tinged, goblin-like face was too alien to tell if he was curious or merely noting Mmok’s presence.

  “You play?” Mmok gestured at the board.

  “Yeah. I’m good too. Don’t get much chance for a decent game.”

  “Maybe I can give you one.”

  Rask grinned, showing fearsome canines. “You’re on. Have a seat.”

  Mmok folded awkwardly into a chair.

  “You a betting man?” Rask asked.

  “Say five credits,” Mmok sipped his coffee.

  “Black or white?” Rask grinned even more broadly.

  *****

  Back in Sickbay, Arpen looked up to see Shizuyo Mourner walking into her small office.

  “So how is it going with Mmok?” asked Mourner.

  “He progresses,” Arpen said, “very slowly.”

  “I thought you would have those interfaces humming by now,” Mourner said, surprise on her face.

  “Oh, those could have been done in three days. They require considerable adjustment, but that was mere technical work. The true work is the healing of the soul; there progress is by inches. His isolation is very complete. He populates his world with simulacrums of people, his robots, and does without the real kind. I hope daily contact with me will open up some interest in other people.”

  “Ah,” Mourner said, “I wasn’t aware you were a psychologist as well.”

  “It is not considered a separate skill among Denlenn,” Arpen said. “Many of an individual’s health problems start with the life they lead.”

  “Mind a piece of advice?” Mourner sat on the exam chair.

  “Of course not. Please go on.”

  “You have been spending a great deal of time with this patient. I don’t know how it is with Denlenn, but human patients can dump responsibility for their whole life on a doctor. Sometimes, it’s better to retain some professional distance.”

  Arpen looked at her, puzzled. “How can you heal from a distance? Denlenn healers treat the whole person. In a sense, I do expect to take responsibility for the patient’s life for a time. Healing Mmok’s inadequate interfaces does not help his greatest illness, the alienation he feels from others of his kind. That is the source of most of the physical ailments he suffers.”

  “If he is depressed,” Mourner said, “I can prescribe an anti-depressant.”

  Arpen checked herself. Mourner was a human healer. It was a different species, a different life. She could not assume her own way was right. Still it shocked her to hear a doctor rely on a temporary change of blood chemistry as a solution.

  “I do not believe,” she said, “that drugs are an answer to loneliness and isolation. People are.”

  Mourner stood, “It appears, Doctor, that we practice medicine differently.”

  “So it would seem,” Arpen replied. “We may have something to learn from each other. I shall bear your advice in mind.”

  “Perhaps.” Mourner turned to leave. Arpen could not read human tone or facial expressions well, but it did not take an expert to detect a lack of enthusiasm in Mourner’s answer.

  Arpen returned to her work, troubled. Human medicine differed from the holistic approach taken by Denlenn healers. She knew this from the war. Humans made superb surgeons. They raised pharmacology to a high art, even for other species. It was the distance between healer and healed among them that seemed so alien. Humans concentrated on “fixing” the problem, with a perception that people were like the machinery skilled technicians repaired. Though more efficient than the Denlenn way, which required many more physicians and healers for a smaller population, it seemed cold and mechanistic to Arpen.

  She was responsible for Mmok now, having taken his case. His physical ailments she’d resolved; now she sought to help him to a life more worth living. The medical relationship that was difficult for a human healer was very natural for Denlenn female. Empathic skill was something prized above all else in her kind. It occurred to her that there was less innate psychological difference between human males and females than between Denlenn genders. What differences that did exist were minimized by a culture that insisted on equality between genders. Empathy became more a question of individual ability than gender characteristic. It explained much. I must remember, she thought, they are alien.

  *****

  Fenaday relieved Telisan on the bridge. The Denlenn stood and stretched, limbs going off in impossible angles, his unlined, yet leathery-looking face split by a very human-looking yawn.

  “Everything OK?” Fenaday asked.

  “Quiet and peaceful, Robert.”

  “I had something weird happen,” the human complained.

  “What?”

  “Ran into Mmok, he said good morning to me.”

  “Hmm,” Telisan said with the Denlenn equivalent of raised eyebrows. “Was he coming from Sickbay?”

  “Arpen,” they both said and laughed.

  “Don’t tell me she can find a heart for the Tin Woodsman?” Fenaday said.

  Telisan hesitated. Fenaday knew that Telisan felt that not all the bad blood between his friend and Mmok was the cyborg’s fault. Mandela had put Mmok onboard during the Enshar expedition as a watchdog, certainly a necessary precaution at the time. Fenaday made no effort then or now to become friends with the cyborg. Nor had Shasti. She kept everyone but Fenaday at a distance. It was not surprising that she, Olympian and aloof, did not befriend Mmok or that Mmok attributed it to her planet’s obsession with physical perfection. On the other hand, Fenaday passionately disliked Mmok, the HCRs and their master, Mandela.

  Fenaday gave in to his friend’s discomfort with the insult to the cyborg. “Sorry. Not too sensitive I guess.”

  “He does what he must, as do we.”

  “Yeah, maybe.”

  “One should not forget he got his wounds in the Great War,” Telisan reminded him. Mmok was, after all, a fellow veteran.

  “Okay,” Fenaday conceded, “you’re right.” He sighed. “I suppose I should have tried to find out if he was dead or alive after Enshar. I was occupied with Shasti and getting my old home back. Worse still, I would have had to go to his bastard boss Mandela to find out anything. I wasn’t willing to do that.”

  “In truth,” Telisan said, “I am at fault here as well. I made no more effort than you. I was in mourning for Duna and in love with Sharla and Arpen. I wonder if many of our troubles with Mmok do not come from our treating him like one of his machines.”

  Fenaday sighed again. “I’ll make an effort. I doubt if it will work and I will not be provoked by the son of a...by him. God help him if he mentions Lisa or Shasti’s names with disrespect again. Otherwise, I’m willing to try and get along.

  “Hey, wait a minute,” Fenaday said. “It occurs to a suspicious mind that there’s a greater force at work in this sudden concern about Mmok’s morale: a controlling intelligence in the background, insidious and with its own agenda. Who could that be I wonder?”

  Fenaday looked at his friend, who appeared embarrassed and pretended to be studying the star field on the main screen. The human turned to cast a mock glare at Sharla, who suddenly found something interesting on her instruments. Fenaday leaned closer to the Denlenn. “Don’t worry. I was married too. My wife could always talk me into things when she wanted to.”

  Telisan gave him a quick grin and headed for the exit. Fenaday sank into the cushioned command chair. It dawned on him that it was the first time he had mentioned his wife without the familiar knife-like pain in his chest, without the dimming of colors, the sudden heaviness of the air, crushing any joy out of life. It was good to be able to think of her without pain. His mind sometimes skittered away from remembrance because of that pain. I mustn’t let that happen, he thought fiercely, that is my past. I want to keep every second of it. I don’t live there anymore, but I want, I need to remember it. All of it.

  Balance still eluded Fenaday. He felt disloyal to the past when he thought of the present and felt he cheated the
present when he dreamed of the past. Maybe there is no right way to do this. Maybe everything I do is wrong, he thought. Right now, all I can do is concentrate on saving the one I can reach.

  Sharla rescued him from spinning down further in such thoughts, bringing a transmission from Mandela. More useless information, all of it weeks out of date to what was happening on Olympia. He’d made a policy of not responding, hoping it annoyed the puppet-master. Sharla smiled Denlenn fashion. “You look lost in thought, Captain.”

  Fenaday hesitated. He’d known Sharla only a few weeks, but they shared watches daily on the bridge. Lately he’d spent more time with her than with Telisan. While Arpen captivated the crew, Fenaday had come to appreciate the demi-female, with her quiet competency, all the more. He looked about. The bridge was on fourth watch and fully manned. Graglia sat at the helm. Perez and his engineers were working on the large bridge monitors. The ambient noise from people and machinery would cover a soft conversation. He swiveled his chair away from the flight stations of helm and gunnery to face Sharla.

  “Balancing the past and the present, I suppose. I feel uncomfortable with trying to start a new life without having found all the answers from the old one. I feel suspended, caught in the middle.”

  “You refer,” Sharla said, keeping her voice low, “to your wife and to Shasti Rainhell.”

  He nodded slowly.

  “Telisan told me much of your story. I may understand better than you realize. You balance between a lost love and a present one.”

  “Well, I don’t... I don’t know,” he stammered, wishing he hadn’t started the conversation, “that I love Shasti or that she loves me. I know she’s important to me. I owe her my life.”

  Sharla looked at him skeptically. “So you say, but if it is not love, it appears much the same.”

  Not for the first time Fenaday wondered what it must be like to be on a regular Navy vessel where the distances between ranks forbade such conversations. Well, I did start this. “As you say,” he replied, waving a hand in surrender.

  Sharla gave a little laugh, then turned serious again. “My life is always that way. I am demi-female, not one nor the other. I am the middle. My loves are the poles. They meet in me. As the demi, I am charged with finding the balance. I must favor neither one at the expense of the other. I soak up the shocks from both, so they do not pass through me. I am no more or less Arpen’s than I am Telisan’s. It is the role of my kind.

  “You seek a balance between two loves, as do I. So I have a piece of advice to offer you. Only Shasti is here to be warmed by that love. One is not balanced with a gold bar in one hand and the memory of a gold bar in the other.”

  “I hear you,” he nodded.

  “Now that you have put up with my dreadful impertinence,” she added, “you must let me make amends. I suggest we all have dinner in our cabin tonight. Tomorrow is jump. Once we are on the other side in Apollo system, who knows what we may face? Please say you will come.”

  Fenaday could not help smiling at the earnest Denlenn, though a sudden foreboding lay on his heart. “Telisan is a lucky man,” he said. “I should never have sent for him and I should never have let any of you come. If something happens, I will regret it for as long as I live.”

  Sharla shook her head, her tawny hair rippling slightly. “You could not stop my fiancé, being who and what he is. He would have learned eventually and set off alone if you denied him a place. As Arpen said, this was our decision. We’ve made it, and there is no more to say on it. Now, will you promise to come to dinner?”

  “Yes,” he said, his throat tight, “I would be honored.”

  “Excellent. At eight bells then.”

  Fenaday nodded, turning in his seat so Sharla could no longer see his eyes. They stung with pent tears. Our Father, he prayed silently, who art in heaven, keep my friends safe. If someone must fall, let it be me. Just leave me standing long enough to help Shasti, just that long. It is all I ask.

  As ever, there was only silence.

  *****

  Shasti stepped off the hoverbus, having finally reached the area around the spaceport in the early evening hours. After a careful look around the busy street, she started toward the seedier section closer to the fenced area of the port. The buildings were a mix of old and new. Most contained shops full of exotic offworld goods. She’d left Rigg and Jenner in the safe house before taking public transit into the port area.

  She found herself wishing she were on foggy Apeldorn or Kubota with its constantly swirling rainstorms. Unfortunately Marathon’s skies remained clear and cloudless, depriving her of any comforting cloak of haze or rain. She made do with the pools of shadow between streetlights. Olympia’s small distant moon and the ice ring did little to dispel that darkness. Despite her size, Shasti had the ability to be unobtrusive at need. As she had painfully learned in training, people simply did not see unmoving objects. Be one with the dark, be one with the earth, be still and live. It was easier on her homeworld. Here, she was neither so much taller, nor so much more beautifully perfect than other humans.

  Jenner had helped her with cosmetic changes, but there was more. Shasti employed other subtleties, posing as a trader from the house of Bremard and adopting the mannerisms and bearing of merchant. The Bremardi had fallen on hard times since Denshi operatives assassinated the last Duke. The killing had been professional, licensed and legal, but many viewed it as advancing Denshi’s interest more than those of the ostensible client. It gave one grounds for a grudge, even on Olympia.

  Her fake identity would allow her cover to haunt the spaceport, finding some way for the rest of the team to escape Olympia. She’d long since discarded her original identity papers. Using them again courted instant capture. All members of the team had backup sets. They were quite genuine. Jenner’s cell arranged the alternate identities and histories long before the Confed team started out for Olympia. They were for different missions. The first set, meant for closing in on the target, came from databases friendly to the guild of assassins. The second set, drawn from enemies of Denshi, was for after the sanction or as a hedge against the situation they were in now.

  Denshi and the Government continued to hunt them quietly. The news contained no mention of the team. Reporters blamed the explosion at the apartment complex on Neo-Reformist extremists, trying to bring back the old ways of the Allessandro natural genetic programs. Shasti did not think the police had been brought in yet. In that much, her presence on the team provided an extra margin of safety. Pard did not want his laundry aired in public. He might even want her alive. She suppressed a shiver at the thought. Never that, she promised herself, never that.

  Denshi lacked reliable access to the databases of the trade unions, the Neo-Reformists or the merchant guilds. It was a system built for espionage, nourished by treachery and mistrust, and quintessentially Olympian. For Shasti and the others, the hollows in that interface were their only chance at survival.

  Shasti stayed away from Denshi-controlled and influenced areas, which was most of the capital. A network of connections, safety lines and bridges existed among the neutrals and other enemies of Denshi. Shasti headed for one such bridge now, the Space Witch, a place for merchants to meet and barter cargoes. Though this section of town welcomed offworlders, there wouldn’t be many. Olympians dominated the in-system trade. Aliens and offworlders remained restricted to the capital and the port area.

  The big merchant vessels rarely landed. Most of their cargoes dropped planetward in shuttles. She sought some of the lesser operators, who sailed on smaller margins and landed mid-size vessels on the planet itself. They did most of the smuggling off and on-world. The government never entirely shut down the trade. Too many of the elite had become fond of illegal imports. A rot in the highest levels.

  Shasti studied the Witch from the shadow of a nearby alley, decided it was safe, and sauntered over as if she had no fears or concerns in the world. Neon lights glared on its dark outside, promising erotic and sinful delights.
The entrance was down three broad stairs. She slipped past a few spacers and locals who’d obviously started early and went inside. A long wooden bar backed by a mirror ran the length of one wall. Three bartenders served a large, noisy crowd. A band was setting up on the stage; meanwhile, recorded music kept the dance floor full.

  A bartender caught her eye. “A beer,” she said.

  “What type?”

  “Whatever’s on tap.”

  The bartender slid a liter of golden, foamy liquid to her. She left a payment on the bar, edged into the darkest corner and eyed the pickings. Several deep-spacers stood at the bar. A Dua-Denlenn she dismissed out of hand, unable to bring herself to trust one. Several Moroks clustered in one private alcove. Not good. It would be difficult to get in and out unnoticed. A standard human stood at the end of the bar. He wore the uniform of the Trans-Nebula Combine, a possibility.

  Shasti sipped her drink, enjoying the wheaty taste of it. Gradually, she drifted around the bar. Men came up to her and made conversation. She struggled with small talk, never an art of hers. Most drifted off disappointed when she kept the conversation businesslike. Shasti started toward the man in the Trans-Nebula uniform, when the front door to the bar swung open. Immediately, she faded back into an alcove. On stage, the house band cranked up, a momentary bit of distraction useful to her just then.

  An Aristo stood in the doorway, surveying the room. At his side stood an attractive, slender Asian woman, not Engineered but Selected. She moved with an athletic muscular grace. Her hair, black as Shasti’s own, was cut short to her head. Her stance said Security, just as his said Engineered. Shasti looked at him from the corner of her eye. About seven feet tall, young, stunningly handsome with piercing blue eyes under black hair. For a second, Shasti forgot the danger he posed to her, enjoying the look of him. Most of the Engineered were Denshi or friendly to Denshi. Their presence in the bar could only be related to the hunt for her.

  Noise, bodies and light of the dance floor concealed her as she moved away from the entranceway, heading for the stage. The band’s music quickly became uncomfortably loud for her ultra-sensitive hearing. Strobing dance-floor lights taxed her eyes as they tried constantly to adjust. It struck her that some improvements generated their own vulnerabilities. Too much specialization made for less flexibility. Heretical thoughts for one of the Engineered and not to the point, she chided herself. Escape now, philosophize later.