Freedom's Fury (Spooner Federation Saga Book 3) Page 4

  That got Albermayer’s undivided attention.

  “You did say it was a serious matter,” she said. “Just how serious, and who might be affected, and how?”

  Althea looked the bioengineer full in the eyes.

  “How about the end of the human race as we know it, Claire? The literal extinction of sentience from the male half of Mankind? Would that be serious enough to justify my request for your presence?”

  Neither of her guests replied. Althea nodded.

  “That’s right. I’ve been infected with something that eliminates the gene cluster responsible for human-level intelligence in men. I spent five hundred thirty-seven days—more than fifteen months—in my medipod, and even so, it’s possible that I’m still infected. That’s why I had Ernie drag you up here—and why you’re not so much as loosening your helmets until you’ve heard the rules.

  “Once you get out of those suits, neither of you is to touch me. Neither of you is to touch anything from which I’ve eaten or drunk. Neither of you is to use the shower or toilet I use. For best safety, you should stay two or three yards away from me at all times, just in case the little wonder that invaded my body can jump a short distance to yours. That way, whatever might become of me, at least you two will be able to return to the surface of Hope.

  “I’m neither kidding nor exaggerating, folks. Until Claire certifies me completely purged of the infection, those are the rules—for your safety, not mine. If I manage to infect you, I won’t allow you to leave. You’ll be stuck up here with me until Claire or somebody comes up with a countermeasure. And frankly, I can’t think of anyone who might succeed where Claire has failed. Give that a few moments’ thought before you remove your helmets.”

  She set her arms akimbo and waited.

  “How did it happen?” Albermayer murmured.

  “That’s a story for another time.” When I can start assembling the forces I’ll need to take vengeance. “So? Suits on or off?”

  “I think I’ll keep mine on for now,” Albermayer said.

  “Me too,” Ernie added.

  Althea nodded. “Come with me, Claire. I’ll show you where the medipod is.”

  * * *

  Claire Albermayer rose awkwardly from her squat over the diagnostic port of Althea’s medipod and turned toward her. Althea controlled her anxieties as best she could.

  “Well, Althea,” the bioengineer said, voice muffled by her pressure suit’s helmet, “which news would you like first, the good or the bad?”

  I’d like the news that says I can go home to see to my husband and my clan, thanks.

  “Uh, let’s start with the bad news.”

  Albermayer’s eyebrows rose briefly. She shrugged. “I’m afraid you’re going to need a new medipod.”

  “Oh.” Well, it’s only money...assuming I have some left. “So what’s the good news?”

  The bioengineer looked squarely into Althea’s eyes. Even through the visor, her expression was visibly tinged with amusement.

  “It would appear,” she said, “that the pod succeeded in seining the nanites out of your body.” She grimaced. “I didn’t expect it. I’d have given odds against it. But it seems to have worked.”

  Althea kept herself rigidly reserved.

  “All the nanites, Claire?”

  Albermayer scowled. “That’s something I can’t tell from the pod’s diagnostics. There’s a good chance, but I know we need to be certain. We’ll need to do a titer of your blood and your adipose tissue to be certain. Any problems with that?”

  “My...what?”

  “Adipose tissue. Your, ah, fat.”

  “Oh. Okay. When?”

  “I can draw the tissue samples I’ll need right now, but I’ll need wider facilities to design a counteragent.” Albermayer looked off briefly. “With a sample of the invader nanite, a proper lab, and the rest of my usual analytical supports, that shouldn’t take more than a few days.”

  Better than I’d expected. Better than I’d hoped.

  “Good enough. But Claire,” she said after a moment’s thought, “if the pod succeeded in removing the nanites, why do I need a new one?”

  For the first time since their earliest acquaintance, Claire Albermayer actually looked embarrassed.

  “I’d rather not say.”

  “Claire,” Althea said in a no-prisoners tone, “you will say if you want to sell me or Clan Morelon any more medipods.”

  The bioengineer grimaced in discomfort. Althea waited with rapidly diminishing patience as she composed her reply.

  “It wasn’t designed to deal with an intelligent self-replicator,” she said at last. “It identified the nanite as hostile, but from the moment it went to work, it was a race between the pod’s ability to find and remove them versus the nanite’s ability to undo the pod’s mechanisms for identifying and isolating them. That’s why I need to titer your tissues. I can’t be absolutely certain which of them won. But I am certain that this pod won’t be of any further use to you.” The pain in her expression redoubled. “I’ll consider it a great victory for HalberCorp biotech if it didn’t reinfect you with them.”

  “Oh.” Althea cringed. “I’ll dispose of it, then.”

  “How?”

  “Load it into the mass driver and fire it into the sun. But I will need a new one. Has the price come down at all?”

  “A bit. I can make you one for about four and a half million today. Possibly a little less.”

  “Hm.” I don’t want to be without one up here. “I’ll radio Bart to write you a check once you’re back on the surface.”

  “Ah. Well, firing it into the sun would certainly dispose of it adequately. Just let me get a sample of the nanite to take groundside first.”

  “NO!” The suggestion catapulted Althea into fight-or-flight mode. “Are you insane, Claire? If even one of those things were to get loose on Hope, the next generation of Hope men would be nonsentient!”

  Albermayer’s expression morphed from confusion to chagrin. “Oh. Of course. But how will I design a counteragent without a sample?”

  Althea closed her eyes and breathed slowly and deeply until the storm in her body had quieted.

  “You’ll have to do the job up here. We’ll need that counter-nanite even if I’m no longer infected. Ernie will take Freedom’s Promise groundside and return with whatever you need for your work. Without you in the right-hand seat, he’ll be able to bring about twelve hundred pounds of whatever you specify. Make a list. When in doubt, include it. And be sure to put your medipod on that list. This isn’t a perfectly safe environment.”

  The bioengineer nodded. Her gaze roved about the nickel-iron walls of the bedchamber. It was plain that she was unenthused at the prospect of an extended stay.

  “Rothbard, Rand, and Ringer,” she murmured at last. “I should have known. Will I be allowed to take this suit off, at least?”

  “Yes, but,” Althea said, “until we’re dead certain I’m no longer infected, you have to be extremely careful. From what I...was told, this abomination is fluid-borne and enters the body through the mucous membranes,” Althea said, “so as long as we don’t share any utensils or drinking vessels, or climb into a tub together, I think you’ll be safe. Just draw whatever samples you’ll need and let me get rid of the medipod.” She hesitated. “Claire?”

  “Yes?”

  “Did you look in on Martin before you came up here?”

  Albermayer nodded.

  “Well?”

  “I don’t know, Althea. He sustained a number of penetrative impacts, including one to the right temporo-occipital junction. No one else has ever presented cranial injuries of that sort to a HalberCorp medipod. It will be a severe test of our technology.”

  Althea winced.

  If he dies, it will be an even severer test of my capacity for anger.

  “Claire...if the pod doesn’t fix him, do you think you can do anything for him?”

  “I can’t say just yet, Althea. His pod has to release h
im first, and there’s no way to know how much longer that will take.”

  “What about Bart? Can you do anything for him?”

  Albermayer bowed her head. “I don’t know.”

  * * *

  Ernie pocketed the list of required lab instruments and went to the docking hatch to depart. Althea turned to Claire Albermayer and said, “I like to suit up and go outside to watch arrivals and departures. It’s pretty safe. Care to join me?”

  Albermayer’s brow furrowed momentarily. She nodded, and the two of them made their way through the surface tunnel to the sally port.

  Outside, when their feet were planted on the surface of the Relic, Althea murmured, “Put an arm around me.”

  Albermayer hesitated, then complied. Althea snaked her right arm around the bioengineer’s waist and pulled her as closely against her side as she could manage without deforming the life-support tubules that ran the length of their pressure suits.

  They watched in silence as Freedom’s Promise uncoupled itself from the docking port, pushed itself to a safe distance from the Relic with its directional jets, and ignited its space drive. Their eyes tracked the violet plume of the spaceplane’s anaerobic engine as it dwindled and vanished from sight.

  Albermayer made to release Althea and return to the sally port. Althea tightened her grip minutely, and the bioengineer thought better of it. They remained on the outer surface, gazing down at the blue-green glory of Hope, for several minutes more.

  “I miss home,” Althea said.

  “How long have you been away?” Albermayer replied.

  “Too long. All told, about ten years, with interruptions.”

  “I don’t think I could bear that.”

  Althea smiled faintly. “I had work to do that had to be done here.” And elsewhere. “Work no one else could possibly do. I’m sure you know how strong a compulsion that can be. You’re a worker bee too.”

  Albermayer nodded.

  She’s not an ice queen after all.

  I’ve put the future of Mankind in her hands. I have to know who she is. What she loves. What she’d die to protect.

  “May I ask a personal question, Claire?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Do you have someone special?”

  The bioengineer looked at her quizzically. “No. Why do you ask?”

  “Just curious. How long has it been?”

  “Hm?”

  “Since...you know. Since there was someone special.”

  Albermayer was slow to reply.

  “There’s never been anyone like that for me, Althea.”

  “What? Are you serious?”

  Albermayer nodded.

  “But you’re...you were in school with my grandfather Armand!”

  “Yes, I was.”

  “And you’ve never had a lover?”

  Another long pause.

  “I have no sex drive, Althea.” The words were drier than the dust between the stars. “I never have. I could never see the point of an intimate involvement, so I never formed one. I severely doubt one would have lasted.” Albermayer’s slight smile spoke of an isolation beyond Althea’s ken. She squeezed Althea gently, making the pumps in Althea’s suit whine. “This is the closest I’ve been to another person in more than a century.”

  “Dear God.”

  Albermayer cocked an eyebrow. “You’re a believer?”

  Althea nodded. “You’re not?”

  Albermayer shook her head.

  “There’s something missing from me, Althea. At least, my parents thought so. I hear other people talk about their emotional attachments—I hear the passion in your voice when you speak of your husband, and in Nora’s when she talks of hers—and it’s like a glimpse into the mind of an alien species. I’ve never felt anything like that for anyone.

  “I’ve been courted a few times. My suitors couldn’t decide what to make of my non-responsiveness. For my part, I never grasped their interest, what attracted them to me sufficiently to justify their efforts. I was always made slightly uncomfortable by that sort of attention, as if I were being told that something was expected of me that I simply couldn’t deliver.”

  “What about...your parents?”

  Albermayer shook her head again. “I appreciated their contributions to my welfare and upbringing. I always have and always will. But it’s not the sort of filial affection and attachment others experience. At least, it doesn’t sound like it when I hear them speak of their families.

  “Your grandmother approached me, long ago, with one of her little books. She said reading it could benefit me immeasurably, so I did. Some of the stories were interesting, but I couldn’t see the point in most of them. Especially the long one near the middle, about the itinerant preacher who let his enemies execute him.” Albermayer frowned. “You really believe that those things actually happened?”

  “Well,” Althea temporized, “let’s say I’m working on it.”

  The bioengineer shook her head again. “I couldn’t accept it. It was just too counter-intuitive.”

  Althea started to reply, clamped her lips together.

  She has no one and wants no one. I’m crazy-mad in love with Martin and addicted to my home and kin, but I deliberately separated myself from all of them for three years. Which of us is the alien?

  “I must say, though,” Albermayer said, surprising her, “this is rather pleasant.”

  “You mean our holding each other?”

  “Yes. I’m sure you only had my safety in mind, though.”

  I’m not.

  “If we were absolutely positive that the nanites are gone from my system,” Althea said, “I could show you something much nicer.”

  Claire Albermayer’s smile turned warm and knowing.

  “I know what you mean, Althea. I’ve been there and done that, as they say. I remember it clearly. It isn’t necessary to do it again.”

  Althea colored and looked away.

  Maybe it is, babe. For more reasons than you know.

  “Should we go back inside?” Albermayer said.

  “Yeah,” Althea husked. “Let’s do that.”

  ====

  November 29 , 1325 A.H.

  “I’ll hear no more about it, Charisse.”

  “Alex—”

  “Was there something unclear about that?” Alex Dunbarton’s glare expressed the exhaustion of his patience unambiguously. It took a considerable effort of will for Charisse not to cringe away from his ire.

  “May I ask a question, then?”

  He waited in silence. His stern glare remained.

  She waved at the bed they’d shared for seven years. “Am I still welcome there?”

  His eyes narrowed. Some of the anger seeped out of his face and bearing. “Why do you ask that? Didn’t you awaken in that bed only a couple of hours ago?”

  “Don’t you think I have a reason? You haven’t touched me—you’ve barely spoken to me since we broke off the siege. Getting your attention has become a challenge. And need I point out that we haven’t sat down to a meal together these past four days?”

  “I’ve been preoccupied.” He started to turn away.

  “I’ve noticed—and I’ve noticed that whatever it is that’s preoccupying you, you won’t speak of it to me. Why is that, Alex?”

  That earned her a scowl, but no further explanation. Presently he said “I have work to do” and departed their bedroom. The firm way he closed the door behind him made it plain that she wasn’t to follow.

  She sat on the bed and tried to think.

  I’m not homeless...yet. But I’m no longer the treasured consort and counselor. And I have no way of knowing if my welcome might expire completely...or when.

  The debacle at Morelon House was hardly my fault. Who would have guessed that Althea would come back just in time, or that she could bombard us from the Relic? For that matter, who would have guessed that she would do so? I was more afraid that they’d find a way to use the spaceplane against us, but it did
n’t even enter the picture.

  The alliance could still exert pressure on them. A concerted economic boycott might be enough to squeeze out a concession or two. I can’t imagine why Alex won’t even discuss it.

  The memory of the blow he had dealt her returned with disagreeable force.

  If Nora was being serious and not just melodramatic, I don’t think I want to be here when Althea comes back to the surface.

  What assets do I still possess, and where can I best leverage them?

  She set grimly but resolutely to reviewing her options.

  * * *

  Barton Morelon seated himself gingerly at the long oaken table in the kitchen of Morelon House and waited in silence. Nora sat at his left, close against his side and the stump of his left arm. Her husband glanced at her briefly and smiled.

  He didn’t say so, but I'm certain he wanted to be sure the others had all eaten and left before he came in here.

  Since Alvah's murder by the alliance forces, the cooking duties had reverted to Dorothy Morelon and Cecile Dunbarton. The two had learned something of the culinary art by assisting their late predecessor, and it showed. They rushed far less than they once had. They paid far greater attention to combinations and proportions. Perhaps most important, they'd learned to trust their raw materials; they no longer overcooked nor overseasoned.

  Who cares if breakfast takes a few minutes longer to arrive, now that we know it will be edible?

  I still miss Alvah. I think I always will, and not just for his skills with food.

  Presently a smiling Cecile set plates laden with ham, scrambled eggs, and buttered muffins before them. Nora returned the smile, Barton inclined his head, and the two addressed their meals.

  Before her husband could poke at his ham steak, Nora attacked it with her own knife and fork. He emitted a grunt of surprise as she deftly sliced it into bite-sized pieces he could easily handle one-handed. He turned to her with an expression of amusement.

  “Have you been practicing?” he said.

  Nora giggled. “Nope. Well, maybe a little.” She leaned a bit more firmly into his side. “I just want my husband to enjoy his breakfast. Is that bad? I noticed that you didn’t get a lot of pleasure out of yesterday’s meals.”