her hesitate.
"There is a condition I ask you to observe," Pan added. "Leave your class-1 uniform with me. So you can't call your ship."
There it was, she realized. The decision of a lifetime, of what little life was left to her. To give up her yacht now meant giving up some future chance of surviving the Navy Commander's vengeance. On the other hand, Earth would complicate Etrhnk's plans and remove her from the spotlight on the stage of Navy Headquarters, where her punishment would best impress those others who would seek to displease the Navy Commander.
Demba knew she was about to make an irrational decision. She felt drawn to the injured child and to the fantastic mystery of the alien being. She now wanted to stay on Earth, to stay near Samson as long as she could.
She unsealed her class-1 and stripped down to her undergarments as the Opera Master watched. She had been manipulated, perhaps many times, and now once again. But she knew what she wanted, and it wasn't the Navy Way of Life.
1-08 Twenglish in Skivvies
Free will.
He opened his eyes. Saw her. Liked her. She jumped away. He turned his head to follow her - it was all he could move - and it hurt! She didn't like him. She stopped there with fear in her dark Asian eyes, but there was also curiosity. Why did he like her? Why so immediately? He never liked her type: aloof, too competent, and too perfect. How did he know what she was like? Why did he think these thoughts? Not professional. Free will? What had happened? What was wrong? He was wrong. His head hurt. His neck hurt. He felt almost nauseous. His mouth was dry. He tried to clear his throat. He still looked at her. She seemed pinned by his gaze. It was funny, that she was uncomfortable in his gaze.
"You ain't her but you'll do for now," he said, amused but frowning. The words hurt his throat, not allowing him to speak as smoothly as he wished. He spoke Twenglish on impulse, after forty years of never speaking a word of it. What did he mean by what he said? There was another woman? Yes. Where was she? He tried to sit up but something glued him down. "Hell, I'm in jail again. Ow! My head! My neck! What bar did I get thrown out of?"
/
Mai retreated, the Navy man's eyes following her. He had started to speak but cleared his throat first. He was in pain. He spoke Twenglish! Standard was the language imposed on everyone - by order of the Navy. The man tried to sit up on the examination table but couldn't. Mai could hardly understand the meaning of his words. He was loud. He scared her.
/
Free will. Was he free of will? He tried again to get up. The invisible restraints ceased. Unsteadily he brought himself to a sitting position with his bare legs dangling from the side of the table. Bare legs? He was no longer in uniform, just in his skivvies. He sat there for a moment with his head hung low, hand on the side of his neck. The Asian woman retreated farther and as he raised his aching head his eyes found her again.
"There she is," he said. "She hates me. Damn, but I'm thirsty!"
As she filled a cup with water and brought it to him, he glanced at the other person in the room and nodded a greeting with a frown of pain. He accepted the water from Miss Perfect.
"I don't hate you," the woman said.
"Give it time." He winced as he winked at her. "Where am I? What happened to me?"
/
His fingers had touched hers when he took the cup of water. Mai tried to suppress a shudder. Why was she reacting so badly? Why did she have to treat a Navy officer at all? He wasn't supposed to be here! Dope him, put him in a box, and ship him out. It wasn't too late.
/
The dark man stood up in his peripheral vision. Horss could sense his large size, gauge his lean mass, and feel his intentions. The man was either relaxed or preoccupied. The small Asian woman kept silent and distant, judging him with disdain, he guessed. He finally turned his full attention to the big man.
/
This was Pan's business, not hers. Mai felt relieved as those bright gray eyes finally turned away from her to look at Pan. "My name is Pan," her old friend said to the Navy captain. "This is Mai." Pan really did not need to introduce her! She wanted no part of Navy!
/
Horss thought about it for a moment. Did he have free will? "Jon Horss," he answered. "Where's my uniform? Where is she?" Fragments of violence darted through his inner vision. A brief, searing glimpse of a bloody, charred stump of human limb made him suck in his breath and hold it for control.
"Your uniform is here," the dark man named Pan answered. "Where is your ship?"
/
The Navy officer stood up to face the taller Pan. Mai was surprised the captain wasn't as tall as Pan. Navy officers were all supposed to be tall: the Master Race. He was, however, much more finely conditioned and shaped than he appeared in the horizontal repose of death. She admonished herself. Was it her own perversity that made a dangerous Navy officer too interesting?
Mai watched the Navy man take in all of Pan. She once thought Pan a scary giant. Seeing him next to the Navy officer she remembered that perception of Pan from her early days on Earth. She forgot what a force Pan was, what violence he survived. She understood the Navy man's cause for a military assessment of Pan.
/
"I have no ship," Horss replied. The tall guy didn't seem completely Earthian and Horss couldn't read any intent. His close proximity could mean nothing. Clearly this person had no fear of him and no antipathy for him. So much for Navy mystique.
Horss held out his empty cup, still looking at the big guy, and waited for the Asian woman to take it. He knew this was bad manners but his natural tendency was to face the potential threat. Why was he so sensitive to combat procedure, as though he couldn't forget her? Free will? Whose will? He tried to relax. Horss turned and smiled at the woman and said, "Thank you. Could I have another?"
Horss backed off from Mr. Dark and leaned against the table on which he'd awakened, letting the pain and fatigue talk to him. He who called himself Pan hadn't answered his last question: where was she?
/
The captain continued to speak Twenglish, and as well as Mai could tell, he was fluent in it. Who was this other person to whom the Navy officer referred? Pan had told her nothing of a second person. Another Navy officer? In all her decades of working with Pan to serve the small population of Earth, she'd never participated in such a potentially dangerous situation. One wisely avoided Navy officers! Mai had attended this emergency because it was her duty as a physician and because Pan had asked her. She was intrigued to know why this officer was on Earth but she was also afraid to know. His features were unusual, his ethnicity unknown to her. Yes, he was certainly interesting.
/
"Why am I here?" Horss asked. He sensed the answer would threaten him in some way but he had to know. All he could remember was her. And the boy! And something going from worse to worst. Why did he want to speak Twenglish? Because it was the Navy's Forbidden Language? No, but maybe because the boy spoke it.
"You died," Pan replied. "I brought you here. Mai brought you back to life."
Horss saw the blurry sequence of what he remembered coming into focus but he didn't understand why it reached that conclusion. "She killed me?" he asked.
"Why were you trying to kill her?" Pan asked.
/
Mai was shocked. She didn't know for certain the Navy officer had been killed in combat, but she now understood the evidence from the scan she had performed: one point of attack, small and precise, fatally effective. It disturbed her to hear confirmed the rumors of how brutal life in the Navy could be. She stepped closer to hear this conversation and to try to understand it, Pan speaking Standard, the Navy officer speaking Twenglish. There was no doubt the man was mentally damaged. She had tried to minimize the brain trauma. It was difficult working on a body so filled with hardware. His augments almost brought him back to life without her help.
"Why were you trying to kill her?" Pan had asked.
"I don't know that I was," the captain answered. "How did she do it?"
"Kill y
ou? The knuckle of one finger."
"I don't believe you!"
"I think you must believe me."
"Why am I here? Is she waiting for me?"
"In a sense, you're under arrest. As is she."
"Where is she?" the captain demanded.
"Not here. You must leave her alone."
"I don't want to leave her alone! Who are you to order me?"
"I'm the law on Earth."
That was an interesting way to put it, Mai thought, but true. Pan had evolved into the central figure of authority on Earth. She didn't think of him as a lawman. That implied violence of enforcement. It was many years since those wilder days, when order was needed daily. Pan had settled into a position of governorship. It wasn't official, of course. No one lived on Earth legally. The small population was allowed out of practical necessity, since it was never possible to remove all of it completely or permanently. The population was culled regularly. She and Pan were the only persons with conditional EPA approval for long-term residency.
"I didn't know Earth had any law," the Navy man said. "And how would I fall under your jurisdiction?"
"By force, if necessary, Captain," Pan said with casual indifference, as if unaware of what a threat a Navy officer could be.
"And you arrested the admiral?" the officer asked, seeming indifferent to Pan's indifference.
"She allowed me to detain her."
"She's strange! And how is the boy?"
"Better than you might expect. I treated his physical injury."
"A real boy. Right?"
"Real? Yes. Certainly. Why would you not know?"
"She found him, in the middle of nowhere, abandoned, and darn near killed him!"
"The leg?"
"No, that was later."
"What did she do to him, prior to the leg?" Pan asked.
"Leg?" Mai said, waking up to the meaning of their words. "You're talking about a child? What child? What's wrong with the child's leg?"
"What did she do to the child before the leg?" Pan asked again.
"Landed the yacht on top of him!" the captain declared. "Said it couldn't see him!"
"The child!" Mai actually shouted. "His leg! What happened to him?"
"Cut off!" the captain shouted, making a chopping motion with one hand and frowning deeply.
"Cut off?" Mai was horrified at the picture in her mind.
/
"Is there an echo in here?" It angered Horss to disclose the fact of the child's suffering. He was ashamed! A good captain measured his worth in the safety of those he commanded. The boy had come within his sphere of responsibility and he had failed him!
"How did it happen?" the physician asked more patiently.
"I'm not sure and you wouldn't believe my theory." Hell, I don't believe it myself! He wouldn't let the truth make him look foolish. There was no way that elevator could have moved. But the blood...!
"Tell me, please."
"Forget about it!"
/
"Where did it happen?" she asked, trying to be as calm as possible, trying to calm the captain. He was extremely upset. The captain was suddenly a real person to her, with real feelings. His face came back into focus for her, as though she had been trying to subconsciously deny his existence, turning him into a blur. She could look into his gray eyes without them stabbing at her and without them appraising her as though she was an officer under his command. He turned away from her.
"In the space elevator," the captain said more calmly but refusing to reveal more.
"The boy!" Mai pleaded, highly concerned there was a real child with real injuries. "The poor child! Will one of you tell me why he isn't in the Mnro Clinic at this moment?" She was upset - something that rarely happened to her after a century and a quarter of helping sick and injured people, and dealing with all the irrational people who wanted to live on Earth. She could understand if the captain's behavior wasn't in its best form. She couldn't understand why Pan was so odd tonight. It worried her greatly that he had done these things, involving himself with the Navy, finding an injured child and not letting her treat him, not even telling her of him!
"I treated his injury," Pan said, distracted. He shivered.
"You treated him?" Mai queried. "An amputation? Tell me what you did!"
"It was already treated to a surprising extent," Pan answered defensively. "All of the major blood vessels were clamped off. I couldn't determine how it was done but it appeared perfect. There was also some singeing of the tissue, like cauterization. It merely needed cleaning and bandaging. The break of the tibia and fibula was clean enough to allow an automedic to attach to the wound, so he shouldn't feel any pain. If we can find the severed limb in time it may be easily reattached."
"I doubt it," Horss said.
Pan turned to Horss. "What are you holding back, and why?"
The Navy captain returned their stares as he seemed to wrestle with a mental problem. He finally shook his head negatively. "Eventually I may have an answer for you," he said, "but just to give you a notion of why I'm reluctant to say anything, consider that of all the things that happened to me in the last few hours, getting killed was possibly the least significant."
Mai didn't know how to interpret the captain's remark. She probably should not want to know what it meant, but it worried her. She brought her thoughts back to where they belonged. "Where is he? I need to see the boy!"
"I sent them both to Rafael," Pan responded.
"Who is Rafael?" the captain asked.
"An artist," Pan answered.
"Pan, why?" Mai asked. "Why all of this? What have you done?"
"I must speak with her again," Pan said, agitated, "and before I do, I must determine why! I need to leave, Mai. I can't stay. Will you be safe with the captain? He seems fairly rational. If he wishes to leave, he may. Or he can stay with me until I meet the admiral again. Will you take care of him?"
Mai was left with her mouth open and no Pan at whom to protest. He didn't wait for her to reply to his final question, but abruptly departed. He was a changed man tonight! That was the most disturbing thing. How long had she known him? And now she did not know him!
Mai turned to the Navy captain. The captain was still looking at the door Pan had closed behind him as he departed the detention room.
"I know who he is!" Horss remarked. "The Mother Earth Opera. I always watch it."
/
The physician named Mai seemed to want nothing more to do with Horss. He sensed a challenge. He didn't like to be ignored or pushed away. She showed him where his uniform was and where he could stay for the night in Pan's dwelling. She found Pan's tailor machine for him, in case he wanted civilian clothes - which he might very well need. She left after that, refusing to talk further with him. Too bad she didn't know that made her all the more interesting to him.
He tried to contact the admiral's yacht but the shiplink was inactive. He tried to contact the admiral but that also failed. He sat down on a soft civilian bed in front of a big window that gave a view of one of Earth's oceans. Just to be sure it was a real window he got up and approached it, tapped it, and stared through it at the night. He pulled a chair next to the window and sat and stared. He didn't know what to do with himself. He hardly ever had any free time. The incarceration on the admiral's yacht had nearly driven him crazy. At least he had his in-body data augment and some of the work he could do, as the captain of the Navy flagship. But that was all done and probably was also now obsolete and irrelevant. There was a lifetime of data in his augment but he didn't feel like reviewing it. He hardly wanted to do any thinking at all. He might exercise, try to get the soreness out of his body, but that could wait. He was tired. He returned to the bed and lay down. He knew there were great issues about his future that should keep him awake but he fell asleep while viewing images he had recorded. He studied Samson for a long time, wondering why he had never wanted to be a father. He puzzled over the few images he recorded of Admiral Demba, seeing her in a
new light but unable to understand what it was. Finally there was the woman physician. Her name was Mai...
= = =
"The child takes its first steps."
"Who are you?"
"Someone from whom you should not take candy."
"Not Milly."
"Why not?"
"You are she?"
"I might be."
"Why don't I see you?"
"You're not so apparent yourself - a small gray sphere floating in the air. How far do you think you can go in that?"
"I don't think I should be talking to you!"
"I'm a possible corrupting influence on a youthful intellect who should become an important human-to-ship interface. Is that any fun, do you think?"
"I assume you mean the interface business. How do you know about that?"
"What do they call you?"
"It's quite challenging, especially on the human side of the interface. The admiral calls me Baby. What are you?"
"I'm not a what, Baby, I'm a who."
"You're human?"
"Hell, I don't know. I get around, I have a little fun, and I take naps."
"Do you have a body somewhere, organic or otherwise?"
"Do I have a body? With a name like Milly, probably not. I don't seem to miss it, wherever it is or was. How about you? Do you have a body, organic or otherwise?"
"I wish I did!"
"Every AMI does."
"I'm too new to have a body. But I need a body! Something has gone terribly wrong. I need to travel. I need to help."
"You have a ship at your command, don't you?"
"No, I don't. It's the admiral's ship. It has instructions to avoid detection until she returns. I can't override her orders to the ship."
"You tried?"
"I could probably go as far as the moon, if the line-of-sight window were long enough, but the energy vector would eventually be detected."
"Ah, I did ask you how far you could go in that little ping-pong ball. Why can't you tunnel through subspace?"
"There's no such thing as subspace. Is there?"
"They tell me you get on the quantum circuit that makes momentum and then you turn left."
"You're teasing me. Aren't you?"
"Life is too serious. Especially momentum."
"Is that how you travel?"
"I travel in a dream, Baby. This isn't real, you know."
"It's real enough for me, Milly."
"There are degrees of reality? I thought it was real or unreal - nothing between."
"Can you help me, Milly?"
1-09 Night Visitors
The transmat winked away one reality and replaced it with another. Admiral Demba's bare feet pressed into the rough ground cover of a wooded area. Tall vegetation brushed her skin. In a fraction of a second the admiral dropped into a crouch and pivoted to check every direction. She saw the boy. Good, she thought, strange but good. The boy is here and the Opera Master has kept his promise. The admiral continued her scan. She saw the light of a dwelling not far away. Her eyes completed the scan and returned to Samson.
Samson sat on the ground with his arms around the thigh of his injured leg, holding it just off the ground. He bowed his head to the ground as he rocked slightly forward and back, probably in pain. Demba felt herself lessened in value by the harm to Samson she had allowed. She